A White House spokesman yesterday dismissed the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Saddam Hussein’s WMD program and his links with Al-Qaeda as containing nothing new. This was an odd reaction to a final report by senior American legislators into the grounds, or lack of them, on which George Bush invaded Iraq and plunged the Iraqi people and the entire Middle East into chaos.
The falsehoods which led America into the Iraqi quagmire may have long been apparent, but this report makes it no less difficult for the Bush White House; a powerful Senate committee has confirmed that the whole operation was launched on a tissue of lies. The 152 page nonconfidential version of the report gives fascinating insights into the way in which tiny snippets of unreliable intelligence were massaged and built up to become entirely inaccurate warning beacons.
A new expression for lying may shortly enter the lexicon after a CIA deputy director’s evidence. She revealed to the committee that intelligence analysts writing a June 2002 report, “Iraq and Al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship” had been strongly encouraged to produce a “forward-leaning” document, a metaphor which conjures up the idea of a poor piece of evidence being stretched just as far as it will go. But taking conclusions beyond the facts is not an intelligence organization’s function. When such a thing occurs, it is often the result of political interference. We now need to know just how far “forward” the White House ordered or encouraged America’s spymasters to “lean.”
Iraq is bleeding to death because of the intelligence which George W. Bush used as the excuse to overthrow Saddam. The invasion and subsequent bloody occupation have cost trillions of dollars. Instead of dealing a decisive blow to terrorism, the adventure has actually opened a whole new battlefield for Al-Qaeda’s fanatics in which far more innocent Iraqis than coalition troops have died. Thanks to the US ouster of Saddam and its subsequent mishandling of every aspect of life in Iraq, Al-Qaeda is arguably stronger and more battle-hardened than it could ever have dreamed when it launched the depravity of 9/11.
So how could the US president have failed so spectacularly on the one issue which has defined his presidency — the war on terror? The answer is perhaps still too shocking for many Americans to accept. After the horror of 9/11 the Taleban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan were obvious targets and were duly destroyed for good — as Washington naively thought. But Bush needed another bogeyman for his war on terror. With Bin Laden’s main training camps obliterated, the targets were going to be altogether smaller and harder. But Saddam was unfinished Bush-family business. The president’s father always regretted not invading Iraq to finish off Saddam at the end of the first Gulf War. His Arab allies and his generals, sickened by the bloodshed, dissuaded him. Then the Twin Towers massacre gave the son the chance to complete his father’s mission, while wrapping the truth in bogus intelligence.
