Secretary Vandelay
From the Economist’s “Democracy in America” blog comes this article by Michael Fullilove describing a new way of viewing the Bush Administration’s foreign policy, the “Costanza Doctrine”:
This doctrine, which had its heyday in 2002-2004 but remains influential, recalls the classic episode of the TV comedy Seinfeld, “The Opposite”, in which George Costanza temporarily improves his fortunes by rejecting all the principles according to which he has lived his life and doing the opposite of what his training indicates he should do . . .
The Iraq policy pursued by the Bush administration satisfies the Costanza criterion: it is the opposite of every foreign policy the world has ever met.
Reflecting upon the incompetence of this Administration, one might ponder how they could have screwed up more, even if trying. The answer, it appears, is that they have been. (Any recent book on the Iraq war describing Rumsfeld would only confirm this.)
But what really struck me about this perspective is the name, as it reminds me of a pet theory I’ve had for a few years called the “Costanza Defense.” This is the only plausible explanation I can come up with for the allegations that Iraq had WMD.
First, one must recall the Seinfeld episode “The Beard,” wherein Jerry pleads with George to tell him the secret to lying (so he can pass a lie detector test). George can only offer him some parting advice, “Remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
Unless the mad hunt for WMD after the invasion was just a facade, or unless Bush & Co. thought everyone would forget to ask, it seems as if they really did believe that Iraq had WMD. Of course, this isn’t exculpatory, as the pre-war intelligence had to be exaggerated (and the uncertainties ignored) in order to justify the invasion. But it might be useful to acknowledge that the justification wasn’t a matter of convincing the public; it was a matter of confirming their own paranoid–even delusional–beliefs. The utility of this is to dispense with all sorts of nonsense from the Left about the true motivations of the “neo-cons,” as if their nation-building dreams alone weren’t sufficiently crackpot.
I wonder, though, how far the Costanza parallels may extend. Remember, he, too, was in a seemingly inescapable conundrum like Iraq: engagement to a woman, Susan, he didn’t want to marry. Out of cheapness, he bought invitation envelopes with poisonous glue; Rumsfeld likewise skimped, but on the numbers of the invasion force. George’s fiancee expired from the glue, and our early mistakes led to the current death toll. Perhaps we will also disentangle ourselves when the dying grows too wearisome, but remember that George was forever tied to Susan Ross by appointment to her charitable foundation’s Board of Directors, an act of belittlement by her parents. For the foreseeable future, it looks as if we will also have an impotent role in the future of Iraqi welfare.
29 Responses to “Secretary Vandelay”
Interesting post, Zach.
What I’m most intrigued about is how close you come to the Democrats’ answer to the WMD question (i.e., “Bush lied”) when you say: “the pre-war intelligence had to be exaggerated (and the uncertainties ignored) in order to justify the invasion.”
I am curious if there is any particular evidence that has convinced you of this (assuming your position has changed since four years ago). It is still my understanding that the majority of Western nations believed before the invasion that Saddam possessed WMD. Based on the evidence at the time, I’d put the certainty of Saddam possessing WMD to be at least 60%.
Granted, the Bush administration took steps to make that certainty appear greater in order to convince skeptics of the need for military action. But if you’re arguing that it was more likely than not (based on evidence at the time) that Saddam had no WMD, I’d like to see what has convinced you of that.
German intelligence officials responsible for “Curveball” said that the Bush team and CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq. Further the Germans warned U.S. intelligence that they had found his info mostly vague, secondhand, and not possible to confirm.
Sen Bob Graham has stated that the classified 2002 NIE on Iraq contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the WMD claims, especially by the DOS and DOE that the unclassified one did not.
David Sanger of the NY Times reported in April 2006 that Scooter Libby had been authorized to tell Judy Miller that a key finding of that NIE on Iraq was that Baghdad had been actively trying to get uranium from Africa at the same time that info was already being discounted by officials in the administration.
Murry Waas reported in 2006 that “Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address — that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon — might not be true, according to government records and interviews.”
