By SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY
SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY SPEECH TO THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN
RELATIONS
Republished by THE MODERN TRIBUNE
March 5, 2004
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WASHINGTON, D. C. (3/8) - Thank you, Glenn Kessler, for that generous
introduction. As you all know, Glenn does an outstanding job covering diplomacy
and foreign policy for the Washington Post.
It's a privilege to be here today with the Council on Foreign Relations. The Council
and its members have a distinguished record of notable contributions to the
national debate over the years. On the most important foreign policy issues
confronting our nation and the world, the Council is at the forefront. Your views
and analyses are more important than ever today as America tries to find its way in
this vastly transformed modern world.
The nation is engaged in a major ongoing debate about why America went to war in
Iraq, when Iraq was not an imminent threat, had no nuclear weapons, no
persuasive links to Al Qaeda, no connection to the terrorist attacks of September
11th, and no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Over two centuries ago, John Adams spoke eloquently about the need to let facts
and evidence guide actions and policies. He said, "Facts are stubborn things; and
whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they
cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Listen to those words again, and you
can hear John Adams speaking to us now about Iraq. "Facts are stubborn things;
and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions,
they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Tragically, in making the decision to go to war in Iraq, the Bush Administration
allowed its wishes, its inclinations and its passions to alter the state of facts and
the evidence of the threat we faced from Iraq.
A month ago, in an address at Georgetown University, CIA Director George Tenet
discussed the strengths and flaws in the intelligence on Iraq. Tenet testified to
several Senate and House committees on these issues, and next Tuesday, he will
come before our Senate Armed Services Committee. He will have an opportunity to
explain why he waited until last month to publicly state the facts and evidence on
these fundamental questions, and why he was so silent when it mattered most – in
the days and months leading up to the war.
If he feels that the White House altered the facts, or misused the intelligence, or
ignored it and relied on dubious sources in the Iraqi exile community, Tenet should
say so, and say it plainly.
It is not sufficient for Tenet to say only, as he did last week to the Senate
Intelligence Committee, that we must be patient. When he was appointed Director
of Central Intelligence in 1997, Tenet said to President Clinton. "… I have believed
that you…and the Vice President must be provided with … complete and objective
intelligence...We must always be straight and tell you the facts as we know them."
The American people and our men and women serving in Iraq deserve the facts and
they deserve answers now.
The rushed decision to invade Iraq cannot all be blamed on flawed intelligence. If we
view these events simply as an intelligence failure – rather than a larger failure of
decision-making and leadership – we will learn the wrong lessons.
The more we find out, the clearer it becomes that any failure in the intelligence itself
is dwarfed by the Administration's manipulation of the intelligence in making the
case for war. Specific warnings from the intelligence community were consistently
ignored as the Administration rushed toward war.
We now know that from the moment President Bush took office, Iraq was given
high priority as unfinished business from the first Bush Administration.
According to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's account in Ron Suskind's
book, The Price of Loyalty, Iraq was on the agenda at the very first meeting of the
National Security Council, just ten days after President Bush's inauguration in
2001. At that meeting, the President quickly – and wrongly – concluded that the U.
S. could not do much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He said we should "pull
out of that situation," and then turned to a discussion of "how Iraq is destabilizing
the region."
Secretary O'Neill remembers: "Getting Hussein was now the Administration's focus.
From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we
could take him out and change Iraq into a new country. And, if we did that, it would
solve everything. It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it.
The President saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"
By the end of February 2001, the talk on Iraq was mostly about how – and how
quickly – to get rid of Saddam Hussein. President Bush was clearly frustrated with
what the intelligence community was providing. According to Secretary O'Neill, on
May 16, 2001, he and the other principals of the National Security Council met with
the President to discuss the Middle East. Tenet presented his intelligence report,
and told the President that it was still only speculation whether Saddam had
weapons of mass destruction, or was even starting a program to build such
weapons.
Secretary O'Neill says: "Everything Tenet sent up to Bush and Cheney about Iraq
was very judicious and precisely qualified. The President was clearly very interested
in weapons or weapons programs – and frustrated about our weak intelligence
capability – but Tenet was clearly being careful to say, here's the little that we know
and the great deal that we don't. That wouldn't change, and I read those CIA
reports for two years," said O'Neill.
Then came 9/11. In the months that followed, the war in Afghanistan and the hunt
for Osama bin Laden had obvious priority. Al Qaeda was clearly the most imminent
threat to our national security. In fact, in his testimony to Congress in February
2001, one month after President Bush's inauguration and seven months before
9/11, Tenet had said: "Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and
associates remain the most immediate and serious threat." That testimony
emphasized the clear danger of bin Laden in light of the specific attacks in previous
years on American citizens and American institutions.
