They Knew

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http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H & b=134880

 

They Knew

 

by David Sirota and Christy Harvey

August 4, 2004

 

If desperation is ugly, then Washington, D.C. today is

downright hideous.

 

As the 9/11 Commission recently reported, there was

" no credible evidence " of a collaborative relationship

between Iraq and al Qaeda. Similarly, no weapons of

mass destruction have been found in Iraq. With U.S.

casualties mounting in an election year, the White

House is grasping at straws to avoid being held

accountable for its dishonesty.

 

The whitewash already has started: In July,

Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee

released a controversial report blaming the CIA for

the mess. The panel conveniently refuses to evaluate

what the White House did with the information it was

given or how the White House set up its own special

team of Pentagon political appointees (called the

Office of Special Plans) to circumvent

well-established intelligence channels. And Vice

President Dick Cheney continues to say without a shred

of proof that there is " overwhelming evidence "

justifying the administration's pre-war charges.

 

But as author Flannery O'Conner noted, " Truth does not

change according to our ability to stomach it. " That

means no matter how much defensive spin spews from the

White House, the Bush administration cannot escape the

documented fact that it was clearly warned before the

war that its rationale for invading Iraq was weak.

 

Top administration officials repeatedly ignored

warnings that their assertions about Iraq's supposed

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to

al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were

told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they

went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate

report admits that the White House " misrepresented "

classified intelligence by eliminating references to

contradictory assertions.

 

In short, they knew they were misleading America.

 

And they did not care.

 

They knew Iraq posed no nuclear threat.

 

There is no doubt even though there was no proof of

Iraq's complicity, the White House was focused on Iraq

within hours of the 9/11 attacks. As CBS News

reported, " barely five hours after American Airlines

Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary

Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up

with plans for striking Iraq. " Former Bush

counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke recounted vividly

how, just after the attack, President Bush pressured

him to find an Iraqi connection. In many ways, this

was no surprise—as former Treasury Secretary Paul

O'Neill and another administration official confirmed,

the White House was actually looking for a way to

invade Iraq well before the terrorist attacks.

 

But such an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country

required a public rationale. And so the Bush

administration struck fear into the hearts of

Americans about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD,

starting with nuclear arms. In his first major address

on the " Iraqi threat " in October 2002, President Bush

invoked fiery images of mushroom clouds and mayhem,

saying, " Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons

program. "

 

Yet, before that speech, the White House had

intelligence calling this assertion into question. A

1997 report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy

Agency (IAEA)—the agency whose purpose is to prevent

nuclear proliferation—stated there was no indication

Iraq ever achieved nuclear capability or had any

physical capacity for producing weapons-grade nuclear

material in the near future.

 

In February 2001, the CIA delivered a report to the

White House that said: " We do not have any direct

evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert

Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction

programs. " The report was so definitive that Secretary

of State Colin Powell said in a subsequent press

conference, Saddam Hussein " has not developed any

significant capability with respect to weapons of mass

destruction. "

 

Ten months before the president's speech, an

intelligence review by CIA Director George Tenet

contained not a single mention of an imminent nuclear

threat—or capability—from Iraq. The CIA was backed up

by Bush's own State Department: Around the time Bush

gave his speech, the department's intelligence bureau

said that evidence did not " add up to a compelling

case that Iraq is currently pursuing what [we]

consider to be an integrated and comprehensive

approach to acquiring nuclear weapons. "

 

Nonetheless, the administration continued to push

forward. In March 2003, Cheney went on national

television days before the war and claimed Iraq " has

reconstituted nuclear weapons. " He was echoed by State

Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who told

reporters of supposedly grave " concerns about Iraq's

potential nuclear programs. "

 

Even after the invasion, when troops failed to uncover

any evidence of nuclear weapons, the White House

refused to admit the truth. In July 2003, Condoleezza

Rice told PBS's Gwen Ifill that the administration's

nuclear assertions were " absolutely supportable. " That

same month, White House spokesman Scott McClellan

insisted: " There's a lot of evidence showing that Iraq

was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "

 

They knew the aluminum tubes were not for nuclear

weapons.

