| Weekend
Edition
July 24 / 25, 2004
Those 16
Words Still Smell
A Close
Look at Bush's Techniques of Deciet in State of the Union
By
DENNIS HANS
We
are now told that the controversial 16-word sentence in the January
28, 2003 State of the Union address (hereafter “SOTU”)
about alleged Iraqi efforts to procure unenriched uranium from Africa
was “truthful” (William Safire) and “well-founded”
(Britain’s Butler Committee report). Alas, it is neither.
An
examination of the entire SOTU paragraph that includes those 16
words illustrates a few of the many “techniques of deceit”
the Bush team has mastered: deception through juxtaposition, unsupported
“certitude” and, most importantly, deception through
omission.
Here
is Bush’s description of the Iraqi nuclear threat:
“The
International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] confirmed in the 1990s
that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development
program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on
five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. 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. Saddam Hussein has not
credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.”
If you’re a parent watching at home with your kids, and you
just happen to lack expertise on Iraq and nuclear-weapons technology,
like 99.99 percent of your fellow citizens (including me), that’s
a very frightening picture.
Not
only did Bush put the fear of Saddam into viewers, he did so by
citing sources that fence-sitters and skeptics would likely consider
credible: the British government and the IAEA. For citizens who
didn’t know the IAEA from Adam or what to think of it, Bush
wisely included this comment earlier in the address: “We’re
strongly supporting the [IAEA] in its mission to track and control
nuclear materials around the world.”
What
Bush didn’t include was the IAEA’s assessment —
issued the day before the SOTU — of the current Iraqi nuclear
“threat.” So far, the agency had found “No evidence
of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities”
nor “signs of new nuclear facilities or direct support to
any nuclear activity. . . . The IAEA expects to be able, within
the next few months, barring exceptional circumstances and provided
there is sustained proactive cooperation by Iraq, to provide credible
assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons programme.”
Such
a program can’t be hidden in a basement or buried in a garden.
It requires a vast, high-tech infrastructure. The “yellowcake”
uranium Iraq was allegedly seeking in Africa would have to be enriched
to become weapons-grade. A nuclear consultant quoted on July 20,
2003 in the British newspaper The Independent estimated the enrichment
plant would be “the size of 30 football pitches” —
i.e., 30 soccer fields. Such a plant could not go undetected in
a country spied on from satellites and swarming with inspectors,
as was the case in January 2003.
What
the preparers of the SOTU did was cherry-pick an old IAEA evaluation
of no revelance to 2003, about a nuclear program that was destroyed
and dismantled long ago, and paired it with (dubious) assertions
about recent activity to conjure up a frightening image that bore
no relation to reality.
The uranium sentence
As
for the uranium sentence, in the months leading up to the SOTU the
CIA alternately credited and pooh-poohed unconfirmed reports that
Iraq had been seeking uranium from Niger and possibly other nations
in Africa. One thing was clear: The CIA certainly didn’t know
for a fact that Iraq was pursuing African uranium.
In
the days leading up to the SOTU, a CIA official and a National Security
Council aide agreed that, for the purpose of a public speech, the
best option was to cite a public document, Britain’s September
2002 WMD dossier, rather than the CIA’s classified National
Intelligence Estimate.
As
noted above, the final wording read, “The British government
has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa.”
CIA
director George Tenet did not review the SOTU, and he has subsequently
said that such a major speech by a U.S. president should not cite
a foreign intelligence service on a matter that U.S. intelligence
retained doubts. But you can’t fault the NSC aide or the White
House speechwriters. The CIA official had a chance to delete or
alter that sentence, but instead endorsed it.
We
can, however, fault all who reviewed that sentence for failing to
spot the obvious flaw: The confused and untrustworthy Brits had
not “learned” Saddam “recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.” To learn is to know, and
not one Brit knew that for a fact.
The
slippery source for the SOTU uranium sentence
In
the British dossier’s Executive Summary, Point 6 begins, “As
a result of the intelligence we judge” that, among other things,
Iraq has “sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,
despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could
require it.” The phrase “we judge” does not mean
“we know.”
