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In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," aired on Sunday, after a week in which it became obvious to the world that the justifications for the war were based on flawed intelligence, Bush offered his reflections.
They were far from reassuring.
He did not have a consistent position on the pivotal intelligence issue.
Though conceding that Iraq apparently did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the US President defended his decision to go to war in the interview. He said even if no cache of arms are found, the war in Iraq was justified because former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and all threats to the United States had to be judged in the context of the war on terror.
"I'm not just going to leave him in power and trust a madman," Bush said.
The Bush administration had all along kept telling the world it had evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
It cited the imminent threat of illicit weapons to world security as the principal stated reason for launching war on Iraq in March last year.
A replay of the claims that Bush made before the war is the most telling of witnesses.
Tim Russert, NBC's moderator during its hour-long interview with Bush, displayed a quote from the president's address to the nation last March 17:
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
However, asked by Russert in the interview whether his statement on the night US troops began the war in Iraq that intelligence "leaves no doubt" that Iraq had WMD was "apparently, not the case," the president responded: "Correct."
It was the first time Bush had been questioned at length about the war since David Kay, former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, said last month that Saddam did not have stockpiles of unconventional weapons. Bush acknowledged that he might have been wrong in asserting that Iraq possessed the weapons.
He suggested in the interview that the threat was no less urgent because Saddam had the capability to produce banned chemical and biological agents "at the very minimum" and pass them along to terrorist groups intent on striking the United States.
This is a far cry from what the president and his administration told the world before and during the war. Back then, Bush repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein "has got chemical weapons."
The war on terror, which was and still is supported by the world community, has been conveniently hijacked by Bush to bring about a regime change in Iraq.
Any country can be assumed to have the ability to develop dangerous weapons. But is that sound enough to justify a war against a sovereign state?
Since Saddam's WMD were one of the principal reasons for the legally controversial war, their absence is a social faux pas at best or a political lie at worst.
(China Daily February 11, 2004)
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