Examining the scorecard (part 2): Mistakes on WMD

I’ll admit I’ve put off writing this piece for some time, but its time to pay the fiddler. As the war began last year, I was convinced that there were weapons of mass destruction--chemical munitions and stocks of biological agents--hidden in Iraq. It’s increasingly clear that I was wrong about that. Let’s look at my own scorecard here:

On April 9, I wrote: “It is almost certain that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, or will shortly be found.” I added that “conclusive analysis will have to be done.”, but clearly I bit on initial reporting.

Then, on May 28, I wrote: “Mobile labs have been discovered, capable of rapid production of lethal biological agents”. It turns out most experts now believe they weren’t for making bio weapons after all. In my defense, however, this came in an article titled, “What happened to Iraq’s WMD?”

Oh sure, there are reports--most from questionable sources--that materials and equipment were slipped into Syria. And yes, there’s a (diminishing) chance something could still be found in the vastness of Iraq. But if you’re a supporter of the war, you have to stop grasping at straws and acknowledge that it’s increasingly unlikely that a smoking gun will turn up.

So where does that leave us? Does it mean the war in Iraq was wrong? To answer that, I refer to the wry farmer’s aphorism, “I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.” Well, mistakes have certainly been made regarding Iraq’s WMD:

It was a mistake for intelligence agencies (U.S., British, German, French, Israeli, etc., etc.) to make worst-case analyses based on dated information. Given the previous history of Iraq’s WMD programs, it was an understandable mistake, but a mistake nevertheless.

It was a mistake for the Bush administration to pin the rationale for war on the existence of WMD stockpiles, and not explain more clearly to the Congress, to the world, and especially to the American people that much more was at stake. A fuller and more complete case for war could and should have been made.

It was a mistake for policy-makers to hype intelligence reports, allow discredited information to appear in Presidential speeches, and make statements like Rumsfeld’s blustering, “We know where the weapons are!” President Bush will pay for those mistakes next November, in lost votes and possibly the loss of his office.

It was also a mistake for the American people to sit in front of their TV sets, listen to the talking heads, and blithely go about their daily business without paying serious attention to the momentous issues being debated. If you think you were lied to about Iraq and WMD, you just weren’t listening closely. The reality is far more subtle than that.

But there is a distinction between making mistakes and being wrong in a logical, ethical and moral sense.

It wasn’t wrong for CIA analysts and other intelligence professionals to conclude that Iraq had the intent, the knowledge and the means to someday build and use WMD. And based on their best efforts to find the truth, it wasn’t wrong for them to assess that Saddam still had weapons and weapons programs.

It wasn’t wrong for President Bush to take military action to enforce U.N. resolutions that others lacked the courage to uphold. The containment of Iraq--and Saddam’s plainly murderous aims--was failing fast. On the contrary, in the shadow of 9-11 it would have been wrong, dangerously wrong, for Bush to dawdle.

And it most certainly wasn’t wrong for the United States to liberate the suffering Iraqi people from a truly evil regime, bring new hope and a new dynamic to a region gripped by fear of Saddam, and rid the world of, yes, a “grave and growing danger”.

T.T.