[Media-watch] Bush was kept "fully informed" about ICRC report - Powell - Slate.msn - 14 May 2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

I tried sending this last night, but it does not seem to have appeared as
yet so I am sending it again. If both copies eventually turn up then
apologies for the duplication. - JA
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Bush administration also feared destroying Iraqi "terrorist camp" would
undercut its case for war against Saddam.
Links to sources and quotes are available in the original at the URL
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http://slate.msn.com/id/2100549/

The Buck Stops . Where?
Stop blaming your henchmen, Mr. President.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, May 14, 2004, at 2:41 PM PT

And so it seems I, too, have misunderestimated the president. This past
Wednesday, I wrote a column holding George W. Bush responsible for our
recent disasters-the torture at Abu Ghraib and the whole plethora of
strategic errors in Iraq. My main argument was that Bush has placed too much
trust, for far too long, in the judgment of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, despite his ceaseless string of bad judgments.

However, two news stories that have since come to my attention-one that
appeared on the same day, the other more than two months ago-suggest not
merely that Bush is guilty of "failing to recognize failure" (as my headline
put it) but that he is directly culpable for the sins in question, no less
so than his properly beleaguered defense chief.

The first story, written by Mark Matthews in the May 12 Baltimore Sun,
quotes Secretary of State Colin Powell-on the record-as saying Bush knew
about the International Committee of the Red Cross reports that were filed
many months ago about the savagery at the prison. Powell is quoted as
saying:

We kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC
and other international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the
president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when we
got notes sent to us or reports sent to us . we had to respond to them.

Powell adds that he, Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice kept Bush "fully
informed of the concerns that were being expressed, not in specific details
but in general terms." (Thanks to Joshua Micah Marshall, whose blog alerted
me to the Sun story.)

So much for Rumsfeld's protective claim, at last week's hearing before the
Senate Armed Services Committee, that he had failed to bring the matter to
the president's attention. No wonder Bush, in turn, rode out to the Pentagon
and praised his servant-secretary for doing a "superb" job.

It's amazing, by the way, how Colin Powell seems to have scuttled his
good-soldier routine altogether, criticizing his president at first
quasi-anonymously (through Bob Woodward's new book), then through close
aides (Wil Hylton's GQ article), and now straight up in the Baltimore Sun.
One wonders when he'll go all the way and start making campaign appearances
for John Kerry.

The second news story that heaves more burdens on the president comes from
an NBC News broadcast by Jim Miklaszewski on March 2. Apparently, Bush had
three opportunities, long before the war, to destroy a terrorist camp in
northern Iraq run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida associate who recently
cut off the head of Nicholas Berg. But the White House decided not to carry
out the attack because, as the story puts it:

[T]he administration feared [that] destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq
could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The implications of this are more shocking, in their way, than the news from
Abu Ghraib. Bush promoted the invasion of Iraq as a vital battle in the war
on terrorism, a continuation of our response to 9/11. Here was a chance to
wipe out a high-ranking terrorist. And Bush didn't take advantage of it
because doing so might also wipe out a rationale for invasion.

The story gets worse in its details. As far back as June 2002, U.S.
intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in
northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon
drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White
House turned it down. In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi
was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another
attack plan. The White House again demurred. In January 2003, police in
London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon
devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not
Zarqawi.

When the war finally started in March, the camp was attacked early on. But
by that time, Zarqawi and his followers had departed.

This camp was in the Kurdish enclave of Iraq. The U.S. military had been
mounting airstrikes against various targets throughout Iraq-mainly
air-defense sites-for the previous few years. It would not have been a major
escalation to destroy this camp, especially after the war against al-Qaida
in Afghanistan. The Kurds, whose autonomy had been shielded by U.S. air
power since the end of the 1991 war, wouldn't have minded and could even
have helped.

But the problem, from Bush's perspective, was that this was the only
tangible evidence of terrorists in Iraq. Colin Powell even showed the
location of the camp on a map during his famous Feb. 5 briefing at the U.N.
Security Council. The camp was in an area of Iraq that Saddam didn't
control. But never mind, it was something. To wipe it out ahead of time
might lead some people-in Congress, the United Nations, and the American
public-to conclude that Saddam's links to terrorists were finished, that
maybe the war wasn't necessary. So Bush let it be.

In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has been
linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700 other
killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June 2002, the
killings might not have happened. More: The case for war (as the White House
feared) might not have seemed so compelling. Indeed, the war itself might
not have happened.

One ambiguity does remain. The NBC story reported that "the White House"
declined to carry out the airstrikes. Who was "the White House"? If it
wasn't George W. Bush-if it was, say, Dick Cheney-then we crash into a very
different conclusion: not that Bush was directly culpable, but that he was
more out of touch than his most cynical critics have imagined. It's a tossup
which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a
top-level enemy in the war on terrorism
for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq-or a president who
leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to
his aides.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.
Photograph of George W. Bush by Luke Frazza/Agence France-Presse.