Dave Muller Dec 6, 12:04 am show options
The world now knows that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but that hasn't stopped President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney this week from labelling people who accuse them of faking the evidence as 'dishonest,' 'reprehensible,' 'corrupt' and 'shameless.' What Happened to Iraq's WMD How politics corrupts intelligence - Scott Ritter San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, December 4, 2005 The recent exchange of vitriol between Republican and Democratic lawmakers over the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and more specifically the disconnect between the intelligence data cited by the Bush administration as justification for invading Iraq and the resultant conclusion by the CIA that all Iraqi WMD had already been eliminated as early as 1991, has once again thrust the issue of the use of intelligence for political purposes front and center. Democrats accuse the president and his supporters of deliberately misleading them and the American people about the nature of the Iraqi threat. Republicans respond that the Democrats are rewriting history, that all parties involved had access to the same intelligence data and had drawn the same conclusions. Typical of the Republican-led rebuttal are statements made by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who noted that "every intelligence agency in the world, including the Russian, French, including the Israeli, all had reached the same conclusion, and that was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." But this is disingenuous. The intelligence services of everyone else were not proclaiming Iraq to be in possession of WMD. Rather, the intelligence services of France, Russia, Germany, Great Britain and Israel were noting that Iraq had failed to properly account for the totality of its past proscribed weapons programs, and in doing so left open the possibility that Iraq might retain an undetermined amount of WMD. There is a huge difference in substance and nuance between such assessments and the hyped-up assertions by the Bush administration concerning active programs dedicated to the reconstitution of WMD, as well as the existence of massive stockpiles of forbidden weaponry. The actions and rhetoric of the Bush administration were aided by the tendency by most involved to accept at face value any negative information pertaining to Hussein and his regime, regardless of the source's reliability. This trend was especially evident in Congress, responsible for oversight on matters pertaining to foreign policy, intelligence and national security. One might be inclined to excuse lesser members of the legislative branch for such actions, given their lack of access to sensitive intelligence, but not so senior figures who sit on oversight committees, such as California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who occupied a seat on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. Today, Feinstein all-too conveniently "regrets" her vote in favor of war on Iraq, but defends her yes vote in 2002 by noting that "the intelligence was very conclusive: Saddam possessed biological and chemical weapons." This is a far different from the statement Feinstein made to me in the summer of 2002, when she acknowledged that the Bush administration had not provided any convincing intelligence to back up its claims about Iraqi WMD. In contrast to Feinstein's actions, Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who also sat on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, noted in September 2002 that the Bush administration's decisions regarding Iraq had been made in the absence of a National Intelligence Estimate from the CIA. The CIA hastily rushed to produce such a document, but the resulting report appeared as much to be an example of intelligence being fixed around policy, as opposed to policy being derived from intelligence. Graham, his eyes opened by the seemingly baseless rush toward conflict in Iraq, voted no on the war. Feinstein and others, their eyes wide shut, voted yes. The crux of the problem of this Iraqi WMD intelligence "failure" lies in the fact that the U.S. intelligence community and the products it produces are increasingly influenced by the corrupting influences of politics. The politicization of the intelligence community allows the process of fixing intelligence around policy to become pervasive, and the increasingly polarized political climate in America prevents any real checks and balances through effective oversight, leaving Americans at the mercy of politicians who have placed partisan politics above the common good. The recent overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community, which resulted in the creation of the national intelligence chief, only reinforces this politicization, because the new director reports directly to the president and is beyond the reach of congressional oversight. The only true fix to the problems of intelligence that manifested themselves in the Iraqi WMD debacle is to depoliticize the process. The position of national intelligence chief should be a 10-year appointment, like that of the director of the FBI, and subject to the consent of Congress. Likewise, all intelligence made available to the president to make national security policy should be shared with select members of Congress, from both parties, so that America will never again find itself at war based upon politically driven intelligence. Finally, and perhaps most important, the American people should start exercising effective accountability regarding their elected officials, so that those who voted yes for a war based on false and misleading information never again have the honor and privilege of serving in high office. Learn more Who: Scott Ritter What: Former U.N. weapons inspector will deliver a speech on the truth behind yellowcake uranium, missiles and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. When: Friday, noon Where: Commonwealth Club, 595 Market St., San Francisco Reservations and information: (415) 597-6700; www.commonwealthclub.org Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-98) and the author of "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein" (Nation Books, 2005). Page E - 5 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12... _____________________________________ Former weapons inspector claims WMD never the issue in Iraq PM - Tuesday, 29 November , 2005 18:34:00 Reporter: Mark Colvin MARK COLVIN: The world now knows that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but that hasn't stopped President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney this week from labelling people who accuse them of faking the evidence as 'dishonest,' 'reprehensible,' 'corrupt' and 'shameless.' They'd no doubt be surprised that they have some qualified support in that from the former weapons inspector Scott Ritter. It was Mr Ritter who resigned