Newsday: Did Bush Exaggerate The Truth About WMDs?

'The first casualty when war comes is truth'

Sunday June 15, 2003, Newsday (New York)

"...That phrase - coined by U.S. Sen. Hiram Johnson, a fierce World War I isolationist - has never lost its sting. But truth has often been bent to argue for war and to justify it long before the first shot was fired.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did it to spur the nation into World War II. President Lyndon B. Johnson did it to justify escalating the Vietnam War. FDR was forgiven because Pearl Harbor gave him all the justification he needed and the cause was seen as just. LBJ was never forgiven for the Gulf of Tonkin deception and the ghosts of Vietnam still haunt the national psyche.

Now President George W. Bush is facing the same, increasingly urgent question: Did he twist or exaggerate the truth about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war against Iraq? If he did - and the evidence is still ambiguous - then it could be argued that he used a dubious pretext to trick the nation and his allies into accepting the most serious action that a head of state can take: war. If so, he would have inflicted grave damage to his own credibility, the most precious and most vulnerable attribute of his office, and cast doubt on every other initiative he may wish to undertake.

It will require a full, fair and impartial congressional investigation to determine exactly what role intelligence agencies played and what information the administration used to make its case for war. A comparable inquiry is taking place in the British parliament on Prime Minister Tony Blair's use of intelligence estimates on weapons of mass destruction to justify the war to his own nation. Even after an investigation, however, it may be impossible ever to know what

Bush knew, what he believed and whether he deceived himself or allowed himself to be deceived.

The consequences of stretching the truth carry a high cost. Americans will need to take Bush at his word if, in a year's time, he says Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and action must be taken to block it from that goal. U.S. allies must be able to believe Bush if he asks them to sacrifice soldiers and resources to hunt down terrorists. Credibility is key.

This newspaper supported Bush in his push for the war against Iraq. In the wake of the horrors revealed about Saddam Hussein's regime after his fall, no one could mourn for its passing. But support for the war was predicated on the validity of Bush's rationale and the facts used to argue it.

Too Soon to Know

It's too early to tell whether Bush and his national security advisers were lying, exaggerating, using bad or incomplete data or deceiving themselves and, in turn, the public. This we do know: Bush said that Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - biological and chemical - and his ties to terrorist groups posed a grave, imminent threat to U.S. security. But after the war was won, it became clear that no firm links existed between Hussein and al- Qaida. Even more crucial was the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Not a single storage site has been uncovered despite assiduous searches. No traces of biological or chemical weapons have turned up so far.

There are disturbing indications from intelligence officials that the White House glossed over raw and contradictory data that had never been put in proper context. For instance, a Defense Intelligence Agency report contained all sorts of qualifications. It said, "although we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses chemical munitions" and "probably possesses bulk chemical stockpiles ..."

Those are not definitive statements of alarm. But they were translated into speeches from the White House and the Pentagon that contained no qualifications, just flat-out statements that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a grave threat. That certitude of imminent danger was what Bush used to justify war..."

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printed from Newsday: Did Bush Exaggerate The Truth About WMDs? on 2004-05-30 23:54:58