SACRAMENTO, Calif., 16 March 2003 — Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry said on Friday that Iraq does not pose an immediate danger, and said that instead of rushing into war, President George W. Bush should take months to build an international coalition against Baghdad.
“Nothing I have seen in the intelligence over the last years suggests to me that in terms of threat to the United States that there is, at this moment, such a compelling rationale that there is a distinction of weeks or months,” the Massachusetts Democrat told a news conference.
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who voted last year in favor of a congressional resolution giving US Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq, said Bush himself had created a sense of urgency by sending so many soldiers to the Gulf. “George Bush has created his own problem by building up the troops to the point where you face the old ‘use them or lose them’ equation,” said Kerry, viewed by some as an early front-runner among Democratic candidates.
“As somebody who has fought in a war, I don’t believe that troops ought be treated that way. I think you use the troops when you absolutely need to use the troops,” he said. “If you didn’t build them up so much, is there a great difference between March or September or October?” Kerry spoke following the announcement that Bush and the leaders from Britain and Spain will hold an emergency summit today in a last-gasp diplomatic effort to bridge deep divisions in the UN Security Council over authorizing war.
Meanwhile, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the FBI on Friday to investigate fake documents the United States used as evidence to the United Nations of alleged Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger. “As you know, the International Atomic Energy Agency has recently determined that some of the intelligence documents provided to it by the United States are forgeries,” Sen. John Rockefeller said in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller.
“These documents were provided to the IAEA as evidence of Iraqi efforts to procure uranium from the Republic of Niger. I am writing to request that the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigate this matter,” the West Virginia senator said. The documents were among intelligence US officials used in seeking UN Security Council support for their assertion that Iraq is hiding biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. Iraq denies having such weapons programs. An FBI official said the FBI would probably launch some type of initial inquiry, but in part to determine whether it was an FBI issue or should be handled by the CIA, which deals with intelligence collected abroad.
US intelligence analysts “believed from the beginning the information was questionable and I understand that they did not factor it into their analysis of the Iraqi threat,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said. “The bottom line is that the United States does not need this one piece of evidence to make its case against Iraq,” the Kansas Republican said in a statement. Rockefeller expressed concern that the forgeries “may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.”