Let’s give the WH the benefit of the doubt and operate on the assumption that they actually believed that Iraq possessed WMD. I’d argue that the Bush team STILL got themselves into trouble by suggesting to Americans that that would have constituted an “imminent threat” to the U.S. I’ll let Bush II’s former Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board member (and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission), Phillip Zelikow, explain it himself:
“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel,”
“”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel.
And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.” – University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, while speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
”And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.
The irony is that the intelligence community was largely right – the evidence for WMD in Iraq was thin.
The most concerning part about this is that the high-level policy makers appeared to ignore the intelligence estimates and proceeded to make up their own. What value is there in even having an intelligence establishment if their input is going to be ignored on matters of war-making?
Reflecting upon the incompetence of this Administration, one might ponder how they could have screwed up more, even if trying.
There was that Republican congressman who suggested we nuke Mecca. Given some of the ideas bubbling around the Republican Party, it’s actually quite easy to see how things could have been worse.
JohnS,
Exaggerating the probability that Saddam had chemical weapons to make it look like absolute certainty is one thing, but overlooking clear evidence that Saddam had no WMD would be a very different thing. The nuclear stuff was an unnecessary distraction–chemical weapons would have been sufficient cause for the invasion.
Furthermore, I’m not surprised that there was vigorous dissent in the intelligence community. But to my knowledge, the consensus view was that Saddam did have WMD.
Let’s not forget, either, that Saddam had the responsibility to comply with the weapons inspectors and demonstrate he’d destroyed his WMD. Just as a meat-packing plant must prove to the USDA that they’re following proper procedures; the assumption, if you will, is that there are violations, and the inspectees must prove they are in compliance.
Nevertheless, if the overall weight of the evidence at the time pointed to it being more likely than not that Saddam had no WMD, I’d agree that the invasion was a mistake. I just haven’t read anything that is convincing when read from a pre-invasion perspective–and not through hindsight bias.
but overlooking clear evidence that Saddam had no WMD would be a very different thing.
Indeed, since it’s logically impossible to prove the non-existence of something.
But to my knowledge, the consensus view was that Saddam did have WMD.
Except for all of those in the intelligence community who were screaming up an down “We don’t think so!” which includes everyone on the UN inspection teams, which had been crawling all over the country for years to every non-political employee of the CIA — meaning everyone but Tenet.
Saddam had the responsibility to comply with the weapons inspectors and demonstrate he’d destroyed his WMD
Again, it’s not logically possible to prove that you don’t have something and holding anyone, Saddam or Jesus, to that standard is irrational. Unless you’ve a political agenda.
Even if we grant for the sake of argument that the mere possession of some sort WMD by Hussein, even without a significant delivery system, would be sufficient to provide a jus ad bellum moral justification for invasion, it substantively fails by itself to justify the invasion as a good policy decision. (E.g., North Korea has WMD, but we don’t think that invading them just now would be a good policy decision.) Much more importantly, the mere possession of some WMD or other without a significant delivery system completely & profoundly fails to justify as a good policy decision the _way_ we invaded — very quickly, without proper planning or sufficient troops (with sufficient training and equipment) for winning the peace, without the support of the global community, without preparing the American people for the long challenges to come. That policy decision could only be justified by the spectre of Saddam lobbing some serious mushroom-cloud badness at us any day now. Which is why that’s the picture that the administration painted, with carefully calculated deception, and a willingness to (e.g.) sacrifice our undercover CIA agents in a spat over the PR surrounding that deception.
So please stop the silly ‘but everyone thought he had WMD!’ line; it is simply, and spectacularly, beside the point.
Greg,
I’m well aware of the logical impossibility of proving a negative. However, this is not a philosophy class, it’s a foreign policy question. I can rephrase the question as “Did Saddam dispose of his WMD which we knew he had?” if that suits you better.
You can’t be serious that no one in the CIA other than George Tenet believed Saddam had WMD. I’d like to see your source for that bit of information. Regarding the inspection teams, please read David Kay’s testimony to Congress, in which he says “we were almost all wrong.”
I am completely serious when I say that if there is convincing evidence that the Bush administration went against the consensus intelligence view on Saddam’s WMD, I want to see it. To date I’ve seen nothing other than hindsight bias and appeals to the authority of dissenters.
phil,
You may think it’s “beside the point,” and certainly there are many other questions worth considering, but I would honestly like to know if “Saddam probably still has WMD” was really the consensus view of the intelligence community prior to the invasion.
