What price will each pay for their use of questionable intelligence?

Angus Reid
Vancouver Sun

Martha Stewart and George W. Bush both stand accused of misusing information: one to sell stock and the other to sell a war.

Stewart's empire is already diminished as a result of her alleged indiscretion and she may, if found guilty, end up in jail.

But what of Bush? Will the controversy over the missing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction ultimately extract a price on his administration? Or will the entire WMD affair blow over as American and world public opinion moves to other issues such as the economy, the threat from Iran and North Korea, and even the prospect of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

The WMD question is of special interest to Canadians because we have been forced to sit in the penalty box for most of the last two months due to our unwillingness to join the American coalition. We have been spurned by the American president, ridiculed by elements of the United States media, lectured by the national security advisor and berated by the U.S. ambassador because we weren't convinced that the U.S. administration had made its case about its number one rationale for going to war: the threat from prohibited weapons.

The WMD issue is just starting to heat up in both the U.S. and Britain as the odds of finding any significant quantity of banned weapons becomes increasingly remote. In the U.S., a special joint Senate committee inquiry is about to begin while, in Britain, left-wing Labour has teamed up with the Tory opposition to call for a full independent inquiry into the handling of intelligence on Iraq.

At a minimum, it appears that American intelligence agencies and their British counterparts may have injected too much hyperbole into their assessments. Reports that uranium was shipped to Iraq from the African country of Niger have turned out to be bogus. In his presentation to the United Nations (UN) Security Council before the war, state secretary Colin Powell made repeated reference to a British intelligence report on the existence of prohibited weapons. It turned out that large sections of the British report were lifted verbatim from the college paper of a California graduate student. Claims that Saddam Hussein had the ability to launch WMD within 45 minutes turned out to have been fabricated by Iraqis eager to curry favour with intelligence agencies.

Was all of this simply the bungling on the part of agencies eager to please their political masters, or was there a more concerted conspiracy? It's too soon to know for certain but tantalizing threads are beginning to surface.

Several weeks ago Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. defence under-secretary and an uber hawk on the Iraqi file, admitted to a conference in Singapore that the WMD rationale was used because it was the most saleable to the American people and Congress.

Earlier this week the Washington Post reported that U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney might have pressured the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to make its assessments fit Bush's vision. According to a senior agency official, Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here."

Unlike Martha Stewart who faces the full weight of American justice for her alleged misdeeds in the intelligence arena, the Bush administration may yet escape unscathed. The WMD issue has all but disappeared from Bush's pronouncements on Iraq. Instead, daily briefings on new discoveries of atrocities of the Saddam regime and news footage of prisons reinforces the idea that the war was really all about liberating the Iraqi people and bringing democracy to the Arab world.

As a friend in Washington told me a couple of days ago, "nobody cares about the weapons issue—Saddam was a bad guy and we got him."

Maybe everyone will forget about the weapons issue over time, but I'm not so sure. The Bush administration might not end up in a court of law, but it is already facing the court of public opinion—both internationally and in the U.S.

Last week, the Pew Research Center in Washington released a global poll that reveals a sharp drop in favourable attitudes towards the U.S. across much of the world. Among traditional U.S. allies in Europe—including Britain—positive ratings of the U.S. have plummeted over the past year. In the seven Islamic countries included in the poll, positive ratings of the U.S. have virtually vanished.

As the WMD controversy gains more attention, the reputation of Brand America is likely to become even more tarnished.

But will this issue damage Mr. Bush at home? According to New York Times correspondent James Rison the failure to find WMD is already "flaring into a major political issue for the Bush administration." A CNN/USA Today poll released this week shows an astounding level of cynicism among Americans—31 per cent feel that the Bush administration "deliberately misled" the country.

In America and around the world, the outcome of the WMD controversy will ultimately depend on how quickly post-war Iraq stabilizes and the U.S. president's success in shifting attention to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

On the first of these, almost two months of occupation have so far failed to produce a secure environment in much of Iraq. If the cost of the liberation, whether measured in blood or money, continues to spiral more Americans will be asking the one question that the Bush administration is increasingly anxious to avoid: "How did we get into this?"

Though I would dearly love to believe that Bush's new-found commitment to finding peace in the Middle East is motivated solely by a grander purpose, it's hard not to be cynical about an administration that sees partisan political advantage in every move it makes. When facing a potential scandal the number one rule in the political playbook is this: Change the channel and turn up the volume.

I hope that Bush's intervention in the peace process will end the violence in Israel, the West Bank and in Gaza. Whether intentional or not, this intervention is timed perfectly to divert attention from the WMD matter.

Meanwhile in Canada there is continued hand-wringing in many quarters over our decision not to participate in the Iraq campaign.

But before this self-flagellation gets completely out of hand, we might wish to pause. This story isn't finished yet.

Martha Stewart is paying a steep price for jumping the gun in the sale of her ImClone shares based on accurate but ethically tainted information. George W. Bush may yet be called to account for using his guns and selling the Iraq war based on equally questionable intelligence.

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