In a recent appearance before the US Senate, arms-hunter David Kay asserted that it was highly unlikely that his Iraq Survey Group would find large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Hand-picked by the Bush administration for his tough-minded approach to inspections and his unshakable belief in the existence of banned substances and the means of producing them, Dr. Kay’s frank admission sent shock waves from Washington to London.

Whatever salutary effects the war had on Iraq’s democratic future, the issue of how the war was sold to public opinion must be re-visited. The question before us is whether the lead nations lied, or made an error in judgement – one that only became clear once they were in control of Iraq and free to inspect as they pleased.

Did the US and UK governments deliberately twist the facts? Did they subconsciously do so? Were they acting on the distillation of the best information the intelligence agencies could provide? If the latter, why were America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 (plus the UN and practically all allied intelligence services) so wrong in their assessments? Were they influenced by their political masters or were they themselves duped by Iraq? How can we possibly verify which of the above (or combination of the above) is true? Will the public inquiries reluctantly convened by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair suffice, given that they will release their findings a year from now?

Everyone has his or her preferred explanation for the debacle. Supporters and detractors are locked in a vicious cycle of post facto justification and vindication. The former cite Iraqi non-compliance and maintain that the decision to go to war was based on the best information available. The latter say that the US was bent on war - that it dealt in supposition from the very beginning. Has either side been proven correct? In the Byzantine world of government bureaucracies and the shadow world of intelligence gathering, the truth is not easily discerned.

The task of assigning accountability is made even more difficult by remarks that went largely unreported by the mass media. In his Senate testimony, Dr. Kay did not rule out the possibility that smaller stocks of WMD may yet be uncovered. He suggested that efforts to hide or destroy proscribed materials could have continued right up until the outbreak of the war, and that efforts to produce the toxin ricin had continued “right up to the end”. The evidence suggested a network  “small covert, capabilities that could be activated quickly” to roll out chemical or biological agents.

Is this sufficient to validate Blair’s claim of an imminent threat? Is it enough to vindicate Bush’s allegation of Iraqi non-compliance? Does even a residual capability to produce exotic arms constitute a clear and present danger to international security? All seem to agree that the combination of UN inspections and Anglo-US air strikes up to 1998 neutralized Iraq’s WMD programs to a far greater degree than Washington had thought. But was this a permanent setback for Saddam or a temporary one?

A clue to his intentions may be found in the deserts outside Baghdad. Excavations have revealed Iraqi fighter aircraft were buried shortly before the war began, evidently with the hope that they would remain undetected until the immediate threat had passed. The scaling back and dispersal of conventional and unconventional weapons would allow military capabilities to be re-constituted at a later date.

Then there is the matter of Iraq’s credibility gap which contributed to the overall perception - widely shared - that Saddam would never disarm fully or voluntarily. In an interview with The Times, Sinan Rasim Said, head of the al-Qaqa munitions complex, said: “We told many lies in the past, we made huge mistakes and we did have weapons of mass destruction programmes. But by the beginning of 2003 there was nothing left at al-Qaqa. Our problem was that we had been so secretive and deceitful in the past that nobody was prepared to believe us in the run-up to the war.”

Finally, there is the nature of pre-war Iraqi society, where graft and corruption flourished. Accounts from Iraqi scientists paint a picture of Saddam doling out money for low-level research programs, unaware that the money was being salted away in overseas bank accounts. Clearly, Iraq’s political elite was adept at practising both deception and self-deception.

But this does not let the US/UK governments and their spooks off the hook. Intelligence – an inexact science at the best of times - is not only supposed to see through the adversary’s obfuscation. It is also supposed to subject one’s own assumptions to rigorous testing. This was virtually impossible after 1998, following the departure of the UN Special Commission. Prior to that, information supplied by Iraqi defectors could at least be vetted by UNSCOM inspectors.

There is no escaping that fact that the intelligence in which Messrs Bush and Blair placed so much faith was simply inaccurate. Qualifiers and caveats seem to have been downplayed by both leaders. Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN, which contained seemingly authoritative information on mobile bio-labs, looks rather ridiculous today. Clearly there was suspicious activity, but were those trucks and trailers really what the Secretary of State claimed them to be? The scepticism of most Security Council members looks healthier than ever.

Was Mr. Powell a victim of CIA misinterpretation and Oval Office group-think? Possibly. In Ron Suskind’s recent book, The Price of Loyalty, former US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill paints a picture of an administration hell-bent on ousting Saddam. Vice-President Dick Cheney has been one of the earliest and most outspoken supporters of regime change. He has only recently begun to acknowledge the dearth of WMDs - a testament to the administration’s ideological commitment what increasingly seems to be a discretionary war.

The sketchy leader of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, virtually admitted that the intelligence his group had passed on to Washington about mobile biological laboratories had been falsified. Unrepentant, Mr. Chalabi boldly declared that the ends justified the means. “As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been entirely successful,” he told Britain’s Daily Telegraph. “Our objective has been achieved.”

No word from the White House on whether its trust in the intrepid Mr. Chalabi (now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council) was misplaced. Clearly it was. After two polygraph tests, the source of the bio-lab story was considered unreliable by his interrogators. Trouble is that intelligence analysts overlooked this warning, and the bio-lab story became firmly entrenched in their analysis of Saddam’s arsenal. Deception by interested third party had worked its magic.

But was it the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, or just a contributing factor to a pre-conceived war plan? One can conclude with near certainty that the White House and Downing Street had drawn a mental picture of the situation – one not entirely based on speculation, given the UN’s experience in dealing with a recalcitrant regime, but one nevertheless lacking some of the hard evidence necessary to bring the rest of the Security Council onside. The willingness to repeatedly level charges which were not verifiable can only be explained by a sophisticated campaign of deception by the adversary, or by self-delusion.

Dr. Kay’s revelations will be inconsequential to the two poles in the debate. Supporters of the war will continue to support it. Opponents will oppose it even if Iraq was today hemorrhaging WMDs. The dialogue of the deaf will continue. Those who should feel puzzled or betrayed are the agnostics who, mindful of Iraq’s past behaviour, were prepared to give America the benefit of the doubt. But that courtesy was contingent on US/UK claims being vindicated.

This has not been the case. The implications of this are twofold: in the short term, the ‘silent majority’ will return at election time and wreak havoc on the incumbents. In the medium to long term, the mere citing of ‘our best intelligence’ will not be enough to convince public opinion of the need to act decisively to counter a threat. As the international community grapples with the very real possibility of more surprise acts of super-terrorism, a lack of faith in the competence of the world’s best-equipped intelligence services does not bode well.

For twelve years the US and Iraq sized each other up and stared each other down. In the end they left themselves and each other with no way out. UN arms inspectors could probably have verified the non-existence of Saddam’s arms, had he let them get on with it. President Bush heaped on the pressure to a point where keeping it in place became too politically costly.

Did Bush and Saddam mislead each other and simultaneously mislead themselves? Were their underlings at fault for feeding them incomplete or false information? Did they err in practice and intent? All or some of the above?  Does it even matter, now that Saddam’s butchery has ended and Iraq is lurching toward democracy?

Yes, it does. The war was conceived as a counter-measure to an allegedly thriving exotic weapons program. Among the results is the biggest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbour. This cannot be passed off lightly. The buck cannot be passed indefinitely. It must stop at the very top.

Saddam was held to account for his misdeeds and obfuscations. There must now be some sort of reckoning for the Bush and Blair governments. We should not have to wait until 2005.

David Rudd is the President and Executive Director of the CISS.

Copyright CISS 2004

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