How bloody difficult is it for people to distinguish the widespread belief that Iraq had possession of biological and chemical agents from the Bush administration’s arguments that Hussein’s possession of, or eventual acquisition of, weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat to America’s urban centers? I know we have a small readership, but it isn’t exactly like Rodger and I are the only people explaining the difference.
This, after all, is what’s at stake in accusations that the Bush administration distorted and selectively used intelligence to make their case for war: they inflated the threat posed by Iraq beyond any reasonable levels to convince the American people (and many Democratic officials) that immediate action by the United States against Iraq was necessary to prevent another 9/11.
We know that threat inflation happened. Now we need to know whether it reached the level of malfeasance. Anyone who believes in the accountability of elected officials or the importance of a separation of powers should support a good-faith investigation to find out.
This is also why I am profoundly sympathetic to the many Democratic officials who now say they were misled by the administration. Looks to me like they were, even if some of them “should have known better.” If a few of them are simply reading the polls, well, that’s democracy for you.
Shorter version: Glenn Reynolds is full of it.
Filed as: Iraq and threat inflation
Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.
He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.
He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
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