Pelosi Is the One Who Is Misleading on WMD in Iraq, Not the CIA

The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has been attempting to defend herself by accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of "misleading" on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Pelosi, who was among the liberal Democratic critics of the Bush Administration's enhanced interrogations of terrorist suspects, is trying to deny the CIA's claim that she was briefed about the techniques, along with other members of Congress, and did not object to the interrogation techniques at the time or afterward.

In order to dismiss the convincing evidence that she was, in fact, briefed about the enhanced interrogations, Pelosi is attempting to impeach the CIA's credibility by smearing it with the canard that it misled about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The charge that WMD were not found in Iraq has been repeated so frequently -- without challenge --that it has become widely believed. But it is not true. Coalition forces have found several hundred weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the form of artillery shells with chemical warheads. According to a declassified report by the Department of Defense, over 500 chemical weapons had been found already as of three years ago. Moreover, other prohibited chemicals have been found that could have quickly been weaponized, a fact which would have made the question of assembled weapons of mass destructive moot. Although no stockpiles of WMDs were found, it is false to say that none were found, as many WMDs were scattered amidst Iraq's conventional munitions.

What was more misleading than any exaggerations by intelligence officials or others about Iraq's WMD programs during the Saddam Hussein era, were the claims before the Liberation of Iraq by liberals and isolationists that Iraq did not have WMD. These claims were based upon a belief that the dishonest Hussein had told the truth that he had destroyed his known WMDs, despite his refusal to prove that he had done so, as he was obligated to do by United Nations resolutions. It was not necessary to find WMDs or WMD materials in order to be skeptical of Hussein's claims that Iraq did not have WMDs. But the finding of Iraq's WMDs and materials proves beyond any doubt that it is liberals like Pelosi, not the Bush Administration and its supporters, who are misleading about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, something that needs to be said more often. In short, with her attempt to impeach the CIA's credibility, Pelosi has impeached her own.