Encoding the Absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Abstract

This chapter covers another backlash faced by the George W. Bush administration following the successful ousting of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003: the failure to locate stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq even after an extensive ground search. It systematically documents how the idea system (which this book terms “the War on Terror script”) afforded a multilayer codification, after which the outcome reported by the administration was that, based on the discovery of the ground search efforts, Iraq posed an even greater level of threat than was previously estimated.

After military operations in Iraq had ended, the Bush administration handled a multi-month scandal when the U.S.-commissioned weapons search team did not locate physical stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq. Some previous guesses about WMD production facilities seemed to be egregiously off the mark. It was scandalous, for example, when the design drawings of suspected mobile biological weapons laboratories—presented by Secretary Powell to the U.N.—were likely to have been trucks that produced weather balloons.¹ The Bush administration commenced an elaborate effort of codification to deal with the information newly surfacing from the weapons search team. Although evidentiary codifications were ostensibly the focus, ideational codifications were intermittently integrated and interwoven.

Timeline of the Iraq Weapons Search Scandal

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) based in the United States was in charge of the ground-search activities in Iraq. The group was mandated to hunt extensively for WMDs as well as documents pertaining to Iraq’s weapon development activities, issues which were repeatedly mentioned as sources of concern before the invasion. The investigation team, first headed by David Kay, began its ground-search efforts in May 2003 and delivered its first report in October 2003. On January 23, 2004, David Kay offered his high-profile resignation from his post for undisclosed reasons. In mass media interviews as well as his testimony to Congress on January 28, 2004, he claimed that he did not believe stockpiles of WMDs would ever be found.² Aside from concrete evidence about a long-range missile program—which consisted of conventional weapons and not WMDs—as well as some “small activities” related to WMD development, there was “no scientist, no documentation nor physical evidence of the production plants” of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.³

Kay’s admittedly inconclusive report did not entirely shut the door to a potentially ground-breaking discovery. Some officials (e.g., Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) insisted that WMD stockpiles might still be found. However, several months later, the investigation effort largely came to a close when the ISG exhausted all searchable sites and investigative leads. Charles Duelfer, who headed the ISG after Kay’s resignation, delivered a Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] on Iraq’s WMD (hereafter referred to as The Duelfer Report)⁴ on September 30, 2004, which was considered to be a conclusive document pertaining to the weapons search. Released only around a month before the November 2004 presidential election, the report did not add significant evidence to Kay’s report with regard to WMD stockpiles or programs, and it dismissed some of its previous suspicions. The report stimulated a wave of criticism against the Bush administration about its prewar assertions. To counteract critics, President Bush, Secretary Powell, and Charles Duelfer insisted that the ISG report affirmed that Iraq presented a strong threat to the United States warranting Iraq’s forced disarmament.

Tabulating Threat from Summative Capability

The main approach of the Bush administration was to empirically encode various material findings (information) into a calculation of summative capability.

Bush often only used “capabilities” as a generic phrase (code), claiming that Iraq was found to have a high, threatening capability pertaining to WMDs. But the phrase “capability” had at least two different meanings. While having immediate capabilities to deploy WMDs meant that a functional stockpile had already been manufactured, having summative capabilities meant an estimated state of readiness to develop WMDs that can be deployed later.

These two notions imply dramatically different thresholds of proof. An infinitely more expansive classes of information could be encoded as “capabilities” if the notion refers to summative capabilities. And to further lower the required threshold, the Bush administration claimed that the ISG search had documented incomplete summative capabilities and was increasing or developing its summative capabilities. Such coding methods create a situation wherein the Bush administration was technically and literally correct by their accounting and reporting, and yet pragmatically fallacious and inaccurate (consider the distortion models that we have examined in Chap. 5).⁵

“Retained scientists/expertise,” for example, often referred to scientists who had participated in Iraq’s WMD or nuclear programs before the 1991 Gulf War; they might indeed be directed to participate in WMD programs if sanctions were to be lifted, or they might be directed to perform other tasks. The word “retained” conveyed an action; but in reality, unless those scientists were deported from Iraq and banished from reentry, their mere presence could plausibly fit the code of “retained scientists/expertise.”

