As Bush and his cronies continue trying to shirk responsibility for the disaster in Iraq, keep these facts in mind:
  1. Bush told the UN if it did not enforce its resolutions against Iraq, the US would do it on its own.
  2. Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq a month later.
  3. UN Weapons Inspectors returned to Iraq on November 18.
  4. Inspectors were told to leave Iraq. They had not finished their inspections.
  5. Bush started the war on Iraq on March 20, 2003.

Those are the facts. They are a matter of historic record.

Now suppose it was no fault of Bush that intelligence indicating that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was fatally flawed. Assume for a moment that the CIA was under no pressure to produce the kind of intelligence that Bush wanted. Pretend that the CIA was operating in a vacuum, entirely outside of any influence from the Bush administration and that the Bush administration carefully and fully analyzed all available intelligence information and considered the credibility of all of that information accordingly. Even though we know now the information presented was basically wrong, let's assume it's January of 2002 and Bush believes the information to be valid. Let's also assume that the pre-emptive war doctrine is legitimate.

Would it be smart to start a war based solely upon intelligence and nothing else? It has always been known that intelligence gathering isn't an exact science and that intelligence information isn't entirely reliable. That is an unavoidable fact of life. It's the nature of the beast.

We know now from the Duelfer report that Iraq's WMD programs basically died after the first Gulf war. Of course, the Duelfer report comes long after the fact of the second Gulf war. However...

If you know you can't rely on intelligence as a sole justification for a war, you probably would at least want to verify that intelligence first if you intend a pre-emptive strike. One way you might do this is to get the UN to threaten the use of force, back that up with a resolution from your government, and put inspectors on the ground. Bush did these things, and they were totally appropriate (remember we're assuming the intelligence was untainted and thought to be valid).

But what the Bush camp cannot deny nor defend is the decision to pull out inspectors and attack Iraq before the inspectors had completed their mission. Had the inspectors been allowed to stay and continue their work, they would ultimately have reached the same conclusion as the Duelfer report: that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Bush alone is responsible for starting the war. He is accountable for that decision. He is responsible for pulling out the inspectors and acting not only on incomplete information but in opposition to the information he was getting from the inspectors. Yes, the inspectors found that Saddam possesed weapons that violated UN resolutions, but they were not weapons of mass destruction, and under the threat of force, those weapons alone could have been destroyed without the loss of human life. (Or at least that could have been attempted; Bush did not even try a peaceful route.) The inspectors hadn't found any weapons of mass destruction-- the reason for the war-- because there simply weren't any.

Iraq was not a threat. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Whatever was believed before the inspectors entered could have been corrected by the inspectors on the ground without the loss of life. Instead, Bush decided to start a war. Bush alone is responsible for this error in judgement.

---Nick

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