|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: International Relations |
|
White House "Overstated" Iraqi WMD Threat |
Current rating: 0 |
by Steven Aftergood, FAS/Secrecy News
(No verified email address) |
26 Jun 2003
|
|
"The committee is now investigating whether the intelligence case on Iraq's WMD was based on circumstantial evidence rather than hard facts and whether the intelligence community made clear to the policy-makers and Congress that most of its analytic judgments were based on things like aerial photographs and Iraqi defector interviews, not hard facts," said Rep. Harman. |
The House Intelligence Committee has found that the Bush Administration "overstat[ed] the case" concerning the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, said ranking member Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), describing the Committee's preliminary findings thus far.
"When discussing Iraq's WMD, administration officials rarely included the caveats and qualifiers attached to the intelligence community's judgments," said Rep. Harman during the June 25 House debate on the 2004 intelligence authorization act.
"The committee is now investigating whether the intelligence case on Iraq's WMD was based on circumstantial evidence rather than hard facts and whether the intelligence community made clear to the policy-makers and Congress that most of its analytic judgments were based on things like aerial photographs and Iraqi defector interviews, not hard facts," said Rep. Harman.
She repeatedly referred to the Committee's activity as an "investigation" even though that term has been proscribed by Senate Republicans such as Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) who say it is "pejorative."
"Iraq did have ties to terrorist groups, but the [House Committee] investigation suggests that the intelligence linking al Qaeda to Iraq, a prominent theme in the administration's statements prior to the war, [was] contradictory, contrary to what was claimed by the Administration," she said.
"I think it is very important that the committee hold public hearings, and I have the gentleman from Florida's (Chairman Goss') personal commitment that we will. I hope our first hearing will occur in July. Our committee also decided to produce a written, unclassified report as promptly as possible," she said.
The transcript of the June 25 House floor debate on the 2004 intelligence authorization act is posted here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h062503.html
Rep. Harman's statement begins here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h062503.html#harman
Meanwhile, "The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, United States government officials said today," reported Douglas Jehl in the New York Times.
"In a classified June 2 memorandum, the officials said, the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, as President Bush has done." See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/international/worldspecial/26WEAP.html
Questions about the Administration's presentation of the case for war against Iraq are not going away and evidence of public frustration with the closed-door official proceedings to date is beginning to mount.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this week issued "A call for a truly public public hearing." See:
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/wo/0624rothstein.html
"This is no game," said Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) on June 24. "For the first time in our history, the United States has gone to war because of intelligence reports claiming that a country posed a threat to our Nation."
"Congress should not be content to use standard operating procedures to look into this extraordinary matter. We should accept no substitute for a full, bipartisan investigation by Congress into the issue of our prewar intelligence on the threat from Iraq and the use of that intelligence." See Senator Byrd's remarks here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/s062403.html
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to
secrecy_news-request (at) lists.fas.org
with "subscribe" in the body of the message.
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to
secrecy_news-remove (at) lists.fas.org
OR email your request to saftergood (at) fas.org
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html |
Comments
|
Bush's Bogus War |
by Paul Knox
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jun 2003
|
All governments shade the truth. Most resort to deception when the going gets tough. Saddam Hussein is gone and so is his regime. So who cares if George W. Bush fiddled with the facts on Iraq's banned-weapons programs and its reported links to al-Qaeda?
I care. The Bush administration's dissembling about the invasion of Iraq and its self-delusion about the consequences are directly related to the disturbing events now unfolding there. All of us are likely to feel the effects as a confused, angry superpower grows ill at ease with its self-appointed role.
Time magazine reports that in March, 2002, Mr. Bush told a group of senators at the White House: "F -- Saddam, we're taking him out." In public he said no such thing, instead initiating a parade of torqued and misleading statements about Iraq's threat to the United States.
In October, he said Iraq "possesses and produces" chemical and biological weapons and "is reconstituting" its nuclear-weapons program. Yet the Defense Intelligence Agency at that time was reporting no hard evidence of Iraqi possession of banned weapons. He also said Iraq had continuing ties to al-Qaeda, and had trained its operatives in the use of banned munitions. Those statements went much further than the U.S. intelligence consensus, according to an exhaustive report on Sunday in The Washington Post.
