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Former Pentagon insider: 'When we lie about stuff,' people perish

A former Pentagon insider talks about Iraq propaganda

Date published: 4/9/2004

AH, SPRING is here and its warm breezes have brought with them a hint of honesty (to which some people are as allergic as others are to pollen).

Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted to reporters that the mobile bioweapons trailers that he discussed at length in his U.N. presentation (with "artist's renderings") might not exist. Of the intelligence on which his charge was based, Powell now says: "It appears not to be the case that it was that solid."

Powell acknowledged that the so-called "Winnebagos of death" (I think I've spotted a few of these barreling down I-95 in search of the nearest RV park) constituted his "most dramatic" accusation before the United Nations. They also were the only piece of evidence he presented that pointed to ongoing WMD production by Saddam Hussein.

Like a lot of other bad Iraq intel, the reports about the trailers emanated from defectors tied to Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, who were pocketing U.S. taxpayer dollars for the privilege of misleading our leaders--and, through them, us.

We should not be too quick to blame our intelligence establishment, though. Since the mid-1990s, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and State Department had dismissed the bulk of the INC's claims as unverifiable at best and bogus at worst.

But then the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, and certain people saw a chance to turn a crisis into an opportunity. Specifically, neoconservative ideologues inside the administration--Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and others--could taste their dream of invading Iraq, but the existing intelligence didn't lend much support for a Mesopotamian adventure.

Enter the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. Conceived by Wolfowitz, the office grew out of the Near East South Asia directorate's Iraq desk and was officially launched in the summer of 2002--just as the administration was readying its big sales pitch for war.

The OSP's director, Abram Shulsky, is a disciple of political philosopher Leo Strauss (as is Wolfowitz). Straussians believe, among other things, that an enlightened elite sometimes has to tell a "noble lie" to bring the masses on board for something they otherwise wouldn't back (this is sort of a perverted take on Plato).

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Date published: 4/9/2004