THE WAR THAT GOT STARTED BY MISTAKE
April 11, 2005 

The war against Iraq was initiated based on false or incomplete information.  This intelligence vacuum was what allowed the administration of President George W. Bush to make a reality of its intention to invade Iraq and oust dictator Saddam Hussein.  All of this was revealed in a 601-page report of an investigation by a nine-member presidential commission.  That is, although President Bush did get the information he wanted to hear, it was not the information that he needed for making a decision based on facts and real events.

It would seem that one of the main sources of intelligence the United States used in order to justify the war with Iraq was not very reliable.  They called him “Curveball.”  He was an Iraqi deserter who had told German intelligence that Saddam Hussein was setting up mobile laboratories for the production of chemical and biological weapons.  But the problem is that Curveball had never spoken directly to any American CIA agents, and as if that were not bad enough, he also had mental and alcohol problems, according to a report in The New York Times.

Comments by the dubious Curveball were accepted whole cloth and were presented as absolute truth to the United Nations by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell on February 3, 2003.  Such was the unreliability of the information provided by Curveball that any newspaper worthy of respect would be hard-pressed to print it.  Nevertheless, it flowed like butter into the report that Powell gave to the world.

            The awful, tragic upshot is that the United States justified the war against Iraq in part with hearsay made to third parties by an emotionally disturbed man.  Despite the stringency of the presidential commission’s report, it does not contain any reprobation aimed directly at the White House for the manner in which it handled the false intelligence that it was given.  To the contrary, the American government accepted it without question because it was to its advantage to do so.  Bush and his advisors wanted to attack Iraq and it was in these incomplete reports that they found the justification they needed for the public.

            “It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom,” the report concluded.  The commission, with the grudging approval of the White House, made it patently clear that as of the first U.S. bombardment of Iraq on March 19, 2003, there was no hard proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, despite its having been offered as the main reason for going to war.

            And what has transpired since the publication of the presidential commission’s report?  Not a thing.  No one has been sacked, and, apparently, no one will.

            It will take a long time for the United States to rebuild its credibility in the eyes of the world.  Who is going to believe the American government at this juncture if it were to try to justify a war with Iran by saying that the latter is trying to produce nuclear weapons?  Which countries would support the United States in an attack against North Korea if it were to say that the latter country is about to drop nuclear bombs on South Korea?  Most troubling is the fact that the report indicates that the same intelligence failures that occurred with regard to Iraq could be repeated in an analysis of Iran and North Korea.

            It turns out that United Nations Inspector Hans Blix was correct after all when he informed the Security Council on February 14, 2003 that he had found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  But here in the United States no one wanted to hear that.  The drums of war were resounding deafeningly, and, I must admit, few journalists dared to challenge the propaganda emanating from the American government.  The war began four weeks after Blix gave his accurate report.

            Sadly, the presidential commission report has arrived too late.  The number of American soldiers killed in Iraq has passed the 1,500 mark, and for the Iraqis they number in the tens of thousands.  Those sanctions against and inspections Iraq were having an effect after all.

            It is true that the only good thing to have come out of all this is that there is one less dictator in the world, and Iraq is taking its first steps on the long road to democracy.  But I ask myself, what would have happened if President Bush had told the American people that he wanted to invade Iraq in order to get rid of a dictator and impose democracy there?  Would he have had sufficient support from both parties?  Would the American public have given its support?

            I seriously doubt, though, that the war against Irak would have been started if the information we have now had been made public back then.  The war against Iraq, as we now know, was not a last resort.  That was a war that got started by mistake.