Posted on 06/22/2003 2:50:51 PM PDT by AntiGuv
WASHINGTON - The question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has left a cloud over the Bush administration's credibility that won't be removed until Americans know whether the administration was straightforward with them, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday.
At the same time, the committee's chairman and its senior Democrat said it is too early to say whether prewar weapons intelligence was manipulated or hyped before the U.S.-led invasion in March, as some Democrats have suggested.
The committee began last week an inquiry into the administration's use of intelligence to justify the invasion, specifically assertions that President Saddam Hussein had thriving programs to develop chemical and biological weapons and had tried to obtain material for nuclear arms.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said the administration is cooperating with the committee hearings, and he expects the cooperation to continue.
"This is a cloud hanging over their credibility, their word," said Hagel. "They need to get that dealt with, taken care of, removed."
Hagel, who spoke on ABC's "This Week" program, said: "The world — certainly Americans — must have confidence in this administration. ... And to resolve this issue is certainly in the interests of this administration."
The Intelligence Committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, said he had seen no evidence in the hearings' early going of any manipulation or other questionable administration tactics, but his panel hopes to answer that question once and for all.
"That's why we have all of the voluminous material from the ceiling to the floor from the CIA," the Kansas Republican said.
The panel's top Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said he does not know whether intelligence may have been exaggerated to bolster the administration's case for going to war, but he added that he has misgivings over the possibility.
Rockefeller pointed to claims that Iraq sought uranium from Africa, which were later determined to be based on forged documents that came to the CIA through Italian and British agencies. President Bush mentioned the purported Niger-Iraq connection in his State of the Union address, apparently after the forgery had been discovered.
For now, Rockefeller said, "I am not going to conclude from that that the president was deliberately misleading."
Rockefeller and Roberts both appeared on "Fox News Sunday."
Their committee held one secret session last week. Roberts said three more hearings are planned, and they probably will be followed by an open hearing, which Democrats have demanded.
"At the end of it, doubtlessly, we will have a public hearing. We'll make a public report and probably a classified report," Roberts said.
The House Intelligence Committee is conducting a similar review on prewar weapons assessments, as is the Senate Armed Services Committee.
More than two months after the fall of Baghdad, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, which has raised questions about the Bush administration's primary justification for invading.
Until recently, Bush and his aides had maintained prohibited weapons would be found. In his radio address Saturday, Bush made no such promise and said instead that documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned "in the regime's final days."
What is it with this guy, anyway?
He and Lugar, always shooting off their mouths.
You know what I think it is? They are jealous as hell of Bush. Hegel's been slugging around in local and Senate politics for years. Bush comes out of nowhere and gets elected President, while Chuckie's still laboring in anonymity,except for his statements, which are guaranteed to get him on the talk shows.
Plain old jealousy.
I love Nebraska but Chuck is an idiot. When it was popular, he was being photgraphed all over the place with Dubya and supporting the war effort. He and McCain are sisters, aren't they?
I don't really lump Hagel in with Lugar, whom I disagree with on occasion but nevertheless respect.
Hagel may be motivated by jealousy, as you say, or he may have a sort of maverick or knight on a white horse complex -- a windmill tilter. Usually such traits are more suited to Demos, so I think it would be an interesting project to really explore the roots of his affiliation with the Republican Party. Interesting, that is, if I gave a damn about the guy, which I don't.
LOL!! That sums up my feelings as well.
Hmmm. Make that independent stinker.
Better yet, make that a jerk face stinker.
Perhaps freepers are intelligent enough to recognize disingenuous questions???
I believe quite strongly that they will be found.
Saddam got unmistakable signals before the official start of the war that the Americans were coming in. Just yesterday it was revealed by Gen. Franks that fiber optic cable control centers which had been left untouched in all the time since the end of Gulf War I and which controlled cables Saddam and his leadership team used for secure communication, were taken out in secret operations by F-18 pilots weeks before ground troops went in. That should have been a hint to Saddam that this time was different.
My point is that Saddam had ample time during the weeks of brinksmanship to read the tea leaves and realize that George Bush was dead serious and that American troops were coming in. No doubt once he knew his regime was toast, he turned his mind to figuring out how best to frustrate and embarrass us after the war. The #1 way, quite obviously, would be to destroy as much illegal weaponry as he could so that it looked like he never had the stuff in the first place. Most of it was probably destroyed in January or February.
Does this mean he got it all? No. We will find some of it. And while we may not find the bulk of what he destroyed just prior to the war, we will find the people who did the destroying. In dribs and drabs, as they realize it's in their self-interest to do so (which may not be completely clear to them yet), the weapons destroyers will help us put the pieces together and present to the world an irrefutable case that Saddam Hussein was in possession of illegal stockpiles of WMDs until as late as January 2003, and that the case against Saddam which Bush presented to the world was largely accurate.
And who knows, maybe one of these people will be able to tell us the location of an actual stockpile, or its remnants, from which good forensic evidence can be obtained.
It's still much too early to say we're never going to find this stuff.
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