Bush Defends War, Sidestepping Issue of Faulty Intelligence
By DAVID E. SANGER and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, July 9 — Saying he had "no doubt" that the United States was right to invade Iraq, President Bush today brushed aside the controversy over his use of faulty pre-war intelligence that said Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium from Africa.
"I am confident that Saddam Hussein had a weapons-of-mass-destruction <font color=red>program<font color=black>," Mr. Bush said during a news conference in Pretoria, South Africa, his second stop on a five-nation tour through sub-Saharan Africa.
Mr. Bush sidestepped the specific question about whether his administration had used fraudulent information to press its case against Mr. Hussein and instead emphasized the ends rather than the means, insisting that "the world is a much more peaceful and secure place as a result of the actions."
He added: "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power."
The president's comments came two days after the White House acknowledged that the president was relying on incomplete and perhaps inaccurate intelligence when he declared in his State of the Union speech in January that Mr. Hussein had tried to purchase uranium in Africa.
On Tuesday, the State Department told a Congressional committee that a week after President Bush gave his State of the Union address American diplomats warned the International Atomic Energy Agency that the United States could not confirm the reports.
The State Department letter, provided to Representative Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, confirms that there were deep misgivings in the government about some intelligence Mr. Bush cited in his January speech.
On Monday the White House said for the first time that the evidence that Iraq sought nuclear fuel in Africa was not credible enough, and should not have been included in the president's remarks.
Nonetheless, White House officials declined on Tuesday to reveal how the charge made it into Mr. Bush's speech. And they argued, in further statements that went beyond those issued from Air Force One on Monday, that the uranium issue was one of many pieces of evidence indicating that Iraq was seeking to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.
The White House acknowledgment that it had used flawed intelligence came nearly six months after the speech, and after weeks of arguments here and in Britain over the justification for the invasion of Iraq. On Tuesday it touched off a new series of accusations between Democrats and Republicans over whether the administration had deliberately skewed the evidence, or, as the Democrats argued, withheld information that would have cast doubt on the intelligence.
Democrats seized on the admission as new justification for a full-scale investigation.
"It's a recognition that we were provided faulty information," Tom Daschle, the senate Democratic leader, told reporters on Tuesday. "And I think it's all the more reason why a full investigation of all of the facts surrounding this situation be undertaken, the sooner the better."
Republicans said the White House had been "forthright" in making the admission and they pointed to the risks of using intelligence from other nations. Mr. Bush had cited British intelligence reports on the uranium, but that report was at least in part based on American reports.
"Obviously, when you use foreign intelligence, you — we don't have necessarily as much confidence or as much reliability as you do your own," Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said on Tuesday. "It has since turned out to be, at least according to the reports that have been just released, not true. The president stepped forward and said so. I think that's all you can expect."
The State Department's letter came in response to a statement provided to Mr. Waxman by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations body that monitors nuclear activity. The agency said it had sought information in December to back up American charges that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium in Niger.
The initial intelligence was provided to Congress in late October. But it was not until Feb. 4, a week after Mr. Bush spoke, that the administration provided documents to the I.A.E.A. to back up its charges.The I.A.E.A. quickly concluded that the documents the United States had turned over to support Mr. Bush's claims were fraudulent. But even in turning over the material, the State Department told the organization, "We cannot confirm these reports and have questions regarding some specific claims." Advertisement
That statement appears to show that serious doubts about the intelligence were present early on, but Mr. Bush also cited other evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Michael N. Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said on Tuesday, "The documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger were not the sole basis for the line in the president's State of the Union speech that referred to recent Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa."
He said that at the time a "national intelligence estimate" cited "attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from several countries in Africa," adding, "We now know that documents alleging a transaction between Iraq and Niger had been forged."Mr. Bush never mentioned Niger by name in his speech. But without the Niger evidence, the argument that Iraq was intent on getting uranium from Africa did not hold up.Mr. Anton noted today that "other reporting that suggested that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Africa is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that such attempts were in fact made."Because of this lack of specificity," he continued, "this reporting alone did not rise to the level of inclusion in a presidential speech.
That said, the issue of Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium from abroad was not an element underpinning the judgment reached by most intelligence agencies that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." That judgment was highly controversial, with the State Department's intelligence unit and the Energy Department arguing that the evidence was murky at best. Republicans, however, insisted on Tuesday that if the president made a very public mistake, it was not a consequential one.
"It's very easy to pick one little flaw here or one little flaw there," said Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the second-ranking Republican leader in the House of Representatives. "The overall reason we went into Iraq was sound and morally sound. And it's not just because somebody forged or a made a mistake on whether Saddam Hussein was looking for nuclear material from Niger or whatever." |