 

To back up claims that Iraq was actively trying to

build nuclear weapons, the administration referred to

Iraq's importation of aluminum tubes, which Bush

officials said were for enriching uranium. In December

2002, Powell said, " Iraq has tried to obtain

high-strength aluminum tubes which can be used to

enrich uranium in centrifuges for a nuclear weapons

program. " Similarly, in his 2003 State of the Union

address, Bush said Iraq " has attempted to purchase

high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear

weapons production. "

 

But, in October 2002, well before these and other

administration officials made this claim, two key

agencies told the White House exactly the opposite.

The State Department affirmed reports from Energy

Department experts who concluded those tubes were

ill-suited for any kind of uranium enrichment. And

according to memos released by the Senate Intelligence

Committee, the State Department also warned Powell not

to use the aluminum tubes hypothesis in the days

before his February 2003 U.N. speech. He refused and

used the aluminum tubes claim anyway.

 

The State Department's warnings were soon validated by

the IAEA. In March 2003, the agency's director stated,

" Iraq's efforts to import these aluminum tubes were

not likely to be related " to nuclear weapons

deployment.

 

Yet, this evidence did not stop the White House

either. Pretending the administration never received

any warnings at all, Rice claimed in July 2003 that

" the consensus view " in the intelligence community was

that the tubes " were suitable for use in centrifuges

to spin material for nuclear weapons. "

 

Today, experts agree the administration's aluminum

tube claims were wholly without merit.

 

They knew the Iraq-uranium claims were not supported.

 

In one of the most famous statements about Iraq's

supposed nuclear arsenals, Bush said in his 2003 State

of the Union address, " The British government has

learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought

significant quantities of uranium from Africa. " The

careful phrasing of this statement highlights how

dishonest it was. By attributing the claim to an

allied government, the White House made a powerful

charge yet protected itself against any consequences

should it be proved false. In fact, the president

invoked the British because his own intelligence

experts had earlier warned the White House not to make

the claim at all.

 

In the fall of 2002, the CIA told administration

officials not to include this uranium assertion in

presidential speeches. Specifically, the agency sent

two memos to the White House and Tenet personally

called top national security officials imploring them

not to use the claim. While the warnings forced the

White House to remove a uranium reference from an

October 2002 presidential address, they did not stop

the charge from being included in the 2003 State of

the Union.

 

Not surprisingly, evidence soon emerged that forced

the White House to admit the deception. In March 2003,

IAEA Director Mohammed El Baradei said there was no

proof Iraq had nuclear weapons and added " documents

which formed the basis for [the White House's

assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq

and Niger are in fact not authentic. " But when Cheney

was asked about this a week later, he said, " Mr. El

Baradei frankly is wrong. "

 

Bush and Rice both tried to blame the CIA for the

failure, saying the assertion " was cleared by the

intelligence services. " When the intelligence agency

produced the memos it had sent to the White House on

the subject, Rice didn't miss a beat, telling Meet The

Press " it is quite possible that I didn't " read the

memos at all—as if they were " optional " reading for

the nation's top national security official on the eve

of war. At about this time, some high-level

administration official or officials leaked to the

press that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was an

undercover CIA agent—a move widely seen as an attempt

by the administration to punish Wilson for his July 6,

2003 New York Times op-ed that stated he had found no

evidence of an Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from

Niger.

