Friday, Jul 11, 2003
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By Sridhar Krishnaswami
Raw materials being mixed to produce herbicides at a pesticides factory in Fallujah, near Baghdad, which was searched by U.N. inspectors for banned weapons after Iraq handed over a declaration of its arms programmes, in this December 8, 2002 file photo.
"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder. We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on September 11th'', the Defence Secretary told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He defended not only the war but also the intelligence basis that justified it. Several leading members of Congress, Republicans included, have questioned the Bush administration's use of the intelligence material for launching the war, with one view being that the White House manipulated intelligence assessments to mirror its perceptions. Senior administration officials, including top Cabinet members, dismiss this contention. The President, George W. Bush, travelling in South Africa, would not openly discuss if he should have used intelligence material that spoke of Saddam Hussein trying to buy uranium from Niger, in his State of the Union Address this January. Very early on, the Central Intelligence Agency had dismissed the linkage, which turned out to be based on forgeries. "Look, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace. And there is no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power'', Mr. Bush remarked in South Africa. Only this week, the White House admitted for the first time that it erred on this Iraq-Niger link. But there are a number of questions why the President used this material in his address to the American people and a joint session of Congress. But on Capitol Hill, Mr. Rumsfeld argued that the war on Iraq was in the context of 9/11. "The objective in the global war on terror is to prevent another attack like September 11th, or a biological, nuclear or chemical attack that would be worse, before it happens. We can say with confidence that the world is a better place today because the United States led a coalition of forces into action in Iraq'', he told the Senate panel. The Bush administration is on the defensive, having to fend off sharp criticism from members of Congress and the media for over-stating the intelligence on hand in the run-up to the war. And in recent days, the administration has had to take a lot of flak for the developments on the ground in Iraq — especially the organised guerilla attacks. Senior officials continue to insist that what is taking place in and around Baghdad is random — no organisation or strategy. The administration has a lot on its plate in the sense that questions of intelligence assessments or what went wrong in the post-conflict stage in Iraq will not go away easily. And heading the agenda of the political opposition is the role the White House played in intelligence assessment. One theme that is emerging is that some of the agencies involved in intelligence or proliferation matters were kept in the dark on the kind of material reaching the President. The other side to this is the thinking that the decisions were not based on what top intelligence agencies recommended but what the White House wanted to do with the material presented. The Defence Secretary, however, does not have a problem with the manner in which intelligence material was used. "... I think the intelligence has been quite good and I don't think that the fact that there is an instance where something was inaccurate ought to, in any way, paint a broad brush on the intelligence that we get and suggest that that's a pattern or something; it's just not'', Mr. Rumsfeld told the Senators.
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