Lean Left

Not only did they not have real weapons, they apparently didn’t even have old weapons or a real research program

But investigators have found no support for the two main fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen — combining pox virus and snake venom — that led U.S. scientists on a highly classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a “grave and gathering danger” by President Bush and a “mortal threat” by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.

The question the becomes was the White House deliberately lying about Iraq’s real status? And if not, how did the Administration and the intelligence services come to such a completely inaccurate portrait of Iraq?

Part of the answer, of course, is that the Bush Administration is famous for hearing only what it wants to hear. Part of the problem is that the neo-cons let their ideology and wishful thinking blind them to the fact that Chabli is a con man of the first rank. A larger part of the problem is that the neo-cons took over intelligence analysis from the professionals.

And Bush let it happen. This White House has proven itself unable to deal with the world as it actually is, and unwilling to look information that does not fit their preconceptions. That may be tolerable – if dishonest – when you work for the Heritage Foundation od the American Enterprise Institute. It borders on the criminal when you are making life and death decisions for this country.