 

In recent weeks, right-wing pundits have pointed to

new evidence showing the Iraq uranium charge may have

flirted with the truth at some point in the distant

past. These White House hatchet men say the

administration did not manipulate or cherry-pick

intelligence. They also tout the recent British report

(a.k.a. The Butler Report) as defending the

president's uranium claim. Yet, if the White House did

not cherry-pick or manipulate intelligence, why did

the president trumpet U.S. intelligence from a foreign

government while ignoring explicit warnings not to do

so from his own? The record shows U.S. intelligence

officials explicitly warned the White House that " the

Brits have exaggerated this issue. " Yet, the

administration refused to listen. Even The Butler

Report itself acknowledges the evidence is cloudy. As

nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione of the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently

pointed out, " The claim appears shaky at best—hardly

the stuff that should make up presidential decisions. "

 

But now, instead of contrition, Republicans are

insisting the White House's uranium charge was

accurate. Indeed, these apologists have no option but

to try to distract public attention from the simple

truth that not a shred of solid evidence exists to

substantiate this key charge that fueled the push for

war.

 

They knew there was no hard evidence of chemical or

biological weapons

 

In September 2002, President Bush said Iraq " could

launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as

45 minutes after the order is given. " The next month,

he delivered a major speech to " outline the Iraqi

threat, " just two days before a critical U.N. vote. In

his address, he claimed without doubt that Iraq

" possesses and produces chemical and biological

weapons. " He said that " Iraq has a growing fleet of

manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could

be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons "

and that the government was " concerned Iraq is

exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions

targeting the United States. "

 

What he did not say was that the White House had been

explicitly warned that these assertions were unproved.

 

As the Washington Post later reported, Bush " ignored

the fact that U.S. intelligence mistrusted the source "

of the 45-minute claim and, therefore, omitted it from

its intelligence estimates. And Bush ignored the fact

that the Defense Intelligence Agency previously

submitted a report to the administration finding " no

reliable information " to prove Iraq was producing or

stockpiling chemical weapons. According to Newsweek,

the conclusion was similar to the findings of a 1998

government commission on WMD chaired by Rumsfeld.

 

Bush also neglected to point out that in early October

2002, the administration's top military experts told

the White House they " sharply disputed the notion that

Iraq's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles were being designed as

attack weapons. " Specifically, the Air Force's

National Air and Space Intelligence Center correctly

showed the drones in question were too heavy to be

used to deploy chemical/biological-weapons spray

devices.

 

Regardless, the chemical/biological weapons claims

from the administration continued to escalate. Powell

told the United Nations on February 5, 2003, " There

can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological

weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more,

many more. " As proof, he cited aerial images of a

supposed decontamination vehicle circling a suspected

weapons site.

 

According to newly released documents in the Senate

Intelligence Committee report, Powell's own top

intelligence experts told him not to make such claims

about the photographs. They said the vehicles were

likely water trucks. He ignored their warnings.

 

On March 6, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, the

president went further than Powell. He claimed, " Iraqi

operatives continue to hide biological and chemical

agents. "

 

To date, no chemical or biological weapons have been

found in Iraq.

 

They knew Saddam and bin Laden were not collaborating.

 

In the summer of 2002, USA Today reported White House

lawyers had concluded that establishing an Iraq-al

Qaeda link would provide the legal cover at the United

Nations for the administration to attack Iraq. Such a

connection, no doubt, also would provide political

capital at home. And so, by the fall of 2002, the

Iraq-al Qaeda drumbeat began.

 

It started on September 25, 2002, when Bush said, " you

can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam. " This

was news even to members of Bush's own political party

who had access to classified intelligence. Just a

month before, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who serves on

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, " Saddam

is not in league with al Qaeda … I have not seen any

intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam

Hussein to al Qaeda.

