[ OUR OPINION ]
Pre-emptive strike
doctrine needs
to be clarifiedAMERICA'S chief of intelligence has said that analysts never claimed to the Bush administration that Iraq posed an "imminent threat," a characterization that many regarded as the premise for U.S. military action in Iraq. The White House response that the president had never described Iraq specifically as an imminent threat before going to war raises questions about U.S. foreign policy and compliance with international law.
THE ISSUE
U.S. intelligence chief George Tenet has said his analysts never claimed Iraq posed an "imminent threat."
The remarks by intelligence director George J. Tenet provide further support for the position that the Bush administration did not deliberately deceive the nation about the Iraqi threat. Nor should intelligence failures diminish the good that has come from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, especially the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the good that may ensue.
As President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell sought United Nations action against Iraq in September 2002, the White House issued its National Security Strategy addressing the situation. The document pointed to international law allowing the use of pre-emptive strikes for nations to "defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack."
"Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of pre-emption on the existence of an imminent threat -- most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies and air forces preparing for attack," the document added. "We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries." Included in those adversaries were "rogue states and terrorists" who "rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction."
This newspaper supported the Bush doctrine as it was being discussed two months earlier, that a pre-emptive strike is justified when there is a clear and present danger to the United States -- not a distant threat but one that must be here and now, one that is imminent.
When the U.S. military launched its attack on Iraq six months later, most Americans reasonably concluded that the regime of Saddam Hussein posed such a threat, that the administration had adapted the concept of "imminent threat," as the National Security Strategy said it must. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." In a radio address later that month, Bush called the Iraqi regime an "urgent threat to America."
A reporter asked last May if the United States had gone to war because the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq was believed to possess "were a direct and imminent threat to the United States. Isn't that true?" Then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded, "Absolutely."
Former U.S. weapons inspector David A. Kay told Congress last month that the weapons of mass destruction that the administration cited in describing Hussein as such a threat probably did not exist at the time of the American-led invasion of Iraq. U.S. intelligence about the weapons was "wrong," he said.
Tenet said in a speech yesterday that his agents had concluded that Iraq possessed some weapons or "was trying to develop them." The analysts differed on several aspects and those differences were "spelled out" in reports to the White House, he said.
"They never said there was an imminent threat," Tenet said. "Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policy makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted last week that President Bush never used the words "imminent threat" to describe the Hussein regime. He said Bush instead saw a "grave and growing" threat.
If the president indeed ordered the attack on Iraq after concluding that Hussein posed less than an imminent threat, less than clear and present danger, he should explain the policy and how the U.S. attack did not violate it. Abuse of the doctrine allowing pre-emptive strikes when faced with an imminent threat is more than a legal technicality.