Dual-use items were another class of objects being extensively accounted. A knife has dual-use potential—for murder or peeling an apple. A battery can be used in an ambulance or a military vehicle.⁶ In a glossary, the ISG report explicitly defined “dual use” as:

Technology, materials, equipment, or knowledge capable of use for both legitimate and proscribed purposes. The object per se is not one or the other—it is dependent on intentions.⁷

There was considerable flexibility by which the ISG could apply the code “dual use” to objects. Moreover, once the code is applied, an intermediary meaning (idea) associated with the object is established, and then the object could, as a next step, be counted as a part of summative capability—or Iraq’s WMD capability at large. Simply by accounting dual-use items extensively it could have a visually stimulating effect—especially if some Iraq agents were found not to have accounted for them in their report in the way ISG accounted for them—or simply “hiding” such items.

A passage under a section labeled as “BW Agent Simulants” shows how things fitting the notion of “dual use” was treated in the report:

BW Agent Simulants. The UN deemed Iraq’s accounting of its production and use of BW agent simulants—specifically Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus lichenformis, Bacillus megaterium and Bacillus thuringiensis to be inadequate. ISG remains interested in simulant work because these items may be used not only to simulate the dispersion of BW agents, develop production techniques, and optimize storage conditions, but also the equipment used for their manufacture can also be quickly converted to make BW agents. It permits maintenance of techniques and provides continuing familiarity with the process to preserve skill levels. Iraq continued its work on Bacillus thuringiensis as a bio-pesticide carried on bentonite, at Tuwaitha after the destruction of Al Hakam. As a result of interviews with the former staff of Al Hakam and principal researchers at IAEC, ISG has discovered that this research also included investigations of bentonite not only as a carrier but also as means of enabling the speedy production of slurry from the stored dried biopesticide.

What the ISG actually found, materially, was that Iraq was using Bacillus thuringiensis as a biopesticide. But the project “preserve[d] skill levels” and equipment that could be used for BW production, storage, and dispersion. Bentonite, a clay that has many uses including cosmetic masks and as a digestive aid, was a potential carrier of BW.

Figure 17.1 presents an item of dual-use equipment, which includes textual descriptions. ⁸

Fig. 17.1

Presentation of dual-use equipment in The Duelfer Report (Volume 3, “Biological Warfare,” p. 31)

While the steel vessel and egg incubator could—and had been—used to produce virus vaccine, the descriptive texts raised the point that this device could prospectively also be used to produce smallpox and miscellaneous “pathogenic viruses.” For their legitimate uses, two qualifiers were used to elicit doubt—that the devices “appeared” to be for the “expressed” purpose of producing virus vaccine. For possible alternative uses, the connection was direct. The device was crisply labeled as “this dual-use equipment.” The distance of cognitive linkages between this object and many negative consequences was compressed. Contextual information overwhelmed the idea formation process.

To summarize, after extensive accounting, the ISG report stated that Iraq could have restarted some elementary form of functioning BW program within several weeks and a more elaborate one in a few months. Regarding CW, The Duelfer Report stated that “Iraq at OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] probably had a capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard within three to six months.” Duelfer also stated in a congressional testimony that “[b]y 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in a period of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two.”⁹ Iraq seemed to have very limited potential to acquire or develop nuclear weapons.

These alarming estimations of BW and CW production capabilities, however, have much to do with the apparent ease of producing biological and chemical weapons (which is not the case for nuclear weapons). If materials were made available for biological weapons, only a “couple of dozen” experts and facilities were needed that “can be readily assembled from quite simple domestic civilian plants.” A CW program requires more experts and more elaborate infrastructure, but Iraq already had a usable chemical production structure due to its indigenous chemical industry. It was for these reasons that it would only take a few months to two years for them to produce biological and chemical weapons; the conclusion was not based on finding surprising materials during the ground search.¹⁰

Tabulating Threat from Uncertain Signs

Besides itemizing objects that could fit the notion of summative capability, the ISG also catalogued certain objects that were not found as a set of problematically mysterious issues and objects. The absence of objects lingered on as uncertain signs supporting the notions of hidden threat.

