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What began in
the UK picks up in the US. This is
about language and interpretation, manipulation and not so much about
deception. That will come
shortly. - KWC Bush Certainty On Iraq Arms
Went Beyond Analysts' Views
By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus,
Washington Post Staff Writers During the weeks last
fall before critical votes in Congress and the United Nations on going to war in
Iraq, senior administration officials, including President Bush, expressed
certainty in public that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, even
though U.S. intelligence agencies were reporting they had no direct evidence
that such weapons existed. In an example of the tenor of the administration's
statements at the time, the president said in the Rose Garden on Sept. 26 that
"the Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons. The Iraqi
regime is building the facilities necessary to make more biological and
chemical weapons." But a
Defense Intelligence Agency report on chemical weapons, widely distributed to
administration policymakers around the time of the president's speech, stated
there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or
stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has or will establish its chemical
agent production facilities." The disparities
between the conviction with which administration officials portrayed the threat
posed by Iraq in their public statements and documents, and the more qualified reporting on the issue by
intelligence agencies in classified reports, are at the heart of a
burgeoning controversy in Congress and within the intelligence community over
the U.S. rationale for going to war. The failure of the United States to
uncover any proscribed weapons eight weeks after the end of the war is fueling
sentiment among some Democrats on Capitol Hill and some intelligence analysts
that the administration may have exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. The White House
yesterday defended the administration's prewar claims. "We continue to have confidence in our statements about
Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons," spokesman Ari
Fleischer said. He added that "the precise location of where Iraq had
chemical and biological weapons was never clear, but the fact they had it was
never in doubt, based on a reading of the intelligence." The controversy over
the administration's handling of the Iraq intelligence continued, however, as
two senior defense intelligence officials discussed the issue behind closed
doors with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The officials, Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency, and Stephen Cambone,
undersecretary of defense for intelligence, were asked by reporters afterward
about the classified Defense Intelligence Agency report on Iraq's chemical
weapons. "What we're
saying is that as of 2002 in September, we could not reliably pin down, for
somebody who was doing contingency planning, specific facilities, locations or
production that was underway at a specific location at that point in
time," Jacoby said. The existence of the
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document was reported in this week's U.S.
News and World Report. The administration
declassified a summary page of the document last night. The report said that
"although we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses chemical
agent in chemical munitions" and "probably possesses bulk chemical
stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of
some mustard agent and VX," a deadly nerve agent. As the administration
built its case for war last fall, some policymakers used caveats in describing Iraq's weapons
holdings that mirrored the caution built into the DIA and other intelligence
reports. In early September, for example, Bush used words such as "likely" or "suggests"
in making the case that Iraq had a covert weapons program. But many of the president's speeches, as
well as statements by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, went without caveats. Among those concerned
by the discrepancy is Sen. John W. Warner
(R-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who
routinely asked at committee meetings on Iraq whether officials were certain
they would find weapons of mass destruction if the United States toppled the
Iraqi government. Warner's committee and the Senate and House intelligence
committees are deciding whether to launch an independent investigation of the
administration's handling of Iraqi intelligence by their staffs. The CIA is
already conducting an internal probe. Cheney kicked off the
administration's campaign to win congressional and U.N. support for military
action in a speech on Aug. 26 to
the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville. "Simply stated," Cheney
said, "there's no doubt that [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein has weapons
of mass destruction." Before his Rose Garden
statement in late September, Bush had used more measured language about Iraq's chemical weapons program, in
line with the Defense Intelligence Agency conclusion. At the United Nations on Sept. 12, when he urged the world
body to join the United States in confronting Iraq, Bush said that previous
U.N. inspections revealed "that Iraq likely
maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents."
But on Sept. 26, as the campaign to win
congressional and U.N. Security Council approval for military action
intensified, the president told congressional leaders Iraq "possesses" such weapons. On the
same day, Rumsfeld told reporters that Iraq has "active development programs for those
weapons, and has weaponized chemical and biological weapons." On Oct. 1, the CIA released a "white
paper" on Iraq's weapons programs derived from a broader, classified National Intelligence Estimate
that had been sent to the White House and shared with members of Congress in
briefings. Among the "Key Judgments" in the first two
pages of the National Intelligence Estimate that were meant to summarize the
details that followed were statements in the white paper that "Baghdad has
chemical and biological weapons," and "Baghdad has begun renewed
production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin,
cyclosarin and VX." However,
the more detailed backup material later in the document did not support those
assessments. The intelligence paper contained more qualified language, stating, for example,
that "gaps in Iraqi accounting and current production capabilities strongly suggest Iraq has the ability to
produce chemical warfare agents within its chemical industry." It also
said Iraq "has the ability to
produce chemical warfare agents" -- a softer
formulation than the summary section of the document, which said
that Iraq "has begun"
producing the agents. On Oct. 7, Bush echoed without qualification the white paper's "key
judgment" conclusion when he said that Iraq "possesses and produces
chemical and biological weapons." He went on to say, "Saddam Hussein
has chosen to build and keep these weapons despite international sanctions,
U.N. demands, and isolation from the civilized world." Asked about the
president's comments on the Iraq intelligence yesterday, Fleischer said: "Intelligence comes in the form of a mosaic.
The president's description of the complete picture resulted from an interagency process in which every statement
was vetted and approved by each agency." A senior
administration official, who consulted with analysts familiar with the white
paper, said the document's judgments "were
a bit more categorical" than later statements "but the overall burden of the evidence pointed
to that conclusion."
He added that the president's statements were "based on the preponderance of the evidence" as he
and policymakers saw it. Throughout the run-up
to war, according to senior intelligence
officials, intelligence agencies had no direct evidence such as photographs or stolen Iraqi documents to
support a firm conclusion about
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. They said the case was circumstantial, largely
because U.N. weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998, shutting off the last
bit of direct knowledge available to the United States. Inspectors returned
last November and remained in Iraq until March. Some officials have
said privately that, while they could
influence the content of intelligence documents, they had no control
over what administration policymakers said in interpreting the material. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26487-2003Jun6.html?nav=hptop_tb |
