Worries of Mass Deception

The assertions about Iraq’s weapons capabilities before the war were definitive. On Oct. 7, 2002, President Bush said: “The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. … Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

On the eve of war, the president said: “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

Now, after more than five months of searching for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after Saddam Hussein’s toppling, comes vague talk of intent and nascent programs. “At this time there is substantial evidence of an intent of senior level Iraqi officials, including Saddam, to continue production at some future point of time of weapons of mass destruction,” David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, the U.S. weapons-hunting team, said following his interim report to Congress Thursday afternoon.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was based on Bush administration claims that Mr. Hussein currently possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed an “imminent threat” to his neighbors and the world. The attack on Iraq was not predicated upon the notion that scientists in the country thought about making weapons or that plans for such weapons programs remained in government file cabinets.

Mr. Kay and his team did find signs that Iraq was working to develop missiles that travel up to 1,500 kilometers, far beyond the 150-kilometer limit imposed by the United Nations. The group also found evidence of attempts to buy ballistic missile technology from North Korea. One vial of a potential precursor to biological weapons was found at the home of an Iraqi scientist. But the promised stockpiles of ready weapons have yet to be found. “It clearly does not look like a massive, resurgent program, based on what we discovered,” Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector, told lawmakers.

Based on what they heard Thursday, members of Congress must now help the public figure out why there is such a large discrepancy between what the Bush administration said about Iraq’s weapons capabilities for the war and what it has actually found – with much more time and access than was allowed to the derided U.N. weapons inspection team – after the invasion. There are two key questions. The first is whether the intelligence gathered about Iraq’s weapons programs was wrong. It if was, then steps must be taken to improve our international intelligence gathering.

Second, was the intelligence intentionally inflated to bolster the case for bombing Baghdad? If this was the case, Congress must find out at what level the enhancements were made and why. The White House should cooperate fully in any such investigation because if a cloud remains over its rationale for attacking Iraq, its claims about the weapons capabilities of North Korea, Iran and other countries will not be taken seriously at home or abroad.

These questions must be answered before Congress approves the administration request for $600 million to continue the search. That is a lot of money to spend to find out whether there is evidence that an Iraqi scientist somewhere harbors the intent to start a program to develop weapons.