July 21, 2003
Senator Nickles:
I have had taken some time to closely read your letter of June 26, 2003, and to formulate a reasoned response.
The bulk of your letter is a series of questions, which lead you to believe Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). I believe there are alternate answers to your questions, which I shall come to in a moment. First, however, I should like to respond with a single question:
If Hussein had access to any WMD, why were none fired? This is a question which has not yet been answered to my satisfaction. The most basic human instinct is self-preservation; it is possibly even more basic to retaliate when attacked. Yet, in spite of reportedly being able to activate these weapons within 45 minutes, not a single one was fired.
Our experience from the first Gulf War confirms that Hussein had no compunction about firing weapons, such as Scud missiles, against a superior force. Our experience since that time confirms that Hussein has a well-developed sense of self preservation. Logic suggests, therefore, two possible answers to why Hussein did not fire any Weapons of Mass Destruction:
To my mind, either of these options suggests a serious breach of intelligence, or in the reporting of that intelligence. This alone would suggest the need for a bi-partisan (preferably independent) commission to examine the claims made, and the validity of the sources.
You believe the only reasonable response to the questions posed in your letter is that Hussein in fact had WMD. I would suggest other possibilities. Lack of co-operation with U.N. Weapons Inspectors, rather than being an issue of hiding weapons, may have been an issue of national sovereignty — although Iraq was forced to make this concession at the end of the first Gulf War, it is not a concession any nation would easily accede to.
Secondly, it is possible that Hussein leaked false information that he was pursuing biological, chemical, and other Weapons of Mass Destruction, simply in hopes of preventing a strike. It may, in other words, have been an attempt to re-create the “mutually assured destruction” diplomacy of the Cold War without expending resources on actual weapons.
In your third paragraph, you reference Hussein throwing out U.N. inspectors in 1998. It's striking to me that you reference an event five years old. The person who sent the inspectors packing in 2003 was George Bush, not Hussein. President Bush claimed he was losing patience with the process just as there was, in fact, increased cooperation with the weapons inspectors. I would grant that this cooperation was likely encouraged by the likelihood of attack. But we can only conjecture at how different the outcome might have been if a greater number of inspectors had been allowed to enter Iraq. I believe that a combination of military force along with an increased presence of inspectors may have resulted in a much more positive outcome than what we are currently witnessing.
In your penultimate paragraph, you suggest the world community should allow more time for weapons to be found. This request for time seems ironic, since this was the same request made by the majority of the world community in the months and weeks prior to the Administration’s pre-emptive strike. Taking this along with the claim that we “knew” where the weapons were (made by Colin Powell before the United Nations), a degree of impatience on the part of the world community seems understandable.
One must ask why the United States refused to share this intelligence (of the location of WMD) with the U.N. inspectors. One must ask why the Administration lost patience with the process just as increased cooperation seemed possible. One must why the Administration was so vehemently opposed to allowing more inspectors into Iraq.
A number of possible answers have been posed to these questions. The best way to arrive at an answer which will be trusted by most sides of the debate is to form an independent bi-partisan commission which is given the authority to thoroughly investigate the matter.
Evidence I have seen and heard to date suggests the claim that Hussein sought nuclear materials from Niger had absolutely no merit. Further reports have suggested that this overstatement or probable falsehood was only the tip of an iceberg of inflated or invented intelligence used to support the attack on Iraq. But even if the "Niger" report were the only error, it demands examination. The lives of our soldiers, as well as the lives of Iraqi citizens, require a level of intelligence better than "pretty good". It would suggest that such evidence be better than “darn good” — when life is on the line, the evidence must be nearly unassailable.
No life should be taken nor put at risk idly.
Senator Nickles, our nation has faced a number of scandals great and small, dating most famously from Watergate. Each of these scandals has one thing in common: the attempt by the participants and their partisans to lie about, or hide, evidence. The Republican refusal to allow any kind of open investigation into this matter seems a continuation of this unfortunate trend. Members of your party have accused Democrats of trying to make this a partisan matter. The Republican refusal to allow an open investigation seems no less partisan.
The time has come for a person, such as yourself, to lobby for an independent bi-partisan investigation. The time has come to take this issue off the front page by opening the books so the nation and the world can see we have nothing to hide, nor any reason to hide something. This openness may, indeed, be the first step in ending public cynicism about our national government, a cynicism which has come to see government as “us versus them” rather than “we the people”.
I urge you, finally, to support any effort made to form an open bi-partisan investigation of the intelligence which was used to support an attack on Iraq. I urge you to lobby to have this commission be independent of all branches of government, and be given the same authority as a federal prosecutor. I strongly believe this is the best way to resolve this question.
Sincerely,
James A. Collins