INTELLIGENCE REVIEW

As weapons inspections teams quietly pack up and go home or turn their attention to other tasks, questions continue to mount about the rationale for attacking Iraq. Before the war, President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell repeatedly warned of the imminent danger from Saddam Hussein and his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. After more than a month of unhindered searching, even the U.S. soldiers looking for stashed chemical and biological weapons wonder if they’ve been sent on a wild goose chase. The United States is certain is has found two mobile biological weapons labs, but actual weapons, be they biological, chemical or nuclear, seem much harder to find.

The weapons hide and seek is all the more troubling after damning comments from intelligence officials – active and retired – about the veracity of the information that was presented to Congress, the United Nations, the American and British people and others to justify attacking Baghdad.

“In intelligence, there is one unpardonable sin – cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy. There is ample indication that this has been done with respect to Iraq,” a group of concerned former Central Intelligence Agency operatives called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) wrote in a recent memo to President Bush. “There are troubling signs … that some senior officials of the CIA may be graduates of the other CIA – the Culinary Institute of America.” The only question, they said, was whether the kitchens were in the Pentagon, National Security Council, the vice president’s office or elsewhere.

To further cast doubt on the solidity of pre-war claims of the threat posed by Mr. Hussein, a British intelligence official told the BBC that reports on Iraq’s weapons capabilities were altered to be made “sexier.”

Noting that intelligence had been warped in the past, but “never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize launching a war,” VIPS suggests that Mr. Bush get serious about investigating the matter. They call for a review of the CIA and other intelligence agencies by Gen. Brent Scowcroft, chair of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

A review is certainly needed but it must be even broader than this. Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an outspoken hawk, wisely pointed out that if the pre-war assessments turned out to be wrong after the war, there would be a lot of questions to answer. In December, he requested a CIA review because he was fed up with the contradictory claims made by intelligence gathering entities.

That review is now taking place, but still more is needed. Close scrutiny should now come from Congress and its intelligence committees. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a member of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, is in an important position to make such a review possible. It is imperative for Congress to find out what information was presented to President Bush and other decision makers prior to the war.

Resolving the intelligence muddle will serve two purposes. First, the American people need to know whether this war was started under false pretenses and why. Second, the United States must prove to the world that its claims about the danger Mr. Hussein posed can bear up under the weight of scrutiny. This would help re-build international confidence in America’s word. As the administration continues serious discussions about North Korea, Syria and now Iran, it must prove that when it says a country has weapons of mass destruction, especially the highly charged accusation of nuclear weapons, it means what it says.