David Kay’s testimony should put to rest any doubts that the Bush administration “sexed up” intelligence or pressured analysts to reach conclusions to fit any political agenda. Kay is unequivocal on this point, saying “never–not in a single case–was the explanation, ‘I was pressured to do this.’”
Still, dreams die hard among the Bush haters. Instead of overt pressure, the Left is now arguing that the personal visits by Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Scooter Libby subliminally intimidated the intelligence community into telling the vice president what he wanted to hear.
The critics might have a point if the Bush administration had made a case on Iraq that was substantially different from its predecessors. But it was nearly identical. In fact, in some ways the Clinton administration was even more alarmist on the issue than this one has been.
On December 16, 1998, President Clinton ordered attacks on Iraq. In informing the nation, Clinton said, “Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs” and that “without a strong inspection system, Iraq would be free to retain and begin to rebuild its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs in months, not years.”
Earlier that year, Clinton signed into law the “Iraq Liberation Act” making regime change in Iraq the official policy of the U.S. government. He also reserved the right of the U.S. to take unilateral action against Iraq.
Ken Pollack, the former Clinton national security aide whose book The Threatening Storm was perhaps the most comprehensive case for war with Iraq, writes that his last memo to the incoming Bush team advised that its choices were “an aggressive policy of regime change” or a “major revamping of the sanctions,” that latter being the more “onerous” of the two options.
Madeline Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state, called Iraq, “the greatest security threat we face.” Al Gore has said, “We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”
I could go on…and on. But it is clear, as Hillary Rodham Clinton declared, that “the intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent” and that Saddam’s behavior “pointed to a continuing effort” to produce weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, Portuguese President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said Bill Clinton told him last October that he was convinced Iraq had weapons of mass destruction up until the fall of Saddam Hussein.
What the critics want us to believe, then, is that the intelligence community was pressured into telling Bush officials…the same things it told Clinton officials. This is not a serious argument, and those who entertain it are blinded by politics.
The real difference was not the intelligence itself, but what each administration chose to do with it. The events of September 11 obviously had a major impact on the president and the decisions he subsequently made. Also remember that our intelligence agencies woefully underestimated Saddam’s nuclear-weapons program before the first Gulf War.
Given the consistent intelligence on Iraq’s WMDs over three presidents, given how much we didn’t know because Saddam kicked out weapons inspectors, and given the fact that September 11 made it painfully clear what can happen when we ignore threats, President Bush made the right decision.
–The Honorable J. D. Hayworth is a Republican congressman from Arizona.