Contextual and linguistic elaborations are the key. A lost “frog” we see on the street can look much more mysterious if we describe it using the words “something that looks like a frog.” Or we can further a sense of problematic quality¹¹ by manipulating the time, space, and other contextual cues (i.e., pre-coded or coded information) with which the object appears—such as saying that “it appeared where there has never previously been a frog and there is no suitable habitat in sight.” In reporting its findings, the ISG often inserted Saddam Hussein’s nefarious history, past acts of violation, and similar contextual cues when it interpreted empirical information. In these given contexts, the absence of findings acquires the aura of uncertain signs. Although uncertain signs are a weak form of data in themselves, they can serve as a basis for circumstantial evidence if they fit stable patterns when viewed in combination with other information. It is often enough to sway public perceptions.

In substance, uncertain signs on BWs have very little difference to non-findings. Consider the items anthrax and botulinum toxin mentioned in Powell’s U.N. presentation. The ISG reported them as follows:

Anthrax. The UN could not confirm, and in fact its evidence contradicted, the quantities of anthrax declared by Iraq as having been produced, used for trials, filled into weapons, and destroyed. The UN assessed that Iraq probably had greater stocks of the agent on hand in 1991 than it declared, probably for use in the Mirage F1 drop-tanks, and questioned Iraq’s account of destruction of the agent. ISG has interviewed most of the key Iraqis who admitted working with the agent, and has obtained contradictory explanations of the events. The details are in Annex A.

Botulinum Toxin. Iraq’s declaration of the amount of botulinum toxin it produced, used in experiments and trials, filled in weapons, wasted during handling, and unilaterally destroyed is derived from calculations, or contrived from the numbers of weapons stated to have been filled—none of these figures is verifiable. ISG teams have interviewed principal engineers and scientists involved with botulinum toxin; there has been no new information.¹²

Little new information had been found on either item after an extensive search. What was added, however, was an aura of mystery because so little information could be found after such a search. Their secretive, ambiguous status continued to persist, and the “facts” continued to be linked (as data) to the notion the potential empirical threat posed by Iraq.

Many other mysteries were interpreted toward potential summative capabilities in a similar manner. Each presentation may be coupled with a “next-step” speculation of how they could be related to a scenario of WMD production. For example, after discovering a suspicious laboratory that had been cleaned (“sanitized”), hard drives that were removed or non-functional (“destroyed”), vehicles or engines that were labeled as civic but could have “military” applications, a minor speculative idea could be offered to fit the description to an image of a tangible threat.

Stepwise Division in Constructing Threat

Just as we have discussed in Chap. 4, a chain-complex of ideas is constructed by different agents, often with sharing a part in a “division of labor.” Stepwise errors could accumulate in this way.

In the context of interpreting the ISG findings, there are several key divisions in codification, conducted by different sets of agents, that can be mapped into a chained relationship (see Fig. 17.2).

Fig. 17.2

Divided, stepwise construction of Iraq’s threat after ISG codification

From the left side to the right in the flowchart, each step of codification included fewer and fewer details, progressively divorced from raw conditions and diverted toward summaries. At the same time that each step of “summary” filters out details (information) by the agent, each step may have included “next-step” speculation which would fall within an acceptable, reasonable range of error. Corresponding to the identities of these agents, each of these agents is subjected to a different “convention” of errors that they could commit. The president, for example, cannot possibly know every detail, but would be expected to cite the words of the ISG heads accurately. Media pundits (experts) may be subjected to basic standards of rational reasoning, but they are not expected to have access to raw or backstage information. Furthermore, each of these agents is imbued with a certain liberty in interpretation; it is acceptable for most of these agents to speculate within reason, bringing in selected contextual cues while filtering out non-fitting information, codes, objects, and ideas. Small errors and speculations may then interact with one another in a stepwise manner, ultimately asserting a compounding effect on the total degree of resulting erroneousness.

