The Fromson File

‘Fessing Up in Iraq There’s an awful lot of lying, self-deception or ideological blindness that are in the way of determining the truth about war and peace in Iraq. Remember, it was nearly a year ago when the Bush Administration was implying that Hans Blix and his United Nations weapons inspectors were somehow laying down on the job because they couldn’t find any of Sadaam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Underscoring this canard was the suggestion that Blix and his team were either naieve, incompetent or blind. We, the President and his men were saying, we can find those damned MDWs just like that, with a snap of the finger. Just let us at them. So we sent in our troops, poured millions of dollars down the drain with billions more to follow and watched as our casualties mounted daily. We need not remind anyone of what has become part of the historical record. Former weapons chief David Kay has testified that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no evidence there ever were. Hesitant to seem as if he was playing politics by blaming the President for the gross miscalculation or lie, Kay turned elsewhere. Faulty intelligence, he claimed, was the cause. That led to the doorstep of the CIA and other intelligence-gathering agencies. Aha, the spooks, they did it. They led us down the garden path. All by themselves. A likely story. Stick the tail on the donkey that can’t bray. Given its code of secrecy, the CIA is restricted from saying too much in its own defense. But does anyone who has only a smidgin of knowledge about how the agency works truly believe that its intelligence estimates were not colored by the ideologues within the White House or the Pentagon? Button your pockets, folks. Then take a look at the President’s reluctant decision to appoint a bi-partisan commission to examine the breakdown of U.S.intelligence before, during and after the Iraq fiasco. Its conclusions will not be forthcoming until AFTER the November election. Will the investigation take in the extent to which the Administration ignored, altered or affected the data provided by Director George Tenet and the CIA? No evidence that the probe will go that far; certainly not by the first week of November. Aside from the intelligence failure is the apparent inability of U.S. officials to understand the complexity and constraints of putting an election or any kind of democratic procedures in play in Iraq. Recognizing the fix that it’s in, the Bush Administration reluctantly has turned for help to the United Nations that only nine months ago could do nothing right. Determined to put a transfer of power in the hands of the Iraqis by June 30, the White House is hoping for a fullscale election by March 2005. All of this is a long way around of pointing out a fascinating article on Page 11 of the New York Times (2/2/04) concerning a relatively unknown division of the United Nations. It consists of 1100 experts who monitor elections around the world and have provided formal assistance to 53 countries in the past two years. They have won universal respect for their honesty, fairness and efficiency, working in places like Cambodia, East Timor, Liberia, Haiti and Afghanistan. Now, its top leadership headed by a tough-minded sociologist and political scientist from Uruguay, Ms. Carina Perelli, will leave for Baghad this week to determine whether U.S. solutions for the chaotic situation in Iraq are realistic. She and her aides are, to say the least, skeptical. Their objective is to find whether the mechanism for a future election can be be organized by June 30 and if not, what adjustments must be made. Usually, these investigations take months. This one is being done with a lot less time to spare. In an interview with correspondent Warren Hoge, Ms. Perelli was clearly pessimistic about a quick solution to a complex problem. She rolled her eyes when he mentioned the election target date of 2005, replying: “Sometimes people say, ‘Oh you have a lot of time because the vote is not until March of 2005.’ Well in this office that comment is greeted with fits of laughter.” Having reported past elections in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, India, the Philippines, El Salvador and Nicaragua, I would have laughed too.