Bush is Right, Because Two Wrongs Make a Right
It’s par for the course to see Democrats and Republicans employing hyperbole and selective use of facts to buttress their own positions and attack each other. However, the reaction of Bush and his supporters to the Senate Panel report on the failures of our intelligence community is just so bizarre, it is truly a wonder to behold. The scathing, bipartisan Senate report paints only a portion of the large canvass that portrays the overall picture of the Iraq war, so let’s consider it within a larger context:
- After 9/11, the Bush administration made public its new, highly controversial policy of pre-emptive strikes against enemies that pose an imminent threat to the United States. One would presume that underlying such a policy would be a reliance on top-notch, rock-solid intelligence work. Assuming our enemies aren’t going to pubicly announce their plans, how else could we justify pre-emptive assaults?
- The Bush administration offered three justifications for the Iraq invasion: 1. first and foremost, it argued that Saddam possessed – or would very soon possess – WMD, and would attack us or our allies with them; 2. that he had strong ties to Al Qaeda and was likely to give it WMD; 3. Saddam was a really nasty guy who did terrible things to his own people.
- Were these things true? 1. The bipartisan Senate report states “Most of the major key judgements [of the CIA, concerning Iraq's WMD, were] either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting.” 2. The report states “there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an Al Qaeda attack,” and it found the CIA was correct in discounting theories about close ties between the two; 3. I think everyone agrees Saddam was a bad man.
- Was it reasonable, before the invasion, for the Bush administration to believe these things were true? An important thing to point out about the Senate report is that it did not find that the intelligence gathering was bungled. (Although it does point out how little actual intelligence we had – most of what we knew in 2002 about Iraq’s weapons programs was just extrapolated from information gathered in 1991, and after 1998 we had no human intelligence sources in Iraq.) Instead, the panel was scorchingly critical of the analyses. Why were they so botched? The panel’s next investigation – on the role of the Bush administration itself – will wait until after the election, but the 7/10 New York Times reported the following:
In one committee interview, the agency’s ombudsman…described what he called a “hammering” in the form of repeated questions by administration officials on…Mr Hussein’s possible links to Al Qaeda. The intensity of the questioning was “harder than he had previously witnessed in his 32-year career with the agency” …[the resulting analysis] was accompanied by a note that said it was prepared using a “purposefully aggressive” approach…
Given this stories and others like it (such as those in Richard Clarke’s book), there’s persuasive evidence that the Bush administration was quite keen to have the analyses reach certain conclusions. Hopefully more light will be shed on this, but for now it’s safe to say that some combination of groupthink, political mechinations, and shoddy work led the Bush administration to its conclusions about the nature and urgency of the Iraqi threat.
- Where does the Bush administration stand now? It stands in a slightly different spot than Tony Blair. In his reaction to the Butler report (on the failures of British intelligence), Blair still stood by the decision to go into Iraq, but he said “I take full responsibility for the mistakes [in the intelligence work]“, even though he had been cleared of any personal culpability. So we know where the buck stops in England, but Bush and Cheney are still selling the same old arguments, but with newer, craftier language, so you have to listen carefully. Earlier this week Bush said “[Saddam Hussein] had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them.” Note the use of the ambiguous terms capability and could have. It’s a far cry from the forceful language that was used in the run-up to the war, and it’s still an overstatement, given the actual, tattered state of Saddam’s weapons programs (see this interview with David Kay if you don’t already know the story). Furthermore, recently Cheney said the “evidence is overwhelming” that “there’s clearly been a relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The panel found no evidence of a significant collaborative relationship; the Czech intelligence report Cheney cited has been discredited; Osama Bin Laden once offered to go to war with Saddam Hussein (remember Saddam was a secular ruler who persecuted Islamists, making him anathema to the likes of Bin Laden). Relationship is a murky word – there is evidence of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but it’s not clear that they amounted to anything like a partnership.
So the only rationale that really had legs was the “Saddam is a bad guy” argument, which – under Bush’s published pre-emption policy – is not compelling enough to justify pre-emptive action. Nonetheless, the one argument Bush and his supporters are now making more forcefully than ever is this: “would you prefer having Saddam still in power?” Given that everyone agrees Saddam was a bad guy, the question is a superb rhetorical device. But I actually have a response. I even have two: 1. If Bush tried to sell the war on that basis alone, do you think there’s any chance at all he could have convinced the nation to go to war? I think brushing off the intelligence debacle that got us into Iraq with this ends-justifies-the-very-questionable-means argument is deplorable. 2. We have traded Saddam, a known – and fairly well contained – evil, for an Iraq fraught with risks for civil war, and for becoming a breeding ground for terrorism. It’s very unclear what the ultimate fate of Iraq will be, and at this point we must do what we can to steer it towards peace and stability. And I sincerely hope we succeed. But it is far, far from guaranteed that the long-term effect of Saddam’s removal will be an Iraq that causes less trouble for the world.
Epilogue
The title for this entry is derived from the tortured logic in the assertions put forth by Bush’s supporters in the aftermath of the Senate panel’s report and the Butler report. For the most part they’ve ignored the main thrust of the report and instead have focused their energy on berating Ambassador Wilson. To see what I’m talking about, see this entry on blogsforbush.com and this Sun Times editorial. If you look beyond the name calling and put the whole story together, the silliness of the argument becomes clear:
- You’ll recall Bush included a statement in his 2003 State of the Union speech about Iraq trying to get uranium from Niger. When it was later revealed how this statement was sourced, Ambassador Wilson stated he found no credible evidence for this claim when the Bush administration sent him to Niger to investigate almost a year earlier.
- In an incredibly rare display, the Bush administration admitted it was wrong to include that statement in the speech, and recanted the assertion. Then, in a more typical display, it sought revenge against Wilson. The Sept. 28 Washington Post reported: “a senior administration official said that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife.” Apparently the other reporters knew this was radioactive and didn’t touch it (she was an active CIA agent, and revealing her identity is potentially a criminal action), but Novak went ahead and published it.
- Fast-forward a full year: the Senate panel’s report roundly criticized the CIA’s analysis failures in regard to Iraq’s WMD, with a notable exception: the panel found there may have been something to the Iraq-Niger connection after all. If you read the New York Times summary of the panel’s findings on this topic, you’ll find it’s a very complicated story, fraught with contradictory opinions from various intelligence analysts.
- This Washington Post article casts serious doubt on Wilson’s credibility.
Tell me again how all this makes Bush look good? Just thumbing your nose at Wilson isn’t enough. It’s highly unusual for Bush to ever admit a mistake, so all the information available to him after Wilson first went public must have indicated the intelligence was unreliable. Hence the recantation. Further information that comes out a year later that happens to lend some support to his original assertion doesn’t justify the original misjudgement behind it. If you’re careful to not mix the past with the present, you’ll find the Sun-Times editorial is just silly: it argues that Bush knew the CIA was doing a lousy job, and that he had the ability to divine that this one piece of intelligence (which came from the British) was good, so he was right to use it in the speech. If that were true (which it isn’t), it would leave you wondering why Bush then felt comfortable trumpeting all the other intelligence analyses from a CIA he thought was incompetent.