An Alternative Theory of Threat: Iraq’s Chaotic Environment

Alongside the theory of Iraq’s threat mentioned earlier, a second one was proffered. The ISG findings were used to build the (intermediary) idea that Iraq had a chaotic environment, so that clandestine activities might actually be taking place without Saddam Hussein’s knowledge and outside of his grasp. This new, intermediary idea helps to link an absence of evidence to the idea of threat. And if the chaotic environment can be linked to Saddam Hussein, even ambiguously, then a cohesive chain of causation could thus be suggested, as follows:

(A) Saddam Hussein → (B) Chaotic Environment → (C) Unknown Dangerous or Terrorist Activities → (D) Iraq’s Threat

The Duelfer Report, as a text of empirical codification, largely performed the works of selective and extensive empirical documentation, a refined textual and linguistic presentation, interspersed with minor next-step speculations. The next-step speculations—usually aligned with the position of the Bush administration—are formed by linkages in many snippets of contextual information with existing ones, so that ambiguous information could be assessed to have the possibility of fitting a certain speculated pattern. For example:

(1) Al-Nida State Company. This facility…had general-purpose machine shops utilizing CNC lathes, CNC milling centers, hydraulic presses, welding equipment, coordinate measuring machines, quality-control laboratories, nondestructive testing equipment, and CAD/CAM computers prior to the recent war. Such facilities would be necessary for a reconstituted centrifuge program. An ISG team visited the Al-Nida site in late August 2003 and found that the entire plant had been systematically looted of all equipment, computers, and documents.¹³

(2) Site visits to several M16 labs, safe houses, and disposal sites have turned up no evidence of CW-related production or development, however, many of these sites were either sanitized by the regime or looted, limiting the obtainable information from site exploitations.¹⁴

Concerning the first passage, the “general-purpose machine shops” housed fragmented groups of objects which were potentially useful—but hardly sufficient—for a nuclear weapons centrifuge program. Such objects were not actually discovered. Rather than saying that nothing was found, the absence of equipment, computers, and documents was first invoked, and the possibility of “systematic looting” was listed. When discussing the M16 labs and other sites potentially linked to “CW-related” activities, the absence of evidence of any object was also not highlighted; instead, the possibility that they were “either sanitized by the regime or looted” became an accounted fact.

Concerning the second passage, allegedly “destroyed” or “sanitized” materials and infrastructures could have been for confidential purposes unrelated to military uses, could have been related to WMD production activities in the distant past, could have been destroyed by coalition or insurgents’ bombings, could have been to the result of the overcompensating efforts of independent government officials to impress the U.N. inspectors or the regime, or could have been looted by mobs or miscellaneous agents for monetary or political gains.

With the mention of the word systematic, and the mention of the possibility of looting, a new type of risk—a new pathway toward an idea of Iraq’s threat—was identified. If the sites were sanitized, then the regime had the power and coordination to skillfully hide its activities from international inspectors; if they were “looted,” then Iraq would fit the image of a chaotic environment (see Fig. 17.3).

Fig. 17.3

Orbit of potential explanations consisting Iraq’s threat

These two possibilities could explain opposing, and potentially contradictory, interpretations of the same data. An empty laboratory, for example, could signify either interpretation, but not both at the same time. If the lab is empty primarily because it has been systematically looted by mysterious actors (such as terrorists), then it could not be empty primarily because it was systematically ordered to be destroyed by Hussein.

The Duelfer Report merely provided the initial materials in the chain of idea-building. The connections with previously hypothesized or new speculative ideas were articulated more explicitly by a different set of social actors who ostensibly mediated between the world of experts and the world of politics: the spokespersons of ISG. The following exchange between Kay and an MSNBC’s news correspondent also shows the role of Kay:

KAY::

Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It’s not a technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened.

