A news story on tv briefly mentioned that an Iraqi scientist came forward with sketchy documents
about a possible nuclear program in Iraq, but the documents were 10 or 12 years old. The
US government wasn't nice to the scientist, and, according to the commentator, it was
unlikely that other scientists would willingly come forward after the way the US treated this fellow.
Do you have additional details about this story?
History will judge Blair and Bush harshly, but, in the interim, we'll suffer because they lied to us,
and the credibility of the US and Blair's government is at stake.
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"Yet there was no consensus within the American intelligence community that Saddam represented
such a grave and imminent threat. Rather, interviews with current and former intelligence officials and
other experts reveal that the Bush administration culled from U.S. intelligence those assessments that
supported its position and omitted those that did not. The administration ignored, and even
suppressed, disagreement within the intelligence agencies and pressured the CIA to reaffirm its
preferred version of the Iraqi threat. Similarly, it stonewalled, and sought to discredit, international
weapons inspectors when their findings threatened to undermine the case for war.
Three months after the invasion, the United States may yet discover the chemical and biological
weapons that various governments and the United Nations have long believed Iraq possessed. But it
is unlikely to find, as the Bush administration had repeatedly predicted, a reconstituted nuclear
weapons program or evidence of joint exercises with Al Qaeda--the two most compelling security
arguments for war. Whatever is found, what matters as far as American democracy is concerned is
whether the administration gave Americans an honest and accurate account of what it knew. The
evidence to date is that it did not, and the cost to U.S. democracy could be
felt for years to come."
EXCERPT: THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR.
The First Casualty
by John B. Judis & Spencer Ackerman
The New Republic
tnr.com |
