End to search for WMD seals doubts about pre-emption
Fri Jan 14, 6:26 AM ET
Op/Ed - USATODAY.com
For months before and after the Iraq (
news -
web sites) war, top Bush administration officials insisted that Saddam Hussein (
news -
web sites) was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
Search USATODAY.com
Latest headlines:
·
Record 129 journalists killed in 2004, Iraq worst hotspot: IFJ AFP - 2 minutes ago
·
Catholic archbishop abducted in Iraq as deadly unrest dogs poll run-up AFP - 6 minutes ago
·
Suicide Car Bomber Targets Shiite Offices AP - 8 minutes ago
Special Coverage
Snapshots
USA TODAY Snapshot Is cellphone subscriber growth still strong?
More USA TODAY Snapshots
"There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us," Vice President Cheney said in August 2002. Six months later, Secretary of State Colin Powell (
news -
web sites) made the case, including satellite photos, to the United Nations (
news -
web sites). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scoffed that even "a trained ape" knew it was true.
This week, The Washington Post reported that the U.S. has quietly ended its search for the weapons. Inspectors scoured Iraq and interviewed Iraqi scientists for months. They spent millions of dollars - the amount remains classified. The result was unchanged from the searchers' previous reports: They found nothing. No nuclear program. No stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons.
The end to the search puts a coda on one of the biggest intelligence failures in the nation's history, and it appears to extinguish the lingering possibility that something would turn up somewhereinside Iraq. Polls show that the administration's pre-war campaign was so effective that about 40% of Americans still believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.
The most obvious and urgent lesson is this: The Bush administration needs to rethink the doctrine of pre-emption that justified the Iraq war. The U.S., according to that doctrine, doesn't have to wait for an attack like Pearl Harbor to defend itself. It only needs evidence that one is being planned.
That made more sense in the aftermath of 9/11 than in the cold new light of the Iraq war.
Not that the Bush administration was alone in its mistaken belief about Iraq's weapons stockpiles. Other intelligence agencies around the world reached similar conclusions.
In the 1980s, Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds in his own country. The U.N. said it could not be sure that Saddam had destroyed stockpiles of deadly weapons as he claimed after the first Gulf War (
news -
web sites). Saddam himself was making the inspectors' job difficult by leaving the impression that he was hiding something, apparently in an effort to deter Iran from thinking he was weak.
Still, cautionary voices, including within the CIA (
news -
web sites), were dismissed in the rush to war.
The fallout is already plain and getting more painful by the day. More than 1,350 U.S. soldiers have been killed. The war has cost the United States more than $100 billion and has strained relations with allies. Iraq could descend into civil war.
While it tries to salvage the situation in Iraq, the U.S. faces challenges from Iran, North Korea (
news -
web sites) and elsewhere. Information about weapons programs inside these secretive regimes is at least as sketchy as it was about Iraq.
Approaches such as diplomacy, intense negotiations and weapons inspections are no panacea. But used together, with other countries, they can be valuable. The weapons debacle in Iraq shows the proper place for pre-emptive war: as a last resort, and only with rock-solid evidence.
________
I swear Dick told me there were there!...it's osama's fault!! we all remember him... he stole those nukes...yah yah... he stole them... be afraid america!! throw your money and votes my way!!!
