June 7, 2003 - During the Senate Watergate Hearings Senator Howard Baker crystallized the issue for the nation with his question to Whitehouse Counsel to the President John Dean. “What did the President know and when did he know it?”, the Republican Senator asked and the answer brought the President down. As the President’s justification for sending the nation’s youngsters into the Second Iraqi War is increasingly subject to doubt the central question is broader and extends to the Bush Administration’s entire foreign policy – military – intelligence establishment. What did they know and what did they do with it.

That the claims that Iraq was producing and stockpiling illicit chemical and biological weapons and was re-instituting its quest to produce a nuclear capability were flawed is a proposition that now seems beyond any rational doubt. The United States and its British and Kurdish allies are in effective control of the entirety of the country. There have been no stockpiles of such weapons found. The fearsome arsenal featured in the rhetoric to prepare the nation for war has simply evaporated and the vapor drifted away on the wind.

As the nation’s press re-examines the “evidence” that the Administration cited to support its pre-war claims, it is becoming increasingly clear that the “evidence” was less than compelling. The Administration claims that it has its proof in the existence of two “mobile biological weapons labs” mounted on truck trailers. But even that physical evidence, when examined, turns out to be less than its claim. American biological warfare experts who have examined the trailers and the equipment mounted on them cast doubt on the use of this equipment to produce either chemical or biological weapons agents. Rather the equipment is consistent with the onsite production of hydrogen gas for use in weather balloons – confirming the use that captured Iraqi scientists have claimed for the trailers. The Administration dismisses that claim as “a cover story” but it is supported by the physical evidence itself.

Glen Rangwala, the University of Cambridge lecturer who exposed plagiarism of dated materials in the Blair Dossier, has examined the various pre-war claims and posted the results of his examination on the internet at http://middleeastreference.org.uk/iraqweapons.html a web site he maintains. His analysis is painstaking and should be considered by anyone who examines the question.

If, as now appears likely, the President took us into a preemptive war based upon a false premise then the real question is whether it was an honest error made possible by bad intelligence or did the President and senior members of his Administration cynically and intentionally mislead the American people.