If those who now contend that the decision to invade was a bad decision concede that that was indeed the intelligence consensus, we can proceed to discuss other matters. But there’s a lot of allegations swirling around on the question of WMD, so I think it’s a worthwhile quesiton to answer.
Even if we grant for the sake of argument that the mere possession of some sort WMD by Hussein, even without a significant delivery system, would be sufficient to provide a jus ad bellum moral justification for invasion, it substantively fails by itself to justify the invasion as a good policy decision.
This may well be true on jus ad bellum moral or policy grounds, but not on legal grounds. We stopped the first Gulf War short on the condition that Saddam would allow weapons inspectors and abide by certain other agreements. In a sense, the end of the war was put on hold indefinitely provided that Saddam and Iraq met certain requirements. Saddam did not abide by those conditions, and in fact went against them blatantly. This doesn’t mean that the war was morally just or good policy, but it was certainly legal and within what was contemplated at the conclusion of the first Gulf War.
“Did Saddam dispose of his WMD which we knew he had?”
This might be better phrased as “Did Saddam dispose of his WMD which we thought, or at least hoped, he had?” And the answer to that is, as I stated before, “there’s no logical way to know” so why are you asking questions that can’t be answered?
I am completely serious when I say that if there is convincing evidence that the Bush administration went against the consensus intelligence view on Saddam’s WMD
Somehow the intelligence community didn’t believe that Saddam had WMDs in all the years prior to the second Bush administration — at least not WMDs as everyone used to understand them, namely weapons capable of causing mass destruction — which means not only a potent weapon, but an effective and credible delivery device).
For if the intelligence community really believed such, i.e. that Saddam Hussein more than likely had weapons, and their delivery systems, capable of presenting the United States with an existential challenge, do you not believe that the community would have made their concerns known to the first Bush administration, not to mention eight years of Clinton?
And do you believe that, when faced with credible evidence that an adversary possessed and intended to use such weapons, either against the United States or one of its allies, that neither President Bush (the first) nor President Clinton would have done whatever was necessary and within their capabilities to make sure that the United States would not suffer the consequences of inaction on their part?
Why did neither Bush the first, nor Clinton invade Iraq, if the intelligence community was telling them that Hussein had WMDs and an itchy trigger finger? Because they thought a mushroom cloud over Manhattan was going to play better than a scold on Hannity and Colmes?
Get real.
The only conclusion is that the intelligence community either didn’t believe, or wasn’t able to make the case, that Hussein had WMDs for twelve years and two different administrations (of different political parties).
And that, less than two years into the second Bush administration, they had finally been able to make their case, or discovered evidence they didn’t have before – ?
Isn’t it just much more likely that the intelligence community has been rather equivocal about the WMDs, or their non-existence, over the past decade and a half and it is the administration that has changed?
That what is different is an administration willing to cook the books to further its agenda and, when called on it, to try and deflect responsibility — because isn’t that what children, do?
Saddam did not abide by those conditions, and in fact went against them blatantly.
Umm, the utter lack of evidence regarding WMDs, or even a WMD effort on Saddam’s part, would seem to contra-indicate your premise. So far, six years or so into it, we’ve discovered no evidence whatsoever of any post-Gulf-War effort by Hussein to militarize, much less build WMDs.
Umm, Greg, your comment suggests you need to re-read my comment. I said nothing about the existance or non-existance of WMDs. Rather, the condition was that Saddam allow weapons inspectors to inspect freely, and he did not. He blatantly banned them from areas and, at times, from the country altogether.
JC: I’m not sure why you cast your comment as disagreeing with mine, as my argument was confined to policy (and, by extension, political) issues. I just didn’t speak to the legal issue at all, and granted the relevant moral issue of whether we had the right to invade. (I suppose I do disagree, perhaps, with what seems like your read about the extent to which Hussein was complying with the inspections system at the time that we ordered the inspections system terminated. But that isn’t playing any role in my argument.)
