In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq the current American administration repeatedly implied that Iraq had reconstituted it's Nuclear programs. These assertions were made repeatedly, and they were cemented later on by the President...
QUOTE(Cheney @ Sept. 8, 2002)
But we do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.
QUOTE(Bush @ March 16th 2003)
And we believe (Saddam) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.
QUOTE(Sept. 11th @ 2002)
Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
This same allegation was made in the two days following.
Now we all remember that WMD was the at very least the rallying cry for invading Iraq; and this claim of Nuclear Weapons was the chief element in convincing both the public and Congress that invasion was necessary.
Now what is my problem? The idea that the government was merely directed by bad intelligence is one that is used to whitewash a lot of the questions that have emerged since Iraq was targetted.
QUOTE(Page 12)
On Oct. 2, nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution, the new National Intelligence Estimate was delivered to the Intelligence Committee. The most significant change from past estimates dealt with nuclear weapons; the new one agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was in aggressive pursuit of the atomic bomb.
...
Today, the Intelligence Committee's report makes clear, that 93-page estimate stands as one of the most flawed documents in the history of American intelligence. The committee concluded unanimously that most of the major findings in the estimate were wrong, unfounded or overblown.
This particular case cannot be simply attributed to flawed intelligence though. The article is of course copyrighted so I can only post a few pieces but the gist is that Cheney, Rice Bush Powell and Rumsfeld were all well aware that there was tremendous uncertainty regarding a set of aluminum tubes which became the focal point for the Nuclear weapons debate. What is spelled out in detail is that every single group that analyzed these tubes either concluded that they were unsuitable for use in WMD production, or that it was an unlikely possibility. What is more troubling is that the leading experts on nuclear material production, who almost unanimously doubted that these tubes could be used for WMD production, were largely ignored or discredited.
More troubling is that around the new year (January 2003), Nuclear Inspectors confirmed the alternate (and favoured theory according to the scientists involved) theory that the tubes were being used for conventional rockets that Iraq was legally allowed to develop and own.
QUOTE(Page 13)
The team quickly arranged a field trip to the Nasser metal fabrication factory, where they found 13,000 completed rockets, all produced from 7075-T6 aluminum tubes. The Iraqi rocket engineers explained that they had been shopping for more tubes because their supply was running low.
Why order tubes with such tight tolerances? An Iraqi engineer said they wanted to improve the rocket's accuracy without making major design changes. Design documents and procurement records confirmed his account.
So where does a challenge to the administration (and not the CIA which can be seen trying to influence and direct intelligence analysis) come into question? Powell, Bush, Rice and Cheney were all made aware of the classified reports that questioned the validity of Iraq's Nuclear ambitions. More to the point, they were advised at numerous times that the claims they were making were either plain wrong, or at best unsupported.
QUOTE(Page 1)
Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists, an examination by The New York Times has found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of nuclear experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public.
I would suggest that you read the report
here before you post, or at least skim it. It's long. The story also caught on with a whole slew of other papers who have much more concise versions.
Some of the more charming details include the Administration dredging up a debriefing of an Iraqi defector who was killed in 1996 as proof of Iraq's current programs. The Minneapolis Star Tribune sums things up nicely
here:
QUOTE
So what were Cheney and Rice putting their faith in? A junior CIA analyst whose theory bolstered the case for war. Experts at both the State Department and the Energy Department disagreed with the nuclear theory of "Joe," the CIA analyst who was termed "very convinced, but not very convincing" by Greg Thielmann, who was then director of strategic, proliferation and military affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Far from revealing an intelligence community blinded by "groupthink," the Times writes, the tale of the tubes "reveals a different failure," which involved the disregarding of nuclear experts in favor of a momentum that gathered behind the CIA analyst's theory. "It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions," the article asserts.
Now, it's obvious that some people here feel that the war was justified for other reasons. But to them, and everyone else I would like to know a few things:
Do you feel that the administration intentionally misled both the public, and congressDo you feel that the administration's behaviour, deliberately misleading the public and congress, was excusable given that Iraq posed no immediate threat to American security? (In the terms that the administration set.)
Given the larger objectives of the War in Iraq, was the deception justified?