[Peace-discuss] Pro-war Dem for Senate Intel Com

Sat Dec 27 21:57:41 CST 2008

	Feinstein: Bad Choice for Intelligence
	Stephen Zunes | December 23, 2008
	Foreign Policy In Focus 	

Ignoring the pleas of those calling for a more credible figure, Senate Democrats 
have instead chosen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to lead the Senate Committee on 
Intelligence. Feinstein was among those who falsely claimed in 2002 — despite 
the lack of any apparent credible evidence — that Saddam Hussein had somehow 
reconstituted Iraq's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, as well as its 
nuclear weapons program.

She used this supposed threat to justify her vote in October 2002 to grant 
President George W. Bush the unprecedented authority to invade Iraq. Most 
congressional Democrats voted against the resolution. So it is particularly 
disturbing that Democrats would award the coveted Intelligence Committee chair 
to someone from the party's right-wing minority.

She took this extreme hawkish position out of her own predilection, not because 
of political pressure. Indeed, Senator Feinstein acknowledged at the time of her 
vote that calls and emails to her office were overwhelmingly opposed to her 
supporting Bush's war plans. She decided to ignore her constituents and vote in 
favor of the resolution anyway.

Background to the Vote

Public opinion polls in the fall of 2002 showed a majority of Americans would 
support a U.S. invasion of Iraq only if it posed a serious threat to the 
national security of the United States. Unfortunately for Senator Feinstein and 
others eager for the United States to conquer that oil-rich country, Iraq wasn't 
a threat to the United States. Though Iraq once had an arsenal of chemical 
weapons as well as an active chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons 
development program, these were all destroyed or otherwise eliminated by the 
mid-1990s, as were their missiles and other delivery systems. With strict 
sanctions prohibiting imports of requisite technologies and raw materials, and a 
lack of adequate internal capacity to produce them in Iraq, it was physically 
impossible for the Iraqis to have reconstituted its "weapons of mass 
destruction" (WMDs).

Former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had briefed Senator Feinstein 
before the 2002 vote, and presented evidence that Iraq had achieved at least 
qualitative disarmament and could in no way be a threat to U.S. national 
security. According to Ritter, "I had her look me in the eye and I asked her if 
she had seen any credible evidence contradicting my conclusions. She said she 
had not."

Similarly, I was among a number of scholars, arms control analysts, and other 
constituents who briefed her staff on how — given the ongoing strict 
international sanctions imposed on that country and rigorous UN inspections 
through the end of 1998 — there was no way for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to 
have reconstituted his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. 
Citing reports from the UN, reputable think tanks, and recognized arms control 
experts — as well as articles from respected peer-reviewed academic journals — 
we thought we had made a convincing case that Iraq was no longer a threat to the 
United States or its neighbors.

Despite all this, Senator Feinstein insisted that Iraq somehow remained a 
"consequential threat" to the national security of the United States and claimed 
that Iraq still possessed biological and chemical weapons. And, in an effort to 
defend Bush's call for a U.S. invasion, she tried to discredit the UN 
inspections regime that had successfully disarmed Iraq by falsely claiming that 
"arms inspections, alone, will not force disarmament."

Similarly, even though the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency had correctly 
noted in 1998 that Iraq's nuclear program had been completely eliminated, 
Feinstein also falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein "is engaged in developing 
nuclear weapons."

When asked about such exaggerated claims regarding Iraq's military prowess, she 
insisted that she was somehow "privy to information that those in California are 
not." However, despite repeated requests to her office to make public what she 
was supposedly privy to, the only information her office provided has been the 
White House's summary of a 2003 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Based on 
the testimony of a handful of disreputable Iraqi exiles, this NIE met with 
widespread derision at the time of its release for its clearly inaccurate and 
politicized content.

[THIS WAS THE SAME EXCUSE EMPLOYED BY OUR OWN CONGRESSMAN, WHO HAS ALSO REFUSED 
TO SAY WHAT HE WAS "PRIVY TO"; IT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN THE NIGER YELLOW-CAKE 
FORGERIES. --CGE]

Feinstein's supporters insist that her false claims about Iraqi WMDs were an 
honest mistake. But Ritter and other critics argue that it wasn't just ignorance 
and stupidity that led Feinstein to make these false statements about Iraq's 
military capabilities. She may very well have lied about the WMDs in order to 
frighten the public into supporting a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country. 
Whether out of deceit or unawareness, however, Feinstein is clearly not suited 
to chair the committee.

Consequences of the Vote

I was also among a number of scholars specializing in the Middle East who warned 
Senator Feinstein that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would likely spark a disastrous 
armed insurgency, sectarian violence, and an increase in anti-American extremism 
in the Middle East and beyond. Despite this awareness of the likely 
consequences, however, she insisted that the United States should invade Iraq 
anyway. Such a decision raises serious questions as to whether she has the 
ability to rationally assess the costs and benefits of national security 
policies, which someone chairing the Intelligence Committee presumably should 
possess.

If her real goal was to protect our country from Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass 
destruction," however, she would have presumably called for the immediate 
withdrawal of U.S. troops once they invaded and occupied Iraq and discovered 
that there really weren't such weapons after all. It should have also been 
obvious that the longer U.S. troops stayed in that country, with its long 
tradition of resistance to foreign invaders, the more likely it would provoke a 
major armed insurgency and the rise of extremists groups. Despite this, 
Feinstein called on American troops to remain in Iraq for more than four years 
after the invasion. She voted to send hundreds of billions of dollars worth of 
taxpayers' money to support Bush's war effort even as California sank deeper and 
deeper into fiscal crisis.

During this occupation, U.S. authorities helped to rewrite the country's 
economic laws to allow American corporations to take over Iraqi industries and 
repatriate 100% of profits. Under U.S. tutelage, the new Iraqi government 
slashed corporate taxes and provided generous oil concessions to American 
conglomerates. In this way, the war has been extremely profitable for some giant 
corporations. Among these were the firms URS and Perini, both of which 
Feinstein's husband served as the majority owner. The Military Construction 
Appropriations subcommittee, under her leadership, steered government contracts 
to these very companies.

The Democratic Party's decision to appoint as head of the Senate Intelligence 
Committee someone with such a history of dubious judgment on intelligence 
matters is hardly new. The party chose Jay Rockefeller (WV) — who is leaving his 
post to chair the Commerce Committee — to chair the Intelligence Committee in 
January 2007, although he also made false claims about Iraq's WMD programs 
similar to those of Feinstein in order to justify his vote in favor of the invasion.

In the world of Senate Democrats, therefore, it appears that the quickest path 
to leadership in Intelligence comes from getting things wrong.

Stephen Zunes is a Foreign Policy In Focus senior analyst and a professor of 
politics at the University of San Francisco.

Recommended citation:
Stephen Zunes, "Feinstein: Bad Choice for Intelligence," (Washington, DC: 
Foreign Policy In Focus, December 23, 2008).

Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5764