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Secrecy on Iraq is disservice to the public
© St. Petersburg Times WASHINGTON -- Polls show more than half of all Americans support President Bush's plan to attack Iraq -- as long as the United Nations has sanctioned it -- and many of them say they are paying close attention to the debate. What pollsters cannot tell us, however, is whether these people understand the likely ramifications of a U.S. attack on Iraq well enough to make an informed judgment. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., among others, doubts it. Graham is not suggesting Americans are stupid. On the contrary, he is saying our citizens are smart enough to make an independent decision. And he's saying that the Bush administration, which puts a high value on secrecy, has not been telling them the truth -- at least not the whole truth. "This is a 'control freak' administration," observes Charles V. Pena, defense policy analyst at the Cato Institute, who agrees with Graham. "Their attitude is, 'We know what's best for the American people -- trust us.' " Not only is Bush unusually zealous in keeping information from the public, but it apparently has not occurred to the Central Intelligence Agency that the ironclad secrecy of the Cold War era may be out of date today. As chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Graham is privy to both the classified and the unclassified information the CIA provides to Congress. He says he is horrified by the discrepancies between the two. "In the classified briefing," Graham says, "they'll say something is 'probably going to happen,' and in the declassified briefing they will change the 'probably' to 'could' or 'may.' So the declassified information is very misleading." Last week, although Graham forced the CIA to disclose some previously classified material about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, he was not satisfied. He thinks the CIA has not been sufficiently forthcoming about Iraq's weapons capabilities and how Hussein will probably respond to a U.S. attack. Karlyn Bowman, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who studies public opinion, says most Americans naturally trust the president and the U.S. military; therefore, they are not skeptical of the information they are getting about Iraq. Bush, in his televised speech Tuesday night, offered a few cryptic details taken from U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq. He said Iraqis have unmanned airborne vehicles that could deliver chemical or biological weapons. He said an al-Qaida leader received medical treatment in Iraq in the last year. What do those details mean? Bush implied that they made his case for war against Iraq, but he did not flesh them out enough for anyone to understand why they are significant. Many experts agree with Graham that the advent of global terrorism calls for an entirely new approach toward sharing government information with the public. "In this new climate, one of the important questions that needs to be worked out is: What level of proof does the public need to support a pre-emptive strike?" says Republican pollster David Winston. Pena adds: "The case for pre-emption has to be made more strongly (by the president), using more information. It begs for making intelligence information as transparent as possible." There are two good reasons why the government needs to be more forthcoming with information in the era of terrorism than it was during the Cold War. The first: As long as the goal of the United States was to deter a Soviet attack, Americans could rest easy in the knowledge that their government would not enter into war without provocation. But public opinion plays a crucial role in the decision-making when the U.S. decides to be the aggressor. A new Pew Research Center poll suggests the American people are not adequately informed about the situation in Iraq. It shows a majority of Americans who support going to war with Iraq believe that Hussein assisted al-Qaida in the terrorist attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. In truth, the administration has never made that case. The second reason is: When a war involving U.S. troops was to be fought entirely on foreign soil, such as in the Persian Gulf, only military leaders needed access to top-secret intelligence. Now, however, the enemy could be living next door. And Americans deserve to know if an attack on Iraq would put them in personal danger. After the Vietnam War, it was standard wisdom the United States would never again invade a foreign country unless Americans were fully informed why it was happening. If the U.S. attacks Iraq, Graham predicts, we will feel that same kind of regret once again.
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Times columns today Ernest Hooper Howard Troxler Gary Shelton Sara Fritz |