At the end of January, in the State of the Union address, Mr. Bush offered a tale of Iraqi attempts to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa. The CIA, and possibly Vice-President Dick Cheney, knew this to be bogus. Last month, Mr. Bush trumpeted the news that U.S. weapons teams had found "biological laboratories" in Iraq. That was another leap into the abyss. It now appears the mobile units either had been deactivated or had nothing to do with germ warfare.
There is, of course, no doubt that Iraq at one time had illegal weapons. The question was whether they were dismantled, lost, buried beyond exhumation and detection or simply too old and decrepit to threaten anyone.
Even before the invasion, the evidence was so dubious that those in favor of war were recasting it as a campaign on behalf of oppressed Iraqi civilians. That is almost unbelievably cynical.
There would have been no quick-exit fantasies if humanitarianism had been driving U.S. Iraq policy. Civilian policing would have been integrated into planning from the start. It would have been tough to avoid the current situation, in which soldiers who thought they'd been sent to take out a death-dealing tyrant find themselves confronting rebellious civilians. But at least the need for a long-term civilian occupation administration would have been acknowledged.
Iraq is not Vietnam, but the resort to deception is common to both campaigns. In 1964, after hearing allegations of attacks on two U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese patrol boats, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving then president Lyndon Johnson a free hand in pursuing the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The first was a trivial incident, and not unprovoked. Mr. Johnson later admitted that he had no idea whether the second attack actually took place. Neither his doubts nor those of a key naval commander were shared with the public.
Sound familiar? Action based on faulty, partial or misleading information is bound to be bad policy and worse strategy. It will come to grief either because it is the wrong thing to do or because it leads to a loss of public trust.
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair is accused of manipulating intelligence reports to boost the case for war. His critics include not only former cabinet ministers and senior intelligence officials, but also the leader of the Conservative Party, whose MPs helped him win parliamentary approval for the invasion.
The spectacle of Margaret Thatcher's political heirs rounding on Mr. Blair ought to make self-respecting Republicans sit up and take note. The next time Mr. Bush decides on the basis of proprietary intelligence that the time is ripe for a pre-emptive strike, who will believe him? Deception-driven policy-making is exceptionally dangerous in an age of instantaneous broad-spectrum news. Actions are far more likely to be jeopardized while they are still in progress, instead of merely being criticized after the fact. Iraqis opposed to the U.S. occupation may be emboldened by real-time, televised accounts in their own language of U.S. and British investigations into who knew what, and when.
Official duplicity may be an immutable fact of life. So should be the quest to expose its corrosive effects. The United States is in danger of forgetting the most important lesson it learned in Vietnam. The end may seem to justify the means, but all too often the means deform the end.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.
http://www.globeandmail.ca |
|
New Polls: Bush's Re-Elect Numbers Fall Below 50% |
by Will Lester
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jun 2003
|
WASHINGTON --President Bush's approval ratings are high, but his re-election support doesn't match up, a reflection of the nation's unease about the struggling economy and uncertainty about who will be the Democratic nominee in 2004.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush has enjoyed approval ratings of 60 percent or higher in most polls, indicative of the historical trend of the nation rallying around the commander in chief when the nation's security is threatened.
But now that the electorate is beginning to focus on Bush's handling of the economy and wondering who the Democrats will nominate, the president's re-elect numbers are at 50 percent or lower in several polls.
Democrats, who face an uphill fight to oust the popular incumbent, see a glimmer of hope in Bush's re-elect numbers, convinced that independent voters are up for grabs. Republicans counter that the stability of Bush's approval ratings bode well for next year.
In a recent CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, 50 percent said they would vote for Bush and 38 percent backed the unknown Democratic candidate, with the rest undecided. Those numbers aren't very different from those garnered by Bush's father in June 1991, when the commander in chief was praised for the U.S. success in the Persian Gulf War and the Democrats were scrambling for a candidate.
Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election.
``With job approval, you're asking how they feel right now,'' said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup poll. Bush's job approval ratings won't accurately reflect his potential until March or April next year, Newport said.
In the last three decades, presidents who failed to capture a second term--Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush--had job approval ratings in the 40s shortly before the election, according to Republican pollster Bill McInturff. Presidents who were re-elected, such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, were in the 50s before the vote.
