The Fromson File

Surprise! There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq last April. There are no weapons of mass destruction now. And, there are no "related program activities" except in the minds of Messrs. Chaney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. At least that's what our former chief weapons inspector says now. David Kay doesn't want to blame anyone in particular for the miscalculation. Guess who got to him? On the other hand, Kay does think U.S. intelligence, from top to bottom, somehow got it wrong. Somehow? Tell that to the United Nations inspectors who the Administration ridiculed for being so slow in finding what Kay and his team of 1200 have been unable to find the past nine months. Tell that to our traditional allies in Europe who the White House and its functionaries inside the Beltway insulted or scorned. While we're at it, consider this: After an exhaustive investigation in London of what went wrong when Prime Minister Tony Blair seemed to echo his new ally, President George Bush, about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction in Sadaam Hussein's hands, isn't it likely that MI-6 and the other spooks in Britain were getting their information from the same tainted sources Dr. David Kay was talking about when he resigned his post. That is the British espionage agencies got their information from the American spy agencies, merely compounding the mistakes and subsequent problems. The real victims of this tragedy in the eyes of Americans must be the families of the 500 American soldiers who have been killed in Iraq since last spring and the 2,000 or more who have returned home, either without their eyesight, a leg or an arm. Doesn't President Bush owe it to the mothers, fathers, husbands, brothers, sisters and children of those dead or disabled who were lied to when WMD was the only (repeat) the ONLY reason given for the U.S. going to war unilaterally in the first place? Given the history of the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy organs on our payroll that got it wrong at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba 40 years ago and so many other places since then, isn't it about time to de-politicize our espionage apparatus? Why not make their operatives independent of political pressure? Have the directors appointed by a board of distinguished Americans appointed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but free of White House influence. Its agents would be free to tell it as they see it. The use of technical means of espionage, that is from satellites, is insufficient. We need language fluent agents on the ground, wise in the ways of countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and dozens of other countries where the need to know is essential to safeguarding our national security. You can bet that Democratic presidential candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards who say they were snookered by the President when they were persuaded in 2002 to expand his ability to make war, if not actually trigger it, must be figuring out how to make political hay out of Kay's stunning disclosure. Prominent Democrats in Congress, like Representative Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, are not likely to give President Bush any wiggle room between now and next November's election.