White House's 'rush to war was reckless'
Kenneth Pollack, key supporter of regime change in Iraq, now says White House engaged in "creative omissions' about WMD.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
It's the latest in a string of books, reports and articles that call into question the way the Bush administration presented pre-war evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton-era National Security Council member and strong supporter of regime change in Iraq (Mr. Pollack had presented his arguments in the much talked about book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq") now says that he and many others were wrong about the nature of the threat Iraq posed. In an interview with the Atlantic Monthly, and in a new book ""Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong," Pollack says that, while the war was not a "strategic mistake," as the removal of Saddam Hussein's malignant influence from the region provided some good, the Bush administration's "justifications and explanations for war were at best faulty, at worst deliberately misleading."
His [Pollack's] most scathing criticism falls on the Bush Administration and, particularly, its tendency to misstate the facts of the case when trying to persuade the country to go to war. In his eyes, the Administration consistently engaged in "creative omission," overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. "The President is responsible for serving the entire nation," Pollack writes. "Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the US government – and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility."
Jeffrey Simpson, columnist for Canada's national Globe and Mail newspaper, points out that Pollack provided useful arguments for those who favored invasion because his views about Iraq weren't based on support for Mr. Bush. Instead, Pollack's experience led him to conclude that "Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, posed an imminent danger to the United States and its allies and had to be removed, the sooner the better." (In fact, an article in FrontPage Magazine earlier this week, denouncing recent reports that have criticized the action of the White House leading up to the war, specifically cited Pollack's arguments in favor of war.) Mr. Simpson decribes Pollack's change of opinion as "amazing."
Remember that when President Bush explained his case to the US Congress on Jan. 29, 2003, almost every paragraph highlighted the danger Iraq posed to the United States. Only a fleeting mention was made of the need to bring democracy to Iraq, the justification now favoured by the administration, faute de mieux [for lack of something better]. Writes Mr. Pollack: "At the very least we should recognize that the administration's rush to war was reckless, even on the basis of what we thought we knew in March of 2003. It appears even more reckless in light of what we know today." Pass the smelling salts, please.
Pollack also says in the Atlantic piece that the Bush administration used this strategy because otherwise it could not have convinced the American people that war was so necessary.
I think the Administration was only telling part of the truth to the American people because it was trying to justify a war in 2003. The intelligence estimates just didn't really support that imminence. The Administration could have said, "Look, the intelligence community thinks it may be five to seven years away, but they do think it's also possible that they could get it in one to two years. After 9/11, we shouldn't take even that kind of a risk." I think that would have been a much more honest way of presenting it to the American people.
Pollack, and several other "liberal hawks" (Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Christopher Hitchens, Jacob Weisberg, and Fareed Zakaria) are currently involved in an ongoing debate at Slate about how their views on the war have changed. Some, such as Mr. Hitchens and Mr. Berman, still strongly support the administration's actions, while other, such as Mr. Kaplan, and Mr. Weisburg, have tempered that support for various reasons, including the lack of international support, the cost in terms of both US and Iraqi lives, and the growing financial burden. As part of their debate, Weisburg asked Pollack if his change of mind about the threat posed by WMD meant he had changed his mind about going to war. Pollack answer is, basically, yes and no. (An answer for which is he taken to task by some Slate readers.)
On the one hand, the combination of inspections and the pain inflicted by the sanctions had forced Saddam to effectively shelve his WMD ambitions, probably since around 1995-96. On the other hand, the behavior of the French, Russians, Germans, and many other members of the United Nations Security Council in the run-up to the war was final proof that they were never going to do what would have been necessary to revise and support containment so that it might have lasted for more than another year or two.
Pollack's article in the Atlantic Monthly comes a few days after another scathing review of the Bush administration's actions in Iraq. The Guardian reports that a paper published by the Strategic Studies Institute of The US Army War College says the administration's doctrinaire view of the war on terror, which lumps together Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda as a single undifferentiated threat, led the US on a dangerous "detour" into an unnecessary war.
"The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate US military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security," says the study by Jeffrey Record, a visiting scholar at the Strategic Studies Institute [and a former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee].
Although Mr. Record's paper, "Bounding the global war on terrorism," carries a standard disclaimer that its views do not represent those of the Pentagon, the study was endorsed by several other academics at the institute. "This piece of work, like many others, certainly should be considered in the debate being taken place on national security policy," the institute's director, retired army colonel Douglas Lovelace, said.
The BBC reports that while the study has been dismissed by US defense officials, it could prove to be an embarrassment to the Pentagon, which is already struggling to deal with the fall out from other critiques. Last week the Carnegie Endowment for International for Peace issued a report that said the White House had "systematically misrepresented" the dangers posed by WMD in Iraq. Earlier this week former Treasure Secretary Paul O'Neil said the White House had been planning for an invasion of Iraq from the start of the Bush administration, and not after 9/11 as had been previously suggested by administration officials.
The Voice of America reports that senior officials at the Pentagon "do not appear to be pleased" with the Army War College report.
Bryan Whitman, a top Defense Department spokesman, admits he has not seen the study but suggests its conclusions are irresponsible. "Any study that concludes that we should not aggressively pursue the global war on terror would be irresponsible. In fact, it is inconceivable to me that any responsible government would not do everything possible to protect its citizens," he said.
An editorial in Montana's Billings Gazette says the report should be "required reading at the Pentagon and the White House." The Christian Science Monitor asks how much difference will all these revelations really make (particularly those of Mr. O'Neill)? The Monitor points out that the administration has shifted the reason it says it went to war from the existence of WMD to the the threat posed by a vicious and megalomaniacal dictator. While it may or may not make much difference to the American people, experts say it will make a huge difference to "the future exercise of American foreign policy."
"It's a classic example of the little boy who cries wolf," says James Lindsay, a foreign-policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "The next time [the US] insists we have to act because the threat is imminent, we will have that much harder a time making the case."
Also...
• After Saddam: Assessing the reconstruction of Iraq (Foreign Affairs)
• Afghanistan: Urgent and unresolved (American Progress)
• Clinton: US, Muslims too quick to judge (Newsday)
• Splitting Iraq... (Baghdad Burning |
