Senator Edward M. Kennedy Delivers Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations

March 5, 2004


For Immediate Release
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: David Smith/ Jim Manley March 5, 2004 (202) 224-2633

SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY SPEECH TO THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Thank you, Glenn Kessler, for that generous introduction. As you all know, Glenn does an outstanding job covering diplomacy and foreign policy for the Washington Post.

今天与外交关系委员会一起在这里是一种荣幸。多年来,该委员会及其成员在全国辩论中有着显着贡献的杰出记录。在我们国家和世界面临的最重要的外交政策问题上,理事会处于最前沿。乐动冠军当美国试图在这个巨大的现代世界中找到自己的方式时,您的观点和分析比今天更重要。

该国正在就为什么美国在伊拉克进行战争的持续辩论,当时伊拉克不是迫在眉睫的威胁,没有核武器,没有与基地组织的有说服力的联系,与9月11日的恐怖袭击没有联系,没有任何联系大规模杀伤性武器的库存。

Over two centuries ago, John Adams spoke eloquently about the need to let facts and evidence guide actions and policies. He said, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Listen to those words again, and you can hear John Adams speaking to us now about Iraq. "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Tragically, in making the decision to go to war in Iraq, the Bush Administration allowed its wishes, its inclinations and its passions to alter the state of facts and the evidence of the threat we faced from Iraq.

A month ago, in an address at Georgetown University, CIA Director George Tenet discussed the strengths and flaws in the intelligence on Iraq. Tenet testified to several Senate and House committees on these issues, and next Tuesday, he will come before our Senate Armed Services Committee. He will have an opportunity to explain why he waited until last month to publicly state the facts and evidence on these fundamental questions, and why he was so silent when it mattered most � in the days and months leading up to the war.

如果他觉得白宫改变了事实,或者滥用了情报,或者忽略了事实并依靠伊拉克流放社区中的可疑资源,则宗旨应该这样说,并清楚地说。

It is not sufficient for Tenet to say only, as he did last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee, that we must be patient. When he was appointed Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, Tenet said to President Clinton. "� I have believed that you�and the Vice President must be provided with � complete and objective intelligence...We must always be straight and tell you the facts as we know them." The American people and our men and women serving in Iraq deserve the facts and they deserve answers now.

The rushed decision to invade Iraq cannot all be blamed on flawed intelligence. If we view these events simply as an intelligence failure � rather than a larger failure of decision-making and leadership � we will learn the wrong lessons.

The more we find out, the clearer it becomes that any failure in the intelligence itself is dwarfed by the Administration's manipulation of the intelligence in making the case for war. Specific warnings from the intelligence community were consistently ignored as the Administration rushed toward war.

我们现在知道,从布什总统上任的那一刻起,伊拉克就被视为第一个布什政府的未完成的业务。

根据前财政部长保罗·奥尼尔(Paul O'Neill)在罗恩·苏斯金德(Ron Suskind)的书《忠诚的价格》中的帐户中,伊拉克在2001年布什总统就职典礼后仅十天就在国家安全委员会的第一次会议上参加了议程。总统迅速 - 错误地得出结论,美国对以色列 - 巴勒斯坦的冲突无法做太多。他说,我们应该“退出这种情况”,然后讨论“伊拉克如何破坏该地区”。

Secretary O'Neill remembers: "Getting Hussein was now the Administration's focus. From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country. And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"

到2001年2月底,关于伊拉克的演讲主要是关于如何摆脱萨达姆·侯赛因的速度。布什总统对情报界的提供感到沮丧。据奥尼尔秘书说,2001年5月16日,他和国家安全委员会的其他校长会见了总统,讨论中东。Tenet介绍了他的情报报告,并告诉总统,仍然只猜测萨达姆是否有大规模杀伤性武器,甚至正在开始制造此类武器的计划。

Secretary O'Neill says: "Everything Tenet sent up to Bush and Cheney about Iraq was very judicious and precisely qualified. The President was clearly very interested in weapons or weapons programs � and frustrated about our weak intelligence capability � but Tenet was clearly being careful to say, here's the little that we know and the great deal that we don't. That wouldn't change, and I read those CIA reports for two years," said O'Neill.

然后是9/11。在随后的几个月中,阿富汗的战争和狩猎乌萨马·本·拉登(Osama bin Laden)明显优先。基地组织显然是对我们国家安全的最迫在眉睫的威胁。实际上,在布什总统就职典礼的一个月和9/11之前的七个月后,宗旨是在2001年2月对国会的证词中,Tenet说:“ Osama Bin Laden及其全球中尉和员工网络仍然是最直接和严重的威胁。“这一证词强调了本·拉登(Bin Laden)的明显危险,鉴于前几年对美国公民和美国机构的特定攻击。

In February 2002, five months after 9/11, Tenet testified: "Last year, I told you that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network were the most immediate and serious threat this country faced. This remains true despite the progress we have made in Afghanistan and in disrupting the network elsewhere."

