One phrase kept popping into my head after reading “War and Decision,” a 674-page examination of President Bush’s global war on terror written by Douglas J. Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy whose ideas helped shape that effort. The phrase was: Falsus en uno, falsus in omnibus. Translation: Untrue in one thing, untrue in everything.
It is a legal term that judges sometimes use to instruct juries that if a witness hasn’t been honest in one part of his testimony it’s reasonable to assume that he might not be honest in other parts.
To the extent that he is known outside of Washington, DC, intellectual and journalistic circles, Doug Feith is probably best-known as the author of a memo produced by his staff that summarized, analyzed and evaluated intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s connections to Osama bin Laden.
Relying on intelligence reports both old and new, ranging from Clinton-era reports of a non-aggression pact between Iraq and al Qaeda to communications intercepts demonstrating Iraqi regime support for the al Qaeda affiliate in northern Iraq, the so-called Feith Memo made an aggressive case that Saddam Hussein had provided support to al Qaeda and like-minded jihadists for more than a decade. The classified memo included a bulleted list of 50 intelligence reports to support this argument, most of them followed by commentary and analysis.
In November 2003, I wrote about the Feith Memo for The Weekly Standard. The article was composed mostly of long quotes taken directly from the intelligence reports. I did little more than provide historical context for the claims included in Feith’s memo.
The article, and the memo that triggered it, created quite a stir. Congressional Democrats lashed out at Feith, accusing him of exaggerating the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Media reports amplified and added to this critique. Later, Thomas Gimble, the Inspector General at the Pentagon, publicly upbraided Feith, calling the activities that led to the production of the memo “inappropriate.”
In op-eds and interviews, Feith has defended himself by challenging the criticism and distancing himself from the memo that bears his name. He continues this effort in “War and Decision” and it gets him in trouble.
Feith writes that his “list became the subject of a cover story in The Weekly Standard that incorrectly depicted it as my ‘case’ for claiming a close connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. That supported the magazine’s own editorial position, but in fact the list was no such thing.”
Either Feith is unfamiliar with the contents of the memo that bears his name or he is simply misrepresenting its contents. Consider, for instance, item No. 37. “Sensitive reporting indicates senior terrorist planner and close al Qaeda associate [Abu Musab] al Zarqawi has had an operational alliance with Iraqi officials.” Elsewhere, Feith describes a “credible” source with “close access” to Osama bin Laden and concludes “bin Laden is seen as heavily involved with Iraq.” In his memo, then, Feith points to an “operational alliance” between Zarqawi and the Iraqi regime and argues that al Qaeda’s leader was “heavily involved” with Iraq. But in his book Feith denies he ever made those arguments and tells his readers that he never claimed a close connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. Falsus en uno.
There are two ironies here. First, a recent study of Iraqi regime documents captured by the U.S. military after the invasion, without addressing the Feith Memo directly, confirms its most important argument – that the Iraqi regime supported a wide range of Islamic radicals, including Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy for more than two decades. Second, Feith spends large chunks of “War and Decision” making the theoretical case that Iraqi support for terrorism was one of several reasons that Saddam Hussein could not remain in power after the attacks on 9/11.
Feith is at his best when he sticks to the theoretical. He is not, as Gen. Tommy Franks once suggested, the stupidest guy in America. His explication of the philosophical principles that served as the foundation for the Bush administration’s global war on terror is clear and compelling.
And Feith’s recollections of the bureaucratic fights between the Pentagon and the State Department provide a necessary corrective to the over-simplified, pro-State Department narrative that has emerged from articles and books written by those outside of that process. (Those tensions began in the days right after 9/11, when Colin Powell reported that his deputy, Richard Armitage, had issued an ultimatum to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that included matters of military planning without first consulting Donald Rumsfeld.)
In the end, Feith provides a detailed account of the national security issues that will define George W. Bush’s presidency. But his inaccurate characterization of the memo that bears his name should make readers wonder how many of those details are true.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism
by Douglas Feith
Harper