HOST::

But as you know, the administration and its supporters, not just suggest, but insist that there was a real connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorist organizations that would be a threat to the United States.

KAY::

Look, I found no real connection between WMD and terrorists. What we did find, and as others are investigating it, we found a lot of terrorist groups and individuals that passed through Iraq.

Kay offered the central message that the Iraqi government posed a significant threat to the world before the invasion. This claim, however, was not built on solid empirical evidence, since the ISG did not actually find any WMDs in Iraq, any actual instances of WMD trading occurrences, any documented plans of trading, or any nongovernmental WMD development programs of any significant government capabilities. The ISG did “document” a state of chaos and disorder within the Iraqi government before the war—with Iraqi scientists lying to Saddam Hussein, government officials lying to each other, and, lastly, as we have discussed, systematic looting. Along with finding of terrorists “passing through” Iraq (for unidentified reasons), Kay formulated a next-step idea: this environment would eventually amount to terrorists attaining WMDs, was a new speculation that served to re-justify the U.S. war on Iraq after the old justification started to fall apart.

The overall structure could be seen in the following terms. Whenever Kay exhausted his ability to extrapolate based on empirical information, an ideational construct that involved additional information—such as a reiteration or speculation on Hussein’s character—served to solidify an idea (an intermediary idea) that could function as a bridge to other ideas. At a later time, simply citing Kay’s, or Duelfer’s, judgments—based on their epistemic authorities, grounded in their near-exclusive access to raw data—would be the same as incorporating their well-structured, hybrid codification.

Charles Duelfer briefly mentioned in his October 2004 senate hearing that:

I am convinced we successfully contained a problem before it matured into a major threat [of Iraqi CW experts collaborating with anti-coalition forces]. Nevertheless, it points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands. Certainly, there are anti-coalition and terrorist elements seeking such capabilities.¹⁵

Further Extrapolations: Judgments Encoded in “the Language of Washington”

Further down the chain, it was the Bush administration communicating both theories to the public as informed by the ISG ground search. President Bush made the following statement on October 1st, immediately after the ISG released its final report and a month before the November 2004 election.

We didn’t find the stockpiles we thought would be there. We didn’t find the stockpiles everybody thought would be there. But I want you to remember, Saddam still had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction. He could have passed that capability onto an enemy, and that is a risk we could not have afforded to have taken after September the 11^th. Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision. (Applause)¹⁶

In his response, Bush was not obliged to cover all contravening information from the report; for example, the qualification that it would take several months and very coordinated mobilization in order to produce even a limited amount of a specific type of BW that many other nations could produce. Narrowing the scope down to not finding any stockpiles was a sufficient act.

As for the use of codes, the president, as the nation’s leader, unlike being a technical expert, was regularly permitted to use codes and coded things at a rather abstract level—using a set of “buzzwords” that a critic has deemed to be characteristic of the “language of Washington.”¹⁷ Not only do details vanish in summative assessment in such abstract words, the language also made it easy for the empirical meanings to be conflated or intermixed with the ideational ones. In the aforementioned quote, these words were “Saddam,” “capability,” “enemy,” “risk,” “weapons of mass destruction,” and “September 11^th.” To say that “Saddam could have passed that capability [of making weapons of mass destruction] onto an enemy” and “that is a risk we could not have afforded to have taken after September the 11^th” is emblematic of a sentence composed of abstract key words that make a perceivable idea, using references that are tied partly to an underdefined set of empirical references¹⁸ and partly to socially significant symbols predicated on preconceptions drawn from preexisting knowledge.