By
Chapter 3, however, the Brits profess absolute certainty. One section
lays out “what we know” about the WMD programmes and
includes a list of nine “main conclusions.” The fourth
states that “Uranium has been sought from Africa. . . .”
The
most obvious flaw in the list of “what we know” is that
it presents as established fact things the Brits may suspect are
true, but couldn’t possibly “know” are true. Properly
interpreted, the list is evidence not of Iraq’s capabilities,
actions and intentions, but of a deceitful British policy of saying
“we know” when they bloody well don’t.
Later
in Chapter 3, the Brits lose the certitude and pen an accurate statement:
“But there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply
of significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
If
you’re keeping score, there’s a “we judge”
judgment in the Executive Summary, a statement of fact in Chapter
3, and a vague “there is intelligence” claim in the
same chapter. Guess which interpretation Blair picked for his address
to Parliament on the day the dossier was published?
Blair
boldly declared, “we now know the following.” He then
laid out a list of everything “Saddam has bought or attempted
to buy” that could be used in a uranium enrichment program.
“In addition, we know Saddam has been trying to buy significant
quantities of uranium from Africa, though we do not know whether
he has been successful.”
Notice
how Blair lends credibility to his assertions of what “we
now know” by acknowledging something “we do not know.”
Who wouldn’t trust a man who’s willing to admit he doesn’t
“know” everything? Back on September 24, 2002, not many.
Today, 58 percent of the British public believed Blair “lied”
to them about Iraq.
If
the British press and politicians had done their job, Blair would
have been forced to explain the discrepancies right then and there.
He would have had to acknowledge that “We don’t really
KNOW.” Tabloid headlines screaming “Blair Recants!”
would have lessened the likelihood that, four months later, the
SOTU would have referred to what the slippery Brits had “learned.”
Alas, the British press and politicians are nearly as sorry as our
own.
The
uranium sentence in the context of 2002-03
When
the Brits first floated their judgment/allegation/statement of fact
in September 2002, the IAEA asked them for “actionable information”
— “specifics of when and where” — so it
could investigate. Britain provided nothing. That’s because
it had no intelligence to call its own, and it was not at liberty
to share intelligence that was, in effect, “owned” by
foreign intelligence services. The Brits were relying on stuff passed
along by Italian and French intelligence, including summaries (not
official documents) of the information in the documents that the
IAEA would soon label fake.
UN
Resolution 1441 required the U.S. and all nations to provide the
IAEA any evidence they had on Iraq’s nuclear programs. In
October 2002 the U.S. State Department acquired copies of the documents
that turned out to be fake and promptly distributed them to all
the national-security bureaucracies concerned with foreign policy
and nuclear proliferation. No U.S. bureaucracy provided copies to
the IAEA until February 2003 — strange behavior indeed for
those analysts and officials who considered the documents credible.
What better way to help Bush win a strong, intrusive U.N. resolution
than to have the IAEA confirm that Iraq had agreed to buy 500 metric
tons of yellowcake from Niger. And what a great SOTU prop for Bush
to brandish!
Alas,
some “evidence” is just too darn good to put to the
test. That’s because once you put it to the test, you run
the risk it will blow up in your face. It could have happened in
October 2002, before the U.N. debate and vote. It did happen on
March 7, 2003, but by then it was too late to play a role in derailing
an unnecessary war.
The aluminum tubes sentence
Bush’s
statement about aluminum tubes combines “deception through
omission” with “implied certitude,” as he gave
nary a hint that they might have a non-nuclear use. The non-expert
sitting at home would have no idea that the tubes’ dimensions
and technical specifications made them a perfect fit for Iraq’s
stock of conventional artillery rockets, or that the IAEA’s
“provisional conclusion” — presented 16 days before
the SOTU — was that the tubes “were for rockets and
not for centrifuges” to enrich uranium. A majority of the
U.S. intelligence community disagreed with the IAEA, but our best
experts, the nuclear scientists at the Department of Energy (DOE),
concurred. (many of whom lacked technical expertise and were suckered
by a CIA officer named Joe Nor would the non-expert viewer have
learned what the IAEA reported 19 days before the SOTU: Despite
Bush’s characterization of the tubes as “suitable for
nuclear weapons production,” the IAEA concluded that they
“are not directly suitable.”
