Hersh Perpetuates Lie
Seymour Hersh’s latest New Yorker article argues that the Bush administration rejected traditional intelligence-vetting methods. The result being that the President went to war in Iraq on bad information. I’d be more sympathetic to the argument if Hersh didn’t rely so much on quotes from anonymous sources. If these people want to seriously accuse the administration they should have the guts to be in the open about it.
What I want to mention is this sentence near the end of Hersh’s piece (emphasis mine):
[Iraq Survey Group head, David] Kay was widely seen as having made the best case possible for President Bush’s prewar claims of an imminent W.M.D. threat.
Hersh continues the lie that we went to war because Iraq was an imminent threat. President Bush never said that. In fact, what Bush said in the State of the Union speech was we couldn’t wait until Saddam’s threat was imminent.
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Hersh is being dishonest by not providing any quotes where Bush or any officials contradict this.
“The Stovepipe“
It’ s a revealing piece, not so much for Hersh’s exoteric message, but for what’s between the lines. Hersh apparently only talked to CIA people opposed to this President’s foreign policy. Think about the implications of that , and it becomes apparent why Secretary Rumsfeld thought a competitive analysis of intelligence important enough to install Steve Cambone in a new office devoted to the same.
But that’s not enough. CIA needs serious reform, and I don’t know that anyone in the Administration outside of DoD is all that interested.