 

To no surprise, the day after Bush's statement, USA

Today reported several intelligence experts " expressed

skepticism " about the claim, with a Pentagon official

calling the president's assertion an " exaggeration. "

No matter, Bush ignored these concerns and that day

described Saddam Hussein as " a man who loves to link

up with al Qaeda. " Meanwhile, Rumsfeld held a press

conference trumpeting " bulletproof " evidence of a

connection—a sentiment echoed by Rice and White House

spokesman Ari Fleischer. And while the New York Times

noted, " the officials offered no details to back up

the assertions, " Rumsfeld nonetheless insisted his

claims were " accurate and not debatable. "

 

Within days, the accusations became more than just

" debatable " ; they were debunked. German Defense

Minister Peter Stuck said the day after Rumsfeld's

press conference that his country " was not aware of

any connection " between Iraq and al Qaeda's efforts to

acquire chemical weapons. The Orlando Sentinel

reported that terrorism expert Peter Bergen—one of the

few to actually interview Osama bin Laden—said the

connection between Iraq and al Qaeda are minimal. In

October 2002, Knight Ridder reported, " a growing

number of military officers, intelligence

professionals and diplomats in [bush's] own government

privately have deep misgivings " about the Iraq-al

Qaeda claims. The experts charged that administration

hawks " exaggerated evidence. " A senior U.S. official

told the Philadelphia Inquirer that intelligence

analysts " contest the administration's suggestion of a

major link between Iraq and al Qaeda. "

 

While this evidence forced British Prime Minister Blair and other allies to refrain from playing up an

Iraq-al Qaeda connection, the Bush administration

refused to be deterred by facts.

 

On November 1, 2002, President Bush claimed, " We know

[iraq has] got ties with al Qaeda. " Four days later,

Europe's top terrorism investigator Jean-Louis

Bruguiere reported: " We have found no evidence of

links between Iraq and al Qaeda. … If there were such

links, we would have found them. But we have found no

serious connections whatsoever. " British Foreign

Secretary Jack Straw, whose country was helping build

the case for war, admitted, " What I'm asked is if I've

seen any evidence of [iraq-al Qaeda connections]. And

the answer is: ‘I haven't.' "

 

Soon, an avalanche of evidence appeared indicating the

White House was deliberately misleading America. In

January 2003, intelligence officials told the Los

Angeles Times that they were " puzzled by the

administration's new push " to create the perception of

an Iraq-al Qaeda connection and said the intelligence

community has " discounted—if not dismissed—information

believed to point to possible links between Iraq and

al Qaeda. " One intelligence official said, " There

isn't a factual basis " for the administration's

conspiracy theory about the so-called connection.

 

On the morning of February 5, 2003, the same day

Powell delivered his U.N. speech, British intelligence

leaked a comprehensive report finding no substantial

links between Iraq and al Qaeda. The BBC reported that

British intelligence officials maintained " any

fledgling relationship [between Iraq and al Qaeda]

foundered due to mistrust and incompatible

ideologies. " Powell, nonetheless, stood before the

United Nations and claimed there was a " sinister nexus

between Iraq and the al Qaeda. " A month later, Rice

backed him up, saying al Qaeda " clearly has had links

to the Iraqis. " And in his March 17, 2003, speech on

the eve of war, Bush justified the invasion by citing

the fully discredited Iraq-al Qaeda link.

 

When the war commenced, the house of cards came down.

In June 2003, the chairman of the U.N. group that

monitors al Qaeda told reporters his team found no

evidence linking the terrorist group to Iraq. In July

2003, the Los Angeles Times reported the bipartisan

congressional report analyzing September 11 " undercut

Bush administration claims before the war that Hussein

had links to al Qaeda. " Meanwhile, the New York Times

reported, " Coalition forces have not brought to light

any significant evidence demonstrating the bond

between Iraq and al Qaeda. " In August 2003, three

former Bush administration officials came forward to

admit pre-war evidence tying al Qaeda to Iraq " was

tenuous, exaggerated, and often at odds with the

conclusions of key intelligence agencies. "

 

Yet, the White House insisted on maintaining the

deception. In the fall of 2003, President Bush said,

" There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda

ties. " And Cheney claimed Iraq " had an established

relationship to al Qaeda. " When the media finally

began demanding proof for all the allegations, Powell

offered a glimmer of contrition. In January 2004, he

conceded that there was no " smoking gun " to prove the

claim. His admission was soon followed by a March 2004

Knight Ridder report that quoted administration

officials conceding " there never was any evidence that

Hussein's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's

Islamic terror network were in league. "

 

But Powell's statement was the exception, not the

norm. The White House still refuses to acknowledge

wrongdoing, and instead resorts to the classic

two-step feint, citing sources but conveniently

refusing to acknowledge those sources' critical

faults.

