Iraq

'œIt took far too long,' said The New York Times in an editorial, but at last we're learning the details of how America was duped into invading Iraq. A new report by the Pentagon's inspector general has confirmed that a sinister White House team known as the 'œOffice of Special Plans' deliberately twisted intelligence to suggest a link between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein, thus enabling the Bush administration to 'œjustify an unjustifiable war.' Every time the CIA reported that there was no reliable evidence of a relationship between Saddam and al Qaida—because there wasn't—Vice President Dick Cheney dispatched one Douglas Feith, a former undersecretary of defense, to 'œreview' those reports and reach the opposite conclusion. Next thing you know, the U.S. had embarked on 'œa disastrous and unnecessary war.'

The contacts between Iraq and al Qaida were not imagined, said Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online. Iraqi intelligence operatives met several times with al Qaida jihadists to discuss terrorist attacks on U.S. interests, including at a critical 2000 planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Those obsessed with proving that the White House lied us into war simply ignore this evidence. And in accusing Feith's office of twisting intelligence, the critics are also ignoring 'œhow intelligence analysis is supposed to work.' Intelligence is by definition speculative, and as we all know by now, the CIA's speculations about Iraq were full of errors. All Feith did was to challenge the prevailing 'œgroup think' about Iraq—hardly a crime. If this war has taught us anything, said The New York Sun, 'œit is that intelligence deserves to be criticized by policy officials, rather than blindly accepted.'

Feith, though, wasn't told merely to examine the intelligence on Iraq, said Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation. His mission was to provide the White House with a justification for an invasion. While CIA analysts and Middle East scholars were debating the theological viability of a Baathist'“al Qaida alliance, Feith's unit was reporting that such an alliance already existed. Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden had a 'œmature symbiotic relationship,' according to Feith, and were enjoying 'œcooperation in all categories.' His reports were sent directly to the White House, bypassing the CIA. Before long, Cheney was telling the world about 'œpossible Iraq coordination' with al Qaida in the 9/11 attacks. These conclusions, the Pentagon inspector general said in his report last week, were 'œnot supported by the available intelligence.' That's a bureaucrat's way of saying that our nation went to war on the basis of a 'œlie-filled pile of crap.'

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