from the UN weapons inspection force UNSCOM in 1998 over his disillusionment with the way the weapons of mass destruction intelligence was being handled. He spent the following years arguing that the US had manipulated the WMD intelligence, and he still holds that view. But paradoxically, Scott Ritter told me today that George W Bush and Dick Cheney were right to attack their Democrat critics on the issue. SCOTT RITTER: In a way, the President and the Vice-President are half-right. I mean, they say that the Democrats are trying to rewrite history when they say that they were deliberately misled by the Bush administration. I agree with the Bush administration. The Democrats weren't deliberately misled. They knew all along that this was a lie, that the Bush administration was hyping the case for war. They knew that the policy was regime change and they knew that we had no intention of genuinely disarming Iraq. They voted for the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. MARK COLVIN: But wasn't there information that was always privileged to the White House and the Pentagon, information about the uranium from Niger, information about the aluminium tubes and so forth? SCOTT RITTER: Well, remember you're talking about the most current manifestation of this cycle of hyping the Iraqi threat, that of course being the 2002 version of events. But people have forgotten about Bill Clinton's speech before the American people in December 1998 where he made the same case. What Bush was doing was nothing new. It was just a continuation of a process, an extreme version of a process, of demonization, where, because we had focused on Saddam, because we had made a decision that Saddam must go, we believed that you could say anything negative about Saddam and people would accept it at face value without question. MARK COLVIN: You say demonization, but isn't it just as plausible to suggest that the shock in the intelligence community after the first Iraq war had been so great to find that they had underestimated Saddam's capabilities, that that shock had been so great that they were determined not to make the same mistake again? SCOTT RITTER: But again, we could accept that if the policy was one of disarmament. But as I state over and over again, one has to recognise what the true objective was of the Resolution 687 passed by the Security Council in April 1991, what the true objective was from an American perspective. And that was not to disarm Iraq, but rather to use disarmament as a vehicle to contain Saddam Hussein through the continuation of economic sanctions. MARK COLVIN: What about the theory that Saddam himself really wanted the world to think that he had the weapons of mass destruction and that also was one of the things that clouded their eyes? SCOTT RITTER: Again, I don't accept that, because they haven't demonstrated the basis for that argument. I mean, we don't have the stunning confession from Saddam; we don't have the documents that back this up. This is sort of a revisionist history trying to articulate some sort of excuse for the intelligence service. What we do have, though, that paints a clear picture of what the genuine objectives of the intelligence service was are: a) the directives from consecutive presidential administrations, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush, tasking the CIA as their primary objective, vis-a-vis Iraq, the removal of his regime. This is why when I briefed the director of the CIA in November 1993 about how we had accounted for the totality of Iraq's ballistic missile capabilities we were told by the CIA at that time that they rejected our analysis, that the number of missiles in play was assessed to be 12 to 20 and that number would never change, regardless of what we did. MARK COLVIN: But was it just the Americans? Because isn't it the case, as one reads, that every Western intelligence service, including for instance the French and the Germans, believed that Saddam was lying about his weapons of mass destruction? SCOTT RITTER: Well, there's a huge difference then in an assessment that says, 'We dont believe the Iraqi Government,' and an assessment that says, 'Iraq maintains massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.' I will concur that every intelligence service in the world had doubts about the veracity of the Iraqi statements, that there was enough reason to distrust the Iraqis, given their past behaviour, and that there was enough doubt cast upon the final disposition of aspects of their programs, so that you couldn't give Iraq a clean bill of health. But it's incorrect to say that everybody believed Saddam Hussein had these weapons. I can guarantee you, as the person who was running intelligence for the United Nations on the WMD issue in 1998, that as of August 1998 the Israelis for instance believed that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed. So did the British, so did the French, so did the Germans, so did the Russians so did the CIA. And so, you know, there's something that transpired from 1998 to 2003 that changes. And I would say that it was MARK COLVIN: And what was that? Was that the Operation Stovepipe, the creation of a sort of parallel intelligence system SCOTT RITTER: Well, correct. I MARK COLVIN: to funnel distorted evidence into the White House? SCOTT RITTER: Certainly. You take a look at the statements of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell made in 2001, prior to September 11, where they said that Iraq was contained, that Iraq had been largely disarmed and Iraq posed no threat. Suddenly September 11th 2001 comes along and the Bush administration exploits the horrific act of terror that transpired and uses it as a vehicle to sell a war with Iraq. And this is where you have the process of stove piping taking place. This is where sound analysis is thrown out and hyped up intelligence is plugged in. MARK COLVIN: All right, so where does this leave us for now and for the future, and particularly if we look at, say, Iran where the new leadership is looking increasingly extremist? Is credibility now so shot that the world can't effectively do anything about Iran if it does get weapons of mass destruction? SCOTT RITTER: Well, the credibility is shot. I mean, this is a problem, because I am someone who's not going to articulate that Iran does not pose a threat. I'm very concerned about Iran. People should be concerned about Iran. I think Iraq has corrupted, in the minds of much of the world, the notion of a United States that's operating within the framework of legitimate international law. So it is a big problem, because there may well in fact be a genuine threat emanating from Iran that isn't going to be articulated and recognised in a timely fashion because the world doesn't trust the United States. http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1519429.htm MARK COLVIN: Former UNSCOM arms inspector, Scott Ritter. Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
