The resignation of David Kay, the CIA’s chief weapons inspector, combined with statements he has made in connection with his resignation, puts something of a capstone on the crumbling of any remotely valid case for the recent (or ongoing, not to put too fine a point on it) Iraq war. Every justification (or rationalization, if you will) for war turns out to have been based on the slimmest of evidence; many were outright false.
It is impossible for me, of course, to place myself retrospectively inside the heads of those who were making the decisions; it is almost certainly the case that none of them had perfect knowledge, and it is more than possible that none of them knew as much as we know now. But if based only on what other people were able, if not to know for certain but could surmise with a reasonable degree of confidence, that some of them, some of the time, almost had to know they were peddling falsehoods, or at the very least, exaggerations.
Unfortunately, this knowledge doesn’t give us a clear set of guidelines for extricating this country from what is becoming an increasingly messy situation in Iraq. The ill-informed (let’s be charitable) geniuses who got us into this mess have created a situation where one of the consequences of withdrawal, at least for the short term, will be a conviction in certain terrorist or extremist circles that the United States does not have staying power, that it will “cut and run” when the going gets tough.
CHANGE THE THINKING FIRST
As long as the general philosophy of the United States in foreign affairs is a default position that views intervention into the affairs of other countries that seem potentially dangerous, unstable, of capable of posing a real threat somewhere down the road – subject to circumstances, a rough-and-ready calculation of the likelihood of success and perhaps a quick acknowledgment of whether they have resources that are deemed valuable to the government/corporate axis that considers itself the rightful arbiter of such decisions – the U.S. will find itself in positions where all the options appear unattractive. The policy will still be run by human beings, after all, and being like all of us, imperfect creatures who almost always have imperfect information when they have to make decisions, they will inevitably make miscalculations about the ultimate consequences of their actions.
A regime of relative peace and freedom, then, can come only when our philosophy of foreign affairs in the post-Cold War world changes to one less aggressive and arrogant – but getting there will not be easy. We can look forward to many years of making the case responsibly and relentlessly, and it is far from certain that we will succeed to the point of influencing policy noticeably.
PRUDENT SKEPTICISM
The minimum any citizen should take from the experience of the last couple of years, however, is that it is prudent to be skeptical of statements by government officials, hangers-on, pundits and think tankers who are obviously trying to gin up support for war or military action. It might not be certain that everything they say to justify their policy preference is a lie, but it is certain that some claims will be exaggerated, many to the point of mischaracterizing conditions and circumstances rather thoroughly.
It is not necessary, in order to be prudently skeptical, to decide whether the impulse to involve the country in imperialist adventures is driven by corporate greed, an overweening desire for power over others, an essentially humanitarian if often naïve desire to help other peoples and countries experiencing oppression, famine or other misfortune, or an overarching political philosophy that sees American hegemony as necessary and mostly beneficial. I’m inclined to think all are involved, to varying degrees. But whatever particular motivations (or delusions) drive advocates of empire, they will be tempted to exaggerate both the threats and the opportunities facing the United States.
In many cases this will not be the result of a fully conscious drive for power or a deliberate desire to deceive. We all see the world, at least to some degree, through the prism of our beliefs, experiences and prejudices (using the word more descriptively than pejoratively). If you believe the world is full of people who wish the United States and the ideal of freedom harm (which to some degree it certainly is), just waiting to spring into action and do us damage, then threats that appear minor or insignificant (or even an opportunity to replace conflict with cooperation or negotiation) to a person with a different set of beliefs or fund of knowledge will loom larger and seem to demand preemptive action.
As has been the case through most of history, opinions about the proper course of action in a given set of circumstances will bring at least intellectual conflict in which many or most people on several sides will be thoroughly well-meaning and quite sincerely convinced that their preference is the only sensible option. It may be tempting (and in some cases will be justifiable) to demonize those with whom we disagree, but demonization (beyond accurate description) is not the most reputable way to argue, and those who are genuinely right have little or no need to resort to it (even though there’s plenty of reason, including the American peoples’ general approval of a war against this particular third-rate dictator, to believe it is often quite effective in the short run).
KAY’S COMMENTS
David Kay’s early comments on his resignation came in an interview with Reuters, in which “he said he thought that Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but that the subsequent combination of U.N. inspections and Iraq’s own decisions ‘got rid of them,'” as Richard Stevenson of the New York Times wrote. The story goes on, “Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country, Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped interview made public by Reuters, ‘That is correct.'”
In later interviews, Kay came close to endorsing the theory/possibility that some of Saddam’s underlings may have lied to him, giving the dictator the impression that various weapons programs were more advanced than they really were, perhaps telling him certain weapons were in arsenals or stockpiles when they were in fact non-existent. Saddam wouldn’t be the first leader to be lied to by underlings, more than likely out of fear – although he had a history of dealing rather harshly (and mortally) with those who he thought betrayed him, so fear would have to have cut both ways.