 

For instance, Cheney began pointing reporters to an

article in the right-wing Weekly Standard as the " best

source " of evidence backing the Saddam-al Qaeda claim,

even though the Pentagon had previously discredited

the story. Similarly, in June, the Republican's media

spin machine came to the aid of the White House and

promoted a New York Times article about a document

showing failed efforts by bin Laden to work with Iraq

in the mid-'90s against Saudi Arabia. Not

surprisingly, the spinners did not mention the

article's key finding—a Pentagon task force found that

the document " described no formal alliance being

reached between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence. "

 

When the 9/11 Commission found " no credible evidence "

of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and al

Qaeda, the White House denials came as no surprise.

Cheney defiantly claimed there was " overwhelming

evidence " of a link, provided no evidence, and then

berated the media and the commission for having the

nerve to report the obvious. Bush did not feel the

need to justify his distortions, saying after the

report came out, " The reason I keep insisting that

there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and

al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between

Iraq and al Qaeda. "

 

That was the perfect answer from an administration

that never lets the factual record impinge on what it

says to the American public.

 

They knew there was no Prague meeting.

 

One of the key pillars of the Iraq-al Qaeda myth was a

White House-backed story claiming 9/11 hijacker

Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi spy in April 2001. The

tale originally came from a lone Czech informant who

said he saw the terrorist in Prague at the time. White

House hawks, eager to link al Qaeda with Saddam, did

not wait to verify the story, and instead immediately

used it to punch up arguments for a preemptive attack

on Iraq. On November 14, 2001, Cheney claimed Atta was

" in Prague in April of this year, as well as earlier. "

On December 9, 2001, he went further, claiming without

proof that the Atta meeting was " pretty well

confirmed. "

 

Nine days later, the Czech government reported there

was no evidence that Atta met with an Iraqi

intelligence agent in Prague. Czech Police Chief Jiri

Kolar said there were no documents showing Atta had

been in Prague that entire year, and Czech officials

told Newsweek that the uncorroborated witness who

perpetuated the story should have been viewed with

more skepticism.

 

By the spring of 2002, major news publications such as

the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek and

Time were running stories calling the " Prague

connection " an " embarrassing " mistake and stating

that, according to European officials, the

intelligence supporting the claim was " somewhere

between ‘slim' and ‘none'. " The stories also quoted

administration officials and CIA and FBI analysts

saying that on closer scrutiny, " there was no evidence

Atta left or returned to the United State at the time

he was supposed to be in Prague. " Even FBI Director

Robert S. Mueller III, a Bush political appointee,

admitted in April 2002, " We ran down literally

hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every

record we could get our hands on, from flight

reservations to car rentals to bank accounts, " but

found nothing.

 

But that was not good enough for the administration,

which instead of letting the story go, began trying to

manipulate intelligence to turn fantasy into reality.

In August 2002, when FBI case officers told Deputy

Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that there was no

Atta meeting, Newsweek reported Wolfowitz " vigorously

challenged them. " Wolfowitz wanted the FBI to endorse

claims that Atta and the Iraqi spy had met. FBI

counterterrorism chief Pat D'Amuro refused.

 

In September 2002, the CIA handed Cheney a classified

intelligence assessment that cast specific, serious

doubt on whether the Atta meeting ever occurred. Yet,

that same month, Richard Perle, then chairman of the

Bush's Defense Policy Board, said, " Muhammad Atta met

[a secret collaborator of Saddam Hussein] prior to

September 11. We have proof of that, and we are sure

he wasn't just there for a holiday. " In the same

breath, Perle openly admitted, " The meeting is one of

the motives for an American attack on Iraq. "

 

By the winter of 2002, even America's allies were

telling the administration to relent: In November,

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he had seen

no evidence of a meeting in Prague between Atta and an

Iraqi intelligence agent.

