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U.S. Misrepresented Iraqi Threat, Says Think Tank By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Starting in 2002, the Bush administration misrepresented the Iraqi WMD threat and may have unduly influenced related intelligence work, scholars from a major think tank here said today. They charged U.S. officials with endeavoring to justify attacking Iraq in the absence of an imminent threat from the country or any demonstrated link to al-Qaeda (see GSN, Jan. 7). In a new report, Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Mathews and George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recommend the United States and the United Nations take steps to determine conclusively what was known before the war about Iraq’s weapons, how policy-makers influenced and used intelligence and whether international measures against Iraq before the war were effective. The report consolidates and analyzes unclassified information on intelligence, statements by Bush administration officials and evidence found in Iraq during and since the war. The authors conclude that although Iraq presented a “long-term threat that could not be ignored,” the country’s WMD programs “did not … pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region or to global security” (see GSN, Oct. 3, 2003). Calling for a revision of the U.S. pre-emption doctrine, the authors write, “In the Iraqi case, the world’s three best intelligence services” ― those of the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel ― “proved unable to provide the accurate information necessary for acting in the absence of imminent threat.” In the absence of such a threat, the scholars say, there was a “dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 national intelligence estimate” ― a document often cited by administration officials in the run-up to war ― that, along with other measures, “suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policy-makers’ views sometime in 2002.” Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright said today that administration “pressure” on officials engaged in producing intelligence is proving hard to establish but that “cherry-picking” and exaggerating on the administration’s part are “certainly going on” and that many decisions were rushed in such a way that deep divisions within intelligence agencies were not aired. Albright added that, although the administration may not have exerted undue pressure on initial intelligence assessments, it did at times act to squelch new information that could have undermined established administration policies. “That I know happened. I watched it happen, actually,” said Albright. Analysts Detail U.S. Misrepresentations, Recommend U.N. ReturnThe Bush administration misrepresented the Iraqi threat in several ways, according to the report: by speaking of a single “WMD threat,” rather than detailing various nuclear, biological and chemical programs, in such a way as to “distort the cost/benefit analysis of the war”; by unjustifiably asserting Iraq would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists; and by “routinely dropping caveats, probabilities and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements.” The authors say Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological programs posed no immediate threat even though the country’s missile program was “in active development in 2002.” They deem it “unlikely” that President Saddam Hussein’s government could have hidden, moved or disposed of the amounts of weapons of mass destruction and missiles Bush administration officials cited, adding that the U.N. inspection process — like sanctions, export-import control and other measures ― “appears to have been much more successful than recognized before the war.” As to alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the authors write, “There was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam’s government and al-Qaeda. There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to al-Qaeda and much evidence to counter it.” The report calls on the United States to tap personnel and data from U.N. inspection efforts in Iraq as one key to establishing an accurate history of Iraq’s WMD programs. They say the International Atomic Energy Agency and other U.N. WMD-related groups should be brought back into Iraq alongside U.S.-led weapon hunters, adding, “Both the United States and the United Nations should be seriously faulted for the failure to do so to date.” In a telephone interview today, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky reiterated IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei’s position that “IAEA inspectors should go back to Iraq to complete the job that they began ― that we have the experience and the mandate and the credibility to bring closure to the file.” The report also recommends the creation of an independent U.S. commission to determine what intelligence officials knew about Iraqi WMD programs before 2002 and, depending on the results of the commission’s work, consideration of “professionalizing the post of director of central intelligence”; the elimination of the U.S. “preventive war” doctrine and a new vigilance about actual weapon transfers to terrorist groups; a U.N. secretary general-chartered “after-action report” on inspections in Iraq; and the potential creation by the U.N. Security Council of a permanent inspection agency. Experts Express Concern About War’s Effects on NonproliferationAll in all, the report’s authors suggest, Iraq was not the most logical focus for any effort meant to head off WMD proliferation. “Today,” they write, “the most likely source of a nuclear terrorist threat would be from theft or purchase of fissile material or tactical nuclear weapons from poorly guarded stockpiles in Russia and other former Soviet states. … The security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, including technology and know-how, is also a major concern.” Nonproliferation Policy Education Center Executive Director Henry Sokolski, however, said insistence on rigorous criteria for acting to curb a perceived threat could ultimately have a negative effect on global nonproliferation efforts. Criticism of how high standards were set, Sokolski said, is a “problematical approach to trying to make headway on the problem in the future.” “You could be for or against the war, for or against an active role for the IAEA, and you’d still have to agree that … the kinds of evidence that one would want” to justify “action short of war ought to be lower than they currently are,” Sokolski said. The former U.S. nonproliferation official nevertheless said the Iraq war had a generally positive effect. “From what I can tell,” he said, “nonproliferation has benefited at least as much as it may have suffered as a result of what we did in Iraq.”
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