The Foreign Service Journal, March 2010

M A R C H 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29 Food program. Iraqi leaders had informed UNSCOM that their pos- session and use of weapons of mass destruction were vital in the war against Iran in the 1980s. Later, they believed that the prospect of encountering WMD had deterred U.S. troops from driving all the way to Baghdad in 1991. Aware of this, Iraq analysts back in Washington figured Saddam would be missing a trick if he did not rebuild his WMD stockpiles. They were right about the plan, but not the timing. Saddam was going to wait until after the sanctions were lifted. In conclusion, let me offer one more observation. It is true that our intelligence assessments concerning Iraqi WMD were largely wrong and mistakenly flaunted in the prewar political environment. However, our intelligence about the internal dynamics of Iraq and how the nation was held together was largely correct. The real problem is that the Bush administration re- fused to tap those perspectives when it made major deci- sions about postwar governance. Prewar actions to establish relations in ministries of Saddam’s government were blocked. The refusal to use such knowledge and as- sessments led to monumental blunders such as de-Baathi- fication and the decision to disband the Iraqi Army. Indeed, the White House refused to undertake even lim- ited covert activities aimed at facilitating carefully limited immediate changes to the very top levels. Instead, it opted for the wholesale destruction of the existing appa- ratus of government. In my opinion, the bulk of the resulting postwar chaos in Iraq was avoidable. While SaddamHussein was a prob- lem that had to be addressed one way or another, the tragedy was that it did not need to be done so badly. This costly miscalculation did not derive from mistakes about Iraq WMD inventories, but from ignoring readily avail- able evidence about the internal dynamics of Iraq. On these points, the intelligence community (and some old hands in State) had far better knowledge. Yet for reasons best known to themselves, political leaders chose not to act on this intelligence. ■ F O C U S