Nick Smith, February 8, 2004

As a former Intelligence officer in the Air Force, I have a particular interest in the controversy surrounding weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. These weapons were a part of the case to go to war and the bulk of the case presented to the United Nations. While David Kay’s commission investigating WMDs found extensive evidence of production and research programs in violation of U.N. resolutions, no significant stocks of WMDs have been found in Iraq up to now. However, as the anthrax and ricin attacks on the Capitol have shown, enormously dangerous amounts of WMDs can be stored in small spaces. For example, Stanford University researchers determined that 1kg of weaponized anthrax could kill as many as 123,000 people if dropped over a major city. There is still a not insignificant chance that WMDs will still be found.

In my view, the war is justified even if no WMDs are ever found. We know that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq possessed and used WMDs in the past, that it had an active nuclear weapons program, and that it had ballistic missiles and other delivery systems. Iraq had pledged, as a condition of the cease-fire at the end of the 1991 war, to allow inspections and to cooperate in disarmament efforts. It did not cooperate as agreed, and the U.N. weapons inspectors compiled 139 pages of WMD concerns. Every major intelligence service in the world believed Iraq had WMDs when we invaded. Moreover, several other countries such as Syria, Iran, and North Korea were in some phase of WMD. If we had not acted in light of these apparent and agreed-upon violations in Iraq, our efforts to control the spread of WMDs and deter WMD proliferators would have been fatally weakened.

On the other hand, the absence of WMDs calls American credibility into question as well as the President’s doctrine of preemptive war. Opponents of the Iraq war will argue that the U.S. intelligence can’t be trusted in the future. Americans should also be concerned about the intelligence failures that led to the September 11 attacks.

Part of the problem is a reduced emphasis on human intelligence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, partly because people felt that it wasn’t needed in a world that seemed safe. In the early 1960s, when I was part of our intelligence effort, we were aggressive and focused on the threats to America. But in the mid-1990s, intelligence was deemphasized. Budgets for intelligence fell 25%, 35% of stations were closed, and intelligence assets dropped almost in half. President Clinton gave specific instructions to downsize intelligence efforts. Many of our most talented people became discouraged and left federal service. We are rebuilding our intelligence capabilities, but it will take some time to return to the level they should be at.

The President’s intelligence review panel that he created on February 6 will give us additional information and guidance about what went wrong and how to fix it. We can get started now, however, on some of the things that we know are wrong - such as insufficient human intelligence and insufficient expertise in the Middle East and the Islamic world. It is important work if we are to uphold our national security. There’s no question that there were some failures, but the renewed effort to build up our intelligence capabilities and improve the cooperation between intelligence agencies means that America will be safer in the future.

Congressman Nick Smith, a Republican, represents Michigan's 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.