 

But it did not stop. In September 2003, on " Meet the

Press, " Cheney dredged up the story again, saying,

" With respect to 9/11, of course, we've had the story

that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that

Mohammed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a

senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before

the attack. " He provided no new evidence, opted not to

mention that the Czechs long ago had withdrawn the

allegations, and ignored new evidence that showed the

story was likely untrue.

 

Even today, with all of the intelligence firmly

against him, Cheney remains unrepentant. Asked in June

about whether the meeting had occurred, he admitted,

" That's never been proven. " Then he added, " It's never

been refuted. " When CNBC's Gloria Borger asked about

his initial claim that the meeting was " pretty well

confirmed, " Cheney snapped, " No, I never said that. I

never said that. Absolutely not. "

 

His actual words in December 2001: " It's been pretty

well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did

meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence

service. "

 

In other words, Cheney hit a new low. He resorted not

only to lying about the story, but lying about lying

about the story.

 

Conclusion: They knew they were misleading America.

 

In his March 17, 2003 address preparing America for

the Iraq invasion, President Bush stated unequivocally

that there was an Iraq-al Qaeda nexus and that there

was " no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to

possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons

ever devised. "

 

In the context of what we now know the White House

knew at the time, Bush was deliberately dishonest. The

intelligence community repeatedly told the White House

there were many deep cracks in its case for war. The

president's willingness to ignore such warnings and

make these unequivocal statements proves the

administration was intentionally painting a

black-and-white picture when it knew the facts merited

only gray at best.

 

That has meant severe consequences for all Americans.

Financially, U.S. taxpayers have shelled out more than

$166 billion for the Iraq war, and more will soon be

needed. Geopolitically, our country is more isolated

from allies than ever, with anti-Americanism on the

rise throughout the globe.

 

And we are less secure. A recent U.S. Army War College

report says " the invasion of Iraq was a diversion from

the more narrow focus on defeating al Qaeda. " U.N.

envoy Lakhdar Brahimi put it this way: " The war in

Iraq was useless, it caused more problems than it

solved, and it brought in terrorism. "

 

These statements are borne out by the facts: The

International Institute of Strategic Studies in London

reports al Qaeda is now 18,000 strong, with many new

recruits joining as a result of the war in Iraq. Not

coincidentally, the White House recently said the

American homeland faces an imminent threat of a

terrorist attack from a still-active al Qaeda

operation in Afghanistan. Yet, the administration

actually moved special forces out of Afghanistan in

2002 to prepare for an invasion of Iraq. Because of

this, we face the absurd situation whereby we have no

more than 20,000 troops in Afghanistan hunting down

those who directly threaten us, yet have 140,000

troops in Iraq—a country that was not a serious menace

before invasion.

 

Of course, it is those troops who have it the worst.

Our men and women in uniform are bogged down in a

quagmire, forced to lay down life and limb for a lie.

 

To be sure, neoconservative pundits and Bush

administration hawks will continue to blame anyone but

the White House for these deceptions. They also will

say intelligence gave a bit of credence to some of the

pre-war claims, and that is certainly true.

 

But nothing can negate the clear proof that President

Bush and other administration official officials

vastly overstated the intelligence they were given.

They engaged in a calculated and well-coordinated

effort to turn a war of choice in Iraq into a

perceived war of imminent necessity.

 

And we are all left paying the price.

 

David Sirota, who writes the " Truth & Consequences "

column in In These Times, is director of strategic

communications for the Center for American Progress.

Christy Harvey is deputy director of strategic

communications for the Center for American Progress.

 

This column originally appeared on August 4, 2004 on

www.inthesetimes.com.