About Time
Finally, the White House is directly answering the screeches from the left that Bush lied. Peter Wehner, who is the deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives writes an article in today's Opinion Journal debunking the worst of the lies and distortions.
The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war. "There is no question [the Bush administration] misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq," according to Ted Kennedy. Jimmy Carter charged that on Iraq, "President Bush has not been honest with the American people." And Al Gore has said that an "abuse of the truth" characterized the administration's "march to war." These charges are themselves misleading, which explains why no independent body has found them credible. Most of the world was operating from essentially the same set of assumptions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it.
Let's review what we know. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the intelligence community's authoritative written judgment on specific national-security issues. The 2002 NIE provided a key judgment: "Iraq has continued its [WMD] programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."
Thanks to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission, which investigated the causes of intelligence failures in the run-up to the war, we now know that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief "were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE" (my emphasis). We also know that the intelligence in the PDB was not "markedly different" from that given to Congress. This helps explains why John Kerry, in voting to give the president the authority to use force, said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." It's why Sen. Kennedy said, "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And it's why Hillary Clinton said in 2002, "In the four years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program."
Beyond that, intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. Even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed Iraq had WMD: Just a few weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the U.S., said, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction."
In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come.
It goes on from there and systematically shows that the charges being made against Bush by the most unscrupulous politicians actually do show who the liars are. (Hint: not Bush). Now, do I think even one of the screeching people will change their minds because of this? No, that would let facts get in the way of truthiness. But at least the White House is not just ignoring these cheap hack jobs by partisans.
Please read it all. Warning: abusive comments will not be tolerated. Period.
UPDATE: Others blogging: Lori Byrd is writing at Wizbang, Chequer-Board, Powerline, Fraters Libertas, Neo-Neocon, and Presto-Pundit.
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The Right Nation — May 23, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
By jpe, May 23, 2006 @ 10:26 am
No one doubts Bush’s sincerity; the problem is that he had access to countervailing intelligence, yet still said it was a slam-dunk that Iraq had unconventional weapons. In effect, he ignored evidence to the contrary and then presented his case as if there were none to the contrary.
That’s how he lied; pieces like the WSJ one will never get traction as long as this isn’t addressed.
By Gaius, May 23, 2006 @ 10:41 am
Nonsense. The story won’t get traction on the left because it doesn’t fit the revealed wisdom of the left’s position. It simply doesn’t matter what the facts are when truthiness is at stake.
By jpe, May 23, 2006 @ 11:54 am
Let me rephrase: until the actual arguments that Bush lied are engaged (rather than sidestepped, as in the WSJ piece), the notion that Bush didn’t lie doesn’t deserve traction.
By Gaius, May 23, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
jpe, they didn’t sidestep. You are looking back with perfect 20/20 hindsight. Always a dangerous standard to apply. Everything I have heard about the lead-up says we had serious disagreement in the intellegence community.
I for one don’t care. The WMD issue was not the reason we went to war, you’re applying revisionist history. We had all the grounds we needed – all – with the UN resolutions. We had a stand-alone just cause in the ceasefire violations.
By jpe, May 23, 2006 @ 12:47 pm
But for the WMD issue, we wouldn’t have gone to war. That much is obvious.
“Everything I have heard about the lead-up says we had serious disagreement in the intellegence community.”
I may be misreading you, but this is why Bush’s presentation of the matter as unquestioned is problematic. There was doubt; Bush presented the issue as unquestionable.
I don’t care much either. We can agree on that, at least.