EDITORIALS
The case, then and now
Before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials made nine arguments for toppling Saddam Husseins regime. Now, as Democrats accuse the White House of having lied to Americans, the president rebukes his critics for rewriting history. Beginning today, the Chicago Tribune Editorial Page attempts to set the record straight.
November 20, 2005
Did George W. Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit the president and his policies?
Today the Tribune begins an attempt to help readers resolve those questions. This re-examination of the administration's rationale for war offers doses of discomfort for the self-assuredthose who have unquestioningly supported, or opposed, the ongoing war in Iraq.
We begin with the premise that the passage of three years has obscured much of what actually was said in 2002 and early 2003 as this nation debated whether to invade Iraq and oust its dictator. Also obscured by the passage of time, and by often vicious (and mutual) political partisanship: what subsequent investigations and other evidence suggest about the emptiness, or accuracy, of the administration's reasons for war.
This is, we acknowledge at the outset, an arbitrary exercisebeginning with our identification of the nine arguments the Bush administration advanced in making its case for war. Those nine arguments were distinct, although sometimes overlapping. They included, but went well beyond, Iraq's weapons programs.
We isolated these nine arguments for war from eight major speeches or presentations by administration officials as they advanced their case. To assess each of those nine arguments, the Tribune will present an occasional series of editorials that examine the arguments one by one.
We approach each argument by positing two questions: What did the administration say about this in making its case for war? And what do we know about those assertions today?
This is not breezy reading. It is, rather, an inquest about deadly serious affairs. We largely reconstruct the arguments for war, and the subsequent investigative findings about those arguments, in the words of those who spoke or wrote them. In numerous instances, those words have not been widely reported before; news coverage at the time tended to focus on the most illuminating or provocative statements, rather than on the broader contexts in which they were made.
That is particularly true of one major argument advanced by the administration: that Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. The administration's argument concerning Hussein's nuclear ambitions included themes separate from its assertions about his biological and chemical programs.
Those nuclear ambitions make fleeting appearances in this installment, and will be discussed more thoroughly in the third.
What the administration said:
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November 20, 2005
In 1998, the year Saddam Hussein squeezed weapons inspectors out of Iraq, then-President Bill Clinton famously defined the risk of leaving Hussein unchallenged: "He will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal."
Several months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration began pressing much the same argument, asserting that Hussein had accomplished the rebuilding Clinton feared. Vice President Dick Cheney broadly argued the case in an Aug. 26, 2002, address to a convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville:
" ... After his defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam agreed under UN Security Council Resolution 687 to cease all development of weapons of mass destruction. He agreed to end his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to destroy his chemical and his biological weapons. He further agreed to admit UN inspection teams into his country to ensure that he was in fact complying with these terms.
"In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each of these agreements. The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.
"On the nuclear question, many of you will recall that Saddam's nuclear ambitions suffered a severe setback in 1981 when the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor. They suffered another major blow in Desert Storm and its aftermath. But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectorsincluding Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.
"Just how soon, we cannot really gauge. Intelligence is an uncertain business, even in the best of circumstances. This is especially the case when you are dealing with a totalitarian regime that has made a science out of deceiving the international community. ...
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighborsconfrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth."
Less than three weeks later, Bush made parallel but comparatively specific assertions about illicit weapons in his Sept. 12, 2002, address to the UN General Assembly:
" ... From 1991 to 1995, the Iraqi regime said it had no biological weapons. After a senior official in its weapons program defected and exposed this lie, the regime admitted to producing tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents for use with Scud warheads, aerial bombs and aircraft spray tanks. UN inspectors believe Iraq has produced two to four times the amount of biological agents it declared, and has failed to account for more than three metric tons of material that could be used to produce biological weapons. Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
"United Nations inspections also reveal that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons."
During a speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush said Iraq possessed "ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of milesfar enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nationsin a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."
The president expanded on another accusationa point he'd mentioned previouslyduring his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address: " ... From three Iraqi defectors, we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them."
Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered the administration's most detailed charges when he addressed the UN Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. Three sentences in particular have become enduring embarrassments for Powell: " ... My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
Powell played audio intercepts and displayed photographs to bulwark his assertions that Iraqi officials were going to great lengths to disguise their weapons programs. His litany of non-nuclear weaponry allegedly in Iraq's possession again included "mobile production facilities used to make biological agents." He said Hussein's regime "has also developed ways to disperse lethal biological agents widely, indiscriminately, into the water supply, into the air. ... "
"Iraq's procurement efforts include equipment that can filter and separate micro-organisms and toxins involved in biological weapons; equipment that can be used to concentrate the agent; growth media that can be used to continue producing anthrax and botulinum toxin; sterilization equipment for laboratories; glass-lined reactors and specialty pumps that can handle corrosive chemical weapons agents and precursors; large amounts of thionyl chloride, a precursor for nerve and blister agents; and other chemicals, such as sodium sulfide, an important mustard agent precursor.
"Now of course Iraq will argue that these items can also be used for legitimate purposes. But if that is true, why did we have to learn about them by intercepting communications and risking the lives of human agents? With Iraq's well-documented history on biological and chemical weapons, why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt?"
Powell referred the diplomats to a 1999 UN report on Iraq's chemical weapons capability. He told them that "Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. ...
"Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons," Powell said. "Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them againagainst his neighbors and against his own people. And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn't be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them."
