[Marxism] Christian Science-Monitor: Clinton-era NSC member joins attack on "rush to war" in Iraq

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

posted January 14, 2004, updated 1:00 p.m. ET

White House's 'rush to war was reckless'

Kenneth Pollack, key supporter of regime change in Iraq, now says
White House engaged in "creative omissions' about WMD.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

It's the latest in a string of books, reports and articles that call
into question the way the Bush administration presented pre-war
evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton-era National Security Council member and
strong supporter of regime change in Iraq (Mr. Pollack had presented
his arguments in the much talked about book "The Threatening Storm:
The Case for Invading Iraq") now says that he and many others were
wrong about the nature of the threat Iraq posed. In an interview with
the Atlantic Monthly, and in a new book ""Spies, Lies, and Weapons:
What Went Wrong," Pollack says that, while the war was not a
"strategic mistake," as the removal of Saddam Hussein's malignant
influence from the region provided some good, the Bush
administration's "justifications and explanations for war were at best
faulty, at worst deliberately misleading."

His [Pollack's] most scathing criticism falls on the Bush
Administration and, particularly, its tendency to misstate the facts
of the case when trying to persuade the country to go to war. In his
eyes, the Administration consistently engaged in "creative omission,"
overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had
evidence to the contrary. "The President is responsible for serving
the entire nation," Pollack writes. "Only the Administration has
access to all the information available to various agencies of the US
government ? and withholding or downplaying some of that information
for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility."

Jeffrey Simpson, columnist for Canada's national Globe and Mail
newspaper, points out that Pollack provided useful arguments for those
who favored invasion because his views about Iraq weren't based on
support for Mr. Bush. Instead, Pollack's experience led him to
conclude that "Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, posed
an imminent danger to the United States and its allies and had to be
removed, the sooner the better." (In fact, an article in FrontPage
Magazine earlier this week, denouncing recent reports that have
criticized the action of the White House leading up to the war,
specifically cited Pollack's arguments in favor of war.) Mr. Simpson
describes Pollack's change of opinion as "amazing."

Remember that when President Bush explained his case to the US
Congress on Jan. 29, 2003, almost every paragraph highlighted the
danger Iraq posed to the United States. Only a fleeting mention was
made of the need to bring democracy to Iraq, the justification now
favoured by the administration, faute de mieux [for lack of something
better]. Writes Mr. Pollack: "At the very least we should recognize
that the administration's rush to war was reckless, even on the basis
of what we thought we knew in March of 2003. It appears even more
reckless in light of what we know today." Pass the smelling salts,
please.
Pollack also says in the Atlantic piece that the Bush administration
used this strategy because otherwise it could not have convinced the
American people that war was so necessary.

I think the Administration was only telling part of the truth to the
American people because it was trying to justify a war in 2003. The
intelligence estimates just didn't really support that imminence. The
Administration could have said, "Look, the intelligence community
thinks it may be five to seven years away, but they do think it's also
possible that they could get it in one to two years. After 9/11, we
shouldn't take even that kind of a risk." I think that would have been
a much more honest way of presenting it to the American people.

Pollack, and several other "liberal hawks" (Paul Berman, Thomas
Friedman, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Christopher Hitchens, Jacob
Weisberg, and Fareed Zakaria) are currently involved in an ongoing
debate at Slate about how their views on the war have changed. Some,
such as Mr. Hitchens and Mr. Berman, still strongly support the
administration's actions, while other, such as Mr. Kaplan, and Mr.
Weisburg, have tempered that support for various reasons, including
the lack of international support, the cost in terms of both US and
Iraqi lives, and the growing financial burden. As part of their
debate, Weisburg asked Pollack if his change of mind about the threat
posed by WMD meant he had changed his mind about going to war. Pollack
answer is, basically, yes and no. (An answer for which is he taken to
task by some Slate readers.)

On the one hand, the combination of inspections and the pain inflicted
by the sanctions had forced Saddam to effectively shelve his WMD
ambitions, probably since around 1995-96. On the other hand, the
behavior of the French, Russians, Germans, and many other members of
the United Nations Security Council in the run-up to the war was final
proof that they were never going to do what would have been necessary
to revise and support containment so that it might have lasted for
more than another year or two.

Pollack's article in the Atlantic Monthly comes a few days after
another scathing review of the Bush administration's actions in Iraq.
The Guardian reports that a paper published by the Strategic Studies
Institute of The US Army War College says the administration's
doctrinaire view of the war on terror, which lumps together Saddam
Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda as a single undifferentiated threat, led
the US on a dangerous "detour" into an unnecessary war.

"The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is
strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and
threatens to dissipate US military and other resources in an endless
and hopeless search for absolute security," says the study by Jeffrey
Record, a visiting scholar at the Strategic Studies Institute [and a
former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee].

Although Mr. Record's paper, "Bounding the global war on terrorism,"
carries a standard disclaimer that its views do not represent those of
the Pentagon, the study was endorsed by several other academics at the
institute. "This piece of work, like many others, certainly should be
considered in the debate being taken place on national security
policy," the institute's director, retired army colonel Douglas
Lovelace, said.

The BBC reports that while the study has been dismissed by US defense
officials, it could prove to be an embarrassment to the Pentagon,
which is already struggling to deal with the fall out from other
critiques. Last week the Carnegie Endowment for International for
Peace issued a report that said the White House had "systematically
misrepresented" the dangers posed by WMD in Iraq. Earlier this week
former Treasure Secretary Paul O'Neil said the White House had been
planning for an invasion of Iraq from the start of the Bush
administration, and not after 9/11 as had been previously suggested by
administration officials.

The Voice of America reports that senior officials at the Pentagon "do
not appear to be pleased" with the Army War College report.

Bryan Whitman, a top Defense Department spokesman, admits he has not
seen the study but suggests its conclusions are irresponsible. "Any
study that concludes that we should not aggressively pursue the global
war on terror would be irresponsible. In fact, it is inconceivable to
me that any responsible government would not do everything possible to
protect its citizens," he said.

An editorial in Montana's Billings Gazette says the report should be
"required reading at the Pentagon and the White House." The Christian
Science Monitor asks how much difference will all these revelations
really make (particularly those of Mr. O'Neill)? The Monitor points
out that the administration has shifted the reason it says it went to
war from the existence of WMD to the the threat posed by a vicious and
megalomaniacal dictator. While it may or may not make much difference
to the American people, experts say it will make a huge difference to
"the future exercise of American foreign policy."
"It's a classic example of the little boy who cries wolf," says James
Lindsay, a foreign-policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations
in New York. "The next time [the US] insists we have to act because
the threat is imminent, we will have that much harder a time making
the case."




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