Secretary Powell, in an interview several days later, stated a similar line of interpretation, pointing to selected “aggregated facts” (a filtered set of information) affirmed by the Duelfer report:

The only thing that I think we got wrong, really, was that he did not have stockpiles…But I still have no doubt in my mind about the intention that he had and the capability that he retained. And as you saw from the Duelfer report, he was doing everything he could to get out from under the sanctions. He was cheating on the sanctions. He was deceiving the world, sometimes in ways that are incomprehensible as to why he was trying to deceive the world in that way…. And the intention and the capability were there, the history was there of what this guy has done in the past, and there was no reason to believe, at least in my judgment and in the judgment of the President and the other coalition leaders, that if left to his own devices and allowed to be free of the sanctions regime, you could put a bet down: Was he going to go back to weapons of mass destruction or not? And I don’t think it was reasonable to think he would not. And certainly Duelfer, when you read the report, it pointed in that direction.¹⁹

As per Powell’s analysis, it is within the bounds of reason for him to express a preferred judgment purely on the basis of what was provided from The Duelfer Report. Powell directed the audience to focus on the structural connections between several parts, and such connections and parts corresponded to the same ones that he had evoked before the war—those that indicated Saddam Hussein’s unchangeable character, with motivation so irrational or mysterious that made him “incomprehensible.” And not only was he deceptive toward particular agents, but he was “deceiving the world”—yet another abstract action composed of “buzzwords” (and another instance that fits the aforementioned “language of Washington”). That The Duelfer Report has provided more documentation of Hussein’s character has only reinforced the overall, abstract case in favor of invasion. And such an expression makes sense impressionistically because of the accumulation of idea-building works that had already taken place.

In this realm of abstract conceptions, in which all things empirical are often transfused with those of the ideational, many judgments can be afforded to be composed using hybrid codification, reducing the traces of cognitive manipulation or breaching in reason.

The Hybrid Codification of Costs and Benefits

Consider the calculation—or weighing—of costs and benefits.

First, there is a question of worthy economic costs. Lobbying for a military budget increase in 2002, Bush repeatedly used the expression “the price of freedom,” stating that “while the price of freedom is high, it is never too high.”²⁰ Although such expressions had a rationalist cloak—ostensibly about weighing relevant information involved in an empirical situation—the actual object being weighed was infused with an ideational mode of codification.

Couched in fundamental American values, freedom is a sacred symbol of the civil religion that has been transmitted for many generations. By implication, in this context then, freedom cannot be measured in economic terms; it is a cause that numerous Americans have died and sacrificed their lives for. It is customary for members of the American nation to say that human freedom is “priceless”—in a rapid manner akin to steps of connections formed through a “cognitive portal.” It was certainly reasonable for Bush, as a spokesman for the American nation, to evoke this portal-like connection. Linking to the military budget sought by Bush, the price of freedom, then, could indeed be said to be “never too high.”

The similar juxtaposition of human and economic costs with immeasurable moral benefit is also evident in post-invasion rhetoric. Bush repeatedly made reference to “mass graves” and the fall of Saddam’s statue when he sought to argue on his reelection campaign trail about the worthiness of the U.S. invasion of Iraq; he seemed to personally believe in the idea when he met Iraqis who expressed their thanks, allegedly breaking down into tears when learning that an Iraqi woman addressed him as “Liberator” (“Muharrir” in Arabic) upon entering the White House’s Oval Office in November 2003.²¹ Responding to the release of a widely publicized book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, coauthored by Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes,²² which estimated the true cost of the U.S. War on Iraq to be at least three trillion (that is to say, $3 million millions) if it is to end swiftly, White House spokesperson Tony Fratto reportedly stated:

People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9–11…. It is also an investment in the future safety and security of Americans and our vital national interests. $3 trillion? What price does Joe Stiglitz put on attacks on the homeland that have already been prevented? Or doesn’t his slide rule work that way?²³

Here, a seemingly astronomical financial figure seemed to weigh against “the cost of doing nothing” against terrorism and “the cost of failure” in the face of terrorism, and it is weighed with the benefit of “future safety and security” and the attacks against America that have already been prevented. The costs and benefits were ostensibly empirical constructs—at least in the context discussed by Stigliz and Bilmes—but they were devoid of an empirical character in the usage by Fratto. Fratto’s costs and benefits were not precise measurements, but were based on hypothetical scenarios that terrorists were so evil that they would attack the United States, that the Iraq war has already prevented (not provoked) attacks on the homeland, as well as the presumption that that the enemies could not be deterred by non-military means. Based on Fratto’s calculation scheme, “one can’t even begin to put a price tag” on the 9/11 events on the United States, which follows the benefit already purchased via the Iraq war. Therefore, the worthiness of spending $3 trillion is justified as a matter of course.

