Former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay sparked a
storm of controversy this week when he directly refuted pre-war
intelligence which asserted that Iraq had large stockpiles of
chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons programs and
was an imminent threat to international peace.
"You have to make decisions based on the intelligence you
have, not on the intelligence you're going to discover later,"
Wolfowitz said during a visit to U.S. troops based in Germany.
It's very important to try to have the best intelligence you
possibly can have."
U.S. intelligence agencies are under attack from critics at
home and abroad for pre-war assessments which officials of
President Bush (news - web sites)'s administration held up to Americans, their
allies abroad and at the United Nations (news - web sites) as justification for
mounting a pre-emptive war against Iraq in March.
Democrats, in a U.S. presidential election year, have been
accusing the Republican White House of exaggerating the
intelligence on Iraqi weapons to build a case for war.
"It's clear if we move away from the stockpiles issue, that
the Iraqi regime was cheating on resolution 1441, which was in
fact their last and final chance to comply with a whole series
of U.N. resolutions," Wolfowitz said.
Wolfowitz, who was one of the architects of the Iraq war
and whose visit with the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division
coincides with preparations for a move to Iraq, said
intelligence was an "imperfect" exercise.
"It's not a science, it's an art... It's important to work
to understand where you got it right and where you got it
wrong," he said.
Wolfowitz said that success in Iraq, which U.S.-led forces
now occupy after a brief war last year that toppled former
President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), will be an important turning point
for the entire Middle Eastern region.
"The Middle East for the last 20 years has been heading
down the wrong road. We've seen some of the results of that on
September 11. Iraqi people have a chance now to start turning
the course of history and putting the Middle East on the right
road, and that's what we have to keep our eye on."
Wolfowitz was briefed by Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander
of the 1st Infantry Division on the plans for deployment of
about 12,000 troops from Germany to take over for the 4th
Infantry Division operating in north central Iraq in mid-March.