What matters is that the grounds for our right to invade fell utterly short of the kinds of grounds that the administration needed to sell the war to the American pubilc, at the minimal costs they (dishonestly) claimed it would take, and to do so in time to nail the Dems in the 2002 midterms. There was indeed a general belief at the time that Hussein had some chemical or biological weapons, but nothing big, nothing nuclear, and nothing with any capacity to reach the US. It was not, however, a universal consensus (cf. especially Scott Ritter), although I do think it was a widely held on both sides of the political aisle.
Anyhow, regardless of such near-consenus on the existence of some WMDs in Iraq, almost no one — including the current administration prior to 9/11, and the GOP Congress during the Clinton administration — thought that a case should be made that the situation warranted an immediate invasion. And so, when post-9/11 the administration decided to gun for Hussen, it had to lie wantonly in order to get their policy implemented on the (extraordinarily foolish) timeframe and resource levels they allowed themselves.
The issue at hand, raised by Zach’s post and Eric’s question of it, is whether “the pre-war intelligence had to be exaggerated (and the uncertainties ignored) in order to justify the invasion”. And the answer to that question is a resounding, if sad, “yes”.
Well phil, I wasn’t disagreeing with yours. Rather, I was addressing a different, albeit related, issue.
Ah, I must have misconstrued the intent of your first sentence. My bad.
This might be better phrased as “Did Saddam dispose of his WMD which we thought, or at least hoped, he had?”
No, we knew he had stockpiles of chemical weapons after the first Gulf war. He had failed to demonstrate their destruction as required by the 1991 cease-fire.
You are correct that intelligence never indicated Saddam could directly threaten American soil with his weapons. Nevertheless, a Saddam with chemical weapons and no respect for any authority other than his own was a danger that could not be ignored.
Of course, we now know that Saddam did not have chemical weapons. If this had been known before the invasion, I would not have supported it. That is the problem with having to make decisions without absolute certainty of the situation. Furthermore, I do believe the administration made many serious mistakes in the planning and execution of the war. But based on what we thought we knew four years ago, I think the decision to invade was both legally and morally correct.
No, we knew he had stockpiles of chemical weapons after the first Gulf war.
No we did not. If we knew he had stockpiles of chemical weapons, after 1991 and until 2000 (?) then we would have done something about it. Either Bush I or Clinton would have eliminated them if we knew he had them.
a Saddam [who might have chemical weapons, just as every nation on the earth might have, but probably did not] and no respect for any authority other than his own was a danger that could not be ignored.
Sovereign states are not generally held to recognize “any authority higher than [their] own.” That’s what sovereign means.
But based on what we thought we knew four years ago, I think the decision to invade was both legally and morally correct.
A half million dead would disagree with you, if they could.
I don’t believe that burning a man’s house down, and hanging him, just because he won’t show you the receipts for disposal of his guns, that you say he has but he says he doesn’t, is legally and morally correct. Even if he is a confirmed wife-beater.
And I think you’ve got a whole lot of ’splainin to do when, after you’ve burned down his house, hung him, and left his kids homeless it turns out that, what the heck, he really didn’t have any guns, after all.
If we knew he had stockpiles of chemical weapons, after 1991 and until 2000 (?) then we would have done something about it.
You’re misunderstanding what I said. I said we knew Saddam had stockpiles after the 1991 war–meaning immediately after–not continually through the on-again, off-again UN inspections over the next 12 years. It’s unclear at what point Saddam destroyed the weapons without UN verification, but apparently he did at some point.
Sovereign states are not generally held to recognize “any authority higher than [their] own.”
I didn’t say “recognize,” I said “respect.” As in, no respect for the terms of treaties, UN Security Council resolutions, etc.
Eric, have you ever heard of the Office of Special Plans?
I believe it’s the sort of thing Dave S. was alluding to.
“But based on what we thought we knew four years ago, I think the decision to invade was … morally correct.”
