How U.S. exits Iraq is our core issue

In George Tenet's new book there is an intriguing phrase that pinpoints a miscalculation that may have done much to trigger the Iraq war.

The CIA director, who served both Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush, writes: "Before the war, we didn't understand that he (Saddam Hussein) was bluffing, and he didn't understand that we were not." Tenet was referring to the fact that Saddam Hussein was a "genius at what the intelligence community calls 'denial and deception' — leading us to believe things that weren't true."

While asserting to the United Nations that he had no weapons of mass destruction, Hussein perpetuated to others — including his own generals — the myth that he did possess them. Thus American and British intelligence agencies, mindful that Hussein had earlier used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, and mindful that after the earlier Persian Gulf War evidence emerged that his regime had been much closer to acquiring nuclear weapons capacity than they had believed, concluded that he might have again clandestinely developed weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence agencies of a slew of other countries, such as France and Israel and Saudi Arabia, were similarly convinced. The Germans had their own prized informant, "Curve Ball," who gave them graphic accounts of Hussein's hidden weaponry. In the end, it all proved to be false. The clever shell game that Hussein had played —assuring one audience like the U.N. Security Council that he was without weapons of mass destruction, while signaling a warning to others that he did have them and could use them if threatened — was his undoing.

Tenet says Hussein was "a fool" for not understanding, especially after 9/11, that the United States "was not going to risk underestimating his WMD capabilities as we had done once before." The irony, says Tenet, is that he (Hussein) could have allowed U.N. inspectors free run of the country and if they found nothing, "U.N. sanctions would have melted. In that case, he might be alive and living in a palace today. Without sanctions, he would be well on his way to possessing WMD." Thus his bluff failed, and he miscalculated the will of the United States to act with military force against him.

In his round of TV programs to publicize his book, Tenet is defensive of himself and the CIA and its officers and agents. He takes aim at some in the Bush administration, particularly Vice President Cheney, who he charges embellished the CIA conclusions. But he admits that he and the agency were dead wrong in the assessment of Hussein's WMD capacity that they gave to President Bush.