Since the 2nd wave of DSM docs were released, an idea has spread that the docs show the British, and by extension the Bush Administration, really believed Saddam Hussein had WMD and WMD production capabilities. They just didn't have the evidence for it. I first saw this idea put forth in an
article by Fred Kaplan.
They just knew Saddam had WMD, and if the facts didn't quite prove he did, they would underscore and embellish the tidbits that came close. The problem was, their man wasn't guilty, at least on the charges of indictment.
More discussion of this is given by Kevin Drum. This type of argument puts the best possible light on Bush's actions and plays into the right's theme that it was an intelligence failure instead of a failure driven by policy. But as Henry and Atrios pointed out, even if this is true, in no way does it mitigate their malfeasance. This is important and worth encapsulating.
Many years ago I watched an infomercial selling a new miracle product to protect the finish of your car. Man, if this stuff did everything they claimed, we wouldn't be putting armor on humvees. We'd simply coat them with this product and they'd be safe and shiny too. One demonstration was memorable. The on-camera man, while noting how salt can hurt your finish, made a paste with baking soda and water which he rubbed in a small patch on the shiny hood of a car protected by this product. He said something like, `you think that's gonna damage the car, just wait, let's do more'. He then sprinkled some metal shavings onto the patch and, with dramatic care, poured a few drops of acid on top. The visual was stunning; the metal shavings bubbled into nothing while he added, `you can just imagine what that would do to your car!' Then, in one quick swoop, he used a large towel to remove the whole patch leaving no evidence that it was ever there. Sure enough, the finish still shined. Wow!
Some of you know what happened here. The baking soda paste was benign to the car's finish but served another purpose. It neutralized the acid. The acid dissolved the unprotected shavings on top of the paste but it could not penetrate the paste, resulting in a dramatic but meaningless demonstration. So, were they lying? Not really, they showed you what they did. Were they knowingly trying to deceive the consumer? You bet, they knew what they were doing. Did they believe their product was good? Who knows and who cares. Their goal was deception and they carefully and cleverly constructed a demonstration just for that purpose. That's the fine art of the flimflam man.
The President's team put together their own prime-time infomercial selling the Iraq threat, the 2003 State of the Union Address. It was pure flimflam with Bush playing the on-camera role. The meat of the show lists eight apparent transgressions by Saddam Hussein offered as demonstrations that he continued to possess and seek WMD in violation of UN sanctions. I'll touch on three that have a common thread.
From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors.
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.
The people who put these statements together knew that just below the frothing metal shavings were hidden neutralizing agents: the "three Iraqi defectors' triangulated to the one unreliable source, curveball, our own information contradicted the uranium from Africa story, and our DOE scientist concluded the aluminum tubes were poorly suited for centrifuges and exactly suited for conventional weaponry. The result was a dramatic but meaningless demonstration. Were these lies? Not really. They were worded to tell only a certain truth. Were they knowingly trying to deceive? Yep, they knew what they were doing. Did they believe Saddam was a threat? Who knows and who cares. Their goal was deception and they carefully and cleverly constructed this demonstration just for that purpose. That's the fine art of the flimflam man.
The common thread of these three examples is that they were all "new" information. The other five points, worst case extrapolations from decade old information, were equally deceptive. A critique of these other statements can be found here. The point is that they were not the victims of bad (or lack of) intelligence. Nor were they (as Fred Kaplan suggests) simply cherry picking or embellishing the intelligence. They went to great lengths to construct their deception. A good flimflam man will probably tell you this is not so easy to do; it's hard work.