[ OUR OPINION ]
Mistakes cast cloud
over military actionON the heels of a Senate committee report concluding that the reasons for U.S. military action in Iraq were based on flawed intelligence, a major British report has come to the same conclusion. Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone a step further than President Bush in acknowledging the errors and taking responsibility. Both seem to be saying that the end result -- the capture of brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- vindicates the erroneous reasons for going to war.
THE ISSUE
A British report found extensive failures in intelligence gathering on weapons of mass destruction and use of that intelligence to justify military action.
The retrospect of the two leaders sets dangerous standards for justification to send troops into foreign lands in the future. Instead of responding to imminent danger, Blair and Bush say the action was necessary to prevent an avowed enemy from reaching that danger point. Their credibility has been seriously damaged by those newly tailored assertions in place of earlier reasons they gave for going to war.
Both men originally said it was necessary to invade Iraq because Saddam had built stocks of chemical or biological weapons and that Iraq had cooperated with the al-Qaida terrorist organization, which attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001. The Senate Intelligence Committee, unanimously, and then a five-person British panel headed by former cabinet secretary Robin Butler concluded that intelligence leading to those estimations was flawed.
"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons, I believe we were right to go into Iraq," Bush said in response to the Senate report. "America is safer today because we did. We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them."
Blair was more conciliatory, accepting that "it seems increasingly clear that at the time of the invasion, Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy." A dossier published by Blair's government in September 2002, asserted no less than four times that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order.
"I accept full responsibility for the way the issue was presented and therefore any errors made," Blair said.
Bush has issued no comparable declaration, saying of the assumed existence of Iraqi stockpiles of weapons, "I thought so. The Congress thought so. The U.N. thought so." The Star-Bulletin thought so, too, persuaded by the Bush administration's claimed intelligence and Secretary of State Colin Powell's persuasive presentation before the U.N. Security Council of what he assured was sound intelligence .
"I'll tell you what we do know," Bush said in a campaign stop in Pennsylvania. "Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons." If that had been the stated reason for invading Iraq, Congress may not have authorized such action.
But it did, and the United States would be irresponsible to now withdraw its troops on the basis that they should not have been sent into Iraq in the first place. American military assistance is needed to achieve the level of stability that would allow such a withdrawal without creating a civil war of horrific proportions.
