'Bush lied, people died' doesn't hold up

In recent the mantra of “Bush lied, people died” has become something of a truism in some circles. But while that slogan makes a clever bumper sicker, it doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

In his recent book “War and Decision,” former Pentagon official Douglas Feith attempts to set part of the record straight regarding the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003. Feith's account paints the Bush administration as well meaning but sadly incompetent.

Feith demonstrates that the administration gave multiple reasons for war in Iraq, including continued violations of U.N. resolutions, violations of the first Gulf War cease fire, humanitarian abuses, regime links to terrorism and the continuation of weapons of mass destruction programs (as distinct from the actual possession of WMD). Iraq's actual possession of WMD was only part of a broader argument for war.

Yet, they did argue that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of WMD, an argument that proved false. But most Western intelligence agencies also believed Iraq had significant stockpiles of WMD.

Members of Congress had access to the same intelligence as the executive branch and most came to the same conclusions. Former Clinton administration officials, including Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton himself initially supported the war based on Iraq's possession of WMD.

Multiple independent investigations, including the Robb-Silberman commission, have cleared the administration of “cooking the intelligence.” Bush said Iraq had stockpiles of WMD because the CIA insisted it did. Still, the Iraqi Survey Group in part vindicated the administration by noting even though Iraq did not possess large numbers of WMD, the programs were in place to reconstitute WMD in short order. For whatever reason, the administration decided not to present this evidence in its own defense.

So what went wrong? Feith argues that the administration failed to press the intelligence community on the sourcing of its reports. Policymakers were unaware that the CIA had no human intelligence to back up its claims. The president was also ill-served by aides who isolated Bush from internal disagreements instead of presenting him with stark alternatives from which to choose. Bush also did not discipline State Department and CIA officials who serially leaked to the press their disagreements with administration policy that the leakers, for whatever reason, failed to mention in official meetings.

The post-war Iraqi situation quickly went from bad to worse. Post-war planning started late so as to avoid the appearance of rushing to war. Also, military leaders, civilian Pentagon officials and the State Department all squabbled over how to train a new Iraqi military and how quickly power should be transferred over to the Iraqis. These arguments festered without resolution.

Finally, Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, unilaterally decided that the Iraqis needed a finalized constitution, as opposed to simple negotiations, before control could be handed over. Bremer ended up leading a14-month occupation that was intended to last only weeks.

In Feith's account, Bush did not demand to be presented all options and gave little guidance or discipline to his appointees. The CIA was rife with incompetence and allowed political agendas to influence its work. The administration made only lame attempts to defend itself in public. In short, the Bush administration showed great incompetence, not maliciousness.

One would think that the charge of incompetence would satisfy Bush haters. But the “Bush lied” mantra frees them of the intellectual heavy lifting required to critique executive management, policy formation processes and intelligence gathering, dissemination and analysis. This is akin to Republicans of the 1990s who worried more about the status of Bill Clinton's pants than actually articulating their own agenda.

To see one's political opponents as evil frees us from having to think hard about politics and allows us the easy comfort of believing ourselves morally superior to our adversaries. This vice is not unique to any particular quarter in American politics. The “Bush lied, people died” slogan is just its latest rendition.

Jon D. Schaff is associate professor of political science at Northern State University in Aberdeen. The views presented here are the author's own and do not represent those of Northern State University.