W.House Promises Independent Probe of Iraq WMD
By Steve Holland and Vicki Allen, 2/3/2004
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House vowed on Tuesday that a probe into intelligence used to justify the Iraq war would be independent despite Democratic complaints the commission would be handpicked by President Bush.
"These will be people of high integrity and they will have the independence to do the job they need to do," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Bush, initially cool to the idea, agreed to an independent investigation under pressure from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill after David Kay, former chief U.S. weapons hunter in Iraq, said he found no evidence of stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq and that prewar intelligence was almost all wrong.
Claims that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were the main reason cited by Bush for the war, in which more than 500 U.S. troops have died.
Democrats doubted whether the panel would have the independence and credibility it needed and said it should be authorized by Congress like the commission looking into intelligence leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"Although one of the major questions that needs to be addressed is whether senior administration officials exaggerated the nature of the threat from Iraq, the president is attempting to make the case that actions by these officials are best investigated by a commission whose members are appointed by and report to the White House," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said in the Senate on Tuesday.
Rep. Jane Harman of California, senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said in a telephone interview that for the probe to have credibility, the commission "should take on some of the tough subjects such as what is the connection between the policy-makers and the intelligence gatherers."
Secretary of State Colin Powell told The Washington Post in a story published on Tuesday he did not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told it had no stockpiles of banned weapons.
"I don't know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world," he said.
'THEY HAD THE CAPABILITY'
Powell, who has frequently been at odds with more hawkish members of the Bush administration like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, appeared on Tuesday to be trying to backtrack from his comments to The Post.
Asked at the State Department about the comments, he said, "What I know now -- and nothing would have changed this -- is that they had the capability and were maintaining that capability by keeping the technical infrastructure in place, making sure they had people around who knew how to make such weapons, make sure they had a warm base, they had the wherewithal to make such weapons."
He added: "The president made the right decision. There should be no doubt in the mind of the American people or anyone else in the world that we have done the right thing. And history will certainly be the test of that."
The White House was working to fill the nine seats on the commission and drafting an executive order to set out the scope of the investigation.
Bush is expected to announce the establishment of the commission this week. McClellan said the commission would include "people of integrity who have experience in public service and expertise in intelligence."
One name for the commission being circulated was that of Robert Gates, a former CIA director under the president's father.