posted on January 30, 2004 01:42:25 PM newWHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT PRES BUSH WAS ACTING ON ADVICE FROM INTELLIGENCE REPORTS
So Where's the WMD?
Anti-Bush partisans aren't listening to what David Kay is saying.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
Iraq weapons inspector David Kay speaks to the Senate today, and our (probably forlorn) hope is that his remarks will get wide and detailed coverage. What we've been hearing from him in snippets so far explains the mystery of whatever happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
His answers, we should make clear, are a long way from the "Bush and Blair lied" paradigm currently animating the Democratic primaries and newspapers. John Kerry of all people now claims that, because Mr. Kay's Iraq Study Group has not found stockpiles of WMD or a mature nuclear program, President Bush somehow "misled" the country. "I think there's been an enormous amount of exaggeration, stretching, deception," he said on "Fox News Sunday." This is the same Senator who voted for the war after having access to the intelligence and has himself said previously that he believed Saddam had such weapons.
The reason Mr. Kerry believed this is because everybody else did too. That Saddam had WMD was the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community for years, going back well into the Clinton Administration. The CIA's Near East and counterterrorism bureaus disagreed on the links between al Qaeda and Saddam--which is one reason the Bush Administration failed to push that theme. But the CIA and its intelligence brethren were united in their belief that Saddam had WMD, as the agency made clear in numerous briefings to Congress.
And not just the CIA. Believers included the U.N., whose inspectors were tossed out of Iraq after they had recorded huge stockpiles after the Gulf War. No less than French President Jacques Chirac warned as late as last February about "the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq" and declared that the "international community is right . . . in having decided Iraq should be disarmed."
All of this was enshrined in U.N. Resolution 1441, which ordered Saddam to come completely clean about his weapons. If he really had already destroyed all of his WMD, Saddam had every incentive to give U.N. inspectors free rein, put everything on the table and live to deceive another day. That he didn't may go down as Saddam's last and greatest miscalculation.
But Mr. Kay's Study Group has also discovered plenty to suggest that Saddam couldn't come clean because he knew he wasn't. In his interim report last year, Mr. Kay disclosed a previously unknown Iraq program for long-range missiles; this was a direct violation of U.N. resolutions.
Mr. Kay has also speculated that Saddam may have thought he had WMD because his own generals and scientists lied to him. "The scientists were able to fake programs," the chief inspector says. This is entirely plausible, because aides who didn't tell Saddam what he wanted to hear were often tortured and killed. We know from post-invasion interrogations that Saddam's own generals believed that Iraq had WMD. If they thought so, it's hard to fault the CIA for believing it too.
Mr. Kay has also made clear that, stockpiles or no, Saddam's regime retained active programs that could have been reconstituted at any time. Saddam tried to restart his nuclear program as recently as 2001. There is also evidence, Mr. Kay has told the London Telegraph, that some components of Saddam's WMD program "went to Syria before the war." Precisely what and how much "is a major issue that needs to be resolved." The most logical conclusion is that Saddam hoped to do just enough to satisfy U.N. inspectors and then restart his WMD production once sanctions were lifted and the international heat was off.
By all means let Congress explore why the CIA overestimated Saddam's WMD stockpiles this time around. But let's do so while recalling that the CIA had underestimated the progress of his nuclear, chemical and biological programs before the first Gulf War. We are also now learning that the CIA has long underestimated the extent and progress of nuclear programs in both Libya and Iran. Why aren't Democrats and liberals just as alarmed about those intelligence failures?
Intelligence is as much art and judgment as it is science, and it is inherently uncertain. We elect Presidents and legislators to consider the evidence and then make difficult policy judgments that the voters can later hold them responsible for. Mr. Kay told National Public Radio that, based on the evidence he has seen from Iraq, "I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat." He added that "I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place potentially, than in fact we thought it was even before the war."
As intelligence failures go, we'd prefer one that worried too much about a threat than one that worried too little. The latter got us September 11.
