Beware of Certitude
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Only two days ago, I wrote with all the confidence of a bigfoot pundit that French President Jacques Chirac, at the NATO summit in Istanbul, would find it in his political interest to paper over past differences with the U.S., Britain and most other European nations about overthrowing Saddam.
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So much for my certitude. Instead, Chirac stuck his thumb in the alliance's eye: he would not allow any troops under the NATO flag to help the newly sovereign Iraqis defeat the terrorists. Even the training of Iraqi police officers would have to take place outside that country; Chirac slyly suggested Rome.
And when President Bush dared to hope that the host nation, Turkey (a NATO nation that did more than France to counter the Soviet threat), would be accepted into the European Union, Chirac lashed out at the American with: <font size=3><font color=blue>"He not only went too far, but he has gone into a domain that is not his own. He has nothing to say on this subject."
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I was profoundly mistaken about how far into isolation this former ally would go. Evidently Chirac finds political salvation in being openly and contemptuously anti-Bush. He has placed all of his nation's diplomatic chips on the defeat of Bush in November.
Chirac takes that gamble because he is afflicted with certitude about this: if freedom fails in Iraq, France's long and profitable protection of Saddam will somehow be justified.
But certitude is an uncertain thing. Take, for example,
the assumption now taken as fact that Saddam's Iraq was
not seeking the raw material for the production of atomic
weapons.
Remember Bush's claim in last year's State of the Union
address about Iraq's negotiating with an African nation
for the "yellowcake" refined from uranium ore? When it
turned out that this suspicion was based on forged
documents, the embarrassed C.I.A. and humiliated White
House confessed error. Great and gleeful derision was
heaped on Bush for misleading the world on one of the
three bases for intervention.
If anything in the intelligence world can be a sure thing, the conclusion that Bush had blundered badly was it. The husband of a C.I.A. employee was lionized by the antiwar left for having doubted the fraudulent report; Joseph Wilson is promoting his book about alleged intimidation in the exposure of his wife's job, and the ensuing leak investigation has been making headlines ever since.
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Comes now a front-page story in The Financial Times by
Mark Huband, that international newspaper's security
correspondent, headlined "Intelligence Backs Claims Iraq
Had Talks on Uranium."
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Were the documents on which Bush based his charge fake? Yes; though "legal constraints" prevent the F.T. and the Italian magazine Panorama from identifying the suspected forger, the source is reportedly a convicted con man who tried to peddle phony yellowcake papers to several spy services. No wonder everybody belatedly ran from any notion that Iraq sought the uranium product from Niger.
But hold that horselaugh: <font size=3><font color=blue>"Embarrassment on fake documents obscured earlier intelligence that Iraq may have been trying to buy uranium," notes an F.T. subheading. Huband writes: "Three intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence . . . had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq. This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programs."
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A close reading of the article suggests the original human source was Italian, whose tip was confirmed by British and French electronic intercepts. C.I.A. analysts, who often disdain data not gathered by us, ignored the real thing until they were suckered by the forged documents.
Was Iraq, like Iran and Libya, in the secret market for atomic material? This article does not yet prove it, but neither does the falsity of some of the data prove the opposite. A safe bet for thee and me is to dispense with certitude.
In the months and years ahead, we are highly likely (almost wrote "sure") to get more evidence from seekers after W.M.D. truth. These range from the new Iraqi government to ousted officials, from the coalition's official team to freelance former spooks and serious journalists.
Don't jump to hasty derision. As Mark Twain advised, the problem is not just what we don't know, but what we do know that ain't so. <font size=3>
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
