Krugman strikes again: "Nation misled into war in Iraq"

Seattle Post

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Nation misled into war in Iraq

By PAUL KRUGMAN -SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

The Bush and Blair administrations are trying to silence critics -- many of them current or former intelligence analysts -- who say they exaggerated the threat from Iraq. Last week, a Blair official accused Britain's intelligence agencies of plotting against the government. (Blair's government has since apologized for January's "dodgy dossier.")

In this country, Secretary of State Colin Powell has declared that questions about the justification for war are "outrageous."

Yet dishonest salesmanship has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's approach to domestic policy. And it has become increasingly clear that the selling of the war with Iraq was no different.

For example, look at the way the administration rhetorically linked Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. As The Associated Press put it: "The implication from Bush on down was that Saddam supported Osama bin Laden's network. Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks frequently were mentioned in the same sentence, even though officials have no good evidence of such a link."

Not only was there no good evidence; according to The New York Times, captured leaders of al-Qaida explicitly told the CIA they had not been working with Saddam.

Or look at the affair of the infamous "germ warfare" trailers. I don't know whether those trailers were intended to produce bioweapons or merely to inflate balloons, as the Iraqis claim -- a claim supported by a number of outside experts. (According to the British newspaper The Observer, Britain sold Iraq a similar system back in 1987.)

What is clear is that an initial report concluding that they were weapons labs was, as one analyst told The Times, "a rushed job and looks political." President Bush had no business declaring "we have found the weapons of mass destruction."

We can guess how Bush came to make that statement. The first teams of analysts told administration officials what they wanted to hear, doubts were brushed aside, and officials then made public pronouncements greatly overstating even what the analysts had said.

A similar process of cherry picking, of choosing and exaggerating intelligence that suited the administration's preconceptions, unfolded over the issue of WMDs before the war. Most intelligence professionals believed that Saddam had some biological and chemical weapons, but they did not believe they posed any imminent threat.

According to The Independent, another British newspaper, a March 2002 report by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee found no evidence that Saddam posed a significantly greater threat than in 1991. But such conclusions weren't acceptable.

Last fall former U.S. intelligence officials began warning that official pronouncements were being based on "cooked intelligence." British intelligence officials were so concerned that, The Independent reported, they kept detailed records of the process. "A smoking gun may well exist over WMD, but it may not be to the government's liking," a source said.

But the Bush administration found scraps of intelligence suiting its agenda, and officials began making strong pronouncements.

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printed from Krugman strikes again: "Nation misled into war in Iraq" on 2004-06-21 07:08:03