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July 14, 2003
Perspective on uranium
Thanks to Robert Bartley for providing some useful perspective on the whole uranium issue. Let's be clear: Saddam may have in fact been seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa. The intelligence community is split on the issue. The administration has acknowledged, however, that the intelligence did not rise to the level needed for this assertion to be included in a state of the union speech, and George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, has taken the blame for this error. No one, not even the French, denies that Saddam Hussein has had nuclear ambitions in the past and no one, not even the French, has given a clear reason why or proof that these ambitions abated. Bush made the assertion that "Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option," in the state of the union and nothing in this uranium issue would change the wisdom of that approach. Was this strategy (i.e. not to trust Saddam) the right one? Voters have the right to hold Bush accountable for the results of his strategy--and they should do so in 2004. What those results will be and how people will evaluate them remains to be seen. But trying to make political hay out of the innate haziness of intelligence is counter-productive.
This is clearly nonsense. The White House, in its search for a causus belli, wanted the Africa/uranium pitch in the SOTU, even though the Intelligence Community, and State Department, was quite sure that it wasn't true. Both State and CIA advised it not be used. And yet it was. And under political pressure, the DCI, or his DDCI of Analysis, signed off on intelligence that all parties suspected was false.
What is increasingly clear is that reasons the American people were given for the invasion of Iraq were debatable at best (as I have argued on this web site); what is also increasingly clear is that the Administration, by its own admission, had other reasons for going to War.
When are we, as a nation, going to debate the reckless lack of statecraft that dragged the United States into an unjustified War, and coldly, and cynically invented reasons for that War?
Probably never. Certainly never, unless the security situation deteriorates markedly in Iraq. Until then, "Bring them on." Sometimes I am very ashamed to be an American (even an adopted one), and understand the feelings of our European friends all too clearly.