Jan. 29 — SOFIA (Reuters) - Iraq's foreign minister said on Thursday weapons of mass destruction acquired by the country's former rulers, which inspectors have failed to find, had been carefully hidden and he was confident they could be found.
"I have every belief that some of these weapons could be found as we move forward," Hoshiyar Zebari told a news conference in Sofia. "They have been hidden in certain areas. The system of hiding was very sophisticated."
\
The United States and Britain cited Iraq's alleged possession of chemical and biological arms as their main reason for invading Iraq last March and toppling Saddam Hussein's Baathist government.
But no such weapons have so far come to light despite intensive searches. Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said Wednesday that "we were almost all wrong" about the issue and it was "highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarised chemical and biological weapons" in Iraq.
But Zebari, on a visit to Bulgaria, said: "We as Iraqis have seen Saddam Hussein develop, manufacture and use these weapons of mass destruction against us. He hasn't denied that."
Zebari, a Kurd, was apparently referring to the use of chemical weapons by Saddam's forces against Iraqi Kurdish villages in the late 1980s.
U.N. teams were sent into Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991 to scrap Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction. Experts are divided on whether or not all the weapons were destroyed at that time.
WASHINGTON — The failure to turn up weapons of mass destruction (search) in Iraq exposed weaknesses in America's intelligence-gathering apparatus, a former top U.S. weapons inspector told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday.
But the inspector, David Kay (search), did not underestimate the threat posed by deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and said there was evidence that Iraq was participating in a weapons program that went against U.N. rules.
"We've had a number of surprises," Kay told reporters after meeting behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee (search). "It's quite clear we need capabilities that we do not have with regard to intelligence."
Later, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee (search) that "we were almost all wrong — and I certainly include myself here," in believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Despite suggestions from Democrats that the White House pressured analysts to construe intelligence to help President Bush' make the case to go to war against Saddam, Kay said he spoke to many analysts who prepared the intelligence and "not in a single case was the explanation that I was pressured to this."
Kay said he felt there would always be "unresolvable ambiguity" about exactly what programs Iraq had because of the severe looting that occurred in Iraq immediately after the U.S.-led invasion and the U.S. military's failure to control it. U.S. investigators believe some Iraqis probably took advantage of that period of chaos to get rid of any evidence of weapons programs, he said.
Under questioning from Republicans, Kay stressed the danger posed by Saddam and said that Iraqi documents, physical evidence and interviews with Iraqi scientists revealed that Iraq was engaged in weapons programs prohibited by U.N. resolutions.
"I think the world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein," he said under questioning from Chairman John Warner, (search) R-Va.
Kay said U.S. intelligence agencies became so dependent on information from U.N. inspectors, they didn't develop their own sources. He also said he would favor an independent investigation into the intelligence failures.
That's something many lawmakers have no problem with.
"I'm sure everyone is taking a look … at the intelligence gathering operations, not just leading up to action in Iraq but leading up to the actions of Sept. 11," New Hampshire Republican Sen. John Sununu, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News.
"In this day and age where global terrorism is the greatest threat to Americans, we need to retool, reshape America's intelligence gathering ... if we're not doing that, we're not doing all that we can to improve our national security."
Kay's appearance had strong political undertones with the justification for war emerging as a top issue in the presidential campaign.
The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, pointed to repeated statements by top administration officials flatly stating that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. He pressed Kay to acknowledge that there is no evidence Iraq even had small stockpiles as of 2002. Kay also said that vans the administration claimed were used for biological weapons were likely not intended for such a program.
Kay also said the United States has learned more about Saddam's weapons programs than U.N. inspectors could have because of Saddam's ability to terrorize his people.
As special adviser to CIA Director George Tenet, Kay was chosen last year as the Iraq Survey Group (search) leader in part because he was convinced weapons would be found. "My suspicions are that we'll find in the chemical and biological areas, in fact, I think there may be some surprises coming rather quickly in that area," he said in a television interview in June.
Kay resigned Friday, saying he was stepping down because resources were being shifted away from the search.
Warner called the hearing to receive Kay's views directly. Before sitting down with Warner's committee, Kay told reporters he believes the work of the Iraq survey group must continue.
Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said: "Tis a quandary. We're at war and people are dying every day. We went to war on the presumption that we were going to be attacked very soon if we didn't do something and the reign of terror would come from weapons of mass destruction. I'm still in search of those weapons of mass destruction."
Rockefeller said his panel still has much work to do on the issue and that, "to date, we have only scratched the surface of the collection shortfall."
"Dr. Kay concludes that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and that means Iraq did not pose a grave and growing threat," Rockefeller said in response to Kay's testimony. "That raises serious questions about our intelligence, but also about the reasons and justification for going to war, and the president's doctrine of preemption."
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (search), R-Kan., said his committee has finished a draft report on its inquiry into the prewar intelligence and plans to get it to members next week.
He said it appears the problem is with some intelligence agencies and not the policy-makers. "Anyone who believes otherwise has not done their homework and certainly was not listening to Dr. Kay," he said.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that it's premature to speculate about "why we were wrong," and rejected Kay's statement that the work in Iraq is 85 percent done.
While inspectors have been unable to unearth weapons of mass destruction, they have found new evidence that Saddam's regime quietly destroyed some stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in the mid-1990s, Kay told The Washington Post in an interview in Tuesday editions.
Democratic presidential contenders have grabbed onto Kay's conclusion on the absence of banned weapons.
"The administration did cook the books," Howard Dean (search) told reporters Tuesday. "I think that's pretty serious."
Kay's resignation and subsequent statements come as many in the administration subtly are changing their assertions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, including Bush. In last year's State of the Union, Bush called Saddam a "dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons."
In the State of the Union this month, Bush spoke of Saddam's programs, rather than weapons: "Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day. "
Last February, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed "real and present dangers."
This weekend, Powell began to backpedal, saying the United States thought Saddam had banned weapons, but "we had questions that needed to be answered."
posted on January 30, 2004 01:47:55 PM newWeapons of Mass Distraction
We've reached an intriguing moment in the saga of evil regimes and weapons of mass destruction--their presence or absence, and the uncertainty zone between.
In Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations had reason to believe that Saddam Hussein--having invaded his neighbors, harbored terrorists, tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of his fellow Iraqis, gassed the Kurds, plundered his country, and set a standard in the Middle East of fascist brutality to rival Hitler--was still pursuing weapons of mass destruction. A U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam's regime. Now the recent U.S. point man for the weapons search in Iraq, David Kay, is saying it looks as if maybe Saddam didn't have any WMDs. At least not significant stocks, at least not that we've found. Mr. Kay's best guess is that Saddam only thought he had a WMD program.
This is now taken in some quarters to mean we should have left Saddam alone, because even if maybe he thought he was pursuing WMDs, he wasn't, except maybe in his own imagination, at least not at the moment we deposed him.
Meanwhile in North Korea, officials of Kim Jong Il's regime earlier this month ushered an unofficial U.S. delegation into their nuclear reactor complex at Yongbyon, and invited a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sigfried Hecker, to examine what was apparently a sample of plutonium--that's nuclear bomb fuel--contained in a jelly jar.
This is taken, usually by the same crowd critical of the U.S. war to remove Saddam, as supporting evidence in the argument that we cannot remove Kim because, among other things, he does have weapons of mass destruction.
One might be tempted to conclude, then, that our only window for intervening in the quest of a threatening, terrorist-linked regime dabbling in WMDs is in that precise time window when there is irrefutable evidence that the rulers are developing WMD capability, but before the wares are ready to be handed out to terrorists or brandished in jelly jars as a "deterrent" to extort concessions from the free world. Except that this seems to be precisely the turf occupied at the moment by Iran, with its nuclear program, and while the clerics there are obviously rushing to get their bombs into production, no one genuinely seems to be preparing to stop that, either.
