各位殿

イラク戦争が実質的に終結してから既に２ヶ月経ちましたが、開戦の大義名分となっ
た大量破壊兵器(WMD=核、生物、化学兵器）がイラクに存在していたという確たる証
拠は未だに発見されておりません。このため米国では、ブッシュ大統領やCIAの責任
を問う声が高まっており、英国でもブレア首相が議会の厳しい追及を受けておりま
す。　他方国連イラク査察委員会（UNMOVIC)のブリックス委員長や国際原子力機関
（IAEA)のエルバラダイ事務局長も、米国が自由にイラクでの査察活動をさせてくれ
ないといって不満を表明しています。エルバラダイ氏はまた、米国や英国が証拠とし
ている文書にはいくつかの偽造が認められるとも指摘しています。

このままでは戦闘活動は終了したのに正式の戦争終結宣言はできないという妙な事態
になりかねません。一体誰の責任なのか。　ブッシュ政権に批判的なNew York Yimes
の著名コラムニスト、Paul Krugman（プリンストン大学教授）は、最新の寄稿論文
で、ブッシュ大統領やチェイニー副大統領の気に入るように「情報をでっち上げた」
米国情報当局の責任を鋭く指摘しています。彼はまた、イラク戦後復興作業の困難さ
についてもブッシュ政権はあまりにも過小評価していたとし、この戦争の結果につい
て誰も責任を取ろうとしないのは誠にけしからんと憤慨しています。

さて、ここで気になるのは、北朝鮮の核開発問題についても、現在我々日本人が知っ
ている情報の大半は米国情報であり、その信憑性はどうなのかということですが、こ
の点については、今後とも我々自身がしっかり判断して行かなければならないという
ことでしょう。
--KK

***********************************

Who's Accountable?

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The Bush and Blair administrations are trying to silence critics ・many of
them current or former intelligence analysts ・who say that they exaggerated
the threat from Iraq. Last week a Blair official accused Britain's
intelligence agencies of plotting against the government. (Tony Blair's
government has since apologized for January's "dodgy dossier.") In this
country, Colin Powell has declared that questions about the justification
for war are "outrageous."

Yet dishonest salesmanship has been the hallmark of the Bush
administration's approach to domestic policy. And it has become increasingly
clear that the selling of the war with Iraq was no different.

For example, look at the way the administration rhetorically linked Saddam
to Sept. 11. As The Associated Press put it: "The implication from Bush on
down was that Saddam supported Osama bin Laden's network. Iraq and the Sept.
11 attacks frequently were mentioned in the same sentence, even though
officials have no good evidence of such a link." Not only was there no good
evidence: according to The New York Times, captured leaders of Al Qaeda
explicitly told the C.I.A. that they had not been working with Saddam.

Or look at the affair of the infamous "germ warfare" trailers. I don't know
whether those trailers were intended to produce bioweapons or merely to
inflate balloons, as the Iraqis claim ・a claim supported by a number of
outside experts. (According to the newspaper The Observer, Britain sold Iraq
a similar system back in 1987.) What is clear is that an initial report
concluding that they were weapons labs was, as one analyst told The Times,
"a rushed job and looks political." President Bush had no business declaring
"we have found the weapons of mass destruction."

We can guess how Mr. Bush came to make that statement. The first teams of
analysts told administration officials what they wanted to hear, doubts were
brushed aside, and officials then made public pronouncements greatly
overstating even what the analysts had said.

A similar process of cherry-picking, of choosing and exaggerating
intelligence that suited the administration's preconceptions, unfolded over
the issue of W.M.D.'s before the war. Most intelligence professionals
believed that Saddam had some biological and chemical weapons, but they did
not believe that these posed any imminent threat. According to the newspaper
The Independent, a March 2002 report by Britain's Joint Intelligence
Committee found no evidence that Saddam posed a significantly greater threat
than in 1991. But such conclusions weren't acceptable.

Last fall former U.S. intelligence officials began warning that official
pronouncements were being based on "cooked intelligence." British
intelligence officials were so concerned that, The Independent reports, they
kept detailed records of the process. "A smoking gun may well exist over
W.M.D., but it may not be to the government's liking," a source said.

But the Bush administration found scraps of intelligence suiting its agenda,
and officials began making strong pronouncements. "Saddam Hussein recently
authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons ・the very weapons
the dictator tells us he does not have," Mr. Bush said on Feb. 8. On March
16 Dick Cheney declared, "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons."

It's now two months since Baghdad fell ・and according to The A.P., military
units searching for W.M.D.'s have run out of places to look.

One last point: the Bush administration's determination to see what it
wanted to see led not just to a gross exaggeration of the threat Iraq posed,
but to a severe underestimation of the problems of postwar occupation. When
Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, warned that occupying Iraq
might require hundreds of thousands of soldiers for an extended period, Paul
Wolfowitz said he was "wildly off the mark" ・and the secretary of the Army
may have been fired for backing up the general. Now a force of 150,000 is
stretched thin, facing increasingly frequent guerrilla attacks, and a senior
officer told The Washington Post that it might be two years before an Iraqi
government takes over. The Independent reports that British military chiefs
are resisting calls to send more forces, fearing being "sucked into a
quagmire."

I'll tell you what's outrageous. It's not the fact that people are
criticizing the administration; it's the fact that nobody is being held
accountable for misleading the nation into war.��