Did John McCain tell the truth about WMD intelligence in the leadup to the war? During a Washington Post live discussion, I asked Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Priest, and here's what she had to say:
Chicago: McCain was quoted in Feb 2003 as asking "is there any doubt in anybody's mind that if Saddam Hussein thought he could harm the United States that he wouldn't give any terrorist organization some weapon of mass destruction?" My impression is that that is not what the intelligence said at the time. The probability of Saddam initiating an attack against the U.S. without being provoked was deemed to be low.
The National Intelligence Estimate described the idea of him passing WMD to Islamic terrorists as the kind of extreme, desperate step he might only take as a last measure of revenge if he were invaded and he wanted as many others as possible to be taken down with him. Do you agree that McCain's statement seems at odds with the intelligence at the time?
Here was her answer:
Dana Priest: You are right, that is what the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq said before the war began, and frankly that is how he acted up to this point. In 1991, he didn't try to lash out at the U.S. -- he invaded Kuwait, a neighbor. He was worried about his standing in the Arab world. He saw himself as a great Arab leader.
In other words, the answer to my question is "no". McCain did not tell the truth about the intelligence regarding the likelihood of Saddam passing WMD on to terrorists. Did he lie? That's difficult to prove. His statement may have been an instance of BS, i.e., speaking while indifferent to the truth. Regardless, it was inexcusable, and he needs to be held to account for this statement during this election. If he's confronted with the clash between this statement and the intelligence, it could be critically damaging to his campaign.
After all, McCain and others have defended the pre-war claims about the existence of WMD as the information we had at the time. Did he listen to all the information we had at the time, including information about what Saddam was likely to do with the WMD he ostensibly had? Or did he only listen to the parts that helped make the case for an invasion?
The quote I mentioned in my question exists almost nowhere on the web aside from my prior attempts to draw attention to it. It's buried in the Arizona Republic archives [$], which may explain why it hasn't gotten the critical attention it deserves. It came at a critical juncture, however- just a month before our invasion. It appears in an editorial entitled "McCain Lends Credence to War Plans". It describes McCain as someone with "unchallenged credibility in matters of war".
McCain's statement was truly egregious. He went beyond simply expressing his own opinion about Saddam's intentions without noting the contrast with the opinion of the intelligence community, although that would have been bad enough. "Is there any doubt in anybody's mind" suggests that there wasn't anybody worth taking seriously who thought otherwise. In fact, the same people who were telling him that Saddam had WMD thought otherwise.
Let's look at the key judgments from the NIE. Remember, this is the same document the White House released as an attempt to defend itself in the wake of the Joe Wilson/Niger/uranium controversy that started in July '03.
We have low confidence in our ability to assess when Saddam would use WMD.
Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war.
Now, what kind of scenario would it take for the intelligence community to envision Saddam passing WMD on to Islamic terrorists?
Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qa'ida--with worldwide reach and extensive terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States--could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.
* In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist terrorists in conducting a CBW attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.
Got that? It was the kind of extreme, desperate, last-gasp action they could see him taking if he was invaded and he knew he was going down.
McCain claims to have been briefed about the NIE numerous times. Oh, really?
Now, what if Saddam were unprovoked? What did the intelligence say? From October '02 Senate testimony:
Senator Levin Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan : . . . If (Saddam) didn't feel threatened, did not feel threatened, is it likely that he would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction?
Senior Intelligence Witness: . . . My judgment would be that the probability of him initiating an attack -- let me put a time frame on it -- in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low.
Some of you may (understandably) have WMD intelligence fatigue by now, but the reality is that this issue is due to get revived soon. The final part of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into pre-war intelligence, the part that compares administration statements to the intelligence, is due to come out soon. With Obama wrapping up the nomination, the primary isn't going to be sucking up all the media oxygen any longer. One last pass over the topic of pre-war intelligence is likely to be a dominant topic some time in the next few months.
I'm worried, though, that an examination of what was said about Saddam's intentions regarding use of WMD may get overlooked. As I've argued in the past, some of the statements that were most outrageously inconsistent with the intelligence concerned the likelihood that WMD would get used against us (see e.g. this diary for an examination of Cheney's demonstrably false claim that there was no doubt Saddam was amassing WMD to use "against us").
Cheney, however, isn't running for president. McCain is. Let's make sure he's forced to address this statement.