US: President Bush has based his case for war against Iraq on the premise that President Saddam Hussein poses a "grave and gathering" danger to the United States. But the CIA believes that the prospect of a terrorist attack by Iraq against the US is low, and that the build-up to war might in fact unleash the horrors that Mr Bush says he wishes to prevent.
The classified CIA assessment, which injects a new element into the debate on war or peace in the US Congress, emerged in a letter sent by CIA Director George Tenet to Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on October 7th.
"Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW (chemical and biological weapons) against the United States," Mr Tenet wrote. An attack on the US might involve conventional weapons, he said, but Saddam Hussein could decide to assist Islamic terrorists in conducting a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack.
The CIA assessment points to fundamental divisions in the US administration over the threat assessment from Iraq. In a speech to the nation on Monday, Mr Bush said: "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
The CIA, at the urging of the Democrat-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, also released the testimony of a senior intelligence witness at a closed hearing of the committee on October 2nd which underlined its conclusions. The unnamed witness said the probability of Iraq initiating an attack on America was "low" but the likelihood of Baghdad's use of chemical or biological weapons if the US initiated an attack was "pretty high".
The White House rushed to dispel the perception that Mr Bush's policies were increasing the threat level to US citizens. Mr Tenet "did not say we're OK," White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer said yesterday. "If Saddam Hussein holds a gun to someone's head, while he denies he even owns a gun, do you really want to take a chance that he'll never use it." He also questioned the accuracy of the assessment.
"Everybody agrees that guesses about the likelihood are just that, they are best estimates," he said. The CIA, on the defensive for intelligence failures since September 11th, did not want its warning of a pre-emptive strike by Iraq to go unheeded, observers said. Many former and current CIA officials are expressing concern that the agency is being heavily pressurised to tailor the White House case for military action.
"There is a tremendous amount of pressure on the CIA to substantiate positions that have already been adopted by the administration," said Mr Vincent M. Cannistraro, former head of counter-terrorism at the CIA.
The ambiguity at the heart of the administration's strategy was picked up by Democratic Congressman Donald Payne of New Jersey.
Mr Tenet's suggestion that an attack on Iraq "could trigger the very things that our president has said that he is trying to prevent, the use of chemical or biological weapons," made the policy of a pre-emptive strike "troublesome", he said.
The CIA declassified other information backing up Mr Bush's claim of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. There is "credible reporting" that the group's "leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities," Mr Tenet wrote in a letter to senators. He added that this, coupled with Iraq's increasing support to "extremist Palestinians", suggested Baghdad's links to terrorists would increase.
Congress is debating a resolution giving Mr Bush authority to use military force to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The House is expected to pass the resolution this evening by about five to one, and the Senate by 70 of 100 votes, though the Senate vote may be delayed to next week by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, who has threatened a filibuster.
Mr Bush is meanwhile delaying the production of a text for a new tough UN resolution on Iraq disarmament until after Congress gives him authority to wage war. France wants two resolutions, with the authority to use force kept for the second to give Iraq a chance to co-operate. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council conferred on Tuesday evening but "the Americans didn't appear to have a negotiating mandate", said a diplomat after the meeting involving US Ambassador John Negroponte and the mission heads from China, France, Russia and the UK.
