Bush intelligence commission will sidestep answering vital questions

Meanwhile, weapons inspector David Kay said bluntly that there are no weapons in Iraq. Many questions, moreover, have been raised about Bush's National Guard Service records of three decades ago, and his aides haven't been able to put them to rest.

And as the President struggles to neutralize these negative developments, he has had to suffer through the release of a series of public opinion polls that showed his popularity fading. Mark Shulman, a prominent independent pollster, told the AP that the credibility issue was Bush's number one problem. "A lot of poll numbers from a lot of different organizations are finding that people are questioning (his) credibility," Shulman xplained.

These developments have been troubling enough, but Bush has also had to listen to the clamour of the Democrats for an investigation of why his administration's pre-war claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were dead wrong.

Given the political heat, the controversy isn't going to die. He has had no choice but to accede to pressure and establish a commission that would investigate the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.

On February 6, Bush announced he would establish "an independent commission . . . to look at American intelligence capabilities." On the surface, at least, it seemed like the right move to make by an administration known for its obsession with secrecy and its arrogant disregard of public opinion. But when details about the intelligence commission became known, it was obvious what the Bush administration was trying to do: make a sneaky political end-run around the WMD issue by delaying the release of any findings until at least after the 2004 political election campaign. The Commission's findings won't be released until March 2005.

Those of us Americans who want a truly independent investigation of the WMD issue have every right to be outraged. As House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi explained: "We had an opportunity to have a truly independent commission that could have brought fresh eyes to the subject. Instead, we have a commission wholly owned by the executive branch investigating the executive branch."

Pelosi was referring to the composition of Bush's commission. Indeed, how can a commission be independent if Bush gets to select all the members? It's a classic example of the fox guarding the hen-house.

Bush should be doing everything possible to ensure that the commission is independent, given the questions that have been raised about his credibility on the WMD issue. Instead, not only has he selected all the commission members, he is also refusing to make public their financial disclosures. In short, the American people will have no way of knowing if conflicts of interest are clouding the commission's work.

Bush has given a lame justification for the non-disclosure. The commission's nine members, he said are not being paid for their work. But some of the commissioners also are believed to have ties, either to the Bush administration or to the US defense industry and other groups that could be involved in the inquiry.

Co-chair Judge Laurence Silberman for one is known to have a chummy relationship ith Bush and the neo conservative cabal that has gotten us into the Iraq mess.

Consequently, concerns have been raised in the US press about Silberman's fitness to serve as co-chair of the commission.

For instance, a press release from the People for the American Way noted that "those who know him -- including one-time Nixon aide and respected author Kevin Phillips, former independent council and Eisenhower deputy attorney general Lawrence Walsh and reformed right-wing hitman David Brock -- raise serious questions and concerns abut Silberman's past activities, his temperament, his judgement and his unyielding commitment to rightwing orthodoxy. After reviewing this criticism, along with Silberman's own statements, it becomes clear that Silberman is ill-suited for a role on the intelligence commission."

Furthermore, instead of focusing on Iraq, the commission will spend much of its time on matters having nothing to do with reasons why the public and Congress want the commission. For instance, it will also spend loads of time reviewing intelligence on weapons programs in North Korea, as well as Iran, and will follow Bush's mandate to "examine intelligence on the threats posed by Libya and Afghanistan before recent changes in those counties."

John W. Dean, in an article posted on the Findlaw.com web site, put the irrelevance of those inquiries into perspective: "What does any of this have to do with whether or not the Bush administration misused, falsely reported, or concocted intelligence to take the nation to war? Nothing."

That is exactly right, and given the commission's mandate, it will avoid finding answers to the most important questions about the Iraq War. Did political pressure from leading figures in the Bush administration contribute to the intelligence failures? Did those officials exaggerate the intelligence analysis assessments as part of a misleading campaign to get the American public behind the war effort? What hard evidence was there that al-Qaeda had ties to Saddam Hussein?

Fortunately, the Bush administration's effort to insulate itself from Iraq War intelligence issues may not succeed. Last February 17, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced its plans to investigate whether the White House officials exaggerated the Iraq threat or pressured intelligence analysts into making assessments that supported their case for war.

No date for release of a report has been set yet, but it's likely the committee's finding will be released well before next November. If this happens, there is a good chance that all of 2004 will be a really bad year for George Bush, Jr.

Ron Chepesiuk is former Fulbright Scholar to Bangladesh, a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University, and a Research Associate with the National Defence College,Dhaka.