The Post reports:
After searching for nearly six months, U.S. forces and CIA experts have found no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq and have determined that Iraq’s nuclear program was in only “the very most rudimentary” state, the Bush administration’s chief investigator formally told Congress yesterday.
We’re not surprised. And even the administration’s supporters are critical:
“I’m not pleased by what I heard today,” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who has been supportive of the administration and the CIA. Roberts said he believes some of the raw intelligence did not support the administration’s prewar statements about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and called some of the claims “sloppy.”
But don’t take this wrong way. Kay also reported on signs of document/record destruction and evidence of programs:
Kay said his search was hindered by what appeared to be the destruction and looting of laboratories and archival records areas, including the destruction of selective computer hard drives as late as May. Inspectors found “small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents were intentionally destroyed,” he said.
The team, Kay said, found evidence of new research on biological weapons agents, one biological organism concealed in a scientist’s home that could be used to produce biological weapons, and labs with the capability to “surge the production of [biological] agents” quickly.
Our contention was always that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat. After all, imminent threat is the basis of the “Bush Doctrine” of pre-emptive warfare. The findings thus far support the notion that Iraq was not an imminent threat, despite the dire images painted by the Bush administration.
We never claimed that Saddam Hussein should be trusted. Given his record and the lack of imminent threat, we advocated that the US support a UN-sanctioned weapons inspection regime backed by the threat of force. At the time, partisan Republicans called it “appeasement,” but in reality it was “containment.” Was the threat of force credible? Yes. Until the re-entry of the inspectors, the US and Britain had been engaged in a decade-long aerial bombing campaign.
Furthermore, we predicted that attacking Iraq would fray ties with our allies and further antagonize the Muslim world, increasing the threat of terror acts against Americans.
We’ve seen the initial consequences of American actions. It is crucial that the US now use all available tools to restore order to Iraq and get the hell out before we witness any more. It is time for the administration to stop talking about the responsibility of the UN’s member states and start accepting culpability for American mistakes. Only by clearing the air between the US and its allies and conceding to reasonable demands can we expect to acheive any measure of success in Iraq.
That is the work the US will have to do, but we Americans must now ask, “How did we get in this mess? Why did the administration push for war? Was it personal? Was it political? Was it ideological? Was it strategic?”
Posted on October 2nd, 2003