Meanwhile, to round out a little more of this picture, in Libya, our new pal Moammar Gadhafi, who has now renounced weapons of mass destruction, just treated visiting Rep. Curt Weldon to a tour of a Libyan nuclear reactor. In response, Mr. Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican, effused that if Libya continues to cooperate, diplomatic normalization may be just ahead, and then--he was addressing the Libyan dictator who for the past 35 years has ruled Libya as a virtual prison camp, and still does--"there is no limit to what we can accomplish together."
I am left with the odd thought that of all the many evil things done by this roster of truly brutal, murderous, internationally aggressive regimes, the only one to actually use weapons of mass destruction was the now-designated-as-WMD-less Saddam.
Meanwhile, not so long ago, it was Afghanistan, a place lacking in almost every amenity, including weapons of mass destruction, that served as the launching base for the world's worst terrorist attack. The real WMDs, one might say, were the Al Qaeda planners, and their Taliban hosts.
Which brings me back to the current U.S. debate, in which the agreed trigger for action seems somehow restricted to weapons of mass destruction--and the sure knowledge and certain existence thereof. This is peculiar in itself. While WMDs certainly matter, they are by no means the sum total of an evil regime's capacity to do damage. In the case of the Soviet Union, which possessed thousands of nuclear warheads and conducted hundreds of detectable nuclear tests, none of those bombs ever actually went off in a war. Yet the harm done by that corrosive empire was vast beyond imagining, and in very tangible ways--including such legacies as Kim's North Korea--still haunts us today.
According to "The Black Book of Communism," the death toll from communism was some 100 million people. That same system supplied to a host of nations worldwide, including in the Middle East, blueprints for the one thing that Soviet communism developed with greater efficiency than any other system ever devised--techniques for the repression of human beings. And it is political repression, not weapons of mass destruction per se, that has turned the Middle East into the danger it now constitutes for the democratic world.
But somehow, in the hurly-burly of election-year politics, the focus is all on those elusive weapons. By all means, beef up our intelligence and double-check information--and wish everyone good luck in penetrating with perfect clarity the secrecy and layers of lies that are precisely the specialty of the world's most dangerous states. But let's not pretend that this is the chief standard by which we will ensure the safety of our children's children.
We seem to be heading for the surreal conclusion that it is all right to be a murderous tyrant who only thinks he is pursuing weapons of mass destruction--even if he apparently believes it himself strongly enough to take the risk of kicking out U.N. arms inspectors for four years. Somehow, I am not comforted by the vision of a Saddam presiding over a country where he is allocating resources for WMD, terrorists are traipsing through, and whatever is really going on is anyone's guess, including Saddam's.
What needs to start sinking in, somehow, is that while arsenals matter, what matters even more is the set of rules and values that a regime defends and its leaders live by. This, more than anything signed on paper or offered as totalitarian propaganda, tells us where the worst dangers lie. We have heard by now too many discussions in which mass graves, mass starvation, conventional mass murder and terrorist trafficking are all somehow hived off from the high and nuanced talk of geostrategy, of bomb estimates and inspections, so scientific but imprecise.
It is necessary in this war to ask where we can best spend our scarce resources. But in judging the priorities, it would be a good idea to be less focused right now on a near-religious calling to base policy on WMD bean counters, and more concerned with creating incentives for dictators to be running so scared that they will not only foreswear weapons of mass murder, but take on the burden themselves of proving to us that they have no such programs or intentions. We are far from that point, and whatever delights the current squabble over Saddam's WMDs may afford, it does nothing to serve the real security needs of the democratic world.
Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.
posted on January 30, 2004 02:26:30 PM new
"It is necessary in this war to ask where we can best spend our scarce resources. But in judging the priorities, it would be a good idea to be less focused right now on a near-religious calling to base policy on WMD bean counters, and more concerned with creating incentives for dictators to be running so scared that they will not only foreswear weapons of mass murder, but take on the burden themselves of proving to us that they have no such programs or intentions. We are far from that point, and whatever delights the current squabble over Saddam's WMDs may afford, it does nothing to serve the real security needs of the democratic world."