As
the IAEA and DOE knew, aluminum was a substandard metal for the
demanding enrichment task. Also, the tubes were the wrong dimension
and would have to be redesigned (a very difficult process) and stripped
of their anodized coating. If all that were achieved, the technical
experts still considered it highly unlikely that aluminum tubes
would be sufficiently durable to function effectively as gas centrifuges.
What
this tell us about Bush and his aides
The
American public doesn’t know if Uncurious George was aware
of the disagreements about the tubes. True, they were spelled out
in a long, careful article in the Washington Post a few days before
the SOTU, but as the article didn’t run in the sports section
(the one section Bush reportedly reads with care) he might have
missed it. But make no mistake, plenty of people who reviewed SOTU
drafts did know about the disagreements and did know that it was
misleading to give citizens the impression that those tubes only
possible purpose was uranium enrichment.
Bush
administration deceit is often a team effort. Make no mistake, senior
officials know that Bush likes to cheat. Those who signed off on
the tubes sentence and that entire graf long ago caught on that
the plain-spoken straight shooter deeply committed to “restoring
honor and integrity to the White House” (as Bush repeatedly
reminded voters before the 2000 election) has no qualms whatsoever
about misleading the American people.
I
can’t imagine a senior official going up to Bush and saying,
“Mr. President, for the sake of argument let’s grant
that each of those sentences in the nuclear-threat paragraph is
at least technically true. Nevertheless, when we string them together
in that order they paint an alarming but false picture. Democracy
is all about the informed consent of the governed, and we owe the
citizens an honest portrayal of the Iraqi threat. We need to rewrite
that paragraph.”
Deceitful close to a deceitful paragraph
Bush
wrapped up the nuclear-threat paragraph with theese words: “Saddam
Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly
has much to hide.”
In
fact, Iraqi officials had credibly explained the tubes to the IAEA’s
satisfaction. As for Iraq’s alleged pursuit of African uranium,
the burden of proof was on the accusers, who were required by U.N.
Resolution 1441 to provide the IAEA any evidence of prohibited Iraqi
nuclear activity. The best the accusers could come up with was a
parcel of forgeries. Neither U.S., British, French or Italian intelligence
was willing to put to the IAEA test any other “evidence”
each claimed to possess. Clearly, the rascals who run those various
intelligence agencies haven’t “credibly explained”
why they didn’t step up to the plate. One might say they have
“much to hide” in the way of credible explanations,
but nothing to hide with respect to credible evidence. Nothing to
hide and nothing to show.
Advice
for lapdogs who’d like to be watchdogs
The
astute reader may have noticed that there was lots of public evidence
from credible sources that would have enabled competent journalists
to demolish the SOTU at the very time it was delivered. (Click here
— http://www.democraticunderground.com/—
for my own analysis two weeks after the speech.)
That
leads to our most important lessons: (1) The Bush team’s techniques
of deceit are transparent and easily exposed. (2) The techniques
can work only if the watchdogs — national-security bureaucrats
in position to blow the whistle, members of Congress, serious journalists
— allow them to work.
Alas,
with relatively few honorable exceptions, the watchdogs slept, cowered
or cheered on the president as he misled the nation into war. Even
today, many appear eager to leap back into Bush’s good graces
by giving him and his administration the benefit of any ethical
doubt — benefit that the Bush team has repeatedly shown it
does not deserve.
Dennis
Hans is a freelance writer who has taught courses in mass
communications and American foreign policy at the University of
South Florida-St. Petersburg. He can be reached at HANS_D@popmail.firn.edu
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