Bush's lie

[ROakes1019]

I had not heard of Kerr before reading this article.  It seems
he's another witness to Bush's lie in the SOTU address.



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More Evidence Bush Misled Nation

By David Corn, The Nation
July 9, 2003

If you blinked – or were busy buying hot-dogs and beer for a
Fourth of July cookout – you might have missed the latest
evidence that George W. Bush misrepresented the threat from
Iraq as he guided the country into invasion and occupation in
the Middle East. 


The day before Independence Day, Richard Kerr, a former CIA
deputy director who is leading a review of the CIA's prewar
intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons, held a series
of interviews with journalists and revealed that his
unfinished inquiry had so far found that the intelligence on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been somewhat
ambiguous, that analysts at the CIA and other intelligence
services had received pressure from the Bush administration,
and that the CIA had not found any proof of operational ties
between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime. 


In other words, Bush lied. 


Bush had said that intelligence gathered by the United States
and other nations had determined – "no doubt" – that
Hussein possessed WMDs, and he had declared that the Iraqi
dictator was "dealing" with al Qaeda. Kerr's
statements undermined these vital assertions Bush had made to
justify the war. 


Kerr was not trying to be difficult. His remarks were
primarily pro-CIA. He maintained that the agency had been
right to tell Bush and top administration officials that
Hussein was seeking WMDs. He said that intelligence analysts
had resisted pressure and had done a fine job, considering the
limited amount of material they had to work with. Kerr noted
that US intelligence analysts had been forced to rely upon
information from the early and mid-1990s and had little hard
evidence to evaluate after 1998 (when UN weapons inspectors
left the Iraq). The material that did come in after then was
mostly "circumstantial" or "inferential,"
he said. It was "less specific and detailed" than in
earlier years, "scattered." Speaking to The
Washington Post, he commented, "It would have been very
hard to conclude those [WMD] programs were not continuing,
based on the reports being gathered in recent years." And
he noted that CIA intelligence reports included the
"appropriate caveats" regarding their
less-than-definitive conclusions. (An unclassified CIA report
released last October said, without qualification,
"Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." But
its supporting material was nuanced, and Kerr noted that
intelligence analysts usually pointed out that their
information was not perfect.) 


Though Kerr did not say so outright, his findings indicate
that there was no hard-and-fast intelligence that Iraq
possessed ready-to-go chemical or biological weapons. Yet that
is what Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz, Ari Fleischer and other administration officials
had asserted repeatedly. In his interviews, Kerr remarked that
US intelligence analysts were right to assume, based on older
evidence and more recent circumstantial material, that Iraq
was maintaining its unconventional weapons programs. But
developing weapons is not the same as possessing weapons. Bush
and his advisers did not argue that the United States was
compelled to go to war – rather than support more intrusive
inspections – because Hussein had ongoing weapons programs;
they claimed the United States had to invade because it was
imminently threatened by actual weapons that were in Hussein's
mitts (and that he could slip at any moment to his partners in
al Qaeda). 


Before the war, there was little doubt that Hussein had a
fancy for mass-killing weapons and was defying UN disarmament
resolutions in part to maintain programs to develop such awful
devices. Yet a desire for WMDs and a development program are
not as threatening as the real things, and Bush and his
colleagues said the intelligence showed – without question –
Hussein was armed with biological and chemical weapons, was
close to building a nuclear bomb, and was in league with Osama
bin Laden. Kerr's comments offer further proof none of this
was true. 


So did front-page headlines scream, "Former Deputy CIA
Director Contradicts Bush's Key War Claims"? Nope. Kerr's
remarks were treated more as a hiccup than a bombshell. A
search of the Lexis-Nexis newspaper database turned up only
three stories that were published; they appeared in the Post,
The Los Angeles Times, and The San Diego Union-Tribune. And
the headlines focused on Kerr's rah-rahing for the CIA.
"Basis for Arms Claims Affirmed" (the Post).
"Official Backs Prewar Claims" ( The Los Angeles).
"Internal Review Backs CIA on Iraqi Weapons" ( The
San Diego Union-Tribune). Each piece emphasized Kerr's
endorsement of the CIA's analysts, rather than the fact that
his findings revealed that the Bush administration had
misrepresented the work of the analysts. As of this writing,
The New York Times has not published a word about Kerr's
preliminary findings. You think it's a coincidence that Kerr
spoke to reporters the day prior to a long holiday weekend?
You don't have to be James Bond to figure that out. 


Slowly, official material is seeping out that confirms the
allegation that Bush and his national security crew misled the
country into war. Last week, Representative Jane Harman, the
ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, referred
to preliminary findings of a review being conducted by her
committee. This examination, like Kerr's, has found that the
intelligence analysts had attached caveats and qualifiers to
their assessments of the WMD threat from Iraq (which Bush
never bothered to mention) and that there had been no good
intelligence linking Hussein with bin Laden. (Click here to
read more about her remarks.) 


Perhaps Kerr is right and that US intelligence analysts had
good cause – if not good evidence – to conclude that Hussein
was still on the prowl for WMDs. A cynic, though, might wonder
whether this former senior CIA official (who was a longtime
analyst for the agency) is being overly kind to his alma
mater. Nevertheless, the issue at hand is what Bush and his
administration told the public. Kerr's remarks add to the case
against Bush. They are another signal that thorough
investigations could end up establishing that the accusation
that Bush lied needs no qualifiers or caveats. 


David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation