The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

attack. But I was wrong, because I did not fully understand that, for the pres- ident, the WMD issue was an excuse rather than a real reason for war. I remember wondering as I head- ed home to Arlington from the State Department on my last day as a Foreign Service officer what the future would hold during my upcom- ing “personal sabbatical.” I would never have imagined that a year later, I would be heading to San Francisco to receive the 2003 “Citizen Watchdog Award” from the Center for Investigative Reporting for speaking out on distortions by government. The Center described me as “the first member of America’s intelligence community with active knowl- edge of the (Iraqi unconventional weapons) case to come forward and publicly question the way intelli- gence was used to make the argument for war.” My acceptance remarks included these words: “I came of age in the era of the Vietnam War — a war based on official deceptions. The failure of several administrations to speak honestly to the American people about Vietnam cast a long shadow over the 20th-century histo- ry of the United States. … “At the beginning of a new centu- ry, and at the end of my own career, I witnessed how the Bush administration consistently distorted the intelligence information available to it in order to justify an attack on Iraq. … However benefi- cial the removal of Saddam Hussein proves to be for the Iraqi people, I believe the U.S. invasion and occu- pation of Iraq has weakened U.S. national security and has weakened American democracy. While making the best of a circumstance abroad we cannot undo, we must also seek to restore the integrity and credibility of our own government at home. Our democracy cannot otherwise flourish.” F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 49 For President Bush, the WMD issue was an excuse rather than a real reason for war.