Was the degree of threat posed by Saddam deliberately exaggerated in order to justify the war?
That, I think, is a reasonable question - as opposed to the ritualistic partisan screaming of "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!" Here is a column from the Jerusalem Post on that point that you might find interesting:
Snap Judgment, By Calev Ben-David: Has anyone seen some WMDs?
Last October, I wrote in this space that "my own effort to formulate a coherent opinion on the best course to take [toward Iraq] is complicated by the fact that I view it through a bifurcated lens, as both an Israeli and an American."
I noted the obvious fact that "Saddam is a serious threat, period, to the State of Israel, and that threat increases exponentially every day he is allowed to develop weapons of mass destruction."
But added to this was the caveat that, from an American perspective, "I don't know why President Bush sees Saddam as so immediate a threat against the US that he has made removing him Washington's highest priority at this time."
A big part of the problem was that the Bush administration (and the president himself) had still failed to adequately prioritize the reasons for the urgency of removing Saddam ASAP. Was it because of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction? Its defiance of UN regulations and international law pertaining to those WMDs? Its possible links to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups? The brutality and inhumanity of Saddam's regime? Or a more general need by America following 9/11 to kick some serious butt among its enemies, of which Saddam's was surely among the most deserving and doable?
Although the last statement probably comes closest to the truth (and should have been sufficient unto itself), it was the first the Bush administration decided to stress. Thus it made as the centerpiece of its campaign to wage war on Iraq Saddam's failure to comply with UN Resolution 1441, culminating in Colin Powell's dramatic speech to the Security Council on February 6 when he accused Iraq of stockpiling up to "500 tons of chemical agents" and "25,000 liters of anthrax, botulinum, aflatoxin, and ricin."
Yet to date, nearly two months after American and British forces have seized control of Iraq, none of that material has been found. And once again, I find my reaction to this development somewhat divided. As an Israeli, I say: Whew, thank God! With little faith in the efficiency of our government-supplied gas masks, and even less in the not-quite-sealed room I prepared for my family, thank God it looks like Saddam didn't have actually those dreaded WMDs on hand.
But the first reaction of my American half isn't quite as sanguine. I want to know, just like a lot of other people: What the heck happened to those WMDs?
THERE ARE several possible explanations.
Saddam could have destroyed his WMDs in the early days of the war although it defies credibility that the amounts cited by Powell could have been made to vanish without a trace so quickly.
They could still be hidden somewhere, perhaps in the same underground bunker housing Saddam, Qusai, and Uday. That's hardly a reassuring thought, though. Wasn't Hans Blix mercilessly ridiculed by pro-war forces for failing to find evidence of WMDs at a time when Saddam still held power? If US forces can't do better when they control the country, perhaps it is time to call Blix back in.
The most plausible explanation has to do with a failure of US intelligence. Perhaps the CIA, NSA, Army Intelligence, etc., were simply wrong in their estimates of Saddam's WMD stockpile. If that's the case, there should certainly be an inquiry of sorts into how that faulty intelligence was gathered, and if major mistakes did happen then the appropriate heads should roll. (Just how many screw-ups is George Tenet allowed?)
Another theory put forward is that senior Bush administration officials deliberately skewed ambiguous intelligence information into the direction they wanted to better make the case for war. Given the speculative nature of almost all intelligence material, this would be a very, very hard case to nail down, although Bush and Tony Blair's political opponents will certainly try.
Their defenders have argued back that the WMD issue is largely now moot. Perhaps Saddam didn't actually have WMDs stockpiled, but he maintained the capability to develop them, and has demonstrated the will to use them. Besides which, hasn't the overthrow of Saddam's tyrannical regime, whose brutal nature becomes more obvious each day with the uncovering of additional mass graves, proven in retrospect to be sufficient cause for waging war in Iraq?
But the Bush administration itself isn't yet taking that line. Only yesterday the president declared, "I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out that they did have a weapons program," while Powell told Fox News on Sunday of the claims he made to the Security Council: "It wasn't the president's credibility and my credibility on the line; it was the credibility of the United States of America."
Don't get the idea from all this that I regret for a minute the US-Great Britain invasion of Iraq, which was good for the US, even better for Israel, and best off all for the Iraqi people and the rest of the Arab world. But I do regret the way the Bush administration went to war; not its failure to secure pointless UN backing, but the president's apparent reluctance to squarely address the American people and tell them that taking down Saddam was necessary because the only real response to 9/11 is waging a decades-long effort, requiring a blood-sweat-and-tears sacrifice on the part of the US, to bring democracy and prosperity to the corrupt, dictatorial Muslim states which have become breeding grounds for Islamic terrorism.
Instead the president chose to make Saddam's possible possession of WMDs as the major reason for going into Iraq in my view a mistake even if they are eventually found. On that point, both sides of me are in agreement: As an American, I'm concerned that the Bush administration's credibility, and its ability to collect or properly interpret intelligence, is now being seriously called into question. And as an Israeli, I'm especially worried that this is happening at a time when Washington is trying to forcefully broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
jpost.com |
