Saddam’s capture doesn’t change a thing

Hallelujah! After eight months of bad news in Iraq, we needed something to cheer about. And we got it.

We finally found one weapon of mass destruction. Indeed, the ultimate WMD: Saddam Hussein himself, hiding ignominiously in a hole in the ground, looking less like a president and more like the homeless man I saw yesterday outside Washington’s Union Station.

The capture of Saddam Hussein is good news for everybody but him. It’s a credit to our determined men and women in uniform, to our intelligence forces, and to President Bush. We salute them all.

But no matter how welcome, don’t be misled about the importance of this one event. Nabbing Saddam was more theater than anything else. And in terms of the war with Iraq, it doesn’t change a thing. It was still the wrong war, fought at the wrong time, in the wrong way and under false premises.

Yes, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. And the Iraqi people are better off with Saddam in captivity. But that’s not why we went to war.

The White House is trying to reinvent history, now claiming we went to war to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Not true. We did not invade Iraq in order to depose a brutal dictator and bring him to justice. If so, we’d have to invade Burma, North Korea, Congo and any number of other countries, some of them our allies.

As repeated over and over again by President Bush, there were three reasons for invading Iraq: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical and nuclear; Iraq was a direct threat to the United States; and Saddam Hussein was linked to the al-Qaida network and Sept. 11. Still today, not one of those charges – not one! – has been verified.

Weapons of mass destruction. Isn’t it ironic? The day after Saddam Hussein was captured, chief weapons inspector David Kay met with CIA Director George Tenet and offered his resignation. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports it was decided at that meeting to pull the plug on the hunt for WMDs.

Privately, at least, the administration admits: There aren’t any. No nukes, no biological or chemical weapons. At most, Saddam Hussein possessed only the “intent” to develop them. Our intelligence was wrong. The president was wrong. The war was wrong.

The threat to the United States. That was Bush’s weakest argument of all. With no navy, no air force, 60 percent of his country under a U.S.-controlled “no-fly” zone and a ragtag army, Saddam Hussein was hardly a threat to the Solomon Islands, let alone the mighty United States of America.

Speaking in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, President Bush warned: “Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles – far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations – in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work.”

Oops! Our military inspectors found zero long-range missiles. Our intelligence was wrong. The president was wrong. The war was wrong.

The link to Sept. 11. President Bush now admits: There was none. The original claim was based on one alleged meeting in Prague between 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and a senior Iraqi intelligence official, which, even the CIA now admits, never took place.

The war in Iraq, in other words, was not part of the war on terror, as the president repeatedly asserts. It was a costly distraction from the war on terror. Our intelligence was wrong. The president was wrong.

And not only wrong about the war but, perhaps, wrong about what led up to Sept. 11. Again, isn’t it ironic? Three days after Saddam’s capture, the man President Bush named to chair the independent commission investigating 9/11 – former New Jersey Republican Gov. Thomas Kean – told CBS News that he believes the terrorist attacks could have and should have been prevented.

Kean found: The Bush administration had been warned that Osama bin Laden was the greatest threat facing the United States, but failed to act. Intelligence agencies had been warned that terrorists might hijack planes and fly them into buildings, but also failed to act.

Kean concludes: “This was not something that had to happen.” Kean’s shocking statement is just one more reason for Americans to ask: Were we deliberately misled into war with Iraq? Only President Bush knows – not Saddam Hussein.

Bill Press, a political analyst for MSNBC, is author of “Spin This!” His e-mail address is: BillPress@aol.com