Even during the buildup to the war in Iraq, in February 2003, Tenet again testified, "the threat from Al Qaeda remains ... We place no limitations on our expectations on what Al Qaeda might do to survive � Al Qaeda is living in the expectation of resuming the offensive."

In his testimony last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tenet repeated his earlier warnings. He said again that Al Qaeda is not defeated and that "We are still at war�This is a learning organization that remains committed to attacking the United States, its friends and allies."

宗旨从未使用过这样的强大的语言escribe the threat from Iraq. Yet despite all the clear and consistent warnings about Al Qaeda, by the summer of 2002, President Bush was ready for war with Iraq. The war in Afghanistan was no longer in the headlines or at the center of attention. Bin Laden was hard to find, the economy was in trouble, and so was the President's approval rating in the polls.

Karl Rove had tipped his hand earlier by stating that the war on terrorism could bring political benefits as well. The President's undeniable goal was to convince the American people that war was necessary � and necessary soon, because soon-to-be-acquired nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein could easily be handed off to terrorists.

This conclusion was not supported by the facts, but the intelligence could be retrofitted to support it. Greg Thielmann, former Director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, put it bluntly last July. He said, "Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided." He said, "They surveyed the data, and picked out what they liked. The whole thing was bizarre. The Secretary of Defense had this huge Defense Intelligence Agency, and he went around it." Thielmann also said, "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude, its top-down use of intelligence: we know the answers; give us the intelligence to support those answers�Going down the list of administration deficiencies, or distortions, one has to talk about, first and foremost, the nuclear threat being hyped," he said.

David Albright, the former weapons inspector with the International Atomic Energy Agency, put it this way: "Leaders will use worst case assessments that point to nuclear weapons to generate political support because they know people fear nuclear weapons so much."

Even though they make semantic denials, there is no doubt that senior Administration officials were suggesting the threat from Iraq was imminent.

在上个月与欧洲记者进行的圆桌讨论中,拉姆斯菲尔德秘书坚持认为:“我从未说过迫在眉睫的威胁。”

In fact, Secretary Rumsfeld had told the House Armed Services Committee on September 18, 2002, "�Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent � that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain."

In February 2003, with war only weeks away, then Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked why NATO allies should support Turkey's request for military assistance against Iraq. His clear response was, "This is about an imminent threat." 2003年5月,白宫发言人阿里·弗莱舍(Ari Fleischer)被问到我们是否参加战争“因为我们说WMD是对美国的直接和迫在眉睫的威胁。”弗莱舍回答:“绝对。”

国家安全顾问Condoleezza Rice还可以提出的其他方式,除了迫在眉睫的威胁 - 当她在2002年9月8日说:“我们不希望吸烟枪成为蘑菇云时。”

布什总统本人可能没有使用“迫在眉睫”一词,但他小心地选择了关于威胁性质的强烈而充满言论。

在2002年10月2日的玫瑰园中,国会正准备投票通过授权战争,总统说,伊拉克政权“是一个独特的紧迫性威胁”。

In a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, President Bush echoed Condoleezza Rice's image of nuclear devastation: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof � the smoking gun � that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

At a political appearance in New Mexico on October 28, 2002, after Congress had voted to authorize war, and a week before the election, President Bush said Iraq is a "real and dangerous threat."

At a NATO summit on November 20, 2002, President Bush said Iraq posed a "unique and urgent threat."

2003年1月3日,在得克萨斯州胡德堡,布什总统称伊拉克政权为“严重威胁”。

Nuclear weapons. Mushroom cloud. Unique and urgent threat. Real and dangerous threat. Grave threat. This was the Administration's rallying cry for war. But those were not the words of the intelligence community. The community recognized that Saddam was a threat, but it never suggested the threat was imminent, or immediate, or urgent.

In his speech last month at Georgetown, CIA Director Tenet stated that, despite attempts to acquire a nuclear capability, Saddam was many years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Tenet's precise words were: "We said Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009."

