'A Slam-Dunk Case'
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Bob Woodward refutes the claim that Bush "lied" about Iraq.<font size=3>
WSJ.com
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A funny thing has happened to the accusation that President Bush "lied" or "misled" Americans about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," blows the charge away, not that you've read about that in many other places.
Instead, we've all heard mostly about the book's report that Colin Powell wasn't keen on going to war. This we already knew. The real news is what Mr. Woodward tells us about the President's state of mind concerning Iraq's weapons when he ordered American troops into battle: His Director of Central Intelligence had assured him that the WMD case was a "slam dunk."
Mr. Woodward describes a December 2002 Oval Office meeting in which CIA Director George Tenet and a deputy brief the President, Vice President, National Security Adviser and White House Chief of Staff on the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. According to the Woodward account, so far undisputed, Mr. Bush responded to the presentation by calling it a "nice try" but "not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."
The President continued, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?" At which point Mr. Tenet is said to have thrown his hands in the air and remarked, "It's a slam-dunk case!" Mr. Bush pressed again, "George, how confident are you?" Mr. Tenet: "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!"
It isn't a shock, of course, that the CIA believed Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton Administration bombed Iraq for four days in December 1998 based on that assessment. Every other major intelligence agency in the world believed the same. What is new in the Woodward account is the extent to which Mr. Bush appears to have been a thoughtful and critical consumer of such intelligence. The President reportedly told Mr. Tenet several times, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."
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All of which puts the "Bush lied" crowd in a rather
awkward spot. "He misled every one of us," John Kerry has
said. "He lied to me personally." Ted Kennedy: "Week after
week after week after week, we were told lie after lie
after lie after lie."
The fact that the Massachusetts Senators didn't have the
benefit of Mr. Woodward's account when making such serious
allegations isn't much of an excuse for these false
claims, since as Hillary Rodham Clinton has recently
attested, "The consensus was the same, from the Clinton
Administration to the Bush Administration." New York's
Junior Senator may owe Mr. Bush a little apology herself
for suggesting he wasn't "intellectually curious" enough
on this matter to seek out "contrary points of view."
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We suppose Mr. Bush can be faulted for his continuing loyalty to Mr. Tenet in the face of faulty U.S. intelligence, but that's a subject for another day. The bottom line is that Mr. Woodward has revealed the campaign to accuse Mr. Bush of lying about Iraq to be false. Let's be generous and say Messrs. Kennedy and Kerry and their media friends were themselves only "misleading" Americans about their accusation based on faulty information. But if they make the charge again we'll know that they are the ones who are lying.
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