But the phrase “morally correct” raises the same double ambiguity that I was pointing out in my earlier post. If we just mean that we had a sufficient moral ground in jus ad bellum terms to invade, then I believe that we did. But whether the invasion was an all-in morally correct thing to do, and to do in the particular way that we did it, is very much another question, and one for which it is much, much harder to give a positive answer. And the administration’s lying is a part of that evaluation, in at least several ways: one significant moral cost of the war has been the very reputation of the United States itself; and because the administration was unwilling to be honest about the war’s costs, it had to start the war without the fundamental personnel, resources, and planning that could have minimized the harm both to our soldiers, and to the Iraqi people.
So, if we’re looking to evaluate the moral standing of this administration (which, again, is the topic of the main post), then it’s insufficient to ask the minimal jus ad bellum question of some sort of invasion or other. You have to ask the harder question about the all-in morality of the particular decisions that the administration made, and the way that they made them.
phil–I agree that the question of whether the invasion was morally justified is much harder to answer than what the consensus view was about Saddam’s chemical weapons. Indeed, many people who were certain Saddam had chemical weapons still opposed the idea of a pre-emptive attack. I do think it was justified, but I don’t have the time to debate that question right now.
Zach–yeah, I’d read about the Office of Special Plans. So, if I read you correctly, you agree that the intelligence consensus was that Saddam *did* have chemical weapons, but that in order to justify the invasion to the public and/or Congress, other stuff like nuclear weapons and links to al-Qaeda had to be brought up?
You are correct that intelligence never indicated Saddam could directly threaten American soil with his weapons. Nevertheless, a Saddam with chemical weapons and no respect for any authority other than his own was a danger that could not be ignored.
“Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”
- Colin Powell, February 2001
“We are able to keep his arms from him, his military forces have not been rebuilt.”
- Condoleeza Rice, July 29, 2001
They were able to safely make those statements because from 1991 until 1998 UN inspectors were on the ground in Iraq, and by 1998 had accounted for almost 98% of Iraq’s stockpiles. (Mainly thanks to info provided in ‘95 by Saddam’s defector son-in-law who was head of military industries).
There were NO nations who bought into Bush Admin disinfo that Iraq had viable massive stockpiles of WMD after 1998. That includes our own intelligence agencies. Read up on reports on the CLASSIFIED 2002 NIE on Iraq — NOT the edited piece of crap they released to Congress. Sen Bob Graham was on the Intelligence committee and had access to the classified NIE. See his statements about it. NOTE: Dem Sen Jay Rockefeller also served on that committee and remained shamefully silent about it.)
The Bush Admin had NO hard facts to make the case that Iraq possessed WMD, or was actively reconstituting WMD.
What the Bush Admin went on were Dick Cheney’s (very bad) gut instincts. The Office of Special Plans was created to comb CIA and DIA research to provide intelligence, even discredited intelligence, to back up Cheney’s gut. They stovepiped it right into the Oval Office and WH officials then passed along some of this classified nonsense to the likes of Judy Miller so that it would wind up on the front page of the Gray lady and then some of these same WH officials could appear on Meet The Press and repeat it knowing that everybody would buy it because it was on the front page of the liberal NY Times.
But, even if Saddam HAD chemical weapons, or perhaps even a nuclear weapon, was that a threat that couldn’t be ignored? Yes, it was. But the only way to deal with that threat was to invade Iraq? Absolutely not.
Bush’s father and Brent Scocroft made an excellent case for not invading Iraq in their 1998 book, “A World Transformed,” predicting with near 100% accuracy what would happen if one took place.
There were other options. We even had a pretty successful model in our Cold War with Russia, a much greater threat that we managed to contain for decades and ultimately defeat, while bringing the rest of the world (mostly) around to our point of view.
Eric, I’m not sure I know what you mean by “consensus view.” Many intelligence estimates did have pessimistic prospectives of Iraq’s WMD (most notably, the French), but those estimates also conveyed a great deal of uncertainty about those capabilities.
The OSP was created especially for the purpose of gathering intelligence on Iraqi WMD that no other intelligence agency would vet as credible.
Zach–by “consensus view” I simply mean that the majority of analysts in Western intelligence agencies believed that it was more likely than not that Saddam had chemical weapons. If you think the opposite is in fact true–that the majority believed Saddam probably did not have them–I’d like to see what has convinced you of this.
