Serious Threat

9 February 2004


CIA Director Defends Agency, Causes President Trouble

George Tenet made a speech last week that more or less defends his agency against the charges that it got the intelligence in pre-war Iraq wrong. It isn't the slam on the Bush administration that many are reading into it. "They [CIA analysts] never said there was an imminent threat," said Mr. Tenet, and in fact, Mr. Bush never did either. Still, Mr. Tenet's defense of the CIA amounts to an attack on the pre-war White House.

Mr. Tenet's assessment of Iraqi pre-war capacities should be examined in light of this January 21,2003, statement by President Bush taken from the White House website, "Saddam Hussein possesses some of the world's deadliest weapons. He poses a serious threat to America and our friends and allies." Serious, not imminent -- Mr. Bush's critics please note.

In his speech last week, Mr. Tenet said, "My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, he still wanted one, and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point." Also, he said, "My provisional bottom line today: Iraq intended to develop biological weapons. Clearly, research and development work was under way that would have permitted a rapid shift to agent production if seed stocks were available. But we do not yet know if production took place." And on chemical weapons, he stated, "Saddam had the intent and capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production. However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected."

In short, the Saddamite regime didn't possess some of the world's deadliest weapons. There were intentions and desires, but nothing that could actually get anyone killed. This isn't something cooked up by a vast left-wing conspiracy. Quite simply, the Director of the CIA now says that the President was wrong when Mr. Bush said what he said. It was on this basis that the nation went to war. The convenient fact that an evil man was removed from power is now being used as an ex post facto justification. And no matter how legitimate, it was not part of the debate that a democratic nation held before commit itself to war. The war was launched under false pretenses with insufficient forces to make occupation safe and effective.

And so on to the Big Question, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Whether the CIA was wrong or the White House was wrong is beside the point. The current mess is the direct result of an error of rather significant proportions, and it would appear that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, as one US serviceman a day is dying in Iraq. When Lieutenant John Kerry asked the above question during Congressional testimony in 1971, he got no real answer. It is only a matter of time before Senator John Kerry asks it again.

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