Did the Decision for War Predate Info?
W A S H I N G T O N, June 16 -- Three months after they first rolled into Iraq, U.S. troops have yet to discover the weapons of mass destruction that administration officials insisted Baghdad possessed. Was their intelligence faulty — or could it have been distorted or suppressed to make the case for war?
President Bush at least paid lip service to the idea that his final decision on war would hinge upon U.S. intelligence evaluating the threat Saddam Hussein posed.
"America needs to know I'll be making up my mind based on the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own country, plus our friends and allies," he told reporters in Crawford, Texas, last August.
But Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks just 10 days later indicate that he, at least, had already made up his mind about the nature of the Iraqi threat.
"Simply stated," Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction; there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
But in September 2002 the first major intelligence report — from the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency — made far less categorical claims. "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons," it reads.
"We could not specifically pin down individual facilities, operating as part of the weapons of mass destruction programs, specifically the chemical warfare portion," DIA Director Adm. Lowell Jacoby explained this month. But he insisted that this lack of information "is not in any way intended to portray the fact that we had doubts that such a program existed, that such a program was active, or such a program was part of the Iraqi WMD structure."
The administration continued to build its case, adding not only that Iraq possessed the weapons, but that it posed an imminent threat. "The danger to our country is grave," the president said in September 2002. "The danger to our country is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons."
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