Eric, I’m not suggesting that the majority of western analysts held that the P(WMD)<0.5, and I’m not sure how you would infer that (or why it would even be a relevant threshhold).
What is relevant is that the uncertainty was significant and dissuasive.
I simply mean that the majority of analysts in Western intelligence agencies believed that it was more likely than not that Saddam had chemical weapons. If you think the opposite is in fact true–that the majority believed Saddam probably did not have them–I’d like to see what has convinced you of this.
I’d like to know where you get this info from Eric. This was simply not the case. It is well documented that U.N. inspectors didn’t believe that ANY of Iraq’s WMD programs had been restarted after 1998, and that if Iraq still had anything at all, it was old and unreliable and that this view was shared by many in the DOS, DOE, and CIA, hence the pre 9/11, pre Iraq-War-hysteria quotes above from Powell and Rice.
The ONLY evidence that Iraq had WMD came from Iraqi exiles like Curveball who were dismissed as unreliable by German intelligence.
If you believe former intelligence officer and Iraq weapons inspector Rod Barton, he says that “in the U.S. the policy of going to war was well ahead of the intelligence,” and that in the U.S., much more so than was the case with coalition partners U.K and Australia, politics corrupted that intelligence.
The repeated claim that western intelligence agencies “believed that it was more likely than not” that Iraq had WMD in 2002 is not supportable.
JohnS–if what you say is true, you won’t have any problem pointing me to at least one report from an unbiased source that backs up your claim. I really would like to read it if it’s out there, because both Zach and phil are agreeing with me that the majority of the West thought Saddam had WMD.
Eric,
I believe much of the nonsense about western intelligence agencies believing Iraq has WMD came from David Kay, who said things like this on the News Hour:
“Well, I think, first of all, because that were the estimates — not just the estimates by the CIA or the Defense Intelligence Agency, we were going in against the background in which the U.N. had spoken of large numbers of missing material that could have been weaponized. There were intelligence reports from the British, the French, the Germans and even the Russians which painted a picture of Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction.”
But when pressed by Lehrer, he clarified:
JIM LEHRER: Now, what was this intelligence based on?
DAVID KAY: Well, multiple sources but when it gets right down to it, it was made — based mostly on the reports of people coming out of Iraq, that is, defectors. (end)
ALL of the western intelligence agencies were leery of Iraqi defectors who they considered highly unreliable (and of having agendas).
To your request for sources.
Here is a link to a report by the Institute for Science and International Security:
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/usallieswmd.html
U.S. Allies Were Not Persuaded By U.S. Assertions on Iraq WMD
June 9, 2003
“Russia was not convinced by either the September 24, 2002 British dossier or the October 4, 2002 CIA report. Lacking sufficient evidence, Russia dismissed the claims as a part of a “propaganda furor.” Specifically targeting the CIA report, Putin said, “Fears are one thing, hard facts are another.” He goes on to say, “Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the US Congress.” However, Putin was apprehensive about the possibility that Iraq may have WMDs and he therefore supported inspections. The Russian ambassador to London thought that the dossier was a document of concern. “It is impressive, but not always convincing.”
French intelligence services did not come up with the same alarming assessment of Iraq and WMD as did the Britain and the United States. “According to secret agents at the DGSE, Saddam’s Iraq does not represent any kind of nuclear threat at this time. It [the French assessment] contradicts the CIA’s analysis.” French spies said that the Iraqi nuclear threat claimed by the United States was a “phony threat.”
After Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech on February 5, 2003 to the United Nations Security Council, the focus of discussion among U.S. allies changed. France, Russia, and Germany did not find Powell’s “evidence” strong enough to support the U.S.’s stance on the Iraqi threat. However, having already questioned the veracity of the dossier and CIA report, they instead concentrated on persuading the international community to continue UN inspections.
Other experts said that the evidence is not sufficient enough to prove that Iraq has WMDs. However, what Secretary of State Powell did prove was that Iraq was capable of producing WMDs. ”
Here’s an LA Times article about the Germans and “Curveball:” http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1120-01.htm
BERLIN — The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq…
Finally, here’s a link to an interview with Iraq weapons inspector Rod Barton:
http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/2405.cfm