There is a lot more than meets the eye in the newly revealed Joint Chiefs of
Staff intelligence briefing of Sept. 5, 2002, which showed there was a lack
of evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — just as President
George W. Bush’s administration was launching its sales job for the Iraq War.
The briefing report and its quick demise amount to an indictment not only of
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but also of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard
Myers, who is exposed once again as a Rumsfeld patsy who put politics ahead
of his responsibility to American soldiers and to the nation as a whole.
In a Jan. 24 report
at Politico entitled “What Donald Rumsfeld Knew We Didn’t Know About Iraq,”
journalist John Walcott presents a wealth of detail about the JCS intelligence
report of Sept. 5, 2002, offering additional corroboration that the Bush administration
lied to the American people about the evidence of WMD in Iraq.
The JCS briefing noted, for example: “Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear)
weapons program is based largely — perhaps 90% — on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”
Small wonder that the briefing report was dead on arrival in Rumsfeld’s in-box.
After all, it proved that the intelligence evidence justifying war was, in Rumsfeldian
terms, a “known unknown.” When he received it on Sept. 5 or 6, the Defense Secretary
deep-sixed it — but not before sending it on Sept. 9 to Gen. Richard Myers (who
he already knew had a copy) with a transparently disingenuous CYA note: “Please
take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD. It is big.
Thanks.”
Absent was any notation such as “I guess we should tell the White House to
call off its pro-war sales campaign based on Iraq possessing WMD since we don’t
got the goods.” Without such a direct instruction, Rumsfeld could be sure that
Gen. Myers would not take the matter further.