As is becoming a habit these days, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) are busy trumpeting the findings of a report that it is quite evident they have not read (see also: 9-11 Commission Report and the Kay Report). In this particular instance, the report that they’re salivating over is the Iraqi Survey Group’s report on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. If the media reports are to be believed, the report is a vindication of the retroactive Democratic position on WMD in Iraq (that they were never there including, apparently, when Bill Clinton bombed Iraq for three days over them in 1998). That is, of course, if the media reports are to be believed.

Let us briefly review what the Duelfer Report actually says, as opposed to what the media says that it says:

According to the report, Saddam Hussein personally supervised and micro-managed the report to conceal from, quite literally, everyone in the world the fact that Iraq lacked weapons stockpiles. Even Saddam’s own Generals were unaware of the true state of Iraq’s programs until very shortly before the war began in March of 2003.
Saddam Hussein’s real strategy in the years 1991-2003 was to pretend to be exactly cooperative enough to get UN Sanctions on him lifted. Throughout that time, Saddam sought to retain a residual WMD capacity which could have been reactivated very quickly once sanctions were lifted.
The UN-created Oil-for-Food program was, without hyperbole, the most hideous example of corruption in the history of the world. Instead of feeding his suffering people, Saddam used his oil to enrich himself and bribe people: including high officials of the United Nations, France, Russia, and China.
Despite the sanctions, Iraq continued extensive work on prohibited long-range missiles.
Oh, yes, and they concluded that it was the “guiding theme” of Saddam’s regime to start making WMD again as soon as possible.

This is the report that the media-Democrat axis is attempting to play up as a damning indictment of the Bush Administration’s thinking and actions? In truth, what this report reveals is that US intelligence, on the matter of Iraq, worked exactly as it was meant to. Intelligence isn’t clairvoyance, it’s merely meant to present the best information available at the time and allow decision-maker to act accordingly.

It’s well past time that we concede that what happened in Iraq wasn’t an “intelligence failure” in any meaningful sense of the word. If Saddam was so successful in his deceptions that even his own Generals, on the very eve of war, were unaware that Iraq lacked WMD, how was it even remotely possible for the United States or other Western powers could discover and confirm the same?

The matter of Iraq is very similar to the situation we see played out on the streets of our cities on a fairly regular basis. A known criminal is running down a dark alley, pursued by the police. At some point the criminal turns around and reaches into his jacket. The police fire. The criminal dies. Afterwards it is revealed that, for some reason, the criminal was reaching for his cell phone. But no one (at least no one who thinks rationally of the matter) believes that the police did anything wrong. Rather, we all agree, they saw an emerging threat and they acted. They did the right thing.

We view what the police did as right because we understand that, in life-or-death situations, the police have no choice to act based upon the worst case scenario. Yes, it’s possible that what the criminal grabbed wasn’t a gun: but the police just couldn’t take that chance. Neither could President Bush.

Those who dub both 9-11 and Iraq as examples of “intelligence failures” are working from the bizarre premise that it’s possible to have intelligence that is 100% accurate. In the case of 9-11, they’re angrily demanding to know why our intelligence services and leaders failed to act upon a scenario which, before it actually happened, would have seemed like a fanciful leap of imagination at best. In the case of Iraq, we’re condemning them for looking at the available intelligence and drawing the same conclusions that every other reasonable and fair-minded observer would have drawn. It can’t be both: we can’t expect our leaders to both be prepared to act upon wild conjecture about bizarre enemy plans and to, simultaneously, accept the word of a mass-murdering dictator whose plan of deception worked so well that even his own Generals were surprised to learn the truth.

Consider this for a moment: if Saddam Hussein was able to convince the entire world, including his own military leaders, that a massive WMD program existed when, in fact, it did not exist, how highly would you rate his capacity to conceal an actual program if it did exist? There was simply no way of knowing the truth without doing what the United States ultimately did.

The case of Libya was a much better example of an intelligence failure. When the Libyans agreed to hand over their nuclear materials, the United States had absolutely no clue that Libya had an advanced nuclear program. None. US intelligence, for various reasons, missed it altogether. That’s the real danger: not that we’ll act too soon, but that we’ll fail to act because we lack confidence in our intelligence. I agree that “abuse” of intelligence has gone on in Washington in recent years, but I disagree as to the perpetrators. The real abusers are not those who have acted in the defense of the United States, but those who have peddled the dangerously flawed notion that it is possible to have intelligence that is perfect in all ways and that, short of that, we must not act.

When acting against terrorist threats, we need to look for “fail-safe” options. What that means is this: when examining intelligence about terrorist threats, we need to act in such a way as to ensure that, even if we’re wrong, things will be better as a result. Invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam is a good example of a “fail-safe” option. Even if we weren’t exactly right as to the exact extent of the threat, we’ve made the world better as a result. Leaving Saddam to his own devices would be what I’d call a “fail-deadly” option. If it works, it works: great. If it fails… well, we’ve all already seen the consequences of that.

We need to be thankful that during the Iraq crisis we had a leader who learned the core lesson of 9-11: that, because we cannot our intelligence to be perfect, we must act against threats as they gather, not after they materialize. As Donald Rumsfeld once explained it, there are facts that are known, there are facts that are known-unknown and there are facts that are unknown-unknown. What this means is this: there are certain facts, such as the fact that a man named Osama Bin Laden exists (or, at any rate, once existed). There are things that we know in general, but do not know in detail: such as that he’s planning a terrorist attack against the United States. We don’t know where and we don’t know how, but we know that it’s coming. Then there are the unknown-unknowns, facts which no reasonable person could ever have guessed. That’s what the actual attacks which occurred on September 11th were: an unknown-unknown.

Now, we obviously cannot guard against those things that we don’t know about: but we can minimize their chance of hurting America. The only way to do this is by acting against threats before they become imminent and by acting on the best information is available. That’s what President Bush did and that’s what he and his successors must do in the dark years to come. In this Global War on Terrorism the margin for error is very small and, if we are to err, it must be on the side of caution for America and for the world. That is how President Bush has acted to date and that is how he will act in the future.

Some, I’m sure, will scoff at the notion that President Bush has been “cautious” in recent years. But I will assert that he has. After all, who is more reckless: the man who confronts a madman or the man who trusts him?