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Senator Says Intelligence Showed Imminent Iraqi Threat By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — A senior Democratic U.S. senator said yesterday that she voted to authorize U.S. military action against Iraq because classified intelligence showed that Iraq posed an imminent threat to U.S. national security at the time. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a senior member of the Senate intelligence committee and prominent critic of the Bush administration’s foreign policies, made the comments following a speech delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations. A former U.S. official moderating the event said Feinstein’s comments vindicated President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war. White House officials, meanwhile, have recently said they never concluded Iraq posed an imminent threat. Feinstein said that at the time of an overwhelming Senate vote last fall to authorize use of force against Iraq, she was convinced after reading numerous classified intelligence reports and other documents that Iraq had chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities that posed an imminent threat. “I went back, and I read both the classified and unclassified version of the national intelligence estimate and tried to reread some of the intelligence. And I drew from that that there was an imminent threat,” she said. “I voted because I sincerely believed that this man, with his background, with his use of poisonous materials on his own people, with his feudal needs, was a threat, certainly in the Middle East and even quite possibly to us, in terms of being able to smuggle things into this country,” she said. She said she voted in favor of military action because she perceived an imminent threat, which would make the U.S. attack “pre-emptive,” as opposed to a longer-term threat that would make an attack “preventive.” According to legal experts, traditional international law has accepted, the use of force for pre-empting demonstrably imminent threats — not for preventing threats that might emerge in the future. Feinstein said intelligence she has read since the invasion indicates there was no imminent threat. “Based on my review of intelligence, and as a member of the Senate intelligence committee, and a review of both classified and unclassified data, no incontrovertible evidence of an imminent threat has been found in the case of the war in Iraq, with the exception of missiles with ranges in excess of 150 kilometers, in contravention to the United Nations Security Council resolutions,” she said. She said the previous intelligence judgments used to justify the war have not “borne out,” making the war a preventive one rather than pre-emptive, undermining the global standing of the United States, and setting a bad precedent for other countries. “Preventive war targeted against speculative threats is not legitimate under international law,” she said. Former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Director Kenneth Adelman, who served as the moderator of the event and a foil for Feinstein’s views, contended her endorsement of force against Iraq effectively vindicated President Bush’s judgment that an invasion was needed. “If you were president of the United States, and as a member of the intelligence committee, you have to go on the basis of what these people [the intelligence community] are saying, right?” he said. “People in the government have to go on the basis of what the information is that they have at their disposal. And obviously, if that’s wrong, it’s a very serious thing. But that doesn’t say that [new information showing that previous intelligence was wrong], in retrospect, should change … the justice of our decisions at the time,” he said. Feinstein said the turn of events raises questions about whether the analysis underlying key judgments on Iraqi capabilities was correct, if the use of the intelligence was correct, or “if it was skewed in any way,” which is the subject of a joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence committees. She was among 77 senators, including many Democrats, who voted to authorize force in a nonbinding resolution. The resolution alluded to known Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities and said force was justified, among other things, to prevent a “surprise attack” from Iraq or a terrorist surrogate. It said “efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated.” An interim report last month from the head of the administration-appointed team searching for unconventional weapons in occupied Iraq said no such weapons had been found and there was no evidence of active chemical or nuclear weapons programs, though some suggesting clandestine biological research (see GSN, Oct. 3). Feinstein’s comments, echoing earlier statements, place her in one of several camps of Democrats that include those who voted for force because they believed the intelligence showed an imminent threat and those who opposed force because they believed it did not. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, declared he was in the latter category because he deemed the threat “not imminent” and that implementing new Bush administration national security policies would set a dangerous international precedent. Presidential candidate Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who stands in a third category, had argued that invading Iraq was justified as a preventive measure as it was unknowable whether a threat was imminent. “We don’t know that an [Iraqi] attack is imminent, but we know that he [Saddam Hussein] has violated the United Nations requirements with regard to inspections. We know for a fact that he has chemical and biological weapons, and he is developing very unsettling capacity to deliver those weapons on distant targets,” Lieberman said during a television news interview just prior to the Oct. 2002. No Imminence AssertedBush administration officials recently have argued that they never concluded Iraq posed an immediate threat, but rather, that the invasion begun last March was preventive, against the possibility Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might one day develop particularly dangerous weapons of mass destruction and share them with terrorists. “Our concern was not the imminence of Saddam’s threat, but the very existence of his regime, given its heinous and undeniable record, capabilities and intentions,” said Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton in a speech in London last week. Bolton said Bush “specifically and unambiguously” made that point in his January 2003 State of the Union address when he said, “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. … If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.” The administration in a major policy document last year argued that some preventive force should be considered legitimate, arguing that it would be difficult to demonstrate imminence of a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction. The September 2002 National Security Strategy said the international community should “adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries.” John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable world arms control lobbying organization, called the administration’s assertions “duplicitous, because they did leave everyone to think that we had to act now, couldn’t give the inspectors time to finish the job because the threat was imminent, and couldn’t delay the invasion anymore because the threat was imminent,” he said. He said statements by various officials characterizing the potential threat encouraged a sense of immediacy, citing national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s remark, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
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