editorial

"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services." That's the excuse that George W. Bush gives to the world for a State of the Union speech in which he falsely accused the former government of Iraq of moving to obtain uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program.

There was no such nuclear weapons program, and a diplomat sent to Niger by the White House to investigate reported that the supposed documents alluding to an attempted Iraqi uranium purchase were the crudest of forgeries. A simple Internet search of who's who in the African government would have exposed the fraud, because the purported official signatures were of people who had not occupied the offices in question for many years.

Now the Republicans, who called former President Clinton's lies about an unseemly extramarital sexual affair an impeachable offense, find themselves defending President Bush's lies. There is, however, a big difference. Nobody died as the result of what went on between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, but thousands of people, many of them entirely innocent noncombatant civilians, died because George W. Bush led the United States to war for a lie.

Now that fatal lie is aggravated by finger pointing at the CIA. Ironically, the far-right Bush administration is borrowing one of the dumbest leftist tactics of the Cold War.

How many times did we hear allegations of CIA plots back then? Sure, there actually were CIA plots, but many fewer than alleged and virtually none that had their origins in "The Company." The habit of blaming the CIA for US foreign policy abuses, real or imagined, hurt the leftist cause by diverting attention from real grievances and real antagonists and attributing blame properly directed at politicians to a supposed rogue intelligence agency. Similarly, a lot of politicians who got the United States into the Vietnam War --- some of whom later adopted the plumage of doves --- got themselves off the hook for their political errors by chalking up the debacle to some sort of military madness.

In the United States, spies and soldiers don't make foreign policy. They follow the orders of their civilian superiors, the highest of whom are elected officials.

The CIA did not lead America to war in Iraq. Neither did the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent his appointees and the senators and representatives who backed him, were the ones who did this. But Bush, caught in a lie, now accuses the CIA.

Any big, rich country like the United States needs a good intelligence agency. Americans can legitimately argue about whether the CIA as presently constituted is up to the job in this era. The wisdom of combining information gathering with a Murder Incorporated function is also a question that ought to be reconsidered. At the end of the day, however, America needs the CIA or something like it.

By attempting to shift the blame for his own misconduct to his information gatherers George W. Bush undermines morale at the CIA and thus makes the United States more vulnerable to the sort of attacks we saw on September 11, 2001. This sort of conduct is Machiavellian, cowardly, and unbecoming of a world leader.

Insignificant events can take on monumental proportions when your head is full of practically nothing.

Grace Slick

There are seven sins in the world: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice and politics without principle.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Moshe Dayan

Back to top