CAP PISTOL DIPLOMACY

March 15, 2003 - It is a skill every trial lawyer must acquire: the ability to gauge the credibility of the evidence in support of one’s own position. On the surface a witness or document may seem to strongly bolster your case, but if the evidence is demonstrably suspect the effect of introducing it in the proceeding is to strengthen the opponent and diminish your client’s case. The use of suspect evidence only tends to place the legitimate information you may offer under the shadow of a provable doubt.

That is the problem that the United States has created for itself with its case against Iraq. For months the United States has been trumpeting specific information from shadowy sources that it has claimed demonstrate that the Iraqi regime is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. For months the Bush State Department has been trumpeting what it called evidence that the Iraqis had recently been trying to acquire high grade uranium from Africa. In support of the claim the State Department turned over documents to the IAEA showing attempts to buy “yellowcake” uranium from Niger. The problem is not just that the damning documents were forgeries. A clever forger’s work may fool all but the most sophisticated expert. These were clumsy forgeries. One letter dated in the year 2000 was on stationary not used by the Niger Defense Ministry since the 1980’s and signed by a man who had not been in government since that time. Another purportedly from the Nigerien President bore a “childlike” scrawl that had no resemblance to the genuine article. It cannot be credibly said that the US intelligence agencies had been taken in. The only reasonable conclusion is that the United States knowingly chose to use the forged documents.

When asked in the State Department press briefing on Friday whether the Department had recommended against turning these false documents over to the arms inspectors in December the spokesman declared that the recommendation had been to turn them over and let the IAEA reach its own conclusions as to their authenticity. IAEA did just that and Dr, Al Baradai announced the forgeries to the Security Council on March 7th.

But the President repeated the charge in his State of the Union message and the Secretary of State echoed it in his indictment of Iraq before the Security Council. The effect of using this manufactured evidence, coming on the heels of the discredited aluminum tube charge repeated by the President after it had been dismissed as unfounded by IAEA, has been to discredit the whole of the United States’ case against Iraq in the eyes of the jury that the Bush Administration was trying to convince.

It isn’t just that the United States is being represented by The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Worse, they don’t even recognize when they are pulling the trigger of a cap pistol. No wonder that American diplomacy is failing!