More insiders argue wisdom of war on Iraq
By Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott
Knight Ridder News Service
October 8, 2002

While President Bush marshals support for invading Iraq, a growing number of
military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own
government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's
double-time march toward war.
 

These officials contend that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence
of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses - including distorting
his links to the al Qaeda terrorist network - have overstated the amount of
international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential
repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.
 

They say that the administration squelches dissenting views and that
intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports
supporting the White House's arguments that Saddam poses such an immediate
threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.
 

"Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very
strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one
official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
 

A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews with Knight Ridder.
No one who was interviewed disagreed.
 

They cited recent suggestions by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that Saddam and Osama bin Laden's
al Qaeda network are working together.
 

Rumsfeld said Sept. 26 that the U.S. government has "bulletproof"
confirmation of links between Iraq and al Qaeda members, including "solid
evidence" that members of the terrorist network maintain a presence in Iraq.
 

The facts are much less conclusive.  Officials said Rumsfeld's statement was
based in part on intercepted telephone calls, in which an al Qaeda member who
apparently was passing through Baghdad was overheard calling friends or
relatives, intelligence officials said.  The intercepts provide no evidence
that the al Qaeda member was working with the Iraqi regime or that he was
working on a terrorist operation while he was in Iraq, they said.
 

In a Monday night speech, President Bush said that a senior al Qaeda leader
received medical treatment in Baghdad this year - implying larger cooperation
- but he offered no evidence of complicity in any plot between the terrorist
and Saddam's regime.
 

Rumsfeld also suggested that the Iraqi regime has offered safe haven to bin
Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
 

While technically true, that too is misleading.  Intelligence reports said
that the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, a long-time Iraqi intelligence officer,
made the offer during a visit to Afghanistan in late 1998, after the United
States attacked al Qaeda training camps with cruise missiles to retaliate for
the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  But officials said
the same intelligence reports said that bin Laden rejected the offer because
he didn't want Saddam to control his group.
 

In fact, the officials said, there is no ironclad evidence that the Iraqi
regime and the terrorist network are working together, or that Saddam has
ever contemplated giving chemical or biological weapons to al Qaeda, with
whom he has deep ideological differences.
 

None of the dissenting officials, who work in a number of different agencies,
would agree to speak publicly, out of fear of retribution.  But many of them
have long experience in the Middle East and South Asia, and all spoke in
similar terms about their unease with the way that U.S. political leaders are
dealing with Iraq.
 

All agree that Saddam is a threat who eventually must be dealt with, and none
flatly opposes military action.  But, they say, the U.S. government has no
dramatic new knowledge about the Iraqi leader that justifies Bush's urgent
call to arms.
 

"I've seen nothing that's compelling," said one military officer who has
access to intelligence reports.  Some lawmakers have voiced similar concerns
after receiving CIA briefings.
 

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, said some information he had seen did not
support Bush's portrayal of the Iraqi threat.  "It's troubling to have
classified information that contradicts statements made by the
administration," Durbin said.  "There's more they should share with the
public."
 

In his Monday night speech, Bush emphasized that if Saddam gained control of
radioactive material no bigger than a softball," he could build a nuclear
weapon potent enough to intimidate his region, blackmail the world and
covertly arm terrorists.  But a senior administration intelligence official
notes that Saddam has sought such highly enriched uranium for many years
without success, and there is no evidence that he has it now.
 

Moreover, the senior official said, Saddam has no way to deliver a nuclear
weapon against a U.S. target.  "Give them a nuclear weapon, and you have the
problem of delivery.  Give them delivery, even clandestine, and you have a
problem of plausible denial.  Does anyone think that a nuclear weapon
detonating in a Ryder truck or tramp freighter would not automatically
trigger a response that would include Iraq, Iran, North Korea?" the
intelligence official asked.
 

Several administration and intelligence officials defended CIA Director
George Tenet, saying that Tenet is not pressuring his analysts, but is
quietly working to include dissenting opinions in intelligence estimates and
congressional briefings.
 

In one case, a senior administration official said, Tenet made sure that a
State Department official told Congress that the Energy and State departments
disagreed with an intelligence assessment that said hundreds of aluminum
tubes Iraq tried to purchase were intended for Baghdad's secret
nuclear-weapons program.  Analysts in both departments concluded that the
Iraqis probably wanted the tubes to make conventional artillery pieces.
 

Other examples of questionable statements include:
 

* Vice President Dick Cheney said in late August that Iraq might have nuclear
weapons "fairly soon."
 

But a CIA report released Friday said it could take Iraq until the last half
of the decade to produce a nuclear weapon, unless it could acquire bomb-grade
uranium or plutonium on the black market.
 

* Also in August, Rumsfeld suggested that al Qaeda operatives fleeing
Afghanistan were taking refuge in Iraq with Saddam's assistance.  "In a
vicious, repressive dictatorship that exercises near-total control over its
population, it's very hard to imagine that the government is not aware of
what's taking place in the country," he said.
 

Rumsfeld apparently was referring to about 150 members of the militant
Islamic group Ansar al Islam ("Supporters of Islam") who have taken refuge in
Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.  However, one of America's would-be Kurdish
allies controls that part of the country, not Saddam.
 

Current and former military officers also question the view sometimes
expressed by Cheney, Rumsfeld and their civilian advisers in and out of the
U.S. government that an American-led campaign against the Iraqi military
would be a walkover.
 

"It is an article of faith among those with no military experience that the
Iraqi military is low-hanging fruit," said one intelligence officer.