In February 2002, five months after 9/11, Tenet testified: "Last year, I told you
that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network were the most immediate and
serious threat this country faced. This remains true despite the progress we have
made in Afghanistan and in disrupting the network elsewhere."
Even during the buildup to the war in Iraq, in February 2003, Tenet again testified,
"the threat from Al Qaeda remains ... We place no limitations on our expectations
on what Al Qaeda might do to survive … Al Qaeda is living in the expectation of
resuming the offensive."
In his testimony last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tenet repeated his
earlier warnings. He said again that Al Qaeda is not defeated and that "We are still
at war…This is a learning organization that remains committed to attacking the
United States, its friends and allies."
Tenet never used that kind of strong language to describe the threat from Iraq.
Yet despite all the clear and consistent warnings about Al Qaeda, by the summer of
2002, President Bush was ready for war with Iraq. The war in Afghanistan was no
longer in the headlines or at the center of attention. Bin Laden was hard to find,
the economy was in trouble, and so was the President's approval rating in the polls.
Karl Rove had tipped his hand earlier by stating that the war on terrorism could
bring political benefits as well. The President's undeniable goal was to convince the
American people that war was necessary – and necessary soon, because soon-to-
be-acquired nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein could easily be
handed off to terrorists.
This conclusion was not supported by the facts, but the intelligence could be
retrofitted to support it. Greg Thielmann, former Director of the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, put it bluntly last July. He said,
"Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but
most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were
provided." He said, "They surveyed the data, and picked out what they liked. The
whole thing was bizarre. The Secretary of Defense had this huge Defense
Intelligence Agency, and he went around it." Thielmann also said, "This
administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude, its top-down use of
intelligence: we know the answers; give us the intelligence to support those
answers…Going down the list of administration deficiencies, or distortions, one has
to talk about, first and foremost, the nuclear threat being hyped," he said.
David Albright, the former weapons inspector with the International Atomic Energy
Agency, put it this way: "Leaders will use worst case assessments that point to
nuclear weapons to generate political support because they know people fear
nuclear weapons so much."
Even though they make semantic denials, there is no doubt that senior
Administration officials were suggesting the threat from Iraq was imminent.
At a roundtable discussion with European journalists last month, Secretary
Rumsfeld insisted: "I never said imminent threat."
In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld had told the House Armed Services Committee on
September 18, 2002, "…Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not
imminent – that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I
would not be so certain."
In February 2003, with war only weeks away, then Deputy Press Secretary Scott
McClellan was asked why NATO allies should support Turkey's request for military
assistance against Iraq. His clear response was, "This is about an imminent threat."
In May 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether we went to
war "because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to the United
States." Fleischer responded, "Absolutely."
What else could National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice have been suggesting,
other than an imminent threat – an extremely imminent threat – when she said on
September 8, 2002, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
President Bush himself may not have used the word "imminent", but he carefully
chose strong and loaded words about the nature of the threat – words that the
intelligence community never used – to persuade and prepare the nation to go to
war against Iraq.
In the Rose Garden on October 2, 2002, as Congress was preparing to vote on
authorizing the war, the President said the Iraqi regime "is a threat of unique
urgency."
In a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, President Bush echoed Condoleezza Rice's
image of nuclear devastation: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the
final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
At a political appearance in New Mexico on October 28, 2002, after Congress had
voted to authorize war, and a week before the election, President Bush said Iraq is
a "real and dangerous threat."
At a NATO summit on November 20, 2002, President Bush said Iraq posed a
"unique and urgent threat."
In Fort Hood, Texas on January 3, 2003, President Bush called the Iraqi regime a
"grave threat."
Nuclear weapons. Mushroom cloud. Unique and urgent threat. Real and dangerous
threat. Grave threat. This was the Administration's rallying cry for war. But those
were not the words of the intelligence community. The community recognized that
Saddam was a threat, but it never suggested the threat was imminent, or
immediate, or urgent.
In his speech last month at Georgetown, CIA Director Tenet stated that, despite
attempts to acquire a nuclear capability, Saddam was many years away from
acquiring a nuclear weapon. Tenet's precise words were: "We said Saddam did not
have a nuclear weapon, and probably would have been unable to make one until
2007 to 2009."
The acquisition of enough nuclear material is an extremely difficult task for a
country seeking nuclear weapons. Tenet bluntly stated that the intelligence
community had "detected no such acquisition" by Saddam. The October 2002
National Intelligence Estimate also outlined the disagreement in the intelligence
community over whether the notorious aluminum tubes were intended for nuclear
weapons or not. Tenet clearly distanced himself from the Administration's
statements about the urgency of the threat from Iraq in his speech at Georgetown.
But he stopped short of saying the Administration distorted the intelligence or
relied on other sources to make the case for war. He said he only gave the
President the CIA's daily assessment of the intelligence, and the rest he did not
know.
Tenet needs to explain to Congress and the country why he waited until last month
– nearly a year after the war started – to set the record straight. Intelligence
analysts had long been frustrated about the way intelligence was being misused to
justify war. In February 2003, an official described the feelings of some analysts in
the intelligence agencies to the New York Times, saying "I think there is also a
sense of disappointment with the community's leadership that they are not
standing up for them at a time when the intelligence is obviously being politicized."
Why wasn't CIA Director Tenet correcting the President and the Vice President and
the Secretary of Defense a year ago, when it could have made a difference, when it
could have prevented a needless war, when it could have saved so many lives?
It was Vice President Cheney who first laid out the trumped up argument for war
with Iraq to an unsuspecting public. In a speech on August 26, 2002, to the
Veterans of Foreign Wars, he asserted: "…We now know that Saddam has
resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons…Many of us are convinced that
Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." As we now know, the intelligence
community was far from certain. Yet the Vice President had been convinced.
On September 8, 2002, Cheney was even more emphatic about Saddam. He said,
"[We] do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to
acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear
weapon." The intelligence community was deeply divided about the aluminum tubes,
but Cheney was absolutely certain.
Where was the CIA Director when the Vice President was going nuclear about
Saddam going nuclear? Did Tenet fail to convince the policy makers to cool their
overheated rhetoric? Did he even try to convince them?
One month later, on the eve of the watershed vote by Congress to authorize the
war, President Bush said it even more vividly. He said, "Iraq has attempted to
purchase high-strength aluminum tubes…which are used to enrich uranium for
nuclear weapons. If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of
highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear
weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be
crossed…Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to
terrorists."
In fact, as we now know, the intelligence community was far from unified on Iraq's
nuclear threat. The Administration attempted to conceal that fact by classifying the
information and the dissents within the intelligence community until after the war,
even while making dramatic and excessive public statements about the immediacy
of the danger.
In a February 2004 article in the Atlantic Monthly, Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst
who supported the war, said, "…Time after time senior Administration officials
discussed only the worst case and least likely scenario, and failed to mention the
intelligence community's most likely scenario." In a January interview, Pollack added,
"Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various
agencies of the U.S. government – and withholding or downplaying some of that
information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility."
In October 2002, the intelligence agencies jointly issued a National Intelligence
Estimate stating that "most agencies" believed that Iraq had restarted its nuclear
program after inspectors left in 1998, and that, if left unchecked, Iraq "probably will
have a nuclear weapon during this decade."
The State Department's intelligence bureau, however, said the "available evidence"
was inadequate to support that judgment. It refused to predict when "Iraq could
acquire a nuclear device or weapon."
The National Intelligence Estimate cited a foreign government report that, as of
early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of nuclear material to Iraq. The
Estimate also said, "reports indicate that Iraq has sought uranium ore from Somalia
and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." The State Department's
intelligence bureau, however, responded that claims of Iraq seeking to purchase
nuclear material from Africa were "highly dubious." The CIA sent two memos to the
White House stressing strong doubts about those claims.
But the following January, the President included the claims about Africa in his
State of the Union Address, and conspicuously cited the British government as the
source of that intelligence.
Information about nuclear weapons was not the only intelligence distorted by the
Administration. On the question of whether Iraq was pursuing a chemical weapons
program, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in September 2002 that "there
is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical
weapons, or where Iraq has – or will – establish its chemical warfare agent
production facilities."
That same month, however, Secretary Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that Saddam has chemical-weapons stockpiles.
He said that "we do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons
of mass destruction," that Saddam "has amassed large clandestine stocks of
chemical weapons," that "he has stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons," and
that Iraq has "active chemical, biological and nuclear programs." He was wrong on
all counts.
Yet the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate actually quantified the size of
the stockpiles, finding that "although we have little specific information on Iraq's
CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly
as much as 500 metric tons of CW agents – much of it added in the last year." In
his speech at the United Nations on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Powell
went further, calling the 100-500 metric ton stockpile a "conservative estimate."
Secretary Rumsfeld made an even more explicit assertion in his March 30, 2003,
interview on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." When asked about Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction, he said, "We know where they are. They're in the
area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
The second major claim in the Administration's case for war was the linkage
between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Significantly here as well, the Intelligence Estimate did not find a cooperative
relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. On the contrary, it stated only that
such a relationship might happen if Saddam were "sufficiently desperate" – in other
words, if America went to war. But the estimate placed "low confidence" that, even
in desperation, Saddam would give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda.
A year before the war began, senior Al Qaeda leaders themselves had rejected a
link with Saddam. The New York Times reported last June that a top Al Qaeda
planner and recruiter captured in March 2002 told his questioners last year that
"the idea of working with Mr. Hussein's government had been discussed among Al
Qaeda leaders, but Osama bin Laden had rejected such proposals." According to
the Times, an Al Qaeda chief of operations had also told interrogators that the
group did not work with Saddam.
Mel Goodman, a CIA analyst for 20 years, put it bluntly: "Saddam Hussein and bin
Laden were enemies. Bin Laden considered and said that Saddam was the socialist
infidel. These were very different kinds of individuals competing for power in their
own way and Saddam Hussein made very sure that Al Qaeda couldn't function in
Iraq."
In February 2003, investigators at the FBI told the New York Times they were
baffled by the Administration's insistence on a solid link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.
One investigator said: "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and
you know what, we just don't think it's there."
But President Bush was not deterred. He was relentless in using America's fears
after the devastating 9/11 tragedy. He drew a clear link – and drew it repeatedly –
between Al Qaeda and Saddam.
In a September 25, 2002, statement at the White House, President Bush flatly
declared: "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk
about the war on terror."
In his State of the Union Address in January 2003, President Bush said, "Evidence
from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in
custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including
members of Al Qaeda," and that he could provide "lethal viruses" to a "shadowy
terrorist network."
Two weeks later, in his radio address to the nation, a month before the war began,
President Bush described the ties in detail, saying, "Saddam Hussein has
longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks …"
He said: "Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda have met at least eight
times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document-forgery
experts to work with Al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and
biological weapons training. An Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in
the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is
harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner. This
network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of
its leaders are known to be in Baghdad."
In fact, there was no operational link and no clear and persuasive pattern of ties
between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda. That fact should have been
abundantly clear to the President. Iraq and Al Qaeda had diametrically opposing
views of the world.
In the march to war, the President exaggerated the threat anyway. It was not
subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a
devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide
nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda justified immediate war.
Why would the Administration go to such lengths to go to war? Was it trying to
change the subject from its failed economic policy, the corporate scandals, and its
failed effort to capture Osama bin Laden? The only imminent threat was the
November Congressional election. The politics of the election trumped the stubborn
facts.
Early in the Bush Administration, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had raised
concerns about politics pervading the process in the White House.
Comparing the Bush Administration and previous Republican Administrations, he
said, referring to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Karen Hughes: "The biggest
difference … is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis – and Karl,
Dick, Karen and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics."
In the late winter and early spring of 2002, in the aftermath of the Enron and other
corporate scandals, as Ron Suskind, the author of the O'Neill book wrote, "…Rove
told numerous administration officials that the poll data was definitive: the scandals
were hurting the President, a cloud in an otherwise blue sky for the soaring, post-
Afghanistan Bush."
The evidence so far leads to only one conclusion. What happened was not merely a
failure of intelligence, but the result of manipulation and distortion of the
intelligence and selective use of unreliable intelligence to justify a decision to go to
war. The Administration had made up its mind, and would not let stubborn facts
stand in the way.
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired Air Force intelligence officer who
served in the Pentagon during the buildup to the war, said: "It wasn't intelligence --
it was propaganda…they'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry pick it, make it
sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, usually by
juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."
As it now appears, the Iraqi expatriates who had close ties to the Pentagon and
were so eager for the war may well have been the source of the hyped intelligence.
As Walter Pincus reported today in the Washington Post, "The Bush
Administration's prewar assertion that Saddam Hussein had a fleet of mobile labs
that could produce bioweapons rested largely on information from an Iraqi defector
working with another government who was never interviewed by U.S. intelligence
officers."
The Iraqi exiles have even begun to brag about it.
The Pentagon's favorite Iraqi dissident, Ahmed Chalabi, is actually proud of what
happened. "We are heroes in error," Chalabi recently said. "As far as we're
concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the
Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush
Administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords, if he
wants."
Our men and women in uniform are still paying with their lives for this misguided
war in Iraq. CIA Director Tenet could perform no greater service to the armed
forces, to the American people, and to our country, than to set the record straight,
and state unequivocally what is so clearly the truth: the Bush Administration
misrepresented the facts to justify the war.
America went to war in Iraq because President Bush insisted that nuclear weapons
in the hands of Saddam Hussein and his ties to Al Qaeda were too dangerous to
ignore. Congress never would have voted to authorize the war if we had known the
facts.
The Bush Administration is obviously digging in its heels against any further
serious investigation of the reasons we went to war.
The Administration's highest priority is to prevent any more additional stubborn
facts about this fateful issue from coming to light before the election in November.
This debate will go on anyway in Congress and in communities across the country.
The most important decision any President makes is the decision on war or peace.
No President who misleads the country on the need for war deserves to be
reelected. A President who does so must be held accountable. The last thing our
nation needs is a sign on the desk in the Oval Office in the White House that says,
"The buck doesn't stop here any more." Thank you very much.
