Why Hillary needs to distract from her record on Iraq (Part 2)

As pointed out in Part 1, Hillary is now claiming that the reason she voted for the Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq (referred to hereafter as the Iraq War Resolution or IWR) is that she "thought it was a vote to put inspectors back in, to make it very clear that Saddam Hussein wouldn't be able to go off unchecked." She also felt that Saddam had WMD and was an imminent threat to the U.S. She also felt that Saddam had ties to terrorists. Of course, all of these beliefs turned out to be wrong.

Now I know what some of you Hillary supporters are thinking. You are thinking that at the time of the IWR vote, all the available information indicated that these beliefs were correct. Well, you are wrong, and Hillary--according to her own account--has no excuse.

This post will examine WMD.

Here's what Hillary told Tim Russert on January 13, 2008:

And let me just add here that when we were moving toward the preemptive war that George Bush decided to wage, the inspectors were in Iraq, we were getting information, finally, that would give us a basis for knowing. I believe if the inspectors had been allowed to do their work, we would've learned that what Saddam Hussein had constructed was a charade.

On the one hand this is correct, but on the other hand, it does not tell the full story, for there was a great deal of information at the time of the IWR vote indicating that there were no WMD in Iraq and that Iraq was no imminent threat to the the U.S. Indeed, I have covered this subject extensively. Before covering it again, there is a little background to cover and one more quote from Hillary to disclose.

One of the primary--if not the primary--documents which was used to seal and/or justify the vote for the IWR was the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. For those wanting to know many of the details regarding the NIE and the other information known before the IWR vote, here's a list of my previous posts on those subjects:

• Franks on the absence of WMD (August 6, 2004)
• The NIE, generally speaking (August 8, 2004)
• The Air Force's position on Iraq's UAVs (August 9, 2004)
• The DIA and chemical weapons (August 12, 2004)
• Bush, Iraq, and WMD: some of the old news (April 14, 2006)
• A closer look at the NIE (April 17, 2006)
• Why revisiting the Iraq NIE is important (April 17, 2006)

Here are some quick facts about the NIE. There were two versions--a 25-page version and the full 90 (or 92) page classified version. The 25-page version was actually not a part of the NIE at all, but was rather a white paper that was prepared separately from (and before) the 90-page version, which was the real NIE. The 25-page version was not much more than a sales tool that supported the case for war. The 90-page version, on the other hand, contained dissenting opinions and caveats that seriously called into question the claims that Saddam had WMD and was an imminent threat to the U.S.

As reported in April 2004 by Dana Priest of the Washington Post,

In the fall of 2002, as Congress debated waging war in Iraq, copies of a 92-page assessment of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction sat in two vaults on Capitol Hill, each protected by armed security guards and available to any member who showed up in person, without staff.

But only a few ever did. No more than six senators and a handful of House members read beyond the five-page National Intelligence Estimate executive summary, according to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material.

Among those that did not read the NIE before voting for the IWR was Hillary Clinton. Maybe if she had read it her October 10, 2002, speech would have been a little different. How could anyone facing a vote that could lead to war not bother to read perhaps the single most pertinent document on the issue? That's not the kind of "experience" I'm looking for in a President. How about you?

But wait...Hillary's story is that she didn't need to read the NIE because, as she told Tim Russert last Sunday, she had plenty of other information that helped her decide to vote for the IWR.

MR. RUSSERT: Again, learning from mistake, do you wish you had read the National Intelligence Estimate, which had a lot of caveats from the State Department and the Energy Department as to whether or not Saddam Hussein really had a biological and chemical and active nuclear program?

SEN. CLINTON: I was fully briefed by the people who wrote that. I was briefed by the people from, you know, the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense; all of the various players in that. And many people who read it--well, actually, not very many people read the whole thing because we were getting constant briefings. And people--some people read it and voted for the resolution, some people read it and voted against the resolution. I felt very well briefed. And it wasn't just what the Bush administration was telling us in the NIE, I went way outside of any kind of Bush administration sources; independent people, people from the Clinton administration, people in the British government. I looked as broadly as I could at how to assess this.

(emphasis added). So, ostensibly, Hillary--according to her own explanation--was briefed on all the information that the various U.S. intelligence agencies had--including what did not make it into the NIE--and had access to even more information than the Bush administration. That means that before she decided to vote for the IWR, she knew at least the following:

• The NIE never said that Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S.
• The Air Force concluded that Iraq’s UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) posed no threat to Iraq’s neighbors or the U.S.
• The Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that 1) A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions; 2) Iraq retains all the chemicals and equipment to produce the blister agent mustard but its ability for sustained production of G-series nerve agents and VX is constrained by its stockpile of key chemical precursors and by the destruction of all known CW production facilities during Operation Desert Storm and during subsequent UNSCOM inspections; and 3) In the absence of external aid, Iraq will likely experience difficulties in producing nerve agents at the rate executed before Operation Desert Storm.
• The Department of Energy and State Department vigorously dissented on many of the key claims that Iraq had WMD, particularly in regard to aluminum tubes to reconstitute a nuclear program.
• The information in the NIE showing that Iraq had WMD had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

[NOTE: All of the foregoing points are discussed in the posts about the NIE listed above.] If Hillary truly had been briefed as extensively as she now claims, she knew all of the foregoing, and yet she still decided to vote for the IWR. One scenario is that she knew all of the foregoing but disregarded it and instead decided to rely on Bush's own words. In her October 10, 2002, speech, she said "President Bush's speech in Cincinnati and the changes in policy that have come forth since the Administration began broaching this issue some weeks ago have made my vote easier." Read Bush's speech and compare his claims with the facts listed above. Then you will realize that Hillary did disregard those facts and chose to side instead with Bush.

Another scenario is that Hillary did not get briefed as she now claims and thus did not attempt to study any of the facts concerning WMD.

In any event, her beliefs prior to the IWR vote about WMD and the imminent threat posed to the U.S. thereby were wrong, and there was plenty of evidence at that time that such beliefs were wrong. But of course, Hillary still refuses to admit that she made any kind of mistake and instead claims that she made a sincere decision based on all the available information.

Yeah, right.