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September 30, 2003

Pre-war Intelligence on WMD

David Corn (of The Nation on his discussion with Scott McClellen during yesterdays press briefing about the House intelligence committee's letter on pre-war intelligence:

At one point at the press conference, the subject shifted to a letter recently sent to Tenet by the House intelligence committee reporting on the committee's review of the prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMDs and ties to terrorists. The committee found that this intelligence--which Bush has said was a solid basis for going to war--was predicated on fragmentary, circumstantial and out-of-date information and contained "too many uncertainties." McClellan noted, "Let's look at what we knew. We knew, just like the United Nations Security Council and intelligence agencies across the world and previous administrations, that Saddam Hussein...had large, unaccounted for stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons....We knew all these facts. Then came September 11th."

Wrong. And since I was there in the White House briefing room, I pointed out this was not the case, noting that Secretary of State Colin Powell had said in early 2001 that there were no stockpiles ("Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction"), that the Defense Intelligence Agency in September 2002 had concluded there was no "reliable information" on whether Iraq had chemical weapons stockpiles, and that the UN inspectors had not said there were WMD stockpiles. "Where are you getting your information?" I asked. Referring to the Powell statement, McClellan said, "That's not what he said....I think you're mischaracterizing Secretary Powell's comments." But it was what he said in 2001, I countered. McClellan then claimed "it was well documented by the United Nations Security Council that there were undocumented stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons." No, I said, and referred to Rolf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of the UN inspections in the 1990s. In a 2000 interview, Ekeus said, "There are no large quantities of weapons [in Iraq]. I don't think that Iraq is especially eager in the biological and chemical area to produce such weapons for storage. Iraq views those weapons as tactical assets instead of strategic assets, which would require long-term storage of those elements, which is difficult. Rather, Iraq has been aiming to keep the capability to start up production immediately should it need to."

McClellan did not counter facts with facts. Instead, he tossed out rhetoric: "America is safer, the world is better, the world is safer because Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime have been removed from power."

Ah yes, the old "well, it doesn't matter if we lied, Saddam is gone" defense, eh? Sorry, but it's not good enough Scott.

The rest of Corn's column is interesting as well. Corn is the journalist who first pointed out the implications of Robert Novak's original article naming Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, and discusses some of the spin and other aspects of the White House's reaction to the increased scruitny on that matter.

Posted by thorswitch at September 30, 2003 05:37 PM

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