Editorial: No imminent threat?

Friday, Feb. 6, 2004 | 8:58 a.m.

The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have come under attack because U.S. troops haven't found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, weapons that were the principal reason for the U.S. invasion. Last week even the former U.S. chief weapons inspector in Iraq said there should be an independent investigation to probe the intelligence failures that led to the assumption that Saddam Hussein had these weapons. On Thursday CIA Director George Tenet, while defending his agency's performance, maintained that U.S. analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now he tells us.

This is not what we were hearing from the White House a year ago and thereafter in the lead up to the war with Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his presentation last February to the U.N. Security Council, was unflinching in his certitude that Iraq had amassed a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence," Powell said. "The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world." Don't forget that Tenet was sitting directly behind Powell as he spoke, a none-too-subtle statement that the intelligence community backed Powell's declarations.

Meanwhile, today the president is supposed to appoint members to a commission to investigate the intelligence failures in Iraq. It's encouraging that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who in the past has shown that he isn't afraid to criticize Bush, is expected to be named to the commission. But not many people have McCain's backbone, which is one reason why Bush shouldn't get to name all the commission's members and why Congress should make some of the appointments. If this commission is to have credibility with an increasingly skeptical public, it needs to be truly independent, and having members appointed only by the president will sow doubts about just how tough it will be on the administration.