Did the CIA just mess up on Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction'?
Remember those 鈥渨eapons of mass destruction?鈥� How chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs were said to be part of Saddam Hussein鈥檚 arsenal 鈥� posited as the rationale for invading Iraq in the wake of 9/11, along with the belief that the Iraqi dictator somehow was helping Al Qaeda?
After a massive US-led invasion in 2003 and 4,486 American service men and women lost in Iraq over the years, the images remain:
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell holding up a small vial of something meant to look sinister as he addressed the UN Security Council. President George W. Bush鈥檚 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledging "some uncertainty" in Iraq鈥檚 ability to obtain a nuclear weapon but warning, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Then-CIA Director George Tenet telling President Bush there was a 鈥渟lam dunk case鈥� regarding such weapons programs in Iraq.
Such weapons were never found. And now, it seems, there鈥檚 been a 鈥渞emarkable CIA聽mea culpa鈥� regarding those WMD. That鈥檚 the conclusion of a report by the National Security Archive听补迟 George Washington University.
Based on documents declassified this summer and acquired from the CIA through a formal 鈥淢andatory Declassification Review鈥� request, the report finds that the spy agency鈥檚 internal review 鈥渂lames 鈥榓nalyst liabilities,鈥� such as neglecting to examine Iraq's deceptive behavior 鈥榯hrough an Iraqi prism,鈥� for the failure to correctly assess the country's virtually non-existent WMD capabilities.鈥�
In other words, CIA officials 鈥� who critics say were being urged by hawks in the administration and think tank neoconservatives pressuring the White House to justify war聽鈥� in turn pushed agency analysts to come up with conclusions that in hindsight were fundamentally (and in the end tragically) wrong.
"Analysts tended to focus on what was most important to us 鈥� the hunt for WMD 鈥� and less on what would be most important for a paranoid dictatorship to protect,鈥� the now-declassified CIA review states. 鈥淰iewed through an Iraqi prism, their reputation, their security, their overall technological capabilities, and their status needed to be preserved. Deceptions were perpetrated and detected, but the reasons for those deceptions were misread."
In order to preserve his domestic reputation as well as his international image as powerful and dangerous, Hussein and his top officials perpetuated the myth of WMD 鈥� which somehow the CIA failed to adequately detect. When Iraqi officials (including Saddam himself after he was captured in Dec. 2003) reversed that assertion, the CIA assumed they were still lying.
鈥淏ottom line, from the CIA鈥檚 point of view: Saddam used to lie about possessing WMD, so we believed he still was,鈥� is how Time magazine national security expert Mark Thompson puts it. 鈥淯nfortunately, the US went to war based largely on that false intelligence. And 4,486 U.S. troops, 318 allies and untold thousands of Iraqis died in the ensuing conflict.鈥�
Not everyone buys the CIA鈥檚 鈥渨e screwed up鈥� explanation.
Writing in the online publication Foreign Policy Journal, Jeremy Hammond argues that 鈥渇ar from acknowledging the CIA鈥檚 true role, the document does not present any kind of serious analysis, but only politicized statements rehashing well-worn official claims designed to further the myth that there was an 鈥榠ntelligence failure鈥� leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.鈥�
鈥淥n the contrary,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢here was an extremely聽successful聽disinformation campaign coordinated by the CIA in furtherance of the government鈥檚 policy of seeking regime change in Iraq.鈥�
鈥淭he narrative of 鈥榠ntelligence failure鈥� attempts to obfuscate the truth of the matter, which is that senior government officials repeatedly lied and willfully deceived the public by making claims unsupported by evidence and by deliberately withholding any information that contradicted their allegations,鈥� Mr. Hammond concludes. 鈥淪een in this light, it becomes evident that the recently released CIA document is anything but a 鈥榤ea culpa.鈥� It is, on the contrary, just more of the same.鈥�
