War Against Iraq

A lot is being made these days about whether George J. Tenet, the director of the CIA, told President Bush that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat to the United States - imminent enough to go to war. Nope, says Tenet. The CIA "never said there was an imminent threat." Or whether Bush himself actually used the word "imminent" when he talked about the threat to America posed by Hussein and the need to invade, occupy and rebuild Iraq. Nope. He didn't. He saw a "gathering threat."

WUERZBURG, Germany - Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said yesterday that the Bush administration was justified in toppling Saddam Hussein, regardless of whether prewar American intelligence indicating that Iraq had stockpiled unconventional weapons was proved wrong. "You have to make decisions based on the intelligence you have, not on the intelligence you can discover later," Wolfowitz said during a visit here with troops of the 1st Infantry Division, which is scheduled to go to Iraq in coming weeks.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and top aides are further shifting their rationale for going to war against Iraq, now that Bush's prime justification has been undercut by a failure to find Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The change comes as pressure mounts for an independent inquiry into what critics say was a major intelligence failure and amid repeated charges by Democratic presidential contenders that Bush misled the nation about the Iraqi threat. While starting to publicly express doubts about pre-war U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons, top administration officials now defend the war by describing Hussein broadly as a "danger" who defied the United Nations for 12 years, as a sponsor of terrorism and brutal dictator, and an impediment to needed change in the Middle East.

New Year's resolutions: So easy to make; so hard to keep. Barely into the New Year, I'm failing. But these were practically unkeepable resolutions. Resolved, had I, to stop being suspicious of all that the Bush administration does, invoking God all along the way to war and deficit spending and environmental enhancements whose consequences will endure for generations. No more suspicions expressed about the reasons Bush said America had for going to war against Iraq. No more talk about the ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein was stockpiling, including nukes that posed an imminent threat to the security of the United States and warranted a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

What the United States called a campaign of shock and awe against Saddam Hussein's Iraq is being criticized by Human Rights Watch as an invasion that used two "misguided" military tactics, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. The report by HRW, a human rights group based in New York, criticized the United States and Britain for using cluster weapons in populated areas and for 50 bombing strikes that were intended to kill Iraq's leadership but instead killed civilians. Cluster bombs killed or injured more than 1,000 civilians, according to HRW estimates.

WASHINGTON - Brushing aside the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, President Bush defended yesterday his decision to go to war and said this week's interim report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector proves "Saddam Hussein was a danger to the world." One day after the top weapons hunter said his inspectors had found no illicit weapons in their search so far, the White House mounted a damage-control effort. The president and other officials chose to highlight what they called evidence found by the inspection team of Iraq's deception and its intent to develop unconventional weapons.

WASHINGTON -- The report that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will step down after President Bush's first term -- dismissed by Mr. Powell as "gossip" -- nevertheless has much logic to it in light of the former general's defensive role in the administration's foreign policy. For all his spoken assurances that he is in lockstep with the president and major administration proponents of the essentially unilateral pre-emptive war against Iraq, Mr. Powell seemingly has been dragged kicking and screaming into the implementation of what is now known as the Bush Doctrine.

U.S. is making real progress rebuilding Iraq Michael Hill's "Quagmire Iraq" (July 13) spends far too much time straining to make tenuous comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. We have been on the ground as a liberating and occupying force in Iraq for less than 120 days and in that time the U.S. force of around 145,000 troops has sustained casualties that amount to approximately 1 percent of that total. During this period, we have managed to oust a brutal regime and succeeded in quelling violence and gaining public support in most areas of the country, except the most fervently pro-Saddam Hussein locales in central Iraq.

The Bush administration is caught in a scandal of almost unprecedented dimensions over the justifications that it and Great Britain gave for going to war against Iraq. Call it the "yellow cake scandal." It goes to the core of whether Saddam Hussein was trying to produce nuclear weapons, thus posing a threat to the United States and Great Britain, which would justify war. It goes to a charge by President Bush that Iraq was trying to build a nuclear arsenal in which Bush used evidence his administration now acknowledges was no good.

WASHINGTON - The so-called first-tier Democratic presidential candidates can learn something more from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean beyond the effectiveness of the Internet as a tool for fund raising and grass-roots organizing. The more prominent party figures - Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, all of whom voted for President Bush's resolution to go to war against Iraq - can learn that the way to win over many Democratic voters is to emulate Mr. Dean in taking on directly the one man they increasingly love to hate.