The lies about faulty Iraqi intelligence

This debate over prewar intelligence about Saddam's WMD is pointless--the decision to undertake regime change was based not on any specific piece of intelligence but on Saddam's track record.

And for good reason: Intelligence is backward-looking--it tells you what has already occured, but it is not a good prognosticator.

Both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in the late nineties that caught the CIA off guard--but even though these were widely condemned and treated to sanctions, we knew that a nuclear war between these two nations was unlikely.

The Clinton administration was similarly stunned when North Korea brazenly test fired a nuclear-capable missile over Japan. This happened after we had secured the North Korean dictator's signature on the Agreed Framework; after we, along with Japan and South Korea, had started bribing Pyongyang with billions of dollars in aid.

We didn't fear the worst because we knew then as we do now that we can count on China and Russia to rein in the North.

At the end of the day, we went into Iraq not on a hunch that Saddam could not be trusted, but on a pretty good understanding--you could call it "intelligence"--that if allowed to get out of the box, he would have quickly rearmed (thanks to his reliable weapons suppliers Russia, France, and China), resumed WMD production and invaded Kuwait (in his first day in court recently, Saddam insisted Kuwait belonged to Iraq).

Putting Saddam in that box wasn't an easy or bloodless process, it should be recalled. Containment was achieved by crudely stripping Iraq off its sovereignty--slicing up Iraqi territory into No Fly Zones, blunting Saddam's ability to channel billions in oil revenue toward million-man armies and weapons programs--we contained him by imposing the most inhumane form of collective punishment ever slapped on a nation in modern times.

Shortly after American troops romped into Baghdad, in May 2003, Bush spearheaded a UN resolution that requested a lifting of the sanctions: "The regime that the sanctions were directed against no longer rules Iraq. And no country in good conscience can support using sanctions to hold back the hopes of the Iraqi people," he noted.

Should sanctions have been lifted with Saddam in power?

In his January 2004 testimony, David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, the organization tasked with putting together a complete picture of Iraq's WMD program, concluded that it was simply more prudent to remove the Iraqi dictator: Saddam and his sons were impatiently awaiting a lifting of the sanctions in order to resume WMD production, Kay reported.

A few weeks ago, Russia's Putin revealed that according to his intelligence sources, Saddam was planning attacks on American soil.

In the end, despite the faulty prewar intelligence, the operation achieved its goals--it preemptively removed a dictator that represented a real danger. Bush's leadership and the sacrifice of American-led coalition troops successfully liberated Iraq from the dual evil regimes of Saddam Hussein and UN sanctions--brought (not restored) that nation a new, genuine sovereignty--and set it on a historic course.