The acquisition of enough nuclear material is an extremely difficult task for a country seeking nuclear weapons. Tenet bluntly stated that the intelligence community had "detected no such acquisition" by Saddam. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate also outlined the disagreement in the intelligence community over whether the notorious aluminum tubes were intended for nuclear weapons or not. Tenet显然与政府在乔治敦的讲话中对伊拉克威胁的紧迫性的言论保持距离。但是他不停地说政府扭曲了情报,或者依靠其他来源来为战争辩护。他说,他只给了总统中央情报局对情报的日常评估,其余的他不知道。

宗旨需要向国会和国家解释为什么他要等到上个月。战争开始后将近一年。情报分析师长期以来对情报被误以为战争的方式感到沮丧。2003年2月,一位官员描述了《纽约时报》情报机构中一些分析师的感受,他说:“我认为社区的领导人也有一种失望的感觉,他们在当时他们没有支持他们智力显然正在政治化。”

CIA董事Tenet为什么一年前不纠正总统,副总统和国防部长,何时可能会有所作为,何时可以避免一场不必要的战争,何时可以挽救这么多的生命?

It was Vice President Cheney who first laid out the trumped up argument for war with Iraq to an unsuspecting public. In a speech on August 26, 2002, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he asserted: "�We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons�Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." As we now know, the intelligence community was far from certain. Yet the Vice President had been convinced.

On September 8, 2002, Cheney was even more emphatic about Saddam. He said, "[We] do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon." The intelligence community was deeply divided about the aluminum tubes, but Cheney was absolutely certain.

Where was the CIA Director when the Vice President was going nuclear about Saddam going nuclear? Did Tenet fail to convince the policy makers to cool their overheated rhetoric? Did he even try to convince them?

One month later, on the eve of the watershed vote by Congress to authorize the war, President Bush said it even more vividly. He said, "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes�which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed�Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists."

实际上,正如我们现在知道的那样,情报界远没有统一伊拉克的核威胁。政府试图通过对情报界内的信息和情报界内的异议进行分类,直到战后,即使在对危险的即时性发表戏剧性和过度的公开陈述时,也试图掩盖这一事实。

在2004年2月在《大西洋月刊》上的一篇文章中,支持战争的前中央情报局分析师肯·普拉克(Ken Pollack可能的情况。”Pollack在一月的一次采访中补充说:“只有政府才能访问美国政府各机构可用的所有信息 - 出于其本身的目的而扣留或轻描淡写某些信息是对这一责任的背叛。”

In October 2002, the intelligence agencies jointly issued a National Intelligence Estimate stating that "most agencies" believed that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program after inspectors left in 1998, and that, if left unchecked, Iraq "probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

但是,国务院的情报局说,“可用证据”是不足以支持这一判决的。它拒绝预测“伊拉克何时可以购买核装置或武器”。

国家情报估计引用了一份外国政府的报告,该报告截至2001年初,尼日尔计划向伊拉克发送数吨核材料。估计还说:“报告表明,伊拉克已从索马里和刚果民主共ReportsReports和国寻求铀矿石。”但是,国务院的情报局回答说,伊拉克寻求从非洲购买核材料的主张“非常怀疑”。中央情报局向白宫发送了两次备忘录,强调了对这些主张的强烈怀疑。

But the following January, the President included the claims about Africa in his State of the Union Address, and conspicuously cited the British government as the source of that intelligence.

Information about nuclear weapons was not the only intelligence distorted by the Administration. On the question of whether Iraq was pursuing a chemical weapons program, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in September 2002 that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has � or will � establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities."

That same month, however, Secretary Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Saddam has chemical-weapons stockpiles.

他说:“我们知道伊拉克政权chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction," that Saddam "has amassed large clandestine stocks of chemical weapons," that "he has stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons," and that Iraq has "active chemical, biological and nuclear programs." He was wrong on all counts.

Yet the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate actually quantified the size of the stockpiles, finding that "although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of CW agents � much of it added in the last year." In his speech at the United Nations on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Powell went further, calling the 100-500 metric ton stockpile a "conservative estimate."

拉姆斯菲尔德(Rumsfeld)秘书在2003年3月30日在“本周与乔治·史蒂芬诺普洛斯(George Stephanopoulos)”的采访中提出了更加明确的断言。当被问及伊拉克大规模杀伤性武器时,他说:“我们知道它们在哪里。它们在蒂克里特(Tikrit)和巴格达(Baghdad)和东部,西,南,南和北部地区。”

The second major claim in the Administration's case for war was the linkage between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Significantly here as well, the Intelligence Estimate did not find a cooperative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. On the contrary, it stated only that such a relationship might happen if Saddam were "sufficiently desperate" � in other words, if America went to war. But the estimate placed "low confidence" that, even in desperation, Saddam would give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda.

