One of the biggest ongoing controversies in US politics over the past year has been on the administration's allegations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The existence of these weapons was the cornerstone of the president's drive to topple Saddam Hussein's regime. The inability to find these weapons in post-Hussein Iraq has been fodder for Democratic presidential aspirants and critics ever since. But I fear the real issues in this debate have been missed in the coverage. The real problems are (a) an abuse of the intelligence gathering and processing apparatus and (b) a deliberate misleading of the American public. These issues will have long-lasting effects in US security.
Recently, Vice President Cheney addressed the Italian Senate and said, "Today the former dictator (of Iraq) sits in captivity; he can no longer harbor and support terrorists, and his long efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction are at an end." This statement illustrates both points pretty well. In making the statement, the vice president is asserting as a given the assumption that Hussein supported terrorism and sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This oft-repeated assumption is based on intelligence data given to the administration. But as we have learned many times since the Iraq war, this intelligence was highly selective with a bias toward supported preconceived notions. Therefore, it is not a fact, but a supposition. Repeatedly asserting it as fact is to deliberately mislead the public into supporting a war for which there was little solid support.
What is the heart of the problem? More so than ever before, in this age of terrorism and elusive, shadowy enemies, the intelligence institutions are the backbone of homeland security. The intelligence on which policy and defense decisions are made is usually fragmentary and incomplete, of variable reliability and accuracy. A vigorous analysis community must pull together these scraps of information, judge the reliability of the information, and arrive at an optimal interpretation. For this to function, the process must be unbiased. Because of the nature of the data, any interpretative bias will inevitably lead to conclusions that conform to the biases. This invalidates the process because we are fitting data to conclusions rather than conclusions to data. Such procedures blind the front line of national security.
Over the last many months, there have been numerous reports of how the administration pressured analysts at CIA and elsewhere to arrive at the "correct", i.e. preconceived, conclusions. If CIA would not cooperate and give the right answers, e.g. in case of the Niger memo, the administration went to other sources (in that case British intelligence) who gave an acceptable interpretation. That one would be considered fact; CIA's dissenting view was considered non-existent.
Because the intelligence analysis provided by this administration is tainted, how can any other warnings be taken seriously. If the administration were to report that intelligence strongly indicates North Korea has functioning nuclear weapons, can the administration be believed? No. They biased analysis on Iraq, so perhaps they are doing the same with North Korea in this hypothetical example. And yet those weapons would be pointed at US troops stationed in the Korean DMZ and would therefore present a direct threat to their security. The intelligence would be the first line of defense in securing American interests, but would be unreliable and untrustworthy because of a rush to war in Iraq.
Administration defenders have all along repeated the assertions that these weapons in Iraq did exist and that they would be found. The vice president's speech in Italy makes no mention of these weapons, and it appears the administration is tacitly conceding they won't likely be found. However, if they were actually found, would that justify or validate administration actions? No, because they would still have tainted the process and undermined security. That their preconceptions would have been borne out in one instance would not change that.
If we accuse the administration of undermining American security to justify the Iraq war, what then is the role of the Democratic opposition? They are just as much to blame. We might expect Republicans in Congress with access to the intelligence data to defer to administration interpretations. But the Democratic members were fairly laconic in opposition. Early on, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware was expressing doubts about the administration's interpretations. Did the Democratic leaders in Congress carry out their responsibilities to the nation and oppose the president's deception? No. They stood by and allowed him to misrepresent intelligence data and to therefore lead the nation into an unadvised war. This failure of responsibility must be kept in mind when listening to Senators campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president and their criticism of how the president justified the war, e.g. John Kerry's recent comment on Face the Nation that, "[the administration] ought to be held accountable for using the weapons of mass destruction argument." While a valid statement, one should also add that the Democrats in Congress ought to be held accountable for allowing the administration to make such an argument without opposition.
Last updated 01/26/2004 11:23 AM