The Counter-deception Blog

In the current (and previous) drumbeat of right-wing spin, the Bush-Cheney message “justifying” the Iraqi War, that claims no intelligence agencies dissented from the Bush propaganda line, always conspicuously omits two key major facts (as well as misrepresenting many minor ones).

The UN inspectors (the only agency with extensive HUMINT collection with access in Iraq) consistently refused to assert as a positive, or as proven, that Saddam had WMD (other than some short-range missiles)--and as a result the UN inspectors were persistently castigated by the Bush Administration as flat wrong. Recently the Nobel Committee recognized M. El Baradi and the IAEA for their courage and accuracy in consistently debunking the Bush “mushroom cloud” and other WMD mythologies.

The details of the many intelligence agencies’ evidence (now proven wrong, and gradually being shown as discredited at the time) were always mostly secret. The evidence of the UN inspectors (now proven right, and defamed then by the Bush Administration) was always largely public. 

Second, the UN Security Council, following the infamous Powell briefing and Bush’s General Assembly plea, did not authorize another war with Iraq, and instead recommended continued monitoring by the UN inspectors.

Consequently, as Kofi Anan has gently suggested, under the UN Charter (an historical creation of the US) the “Coalition’s” invasion of Iraq was then, and still is, illegal--the same crime, in effect, that Saddam committed on Kuwait fifteen years ago.

Rightwing spin-meisters, before the war and now, act as if these inconvenient two facts do not exist.

All of which underscores the point that, even when motives are pure (and in this case they are almost certainly not), worst case decision-making can be as costly (or more so) than a prudent, evidence-based decision.

One is reminded of another empire that made a foolish decision to fight an unneeded war (and paid the price of ultimate disintegration and demise):

"What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find...to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action." Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

Those who attend to moral and political philosophy may recognize a direct philosophical line from Plato to Strauss to the NeoCons, and their corresponding respect for truth and the voters and their representatives; a line for which that good soldier, Thucydides, had nothing but unbrided scorn in his day. Other soldiers, in our day, have expressed similar opinions about cabals so inclined.

A modern warrior offered an appropriate warning:

Once upon a time, a mighty king gathered a superb collection of loyal knights. One day, an enthusiastic and powerful knight clad in red armor returned to the king’s castle after months away, the marks of much battle apparent on his armor. The king was pleased with the obvious efforts of the Red Knight and asked him where he had been fighting.

The Red Knight leaned on his sword and proudly said, “My Lord, I have been fighting in the west, laying waste to the enemies of the king!”

The king pondered this, then replied in a puzzled voice, “But good sir knight, I don’t have any enemies in the west.”

The Red Knight straightened up, saluted the king, and said, “Well, sire, you do now.” Rear Admiral James Stavridis, The Tale of the Red Knight

The King today is “We, the People,” and the Red Knights we elected and pay to defend us have provided us with many more enemies.

[Thanks to Chris E for forwarding the item below]

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; A22

In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the reliability of a captured top al Qaeda operative whose allegations became the basis of Bush administration claims that terrorists had been trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, according to declassified material released by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).

Referring to the first interrogation report on al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the DIA took note that the Libyan terrorist could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used or where the training occurred. As a result, "it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," a DIA report concluded.

In fact, in January 2004 al-Libi recanted his claims, and in February 2004 the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his information. By then, the United States and its coalition partners had invaded Iraq.

Levin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he arranged for the material to be declassified by the DIA last month. At the same time that the administration was linking Baghdad to al Qaeda, he said, the DIA and other intelligence agencies were privately raising questions about the sources underlying the claims.

Since then, Levin said in an interview Friday, almost all government intelligence on whether Iraq pursued or possessed weapons of mass destruction has proved faulty. In addition to the allegation of training terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden, there were government claims that then-Iraq President Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, that he had reconstituted his nuclear weapons programs, and that unmanned airborne vehicles posed a threat, Levin said.

He said that he could not be certain that White House officials read the DIA report, but his "presumption" was that someone at the National Security Council saw it because it was sent there.

Administration officials declined to comment for this article.

Levin noted in a prepared statement that, beginning in September 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used the alleged chemical and biological training by Baghdad as valid intelligence in speeches and public appearances to gather support for the Iraq war.

In none of the speeches or appearances was reference made to the DIA questioning the reliability of the source of the claims, Levin said. The doubts about al-Libi were contained in the DIA's February 2002 "Defense Intelligence Terrorist Summary,"which was sent to the White House and the National Security Council and circulated among U.S. intelligence agencies.

"The newly declassified information provides additional dramatic evidence that the administration's prewar statements regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda represents an incredible deception," Levin said.

Levin pointed specifically to an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in which the president outlined what he said was the "grave threat" from Iraq days before the House and Senate voted on a resolution giving him the authority to go to war.

"We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," Bush said, an assertion that was based, according to Levin, primarily on al-Libi's material. Other less important intelligence on the training of al Qaeda members, carried in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, also came from questionable sources, Levin said.

Bush also said in his October 2002 speech: "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade." Levin said the DIA's declassified February 2002 report points out that "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."

"Just imagine," Levin said, "the public impact of that DIA conclusion if it had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a difference in the congressional vote authorizing the war."

Levin also pointed out that before the war, the CIA had its own reservations about al-Libi, although the agency did not note them in its publicly distributed unclassified statements. In those, Levin said, it described the source -- without naming al-Libi -- as "credible." In the classified version, however, the CIA added that the source "was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."

Levin said: "Imagine if the president or the others had added that the source of the information might have been making it up for his questioners or wasn't in a position to know. . . . Would he have delivered that in his speech?"

Levin said he first obtained the DIA document as part of his continuing investigation as an Armed Services panel member into intelligence activities that took place within the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Feith's Office of Special Plans undertook a review and analyses of prewar al Qaeda intelligence.

Levin said Friday that he was not aware whether the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he also serves, has the document. That panel did not have the DIA document in July 2004 when it completed its Phase 1 report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

The committee is now conducting its second-phase investigation of the use of Iraq intelligence, one part of which is to compare prewar public statements by officials and members of Congress with the information known at the time.

Levin took part in a news conference Friday with two other intelligence committee Democrats in which they raised questions about whether the panel had received all the classified material on Iraq, including the February 2002 DIA publication, that Bush administration officials had when they made their public statements.

At that news conference, Levin urged that the process be slowed down to make sure the committee had gathered all the intelligence material.

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