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Iraqi Intelligence

A funny thing happened on the way to the war. President Bush had enraptured an invited crowd – if not the networks – with his “full force and fury” battle plan. Congress was primed to vote consent. Public opinion was breaking toward the White House, and all the president’s men looked to be lining up […]

A funny thing happened on the way to the war. President Bush had enraptured an invited crowd – if not the networks – with his “full force and fury” battle plan. Congress was primed to vote consent. Public opinion was breaking toward the White House, and all the president’s men looked to be lining up behind.

Then CIA Director George Tenet sent a letter to the Senate. Seems the spy chief is in possession of intelligence – a rare commodity on the Washington scene – that convinces him Saddam Hussein might indeed pass weapons of mass destruction to terrorists – but only if the U.S. strikes first.

The administration needed a missing link – proof positive that Saddam was complicit in the atrocities of 9/11. Instead it got an expert assertion that “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting attacks with conventional or chemical or biological weapons.” Rather than the global threat of President Bush’s incarnation, Tenet casts the dictator as a cornered animal, fierce if provoked but unlikely to initiate aggression.

The CIA memo is not cavalier. It warns that Saddam is still in pursuit of the world’s deadliest weapons. But it makes clear that the threat to American territory, either by direct attack or terrorist delivery, is not imminent. Unless we choose to make it so.

“Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,” the president said in his Cincinnati speech. Perhaps. But Tenet ascribes far less arbitrary intent. Instead of any given day, he sees a date certain, set not by Baghdad but by President Bush.

“Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions,” the CIA director writes. In other words, the man Bush describes as a “homicidal dictator…addicted to weapons of mass destruction” is behaving like any rational leader. He is stocking an arsenal that he will use if attacked and empty if threatened with extinction.

If logic so governs, then the time-tried constraints of containment and deterrence should be tools of choice. Countries across the globe – some friendly, others not so – possess the same weapons and have historically been corralled by diplomatic means. Saddam differs only in that, from the ashes of his 1991 defeat, he agreed to open his cache and strip it as the victors required. He has not been forthcoming on that score, but none can argue that the inspection regime has failed, for in the last 11 years Saddam has neither acquired nuclear weapons nor deployed chemical agents. Noncompliance therefore justifies more rigorous inspections, but not invasion.

Should the president decide otherwise, over the objection of his top intelligence officer, he could make of his scant evidence a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a fight to the death, Saddam would do the things the administration deems him eventually capable of but cannot immediately prove. The pinned despot would likely vindicate the latter half of Bush’s good vs. evil dichotomy. But at what price?

After hearing Tenet’s assessment, Sen. Ron Wyden concluded, “Pursuit of a first-strike war – absent any credible sign that Saddam Hussein is preparing to wage war against our nation or other nations – will leave this nation less secure than before.”

That is President Bush’s constitutional mandate: the security of the country he leads. Not selecting which dictator next abuses the long-suffering Iraqis, or reconfiguring the balance of Middle Eastern power, or cashing in on the domestic rewards of war-making. The duty of an American president is to defend these borders and to spend our blood sparingly. This administration makes exception for itself because its professed goals have noble names like democracy and liberation. But imposing “freedom’s power” does not inoculate even a superpower against the natural consequence of tramping through a minefield. Beating despots into submission comes with just one guarantee: we will only remain good in our own eyes.

In the wake of September 11, the same voices calling for Saddam’s head claimed we were hated for our virtue. How much more will we be despised when the crusade begins in earnest? George Tenet knows. So too does Saddam Hussein, and if we ask through a hail of bombs, he will likely answer.

–The Editors

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