What have we learned recently from the weapons hunt?
Here’s highlights (pdf file) from the Carnegie report, “WMD IN IRAQ: Evidence and Implications“:
- WMD programs represented a long-term threat that could not be ignored. They did not, however, pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region, or to global security.
- The dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), together with the creation of an independent intelligence entity at the Pentagon and other steps, suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers’ views sometime in 2002.
- 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.
- Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs, beyond the intelligence failures noted above, by:
- Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single “WMD threat.” The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose,distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war.
- Insisting without evidence—yet treating as a given truth—that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists.
- Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements.
- Misrepresenting inspectors’ findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire.
- Even a war successful on other counts could leave behind three significant WMD threats: lost material, “loose” scientists, and the message that only nuclear weapons could protect a state from foreign invasion.
Meanwhile, here’s the Bush administration response:
The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government officials. The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.
And the status of David Kay’s heralded efforts?
Its leader, David Kay, is said to be on the point of resignation. A colleague in Washington said: “His family is worried about his safety and he is disenchanted, both by the failure to find weapons he was sure were there and because his team has been cut in half.”
Interesting.