Right. Somehow, WE are in charge of deciding who gets to have WMD and who doesn't. Plenty of people around the world see America as "sitting on a stockpile of WMD" and perceive that as a threat. As to her reference to "the democratic world" , I don't know what planet Ms. Rosett is referring to; earth is not now, nor has it ever been a democracy.
Just threw that last bit in to give Helen a laugh...
posted on January 30, 2004 02:38:45 PM new
blah blah blah, anyone can see that David Kay isn't saying the president lied. It isn't his job to do that. It was his job to determine if WOMD existed, and he has come home to give a report that I'm sure the White House didn't expect. THERE AREN'T ANY.He can't prove it, and neither can the President. If the president didn't lie, then he believed liars. Either way, we went to war for a specious argument, and when your the one in charge, you get the heat.
Saying "oh well, it's ok, at least Saddam is gone now, so it's ok " is nothing but a dodge.
___________________________________
Mi abuelita me dijo "en boca cerrada no entran moscas".
posted on January 30, 2004 05:16:41 PM newWHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT PRES BUSH WAS ACTING ON ADVICE FROM INTELLIGENCE REPORTS
They weren't all that intelligent, those reports. As I recall, when Bush was first pushing to get us into this war, there were folks, including CIA, who were trying to tell him that it wasn't a reliable report. He ignored them all.
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on January 30, 2004 06:20:24 PM new
I am of the opinion that Chaney is far more dangerous than Bush. I think that Bush has a hard time thinking for himself. Ultimately, isn't Bush responsible since he is the President? I can tell you this, as a boss I am ultimately responsible for what my employees do. It's my job to make sure I know everything that is going on and that all information I am fed is accurate. If not, I have he** to pay from my boss. There is simply no excuse here.
posted on January 30, 2004 06:42:16 PM new
"I am of the opinion that Chaney is far more dangerous than Bush"
I agree with you, Cheryl. But Bush is the ultimate fiend because he listens to Dick and has the power to implement his agenda, which he does with astonishing alacrity, given his otherwise dim-witted approach to even something so simple as addressing a classroom of elementary school kids...
"You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."
God Almighty! Illiterate George advocating literacy!!
(The above quote was taken verbatim from a transcript of the president's speech to a group of young students in Tennessee in 2001. )
posted on January 30, 2004 09:56:31 PM new
It's nothing short of astounding that the Bush response to lies that caused the deaths of over 500 troops, thousands of wounded and left the reputation of the United States tarnished is 'What difference does it make? - Saddam's a bad guy.
Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the administration's reaction to David Kay's recent statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified — under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less — because Saddam "did not let us in."
So where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language from Mr. Bush — and a determined effort to prevent an independent inquiry.
True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence failure. I don't buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and former officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war buildup. (Yes, the Hutton report gave Tony Blair a clean bill of health, but many people — including a majority of the British public, according to polls — regard that report as a whitewash.)
In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America's credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.
posted on January 30, 2004 11:25:07 PM new
Thanks to the Democrats in the early 1990's, the CIA was gutted. And our intelligence has suffered ever since:
-We had no idea India had a nuclear weapon until they detonated one.
-We had no idea Pakistan had a nuclear weapon until they detonated one.
-No warning of Sept 11 attacks
-For years, North Korea got away with cheating on Bill Clinton's nuke deal
-No warning for the attack on the USS Cole
-Bad intelligence had Bill Clinton blow up an empty terrorist camp and an aspirin factory
-Inaccurate intelligence of Iraq's WOMD's
-Our "allies" got away with breaking the UN sanctions against Iraq.
