Where does the buck stop?

Following up on yesterday's entry, I found even more documentation that exposes the absurdity of trying to blame the US intelligence establishment for inaccurate information about Weapons of Mass Destruction™ in Iraq. The Center for American Progress has a timeline of statements by the Bush gang regarding Iraq and the responses from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy, International Atomic Energy Association, and United Nations. The pattern is clear: every assertion by Bush and his henchman about WMDs in Iraq was quickly and publicly refuted, often by the very intelligence agencies they are now trying to blame for faulty information. Basically they are blaming career intelligence analysts for being right. And here is a Houston Chronicle article, Some administration officials expressing misgivings on Iraq, from October 8, 2002 based on interviews with military and intelligence officers who accuse the adminstration of "cooking the books" on intelligence about Iraq:

They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary. "Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed.

My personal source in the DIA (who, for his protection, I will not name) put it this way:

They [Rumsfeld's people] would ask us for intelligence, but when we gave it to them they'd say "You're wrong."

Still not convinced? Here's an American Prospect article, The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA from December of 2002 (again, before the war even started):

Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq, according to former CIA officials. Key officials of the Department of Defense are also producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war. Much of the questionable information comes from Iraqi exiles long regarded with suspicion by CIA professionals. A parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation, in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, collects the information from the exiles and scours other raw intelligence for useful tidbits to make the case for preemptive war. These morsels sometimes go directly to the president.

Finally, consider this. The president of the United States is the head of the executive branch of the government. It is ultimately his responsibility to appoint capable advisors, evaluate the information he is given, and make the final decisions. When Harry Truman became president he put a sign on his desk saying "The Buck Stops Here." George W. Bush seems to be saying "The Buck Stops Anywhere BUT Here." It's time to hold him accountable.
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David Kay finally admits there are no WMDs, but tries to shift blame

Last week David Kay resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, and earlier this week he said publicly that he does not expect Weapons of Mass Destruction™ to be found in Iraq ("We Were Almost All Wrong" - Associated Press). This will not come as a suprise to my loyal readers; way back in August I cited an Associated Press article that debunked all of the pre-war claims made by Colin Powell (Powell's push towards Iraq war questioned - Associated Press). But members of Congress, even some Democrats, are acting surprised. The Bush gang so far has been silent, other than to reject calls for an independent investigation. Kay has the audacity to blame the US intelligence community. But we already know that the CIA and DIA were not convinced Iraq had WMDs, and said as much to the White House. And we already know about the Office of Special Plans, a secretive group within the Defense Department reporting directly to Dick Cheney which was cherry-picking intelligence to fit a predetermined conclusion. This was all reported in the press. Are politicians in Congress really this out of touch, or are they enabling the Bush gang's coverup of their own failings? To be honest, I don't know. While I believe the vast majority of Republicans in Congress would willingly and happily lie to their constituents in order to cover for Bush and his henchmen, I do not think that is necessarily what is going on in this case. Representatives and Senators have very busy schedules, and rely on their staff to keep them informed. If those staff are getting their information from lobbyists, the occasional Fox News report, and of course the White House for their information, it's possible that some members of Congress could actually be ignorant of the facts that are in plain sight. Anyone who has worked in or near upper management knows there is a tendency of underlings to tell their superiors what they want to hear, and a tendency of superiors to believe it. Just as the OSP relied on intelligence from unreliable Iraqi exiles with their own agenda, it may be that well-meaning policymakers are relying on information from people not motivated to provide accurate, objective data. Another thing that seems to have been forgotten is the people who were never convinced of a danger from Iraqi WMDs in the first place. Among them are former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and former inspector Scott Ritter. If you remember (many people don't), Saddam readmitted UN weapons inspectors late in 2002 in response to the threat of military force from the United States. They found nothing, even working on tips from US and British intelligence. Bush and Cheney pilloried Blix's team as unreliable and ineffectual. Well now it turns out Blix was right. David Kay says "We were almost all wrong". But some of us were right, and now we have been vindicated. Will the Bush gang admit that they were wrong and Hans Blix, Paul Wellstone, Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, and millions of anti-war protesters were right? Will they apologize for calling us unpatriotic and soft on terrorism? Let's all contact George Bush at 202-456-1111 or president@whitehouse.gov and ask him!
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Why Listen to What a Liar Says About the State of the Union?

Tonight George W. Bush will give his third annual State of the Union address to Congress. Let's take the occasion to review three statements from last year's address:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda.

All three of those turned out to be lies. American intelligence already knew the uranium from Africa story wasn't true; they already knew the aluminum tubes were not suitable for nuclear weapons production; and they had no evidence of any connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. A year ago, George Bush told lies to take this country to war. Tonight, Congress will applaud and corporate news anchors will fawn as he tells a new set of lies. But if you want to know the real state of the union, take a look at the numbers to the right of this page. Bush lied, soldiers died.
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More Criticism of the War in Iraq

Last Thursday we discussed a report on the strategic implications of the war in Iraq by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The report, WMD In Iraq: Evidence and Implications, is now available in full from the CEIP website. Today's analysis comes from that notorious liberal think tank the Army War College. In Bounding the Global War on Terrorism, Dr. Jeffrey Record writes:

Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat. This was a strategic error of the first order ... the result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not integral to the GWOT, but rather a detour from it.