It may also have been (assuming there’s anything to this theory, of course) that underlings thought they knew better, that they believed Saddam’s obsession (as some might see it) with nasty weapons was unnecessary and a waste of money that could better be spent on necessities, like a new villa and more expensive liquor or hookers. In a way that mightn’t even have been entirely irrational; the main value of weapons, from Saddam’s perspective (assuming he wasn’t planning to invade Saudi Arabia soon or resume the war with Iran) was the fear an uncertainty even rumors about his possessing them would induce in neighbors he might try to influence or coerce.
In a strange way, a widespread perception that a leader not only has weapons but is a little crazy – just crazy enough that he might use them – can be an advantage to a leader seeking to exert power in ways just short of outright war. A number of recent books and articles celebrating how Ronald Reagan won the cold war have made this very point, arguing that the Soviets had at least some concern that the popular caricature of Reagan as a commie-obsessed warmonger with an itchy finger on the nuclear trigger might just contain significant elements of truth, so they backed off in some circumstances where they might have pushed toward confrontation with an American leader they believed was more rational and more thoroughly sane.
Whether this theory has validity or not, as Stevenson put it, “Kay’s statements undermined one of the primary justifications set out by President Bush for the war with Iraq. Bush and other top administration officials repeatedly cited Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons as a threat to the United States, and the lack of evidence so far that Saddam Hussein actually had large caches of weapons has fueled criticism that Bush exaggerated the peril from Iraq.” Nicely understated.
KAY’S HISTORY
Now we will almost certainly continue to hear, from some of the more enthusiastic war-whooping pundits, at least, that even these comments upon quitting still don’t rule out the possibility that caches of weapons (maybe in Syria, as they all wanted to hope a few months ago?) may yet be found. In my own work as a journalist, I generally assume, though there are exceptions, that a government official who has left his post or retired from the service is more likely to be telling the truth than one who is still on the payroll and still personally effected by the phenomenon that there is a preferred “line” or official story extant about a given situation. But there are those who believe those still in official positions are more reliable, although it goes against the vast preponderance of actual experience.
The first thing to note – or to say to such people if you’re in a position to do so – is that of all the people in the government, David Kay was the one person most likely to be acquainted and conversant with all the facts that might have a bearing on the question of whether Saddam really did have WMDs prior to the invasion. No doubt there were technical people on his team who knew more than he did about how to trace or identify, for example, a certain strain of anthrax or to read seismic surveys that might hint at underground caches. That’s the nature of such organizations. But he would have had access to the widest range of relevant information, including knowledgeable specialists working under him and eager to succeed in the quest, of anybody. Theoretically some higher-ups might have had access to more information, but it is unlikely they would have been as familiar with the raw material bearing on the questions as Kay was.
Second is that until very recently, Kay has held out the possibility that significant quantities of weapons might be found, and not only because it is virtually impossible to prove the negative in this situation beyond a reasonable doubt. His report last October said he and the team he headed “have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone.” In a number of media appearances and interviews last fall Kay warned (and even criticized) some war critics who had wanted to take his report as final evidence that Saddam really didn’t have those elusive WMDs. In such appearances he would emphasize the part of the report that spoke evidence of “dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002.”
Bottom line: David Kay had every reason to want to succeed in the quest for Iraqi weapons, and fairly certainly wanted to succeed. Even when his earlier information, though incomplete, led in the direction of “there simply are no weapons,” he resisted that conclusion and stressed the incompleteness of the information. The more information he (and his team) has assembled, however, the more difficult it has become to conclude anything other than that those weapons bore a serious resemblance to phantoms. So he’s taken the honorable course and quit the job and spoken out.
David Kay has also said it is time to reform the CIA, which apparently failed to assemble information reliable enough to guide a war-or-peace decision process. One could argue, of course, was that the CIA failed, despite strenuous efforts, to prevent various bureaucratic sappers from “stovepiping” unprocessed, unvetted and, as it turned out, unreliable information straight to the White House, and getting a White House already inclined to believe what it wanted to believe to accept the unreliable stuff in preference to the more thoroughly vetted but more boring information that didn’t make the case the war-whoopers wanted to make.
If that’s so, of course, reform in the way the White House processes information is more important than reform at the CIA, although I have little doubt the CIA could do with a little housecleaning. But it’s hard to reform the White House without changing its occupant – and even then there will be certain institutional tendencies that resist change even though presidents might seek it actively.
Ordinary citizens, aside from writing to congresscritters and penning letters to the editor, are likely to have only a slight influence over such things as reforms in how information is gathered and processed. What they should take from all this, however, is a determination to be more actively skeptical the next time there’s a reasonably serious call for war. Given the mess in Iraq and the fact that this is an election year, we might not hear too many such calls this year, but if Bush is reelected such calls are certainly possible again, if the only thing the Bushies have learned is that the American people are susceptible to believing almost anything when the war juices are stirred.
