NEWSWEEK
What Went Wrong
Tue Feb 3 14:08:33 2004
64.140.159.118
What Went Wrong
He was the most dangerous man alive, sitting atop a massive stockpile of
deadly weapons. The only way to end the gathering threat was to take Saddam
out—and fast. Only there wasn't any WMD. The fateful fictions that led to war
Holland / AP (bottom center); P.M. Monsivais /AP (right)
Key players in the WMD scandal are (clockwise from top center) Bush, Kay,
Rumsfeld, Powell and Cheney (center)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4123507/
Feb. 9 issue - Saddam Hussein was holed up in his palace putting the final
touches on his latest novel. His first, "Zabibah and the King," had been
published in 2000 to reviews that only a dictator could get. Everyone seemed
to adore the story of a righteous Iraqi king who dies, but only after
restoring the honor of the beautiful Zabibah. The woman had been raped—and
here's where the tricky historical allusion comes in—on Jan. 17, the day that
American troops launched their 1991 offensive to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. The
Iraqi National Theater was planning to turn the novel into a hit musical, the
country's biggest-ever stage production. So the despot now had his own big act
to follow. His second masterpiece, called "Al-Qala-ah Al-Hasinah," or "The
Fortified Castle," also concerned a fierce battle between good and
evil—"without boring details," Iraqi television had reported.
No writer likes to be disturbed. But so much was going on at the time: the
United Nations was demanding greater access to Saddam's palaces, George W.
Bush had declared Iraq part of an "Axis of Evil," the United States was
pushing for war. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who routinely consulted
Saddam about U.N. demands, found that his boss was often distracted by his
latest literary effort. When the subject did turn to weapons, the dictator
seemed dangerously out of touch. As early as 2000, Saddam became convinced
there was a loophole in United Nations resolutions—that long-range missiles
were proscribed only if they were loaded with weapons of mass destruction. All
of Saddam's top aides knew better, but they were terrified of contradicting
the dictator. The illegal missile program went ahead.
Saddam's rich fantasy life extended to another weapons program. David Kay,
head of the Iraq Survey Group tasked with finding Iraq's WMD after the war,
told NEWSWEEK that Saddam was obsessed with building a system that could shoot
down U.S. stealth aircraft. He "kept handing out money," says Kay, to
scientists and military officers who claimed to be developing new techniques
for spotting stealth planes. Many of the schemes were Potemkin projects that
existed largely in the imaginations of the officials promoting them. Saddam
would give away new cars to the inventor with the most ingenious idea; the
more elaborate the invention, the fancier the car. Scientists and officials
involved in wacky programs shared payoffs or tacitly blackmailed one another
to ensure their programs weren't exposed as empty shells.
Saddam's real masterwork—the edifice of fear that had ensured his power for
decades—was decaying beneath him. An air of decadence and decline had spread
among the elite, and small to middling officials were trying to take what they
could for themselves. But nobody could tell the dictator, because virtually
everyone was implicated.
NEWSWEEK RADIO | 2/1/04
Intelligence: Missing Weapons Fallout
Mark Hosenball, Newsweek Correspondent, Washington, Stryker McGuire, Newsweek
Bureau Chief, London and Lally Weymouth, Special Diplomatic Correspondent
• Listen to the audio
• Listen to the complete On Air show
It seems that nobody told President Bush or his senior advisers, either.
Saddam was more than just evil, according to their intelligence, he was also a
master of control and deception. He had fooled U.N. inspectors for a decade.
Now he had resumed production of chemical and biological weapons, and he was
also trying to purchase parts for a nuclear-weapons program. Defectors were
telling of labs hidden under Saddam's palaces. The 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq, which represented Washington's best available analysis,
concluded that "Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction [WMD]
programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions," that it had
"invested more heavily in biological weapons" and that "most analysts"
believed that it was "reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." Even the
French and Germans believed that Saddam had WMD.
"It turns out we were all wrong, probably, in my judgment," Kay stammered
before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "And that is most
disturbing." With perhaps 85 percent of the Survey Group's work done, Kay said
it was likely that no WMD would be uncovered. His team did find evidence that
Iraq was working to develop the poison ricin, and he warned of "unresolved
ambiguity" about other Iraqi programs. Too much evidence had been destroyed
and looted in the early days of the war, he said. But in Kay's mind, the
absence of evidence should not obscure a larger fact: Iraq was a monumental
intelligence failure.
Live Vote
Did the White House knowingly misrepresent intelligence on Iraq?
No. The administration was misled, too
Yes. Bush and Cheney knew the intelligence was wrong
I don't know
Vote to see results
How did it happen? The United States spends more to run spy satellites and
supersecret listening devices than the gross domestic products of many
countries, yet it didn't have a clue as to what was really going on inside a
sanctions-racked dictatorship it was about to attack? A new Senate
Intelligence Committee report, lambasting the CIA for major "errors in
judgment," suggests that America's mastery of high-tech gadgetry is part of
the problem, and Kay thinks much the same. The United States has become so
dependent on what it can detect from a distance that it no longer does the
dirty, painstakingly slow business of gathering human intelligence well. But
that is only part of the story.
Kay himself believes that in order to get the full picture, an independent
panel needs to investigate. He was very careful not to blame the
administration—there were no accusations of "sexing up" the intelligence. On
the contrary, he absolved policymakers of any misjudgments, and said he still
supported the war. (Britain's Tony Blair got a similar reprieve last week,
when the much-anticipated Hutton report found him innocent of making a 2002
WMD assessment "more exciting.") But intelligence is never gathered or
assessed in a political vacuum, and leading Democrats will be sure to demand
that any investigation extend to the White House.
The clamor for heads to roll has already begun. Democratic hopeful John Kerry
last week called for CIA Director George Tenet to be fired, and he was
seconded by Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee in
the run-up to the Iraq war. "If you're in the Navy and you're the captain of a
ship that runs aground, you're responsible," Graham told NEWSWEEK. "I believe
in the principle of accountability."
But the White House is, for now anyway, loath to scapegoat Tenet, a loyal
soldier if ever there was one. (The CIA itself says its assessments were done
with "professionalism and integrity," and believes WMD may still be found.)
Nor did top officials immediately embrace the call for an independent
commission. But with Bush insisting that he wanted "to know the facts," the
seeming contradiction appeared untenable: NEWSWEEK learned late last week that
the White House was moving toward endorsing the idea of a "presidential
blue-ribbon panel" of elder statesmen and WMD experts. Officials had begun
putting out feelers to possible chairs. Such an inquiry will have to examine,
at least, whether direct or indirect pressure was placed on American spies to
produce particular results. It will also have to examine the reluctance of
spymasters to admit what they didn't know, and when they didn't know it.
Continued Pages 1 | 2 | 3
PART II:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4125720/
PART III:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4125721/
Did the White House knowingly misrepresent intelligence on Iraq? * 26158
responses
No. The administration was misled, too
18%
Yes. Bush and Cheney knew the intelligence was wrong
76%
I don't know
6%
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4125721/#survey