Well, duh. He concludes with several recommendations for refocusing the "war on terrorism":

(1) Deconflate the threat. This means, in both thought and policy, treating rogue states separately from terrorist organizations, and separating terrorist organizations at war with the United States from those that are not. Approaching rogue states and terrorist organizations as an undifferentiated threat ignores critical differences in character, threat level, and vulnerability to U.S. military action. (2) Substitute credible deterrence for preventive war as the primary policy for dealing with rogue states seeking to acquire WMD. There is no evidence that rogue state use of WMD is undeterrable via credible threats of unacceptable retaliation or that rogue states seek WMD solely for purposes of blackmail and aggression. There is evidence, however, of failed deterrence of rogue state acquisition of WMD; indeed, there is evidence that a declared policy of preventive war encourages acquisition. Preventive war in any case alienates friends and allies, leaving the United States isolated and unnecessarily burdened (as in Iraq). (3) Refocus the Global War on Terror first and foremost on al-Qaeda, its allies, and homeland security. This may be difficult, given the current preoccupation with Iraq. But it was, after all, al-Qaeda, not a rogue state, that conducted the 9/11 attacks, and it is al-Qaeda, not a rogue state, that continues to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. and Western interests worldwide. The war against Iraq was a detour from, not an integral component of, the war on terrorism; in fact, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM may have expanded the terrorist threat by establishing a large new American target set in an Arab heartland. (4) Seek rogue-state regime change via measures short of war. Forcible regime change of the kind undertaken in Iraq is an enterprise fraught with unexpected costs and unintended consequences. Even if destroying the old regime entails little military risk, as was the case in Iraq, the task of creating a new regime can be costly, protracted, and strategically exhausting.

This report isn't just worth reading, it's worth printing out and mailing to your elected representatives!
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More Support for the Troops

Vets say visits restricted to U.S. wounded - Jan. 7, 2004 (CNN)

One of the nation's leading veterans' service organizations accuses the Pentagon of "severely restricting" its counselors from visiting wounded and injured service members at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In a letter sent this week to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Dave Gorman, executive director of Disabled American Veterans, complained that the DAV is being blocked from carrying out its congressionally chartered mission. Gorman questioned measures that require hospital pre-screening and approval of all visits, and full-time escorts during those visits, according to the letter a copy of which CNN obtained. Gorman said because of those escorts there is a lack of privacy over matters the counselors discuss with patients and their families at Walter Reed. He said the monitoring of these conversations "is particularly unnerving and inappropriate as all conversations between a representative and client are confidential in nature."

This is outrageous.
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White House Distorted Iraq Threat

Don't just take my word for it. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, DC think tank, is publishing a report today charging that Bush administration officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says. The study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concludes that, though the long-term threat from Iraq could not be ignored, it was being effectively contained by a combination of UN weapons inspections, international sanctions and limited US-led military action.

(Financial Times) Wasn't I just saying that yesterday?
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Still No Weapons of Mass Destruction

Yesterday the Washington Post ran an excellent piece of investigative journalism* regarding the current state of knowledge of Saddam Hussein's weapon programs prior to the 2003 US invasion. I urge all my loyal readers to take the time to read the article, Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper, in its entirety. In the meantime here are a few highlights:

Investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones.... The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a "mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry, supported by observations on the ground, described factories and institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict, arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

A recurring theme in the article is that Saddam's weapons programs were effectively immasculated by the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent trade sanctions and weapons inspections. Biological and chemical weapons stocks were destroyed, as were the facilities to produce more. Some documents were hidden, and some research continued in secret, but without adequate funding or equipment no new weapons could be developed, much less produced in quantity. Iraqi scientists and engineers not only concealed research from UN weapons inspectors; they concealed their lack of progress from Saddam.

"Saddam Hussein ordered this work, but where would we get the materials?" said an Iraqi general who declined to be named and who kept close tabs on Tamimi's missile designs. "This was the case in every field. People would prepare reports under the order of Saddam Hussein and the supervision of the people around Saddam Hussein. But it was not real."

It is safe to conclude that Saddam was in violation of UN Resolutions and agreements he had made with the United States following the 1991 Gulf War. It is also a good bet that he intended, at some point, to rebuild Iraq's military power and restart development of nuclear weapons. But the intelligence we have now confirms what Hans Blix and other experts were saying a year ago: any threat from Iraq was far in the future. The effectiveness of the economic sanctions and inspection program indicates that there were options available to the world community besides invasion and occupation. Were the sanctions and inspections working perfectly and accomplishing all they were intended to do? No, but then no Americans were dying either. *"Investigative journalism" is a now archaic style of journalism where a reporter performs in-depth research about an issue and reports on his findings; has largely been superseded by the modern, less expensive practice of merely repeating official press releases.
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