US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defended the decision to go to war against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the midst of a dispute among intelligence analysts over an important piece of evidence behind a rationale for the war, that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program.
"Whatever the case there," Rice said on the ABC News program This Week with George Stephanopoulos, referring to a debate in 2002 over whether or not Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes were related to nuclear weapons, "I stand by the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and remove this threat to American security."
Rice also said she was aware of the dispute in September 2002, when she stated in a television interview that the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." But, she said Sunday, it was not until after that television appearance that she learned "the nature of the dispute."
The CIA believed that the tubes were intended for centrifuges used to enrich uranium, an important step in building a bomb. But the Department of Energy, home to many of the government's best nuclear scientists, believed that the tubes were more likely intended for rockets.
The difference is important: It would be more troubling if Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program than if it was acquiring small artillery rockets. The "principal part" of the CIA's conclusion in 2002 that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program was its efforts to acquire tubes, a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found this summer.
Rice was reacting to an article in the New York Times on Sunday about the aluminum tubes debate. The article said she had been aware before her remarks in 2002 that government experts differed over whether or not the tubes were intended for nuclear weapons but that she knew that the nuclear theory was strongly backed at the highest level of the intelligence agencies. The article also said experts on her staff, though not Rice herself, had been told months earlier that the Energy Department scientists believed that the tubes were more likely intended for rockets.
On Sunday, Rice said in reference to the tubes, "People are still debating this."
The Iraq Survey Group, which searched for illicit weapons of in Iraq after Saddam's fall, reported back to the CIA and Congress that it had found no indications that the tubes were intended for nuclear weapon development or that Iraq had started up its nuclear weapons program again. CIA officials say they still view the tubes as an open question.
By October 2002, the intelligence agencies as a whole, including the Department of Energy though not the intelligence arm of the State Department, agreed that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. That consensus was contained in a then-classified National Intelligence Estimate.
Rice said the 2002 estimate of nuclear renewal was an assessment "that cannot be ignored." So, she said, "a policy-maker cannot afford to be wrong on the short side, underestimating the ability of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein."
Members of Rice's staff told intelligence officials in January last year that the case that Iraq had renewed its nuclear ambitions "was weak," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report.
Rice also defended her 2002 remarks and the decision to go to war during two television interviews. In both interviews, Rice said the "intelligence community as a whole" had backed the theory that the tubes were nuclear related.
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