In yesterday’s Washington Post, Fred Hiatt has a particularly misleading op-ed on the recent Senate Intelligence Committee’s Phase II report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq, referred to as the “Rockefeller Report” (each of the two parts are available in .pdf format here and here). In it he poo-poos the Rockefeller Report’s findings, claiming that if you dive into the report you will find the report does not vindicate claims that the President misled Americans into war with Iraq, but rather it absolves him of any personal wrongdoing. Hiatt describes the committee’s findings as follows:

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.” Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? “Generally substantiated by available intelligence.” Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

In some ways Hiatt is making a legitimate point. Plenty of the opponents of the war have stated in the past that there were some reasons to believe that Saddam may have been sitting on stockpiles of WMDs. Whether the intelligence on Saddam’s possession of such weapons was right or wrong is now, five years later, completely irrelevant. The issue was never what weapons Saddam may have been storing, but what threat he presented to the United States and whether that threat was urgent enough to warrant the saturation-bombing and occupation of a country that never attacked us. On these questions the report is very clear:

–Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

–Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

–Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

–Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

–The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

–The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

Hiatt is not all wrong. He is correct when he asserts that, on the question of Saddam’s future intentions, it is the type of question that is not answerable by intelligence reports alone, but rather it is a “question of judgment that politicians are expected to make.” Whether the President’s judgment was sound is at least debatable. What is not debatable is that post-war intelligence studies have cast serious doubts on the sincerity of statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and many others in the months leading up to military strikes on Iraq. Hiatt would rather distract readers from this fact than analyze the report honestly, and in so doing, he does them a great disservice.