-Unable to capture OBL
And I blame the Democrats for the 3,000+ lives lost on 9/11. Good intelligence would have prevented it.
posted on January 31, 2004 06:39:27 AM new
Ask yourself, WHY does Bush want to avoid an independent investigation of the situation that led to the Iraq war and those intelligence agencies that you are so quick to fault. The answer is that he knows that he would be found guilty. Instead, it's so much better for him to blame the CIA and lead people like you to blame the Democrats and Clinton.
The intelligence agencies did NOT deliver lies to Bush to use. They had their information exactly right and made efforts repeatedly to stop Bush from making his unsubstantiated claims. There is absolutely NO evidence that the CIA or any other intelligence agency supported Bush's case for war.
Now, Bush wants to avoid an independent investigation because it would expose his exaggeration and lies that led this country into a needless war in which over 500 Americans were killed and thousands wounded for the rest of their lives.
It's so pathetic when you try to shift blame to Clinton or the Democrats or the intelligence agencies when the facts are staring your right in the face that the culprit is the guy in charge, President George w. Bush. Your president lied and is now disseminating the spin that it makes no difference.. "We got rid of a bad guy".
When will you ever see Bush as the president of the United States and hold him responsible for his actions?
A 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.
That report was dismissed and ignored by Rice and Bush.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people . . . would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice said Thursday.
posted on January 31, 2004 07:38:18 AM new
Remember the sign on Truman's desk? While, the buck stops in the pockets of bush cronies, I thought of a new sign for his desk. Bush' sign reads
The duck starts here....
Or
All your bucks are belong to us
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on January 31, 2004 08:30:56 AM new
Yes the Republicans blame the Democrats and the Democrates blame the republicans and neither really does anything to change the way the whole system works. Since NOBODY takes any responsibility why should they?
posted on January 31, 2004 08:49:46 AM new
Gravid, Bush has taken the shift, spin and lie to an exceedingly unacceptable level, beyond what you consider just politics. His actions are criminal.
Good one, snowy...The duck starts here.
What happened to the Bush "era of responsibility"?
It's the CIA's fault.
It's the speechwriter's fault.
Btittian did it.
It's time to move on.
Who cares?
Bush
posted on January 31, 2004 10:06:49 AM new
This is downright funny. WE, who tell the U.N. to shove it all the time, are now saying we went after Saddam because he disobeyed U.N. resolutions!
Wolfowitz Says Iraq War Justified Because Saddam Ignored U.N. Demands
By Matt Kelley Associated Press Writer
Published: Jan 31, 2004
WUERZBURG, Germany (AP) - The United States was justified in going to war against Iraq because Saddam Hussein violated U.N. resolutions ordering him to disarm, the Pentagon's second-in-command said Saturday.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said flawed intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction should be investigated, but the inability of inspectors to find such weapons did not mean the war was unnecessary.
David Kay, the former chief inspector in Iraq, said this week he believes deposed Iraqi President Saddam probably did not have the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that President Bush claimed as justification for the invasion in March.
"You have to make decisions based on the intelligence you have, not on the intelligence you can discover later," Wolfowitz said, while visiting the headquarters of the Army's 1st Infantry Division.
The division is preparing to ship out beginning next week for Iraq, where it will replace the 4th Infantry Division in the dangerous north-central part of the country.
Wolfowitz said he retains confidence in American intelligence agencies, despite their apparent mistakes about Iraq's weapons programs. "You need to look into when you got it right, and when you got it wrong," Wolfowitz said. "It's important to understand we could not possibly do what we need to do in the world without intelligence."
Wolfowitz said deposing Saddam was important to bring freedom to the Middle East.
"We have an absolutely important job to do to help the Iraqi people build a free and democratic Iraq," Wolfowitz said. "It's going to be a very important turning point in the war on terrorism. The Middle East has been heading down the wrong road for some years now."
Earlier Saturday, Wolfowitz met with troops and their families.
Soldiers' spouses complained that American troops need time to rest between their frequent missions.
