Like the layers of an onion, the different pieces of evidence that provided the US-led Coalition with the excuse to go to war with Iraq are being peeled away. We have a few layers yet to go, but all the signs are that when the last layer goes, we will be left with nothing except a rather pungent smell.
The latest layer to go was removed by President Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has just said that weapons of mass destruction may now never be found in Iraq. In his State of the Union address, the president himself had peeled away one of those diaphanous pieces of onion skin. In his own inimitable style, he used an almost transparent piece of verbiage in speaking of a search now for “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities”. Given that the US’s own weapons inspection chief has quit his job and told Congress that he now believes that there is nothing to find in Iraq, it cannot be long before the White House, and presumably London as well, come clean and admit that there was no reliable evidence to justify their proclaimed need to attack Saddam before he attacked somebody else with his deadly WMD arsenal.
When this confession comes, it will confirm for many the opinion that indifferent intelligence was inflated by Bush and Blair to underpin a decision already taken by both to invade Iraq and have it over with before the long hot summer months began. The politicians will, however, blame the intelligence services, whose chiefs are already being maneuvered into the firing line. Security heads seem certain to roll.
If the US and British intelligence communities did in fact mislead their political masters, telling them what they thought they wanted to hear, then such sacking will be justified and few intelligence professionals will demur. However, if the secret services are punished for mistakenly exaggerating the threats an interesting reaction could set in. There could be far less willingness to pass on to their political bosses any important but nevertheless uncorroborated intelligence.
America has been down this road before. On Aug. 4, 1964, the US spy ship Maddox sailing in North Vietnamese waters, radioed that it was under seaborne attack. Fighters were scrambled from the carrier USS Ticonderoga and the Tonkin Incident became the start of America’s total involvement in the Vietnam conflict. Intelligence analysis later showed that the attack craft allegedly picked up by the Maddox’s highly advanced systems were “freak radar echoes”.
But by then it was too late. President Johnson had his war. America was sucked into the massive blood-letting and humiliation of the Vietnam War, all because of an apparent radar error.
America is once again launched upon a military campaign on what is increasingly clear has been equally faulty intelligence. We must all hope that the outcome is not as serious.
