As much as it pains me to write it, Senator Harry Reid had a legitimate point when he justified the forced closed session in the Senate yesterday. "Finally, after months and months and months of begging, cajoling, writing letters, we're finally going to be able to have phase two of the investigation regarding how the intelligence was used to lead us into the intractable war in Iraq,"
While a surprise move to force the Senate into a closed session may have been the wrong tactic, I understand the motivation.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Joseph Wilson was dead wrong in his contention that Iraq was not attempting to buy uranium ore. Suppose that the Saddam really did by the uranium and had a nuclear weapons program, just as the administration contended. What would it have proved? That Saddam had developed a weapon and was prepared to use it next month, next year, or in five years? If the answer were next month, an attack might have been justified. If an intelligence assessment had said that the Iraqi’s had Weapons of Mass Destruction programs but they were years from completion, the Senate debate on going to war would have been very different. I contend that the war could have been fought for the just cause of ending Saddam’s atrocities against his own people. It could, however, have been fought very differently.
As far as I can tell, the Administration’s efforts to justify the war were totally devoted to proving that Iraq had WMD programs. They never asked if these programs were mature enough to constitute a real threat – as this blog has been contending since March 16, 2004, and December 14, 2004. On April 15, 2005 this blog reported on Senate investigation into adminstration attempts to suppress information that questioned an exaggerated WMD threat. This included the infamous “Powers that be” e-mail which, as this blog reported on June 3, 2005, indicates that top level CIA officials suppressed information indicating that the WMD threat was not immediate.
Remember, the same administration that acted on incomplete and inaccurate intelligence analysis, is also considering plans for a premptive nuclear strike against terrorists. Given the moral and strategic seriousness of such plans, one would think that the question of Why we missed WMD would be a top priority for the Senate.
I don’t know about Senator Reid’s tactics, but having written about the question for over two years, I’m also frustrated.
NOTE: Linked with Beltway Traffic Jam at 26:27 on 11/2/05
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