Fred Kaplan admits Bush lied, but as he sees it, believed Iraq possessed WMD so “fixed” intelligence for that reason.
Does Kaplan provide any evidence that Bush had compelling reason to believe this? No, apparently, merely believing something despite the best intelligence is excusable, even commendable. After all, this was a guilty man who was framed. Kaplan’s case that Bush in fact believed this rests on faith, and he distorts the evidence to make it.
In a personal message to Blair, dated March 22, 2002, political director Peter Ricketts writes that, although Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs “have not, as far as we know, been stepped up,” they “are extremely worrying.” What has changed, he emphasizes, “is not so much the pace of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programmes but our tolerance of them post-11 September.”
The implicit point of these passages is this: These top officials genuinely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction—and that they constituted a threat. They believed that the international community had to be sold on the matter. But not all sales pitches are consciously deceptive. The salesmen in this case turned out to be wrong; their goods were bunk. But they seemed to believe in their product at the time.
Well, no, at least Ricketts, based upon “the best survey”, genuinely believed Saddam still had programmes, not WMD, and they were not threatening enough to justify regime change. For that reason he pushed the UN route hoping Saddam would resist. He also seems to be encouraging Blair to pass along the opinion that efforts to tie Iraq to al Qaeda were “frankly unconvincing”, as Think Progress emphasises, and Jack Straw concurred.
The goal of the Iraq: Options Paper is clear. It begins with the information that “A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers advice, none currently exists” and offers best recommendations for distorting the intelligence to make a case.
One of the most telling titbits was Manning‘s point to Condoleezza Rice that Blair “would not budge” in his support for regime change but that he had to “manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different from anything in the United States”.
Kaplan requires no such management.
Updated @ 2016 6/16/05:
Must-read post.