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- Author: James P. Pfiffner x
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This chapter examines several sets of statements by President George Bush and his administration. The first statement was about the implication that there was a link between Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Second was about Iraq's nuclear weapons capacity; and third was about Saddam's chemical and biological weapons and his ability to deliver them. The administration's claims about Iraq's nuclear capacity were based on dubious evidence that was presented in a misleading manner. Although Iraq purchased most of its chemical and biological weapons materials from Europe and a few other regions, significant materials came from the United States in the 1980s. The chapter examines the possibility that the intelligence process was politicized. The chapter concludes that from publicly available evidence, the president misled the country in implying that there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11.
This chapter begins with an account of the run-up to the war in Iraq. It presents a critique of the national security decisionmaking process that led up to the war. President George H. W. Bush was aware of disagreements with his seeming intention to go to war, but most of these came from outside the administration. The chapter explains the role of intelligence and how it was used before the war. The administration was so convinced that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States that it attempted to use the intelligence process to bolster its case for war. Intelligence may also have been politicized by pressure placed upon intelligence analysts to arrive at the conclusions favored by political levels of the Bush administration. The chapter also presents some lessons that might be learned about presidential decision making about going to war.
This book examines the intellectual frameworks within which the case for war in Iraq has developed in the US and the UK. It analyzes the neoconservative roots of the decision to go to war. The book also analyzes the humanitarian intervention rationale that was developed in the context of the Kosovo campaign, Tony Blair's presentation of it, and the case of Iraq. It looks at the parallel processes through which the George Bush administration and Blair government constructed their cases for war, analyzing similarities and divergences in approach. The book considers the loci of the intelligence failure over Iraq, the lessons for the intelligence communities, and the degree to which the decision to go to war in Iraq represented a policy rather than an intelligence failure. It then complements the analyses of US prewar intelligence failures by analysing what post-war inquiries have revealed about the nature of the failure in the UK case. The book discusses the relationship between intelligence and policymaking. It looks at how US Congress dealt with intelligence before the war. The book also examines how the Bush administration tried to manage public opinion in support of its war policies. It then looks at the decisionmaking process of the Bush administration in the year before the war in Iraq. Finally, the book also provides excerpts from a number of speeches and documents which are key to understanding the nature of national security decisionmaking and intelligence failure.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the intellectual frameworks within which the case for war in Iraq was developed in the US and UK. It analyzes the neoconservative roots of the decision to go to war and traces the evolution of neoconservative thinking on foreign and security policy issues, highlighting the complexity of, and potential contradictions within, neoconservative thought. The book looks at the parallel processes through which President George H. W. Bush's administration and Tony Blair's government constructed their cases for war, analyzing similarities and divergences in the approach. It examines how the Bush administration tried to manage public opinion in support of its war policies. The book also looks at the decisionmaking process of the Bush administration in the year before the war in Iraq.