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| What the Road to War Really Looked Like |
| 2005-12-07 |
| DC Examiner - not quite MSM Things in Iraq clearly have not gone as planned. The administration's that troops would be greeted as liberators fell far short. Iraq's oil fields have not yielded the anticipated revenues. Insurgent attacks are a constant and dangerous force. And Iraq's divided population has not galvanized as was hoped following the removal of their brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein. As casualties continue to mount and as success continues to elude American troops in the region, the American public has grown weary of the war. Opinion has turned against the war in recent weeks and a majority of Americans now believe that the decision to go to war was a mistake. But while Americans have always wondered whether it was a wise decision to go to war, they now also wonder whether they were duped into going to war by an administration hell-bent on capturing Iraq. To some of President Bush's harshest critics, the answer is simple: Bush and his legions exaggerated the threat posted by Iraq in order to secure support of a war that made oil company fat cats drool with anticipation. On the one hand, these criticisms are irrelevant. The decision to go to war was made and, well, what's done is done. On the other hand, if the Bush administration did, in fact, mislead the American public and Congress into a war, that most certainly is an issue that affects the public trust of our elected officials - no small thing. So do the charges against the administration bear out? No. There's a difference between misleading the American people and being mistaken. And when it comes to prewar opinions on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear arsenal, almost every Republican and Democrat was mistaken in their belief that Iraq was indeed a threat and that it possessed considerable stockpiles of destructive material. Indeed, it has been the policy of the United States since 1998 (following the Iraqi Liberation Act) to forcibly remove Saddam from power. Consider: The Washington Post ushered in the Bush administration in January 2001 with an editorial that read, "[O]f all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous - or more urgent - than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [where] intelligence photos â€- show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons." The intelligence was, quite simply, way, way off. But no intentional malice was committed. The remaining criticism, then, is that the Bush administration purposely withheld intelligence from elected officials that would have shed some doubt on Iraq's weapons program. Wrong again. The summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (read only by six senators, by the way) had a caveat from the State Department and Department of Energy alerting readers that certain information could not be verified and that questions remained. If senators want to hold the Bush administration responsible for missteps, they, too, need to be willing to explain their own failures of judgment. Of course, believing that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction does not - and should not - mean that war must be declared, and the administration's decision to invade in March 2003 is one that the Bush administration will have to constantly defend (although, to be fair, let us not forget the myriad Democrats and liberals who also supported the war ...). Since the case for war - as argued by people on both sides of the political aisle - was based largely on Iraq's alleged weapon capabilities, and since those capabilities have been proven to be grossly overestimated, it is true that the war in Iraq was, indeed, based on faulty intelligence - a faulty premise, even. That's an unfortunate embarrassment and setback that the U.S. will have to work hard to overcome. That should not, however, lead one to conclude that the Bush administration is guilty of deliberate deception or even that the goal of a peaceful, democratic Iraq was never worth the effort. As for how the war has been conducted - and what the future holds - well, that's a different story. To be continued in Part 2 of this series ... Notable Iraq quotes - Former President Bill Clinton: "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program." - Sandy Berger, national security adviser under Bill Clinton: "[Saddam Hussein] will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.: "Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.: "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members." - Former Vice President Al Gore: "Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." |
| Posted by:Bobby |