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February 14, 2007

The Price of Credibility

Ezra Klein has highlighted one of the biggest failings of the Bush administration: its almost complete loss of credibility in the wake of the Iraq war.

It is possible, although I believe it unlikely, that the U.S. government has firm evidence linking the Iranian government to the weaponry found in Iraq it claims is of Iranian origin. I have noted in the past that the Iranian government has good reasons provide limited aid to the insurgency in Iraq. After all, President Bush placed Iran within the 'Axis of Evil' during his 2003 State of the Union address, the U.S. has made numerous arguably threatening comments about not permitting Iran to gain nuclear technology, and the U.S. clearly considers the Iranian government unfriendly at best. Given the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran is quite rational to be concerned about the U.S. possibly trying to overthrow their government as well. So the motive to see the U.S. tied down in Iraq is there. But it is impossible to accept the claims of the administration at face value after the events that led up to the Iraq war.

I get a fair amount of ribbing (I like to think it is good intentioned) because I do not ascribe nefarious motives to the Bush administration for what happened in Iraq. Regardless of motives, however, it is quite clear at this date the administration relied on very poor intelligence to make its case for the war in Iraq. I suspect we would have gone to war in Iraq even had our intelligence been better, but the case would have been far more difficult to make had we known going in that Iraq's WMD program was dormant in 2002. So when the administration starts making the case for a casus belli with Iran, it is difficult at best for the outside observer to accept the case without seeing all the evidence. The problem is, if the U.S. does have any real evidence tying the Iranian government to any part of the insurgency, that information was probably collected in such a way that to reveal it would be to burn that source, so if that evidence does exist the intelligence community will be loathe to do so. This is why we have intelligence committees in the House and Senate: so classified information can be provided to a small group of (theoretically) trustworthy representatives and Senators who can evaluate it on the merits and keep their colleagues informed. But that system broke down over Iraq, and any claims this administration makes are going to require a much higher standard of proof from now on.

I have absolutely no interest in seeing the U.S. expand the war to Iran, so I have no objections to the path to war being made as difficult as possible for the Bush administration. But I do believe the Bush administration has caused real damage to our system through their actions during the runup to the Iraq war. While I think the amount of classification that goes on in Washington is probably at least an order of magnitude greater than it needs to be, there are occasions when the government really does need to keep secrets, and the people need to be able to trust their elected representatives to act accordingly. Because the Bush administration has chosen to abuse the classification system, they have damaged that capability, and we may all pay a price for it at some point in the future. And that damage will remain long after the Bush administration players have moved on.