A year before the war began, senior Al Qaeda leaders themselves had rejected a link with Saddam. The New York Times reported last June that a top Al Qaeda planner and recruiter captured in March 2002 told his questioners last year that "the idea of working with Mr. Hussein's government had been discussed among Al Qaeda leaders, but Osama bin Laden had rejected such proposals." According to the Times, an Al Qaeda chief of operations had also told interrogators that the group did not work with Saddam.

中情局分析师梅尔·古德曼20年来,放提单untly: "Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were enemies. Bin Laden considered and said that Saddam was the socialist infidel. These were very different kinds of individuals competing for power in their own way and Saddam Hussein made very sure that Al Qaeda couldn't function in Iraq."

In February 2003, investigators at the FBI told the New York Times they were baffled by the Administration's insistence on a solid link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. One investigator said: "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there."

But President Bush was not deterred. He was relentless in using America's fears after the devastating 9/11 tragedy. He drew a clear link � and drew it repeatedly � between Al Qaeda and Saddam.

在2002年9月25日在白宫的声明中,布什总统坦率地宣布:“当您谈论反恐战争时,您无法区分基地组织和萨达姆。”

In his State of the Union Address in January 2003, President Bush said, "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda," and that he could provide "lethal viruses" to a "shadowy terrorist network."

两周后,在战争开始的一个月前,布什总统详细描述了这些关系,他说:“萨达姆·侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)长期以来一直与恐怖分子网络有着直接和持续的联系:``萨达姆·侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)``

He said: "Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document-forgery experts to work with Al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. An Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases. We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad."

In fact, there was no operational link and no clear and persuasive pattern of ties between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda. That fact should have been abundantly clear to the President. Iraq and Al Qaeda had diametrically opposing views of the world.

In the march to war, the President exaggerated the threat anyway. It was not subtle. It was not nuanced. It was pure, unadulterated fear-mongering, based on a devious strategy to convince the American people that Saddam's ability to provide nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda justified immediate war.

为什么政府会竭尽全力进行战争?它是否试图将主题从失败的经济政策,企业丑闻以及占领乌萨马·本·拉登的努力失败的努力中改变?唯一的威胁是11月的国会选举。选举的政治胜过了顽固的事实。

Early in the Bush Administration, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had raised concerns about politics pervading the process in the White House.

Comparing the Bush Administration and previous Republican Administrations, he said, referring to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Karen Hughes: "The biggest difference � is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis � and Karl, Dick, Karen and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics."

In the late winter and early spring of 2002, in the aftermath of the Enron and other corporate scandals, as Ron Suskind, the author of the O'Neill book wrote, "�Rove told numerous administration officials that the poll data was definitive: the scandals were hurting the President, a cloud in an otherwise blue sky for the soaring, post-Afghanistan Bush."

到目前为止,证据只得出一个结论。发生的不仅是智力的失败,而且是对智力的操纵和扭曲的结果以及选择性使用不可靠的情报来证明决定进行战争的正当性。政府已经下定决心,不会让顽固的事实阻碍。

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired Air Force intelligence officer who served in the Pentagon during the buildup to the war, said: "It wasn't intelligence -- it was propaganda�they'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, usually by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."

As it now appears, the Iraqi expatriates who had close ties to the Pentagon and were so eager for the war may well have been the source of the hyped intelligence. As Walter Pincus reported today in the Washington Post, "The Bush Administration's prewar assertion that Saddam Hussein had a fleet of mobile labs that could produce bioweapons rested largely on information from an Iraqi defector working with another government who was never interviewed by U.S. intelligence officers."

The Iraqi exiles have even begun to brag about it.

The Pentagon's favorite Iraqi dissident, Ahmed Chalabi, is actually proud of what happened. "We are heroes in error," Chalabi recently said. "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush Administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords, if he wants."

我们的男女军人仍然支付their lives for this misguided war in Iraq. CIA Director Tenet could perform no greater service to the armed forces, to the American people, and to our country, than to set the record straight, and state unequivocally what is so clearly the truth: the Bush Administration misrepresented the facts to justify the war.

美国参加了伊拉克的战争,因为布什总统坚持认为,萨达姆·侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)手中的核武器和他与基地组织的联系太危险了,无法忽略。如果我们知道事实,国会永远不会投票授权战争。

The Bush Administration is obviously digging in its heels against any further serious investigation of the reasons we went to war.

The Administration's highest priority is to prevent any more additional stubborn facts about this fateful issue from coming to light before the election in November.

This debate will go on anyway in Congress and in communities across the country. The most important decision any President makes is the decision on war or peace. No President who misleads the country on the need for war deserves to be reelected. A President who does so must be held accountable. The last thing our nation needs is a sign on the desk in the Oval Office in the White House that says, "The buck doesn't stop here any more." Thank you very much.

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来源:肯尼迪参议员办公室