Bush officials bend Iraq facts till they break
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Did Bush officials exaggerate and distort prewar
evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?
Or were they, like the rest of us, simply the victims
of poor intelligence work by the CIA and other
agencies?
The answer is important. Incompetence is one
thing; a conscious decision by our top leaders to
deceive us into war would be far more troubling.
And getting to the truth will be difficult as long as
Republican leaders in Congress refuse to conduct a
full-scale investigation into the question.
Fortunately, there are other ways to gauge the
decision-making process in the Bush
administration. The most obvious proof that Bush
officials hyped and distorted evidence about Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction in the past is that
they continue to hype and distort that evidence
today, with a shamelessness that is stunning.
Let's review briefly:
Before the war, the American people heard repeated warnings from prominent
members of the administration -- President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell,
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, etc. -- about the dire threat posed by
Iraq. We heard warnings of Iraqi nuclear bombs and mushroom clouds drifting over
American cities. We heard talk of Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles that could fly over
the continental United States, spreading chemical and biological weapons. We
heard ominous reports of growing Iraqi stockpiles of the most vicious weapons
devised by mankind, weapons that could be slipped easily to Saddam Hussein's
bosom buddies in al-Qaida.
Now, almost six months after the war ended, we know that none of those fears
was grounded in reality. David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, grudgingly
reported to Congress last week that so far he has found no chemical or biological
weapons, not even a program to produce chemical or biological weapons. He found
no Iraqi program to develop nuclear weapons. He found no evidence of unmanned
aerial vehicles capable of spreading biological or chemical weapons. The list goes
on and on.
However, rather than admit the undeniable truth, Bush and others have tried to
magically transform it. If you believe their version of the story, the fact that we have
found no WMD in Iraq -- and no WMD programs -- is of little or no importance. In
fact, they argue that the Kay report actually vindicates their claim that Saddam
posed an imminent danger to the region and the world. It seems they were right all
along.
Uh huh. And the Braves are going to win the World Series this year.
This is precisely how a discredited forgery about enriched uranium is transformed
into proof that Iraq is building a nuclear weapon. This is how CIA dismissals of a link
between Saddam and Osama bin Laden -- dismissals backed by investigation and
expert analysis -- are made to disappear because they inconveniently contradict
policy. This is how hype, exaggeration and distortion can be used to alter reality,
right out where everyone can see it.
To justify their bizarre claim, Bush officials have pounced upon a handful of minor
finds by Kay's group, in particular the discovery of a biological agent in the
possession of an Iraqi scientist. What they found, of course, was not the tons of
weaponry that Powell so famously promised in his speech to the United Nations. It
was not pounds or even ounces of the material. It was one small vial.
That vial contained the B strain of botulinum, not the more deadly A strain. It did not
contain botulinum toxin, the actual nerve agent known in this country as Botox, only
the fairly common botulinum bacteria that can produce the toxin.
Most tellingly, the vial was given to the Iraqi scientist for safekeeping back in 1993,
and it has sat untouched in his home refrigerator ever since. For the next 10 years,
nobody in the Iraqi government showed the slightest interest in reclaiming that vial,
not even after U.N. inspectors left the country in 1998.
The vial, in other words, is not evidence of a living, fire-breathing dragon that had to
be slain before it could threaten our homes. It's a dinosaur bone, an ancient relic of
a long-departed beast. All the spinning and hyping in the world can't change that.
Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays
and Mondays |