Bonnie McCarty said her husband is preparing for a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq. "When he comes back, does this mean in another year he's going to go back again because the size of the Army isn't big enough?" McCarty asked Wolfowitz. "We don't want to keep going through this."
Wolfowitz said the Army is considering an increase in the number of combat units to ease the strain.
He said he and other Pentagon officials know that the last several years have been difficult for soldiers and their families and are trying to ease the strain. Wolfowitz said Pentagon officials are not sure, however, that permanently enlarging the Army is the answer.
"There's a big uncertainty about what we're going to need in the future, " Wolfowitz said.
Fact Check
Is Anybody Looking For Any Facts?
It's been 11 days since President Bush in his State of the Union message amended his prior contention that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction" to the softer assertion that Saddam Hussein, pre-invasion, had been working on "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."
Are we the only ones who'd like to know exactly what this circumlocution -- let's call it WMDRPA -- refers to? So it seems. For, in those 11 days, apparently nobody in the media has been curious enough to ask the White House for a definition.
A search of LexisNexis shows 336 references (it keeps growing) to the term since the President addressed the nation. (Rest assured, nobody strings together a phrase like that in any other context.) Yet, no one in the media has done the logical thing: Demand a definition. (For the record, Jon Stewart did ask "Weapons of mass destruction related program activities? What the f--- is that?" on Comedy Central's "Daily Show" on the 21st, and Jac Wilder VerSteeg of the Palm Beach Post nominated the phrase for the "Weasel-Word Hall of Fame." )
posted on February 2, 2004 04:54:32 PM new
Lord, they're good! They take us to war on false pretenses, then convince us that it's all the Democrats fault. If it weren't so deadly, you'd have to admire the sheer, rotten ballsiness of it. We're all concerned that this will be whitewashed so that the CIA gets blamed for all the failures. Uh-uh. By the time they're done, the White House and the CIA will be spotless. It will the liberals who got us into this mess."
"...Put the pieces together. For the next nine months, we will be hearing that we still don't know everything about Iraq's weapons. We have to wait. A commission is looking into it. The commission, of course, will not be looking into whether or not the weapons existed, but in a story squeezed between Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart, all most people will pick up is...um, something something weapons, something something Iraq, something something CIA screw-up, something something Democrats castrated the intelligence agencies. And Bush will still say we're going to find the weapons.
And come November, sixty percent of Americans will believe the weapons existed. Half will probably believe we found them. And they'll have a vague sense that something went wrong, but there's an investigation, so don't worry about it. It has something to do with Democrats not wanting us to get the intelligence we need to fight the terrrorists, but the president wouldn't let them get away with it."
Yep. Sounds about right.
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on February 2, 2004 06:42:24 PM new
gravid, I have to agree with you. Still no one listens to the "facts". They hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe.
What of Bush's buddy, Blair? Do you have any idea what all of this will do to him? Do you think Bush really cares? He doesn't need him anymore so he's expendable. Just like all of us. Either you fit into his administration's scheme of things, or you don't exist. Your needs are forgotten about. You are nothing more than a security risk number.
I don't like to hate. It's counterproductive, but that's exactly how I feel about Bush and his entire administration. Lying, conniving cheats. All of them. And, I am becoming of the opinion that all those who support him must be just like him. I am happy to say, though, that I have talked to many conservatives who think Bush is a horse's behind. He's a bigot and an egotist and he should not be in the White House.
I do want to thank him for one thing though. Until his administration, I didn't give a darn about politics. I paid very little attention to anything. Why did I need to? Things seemed to be going along just fine. We were once fat and happy. Now we are thin and despaired. I am now more politically involved than I have ever been. I am campaigning for my candidate and proudly working hard on it. Do I think he has a chance? Probably not. But, he's getting people fired up and he's out there telling the truth to anyone who will listen. If nothing else, he'll force the democrats to look hard at the issues that effect us the most.
Bush wants facts? I think he knows the facts and anyone else with half a brain knows them as well. He is ultimately responsible for everything those under him do whether he's man enough to admit it or not.
