Some of us were right

"We were almost all wrong," said David Kay when he finally stated publicly that he didn't expect Weapons of Mass Destruction™ to be found in Iraq. The phrase showed up in various news articles and made the cover of Newsweek, along with pictures of some of the men in the Bush cartel who had been wrong. It is worth remembering that some of us were right. Former chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq Hans Blix has been telling his side of the story. Let's see what he has to say:

The United States and Britain "created facts where there were no facts" in the run-up to last year's war in Iraq, according to Hans Blix. Blix acknowledged that inspectors would not have gained access to Iraq in late 2002 without US military pressure - but he added that "men such as Vice President Cheney, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and his deputy Wolfowitz said the inspections were at best useless". "During a meeting at the White House at the end of October 2002, six months before the beginning of the war, Cheney told us he would not hesitate to discredit the inspections," Blix was quoted as saying.

(Associated Press: US and Britain 'created facts' over Iraq war says Blix) That news story was from yesterday. It comes from the Associated Press, but when I did a news search it appeared that no American papers picked it up. Interesting. Here's what he said back on February 8:

Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix accused London and Washington on Sunday of exaggerating the threat of Iraqi weapons to justify waging war and said they should have been more sincere. "The intention was to dramatize it just as the vendors of some merchandise are trying to exaggerate the importance of what they have. "From politicians, our leaders in the Western world, I think we expect more than that, a bit more sincerity," Blix told BBC television.

(Reuters: Blix Says Bush, Blair Exaggerated Iraq War Case) Someone else who was proven right but is still being ignored is Scott Ritter, formerly of UNSCOM and, before that, the US Marine Corps. Ritter wrote an article back in June of 2000 called "The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament" in which he stated his opinion that the UN sanctions and weapons inspections had put a halt to serious WMD development in Iraq. His expert opinion was dismissed at the time. Now it turns out he was right. He wrote about his take on the WMD issue for the Houston Chronicle:

The fact is, Ray McGovern and I, and the scores of intelligence professionals, retired or still in service, who studied Iraq and its WMD capabilities, are reasonable men. We got it right. The Bush administration, in its rush toward war, ignored our advice and the body of factual data we used, and instead relied on rumor, speculation, exaggeration and falsification to mislead the American people and their elected representatives into supporting a war that is rapidly turning into a quagmire. We knew the truth about Iraq's WMD. Sadly, no one listened.

(Truthout: Not Everyone Got It Wrong on Iraqi WMDs) These men are experts in the fields of military intelligence and disarmament. Over a year ago they were contradicting the Bush cartel's lies about Iraq, but they were ignored. They are still being ignored now, even though they have been proven right. Who should Americans trust? People who have been proven wrong, or people who have been proven right?
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George W. Bush's Slowing of Intelligence

You can imagine my joy this morning when I browsed the AP headlines and saw Bush, intelligence, and slow in the same sentence. David Kay is talking to the press again, and he says the Bush administration has to face the facts about Iraq's missing Weapons of Mass Destruction™ before they can reform our intelligence gathering abilities. (Associated Press: Kay Says Bush Slowing Intelligence Reform)

The Bush administration is hampering efforts to improve intelligence by clinging to the false hope that weapons of mass destruction may be found in Iraq, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector said Thursday.

Since resigning last month, Kay has repeatedly said U.S. intelligence was wrong in claiming that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and advanced nuclear weapons programs. Those programs were the main justification for the Iraq war.

Kay goes on to contradict various Bush claims about aluminum tubes and trailers, but you already know about all that.
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What Bush knew but didn't tell us

While George Bush is still blaming the US intelligence services for intelligence failures regarding Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction™, Knight Ridder News Service has compared a recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate that was prepared for Bush in October of 2002 with the unclassified version of the estimate released to the public (Knight Ridder: Doubts, dissent stripped from public version of Iraq assessment):

The stark differences between the public version and the then top-secret version of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate raise new questions about the accuracy of the public case made for a war that's claimed the lives of more than 500 U.S. service members and thousands of Iraqis.

[W]hile top U.S. officials may have been told of differences among analysts, those disputes were kept from the American public in key areas, including whether Saddam was stockpiling biological and chemical weapons and whether he might dispatch poison-spraying robot aircraft to attack the United States.

There was substantial difference between the public version of the estimate and the classified version on the issue of Iraq's biological weapons program.

In a section on chemical weapons, the top-secret findings said the intelligence community had "little specific information on Iraq's CW (chemical weapons) stockpile." That caveat was deleted from the public version.

Deleted from the public version was a line in the classified report that cast doubt on whether Saddam was prepared to support terrorist attacks on the United States, a danger that Bush and his top aides raised repeatedly in making their case for war.

Either Bush doesn't read his own intelligence estimates or he lied to the American people. Neither one is acceptable from the president of the United States.
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One Iraq war supporter admits he was wrong

Toronto Sun's Lorrie Goldstein: We Were Had

Those of us who supported the invasion of Iraq believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction he was poised to give to terrorists need to admit something. We were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Like a 12-step program, where you can only start the road to recovery by admitting you have a problem, we have to admit U.S. and British intelligence about Iraq was awful, at best, and, at worst, the George Bush and Tony Blair administrations cherry-picked or lied about the intelligence they had. U.S./British credibility has been shredded. It will be years before the U.S., as the world's only remaining superpower, will be able to garner international support for launching pre-emptive war in the name of fighting terrorism. None of which is to say the U.S. may not do it anyway, just that the rest of us will be a lot more skeptical about going along. Finally, it must be admitted the invasion of Iraq cannot be justified after the fact just because the world is far better off without Saddam in power (which it is).

It is hard for someone to accept they fell for a scam, and it takes a person of integrity to admit it in public. Mr. Goldstein is to be commended for his honesty. So, who's next?
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Intelligence inquiry must include Office of Special Plans

George W. Bush has reversed himself, and is now calling for an investigation of the intelligence "failures" regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction™ in Iraq. He claims the investigation will be independent, but wants to appoint the investigators himself. Obviously this is unacceptable. It is also important that the investigation include the administration itself, including Dick Cheney's Office of Special Plans. The American news media may finally be catching on to the OSP; the Philadelphia Inquirer mentioned it today (Cheney key to Iraq probe, critics say):

What went wrong with intelligence on Iraq may never be known unless the inquiry proposed by President Bush examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President Cheney and Pentagon hawks, current and former U.S. officials said yesterday. Those efforts bypassed normal channels, used Iraqi exiles and defectors of questionable reliability, and produced findings on former dictator Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaeda and his illicit arms programs that were disputed by analysts at the CIA, the State Department and other agencies, the officials said. Some of the disputed findings were presented as facts to Americans as Bush stated his case for war. Senior officials yesterday revealed new details of how Cheney's office pressed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to use large amounts of disputed intelligence in a February 2003 presentation to the U.N. Security Council that laid out the U.S. case for an invasion.

I urge all my readers to contact their representatives in Congress and demand that any investigation into pre-war intelligence include the Office of Special Plans and the White House itself. Don't know who your representatives are or how to contact them? It's easy! Just go to the websites for the House of Representatives and the Senate. From there you can look up your representatives and get their mailing addresses (paper letters are most effective) or just send them email. Remember, they work for you!
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