The current Gallup poll found that 37 percent of Democrats approve of Bush's job performance, but only a third of those Democrats who approve would vote to re-elect him. Among independents, the re-elect numbers weren't as high as the approval ratings.
``What this means is that Democrats and independents who lean Democratic still want to consider other choices,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. ``Bush will still have to convince swing voters that he's the right person for the job once a Democratic candidate emerges.''
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake argues that it will be hard for Bush to solidify his re-election support in tough economic times. She said the president's re-elect numbers are a sign that ``independents are in play.''
Bush's re-elect numbers are even lower in the Ipsos-Cook Political Report tracking poll, which showed a drop for the president from April to June, a time when the nation's focus shifted from the U.S.-led war against Iraq to the economy, Medicare and tax cuts.
In June, 42 percent of those polled said they would definitely vote to re-elect Bush, and 31 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else, with the remainder saying they would consider someone else. Bush had a 19-point advantage over an unnamed opponent in the April survey by the Ipsos-Cook Political Report.
Veteran pollster Warren Mitofsky said who the Democrats pick will definitely influence the support for Bush's re-election, noting:
``The real question for the Democrats is will they choose a candidate who's as good as people are looking for?''
Copyright 2003, The Associated Press
http://www.ap.org |
|
Intel Cover-up Deepens: House Rejects Calls For Deeper Probe On Iraqi Arms |
by Ken Guggenheim
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jun 2003
|
WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday rejected two attempts by Democratic lawmakers for additional inquiries into the handling of intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.
Democrats sought to include the inquiries in a bill authorizing 2004 intelligence activities. That bill, whose details are mostly classified, was expected to be approved late Thursday or early Friday.
Democrats have questioned whether prewar intelligence was inaccurate or manipulated to back up President Bush's push for war. Republicans have said there is no sign of wrongdoing and have accused Democrats of raising the issue for political reasons.
Reviews of administration assertions of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction already under way by the House and Senate intelligence committees and the Senate Armed Services committees. But some Democrats said they don't go far enough.
An amendment proposed by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas to require the U.S. comptroller general to study U.S. intelligence-sharing with U.N. inspectors was defeated 239-185.
By a 347-76 vote, the House rejected an amendment by Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio to require the CIA's inspector general to audit all telephone and electronic communications between the CIA and Vice President Dick Cheney relating to Iraq's weapons.
Kucinich, a presidential candidate and outspoken opponent of the war, cited a Washington Post story in which unidentified intelligence analysts said they had felt pressured by Cheney to make their assessments meet administration policy objectives.
In debate Wednesday, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., called Kucinich's proposal the ``cheap shot amendment of the year.''
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman of California, also opposed Kucinich's proposal, saying his concerns could be examined by the committee's review of prewar intelligence.
Harman said the early stages of that review found that the administration ignored doubts about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability. But Harman said she still believes Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that could now be in the hands of anti-American fighters in Iraq or terrorists elsewhere.
She said the early stages of her committee's review has made clear that Iraq once had chemical and biological weapons and that these weapons were easy to hide - but administration officials ``rarely included the caveats and qualifiers attached to the intelligence community's judgments.''
``For many Americans, the administration's certainty gave the impression there was even stronger intelligence about Iraq's possession of and intention to use WMD,'' she said.
Harman said the committee was reviewing whether intelligence agencies ``made clear to policy-makers and Congress that most of its analytic judgments were based on things like aerial photographs, Iraqi defector interviews - not hard facts.''
Harman also said that intelligence linking al-Qaida to Iraq ``is conflicting, contrary to what was claimed by the administration.''
Harman said the committee's review would be thorough and that Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., has told her he will hold open hearings, which she hopes will begin in July. But she also said the investigation had to be ``mindful of the burden the intelligence agencies are carrying.''
``Our nation is best served by an effective intelligence community, not one hobbled by risk-aversion and finger-pointing,'' she said.
The intelligence authorization bill would pay for programs aimed at improving intelligence sharing among agencies, increase training of state and local agencies, modernize an aging satellite network, strengthen human espionage and improve counterintelligence efforts.
The bill's cost is classified, but has been estimated at $40 billion. Goss said that level would meet Bush's request. It will have to be reconciled with a version being considered by the Senate.
© 2003 The Associated Press
http://www.ap.org |
|
