LIKE AN ALBATROSS that castaways hope will not alight on their raft, the question of who misled America into the war in Iraq hovers above Washington, flapping its wings, but so far choosing not to land on either CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., or the White House.
The debate over prewar intelligence reemerged with last month's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is accused of lying about his role in the leak of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic. Democrats pounced on the indictment, saying the real issue it raised was the administration's manipulation of intelligence.
President Bush, facing record-low approval ratings and public discontent over the war, escalated the controversy on Veterans Day, when he attacked those who charge that his administration "manipulated the intelligence" to go to war. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) fired back, assailing Bush for attempting "to rebuild his own credibility by tearing down those who seek the truth."
The intelligence issue has always been intensely political. To the extent that the president, with the loyal support of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), can shift the blame to the CIA, it deflects responsibility from the White House. But the debate has been framed the wrong way from the start.
Congress and the public were persuaded to back the war because the president asserted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States. In the months after the quick U.S. military victory in 2003, however, it became clear there were no WMD in Iraq. As the argument over the roots of the war evolved, it has taken a simplistic either/or form: Did the CIA provide bad intelligence, or did the Bush administration exaggerate and shape the intelligence to build the case for war?
In fact, both things happened.
That can be demonstrated in several ways. The intelligence about nuclear weapons provides the most dramatic example. The now-infamous National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 claimed that Iraq "is reconstituting" its nuclear weapons program. It wasn't. The CIA's experts did not predict, however, that Hussein, absent outside help, would have the bomb before the close of the decade. Yet in the months before the invasion, both then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Bush warned of a looming "mushroom cloud." Bad intelligence that the administration took and ran with and exaggerated.