In the hybridized mode of codification, Bush did not merely articulate the material benefits that satisfy the nation’s self-interest. At a deeper level, Bush also made a symbolic calculation arguing for the moral benefit of the war in light of human costs. In an exchange with media host Tim Russert following the David Kay scandal in NBC’s program Meet the Press, ²⁴ Russert invited Bush to reflect on whether it was “worth the loss of 530 American lives and 3,000 injuries and woundings simply to remove Saddam Hussein, even though there were no weapons of mass destruction.” Near the end of the interview, Bush weighed between the precious but finite human costs to what he referred to as fulfilling “history’s call to America”:

And, Tim, as you can tell, I’ve got a foreign policy that is one that believes America has a responsibility in this world to lead, a responsibility to lead in the war against terror, a responsibility to speak clearly about the threats that we all face, a responsibility to promote freedom, to free people from the clutches of barbaric people such as Saddam Hussein who tortured, mutilated—there were mass graves that we have found—a responsibility to fight AIDS, the pandemic of AIDS, and to feed the hungry. We have a responsibility. To me that is history’s call to America. I accept the call and will continue to lead in that direction.

The possibilities “to free people from the clutches of barbaric people” were the codes applied to characterize U.S. motivation. The elicited mental objects (coded things) were the tortures, mutilations, and “mass graves” caused by Saddam Hussein on Iraq’s side, and the grandeur, historical, moral “responsibility” that of the U.S. nation on the other—represented by the aggregated facts of U.S. past efforts to “fight AIDS” and “feed the hungry”. By implication, forgoing the “responsibility” would entail an increase in mass graves, mutilation, and torture as well as AIDS victims and starving people. Casting the cost of measurable casualties against these aggregated facts, the moral benefits could “reasonably” be extrapolated as being worthy of the human cost paid by the U.S. soldiers.

Demarcating the Causes and Nature of National Errors

Under the pressure of the pending Presidential Election in November 2004, President Bush used several codification strategies to contain the potential impact of the negative proof of WMDs on his reelection efforts—as well as to continually legitimize the Iraq invasion.

Unlike the topic of Iraq’s threat, in which a massive amount of information had to be handled using an evidentiary mode of codification, this topic on the causes and nature of errors in the administration’s previous empirical estimation had very little information. Therefore, Bush had considerable liberty to proffer explanations, primarily by activating an ideational mode of codification in the manner that we have seen in other instances.

Within that room for freedom, Bush’s chief strategy was to compartmentalize the causes and nature of the national errors into the domain of technicality and not morality, in the circumscribed scenes of intelligence agency rather than in the broader institutions of the U.S. government, political parties, or the American nation.

In response to David Kay’s announcements and resignation in January 2004, Bush issued an executive order to form a commission to look into potential problems within the U.S. intelligence agencies. Bush first affirmed the identities of the agents who might have caused the errors, using amiable word choices, as “men and women of our intelligence community and intelligence officers who work for our friends and allies around the world are dedicated professionals engaged in difficult and complex work.” And these agents were up against “America’s enemies” who were “secretive,” “ruthless,” and “resourceful.” The phrase “difficult and complex work” implies that the act that led to error was committed not with deliberate intention, and the motivational cause (agency) was probably explainable by the challenging nature of the work. Parallel to our previous discussions, these are characterizations coded through an ideational mode.

The ISG’s sincerity in seeking the truth—and not merely scavenging useful information to build a case for war—was an idea that needed to be defended, as it could have great relevance to the core proposition about the character of the American nation, represented by the U.S. government. Opponents of Bush could seek to zero in on a narrow set of responsible agents within the government, such as Bush himself, in order to stay within the appropriate discourse parameter. But doing so would require strong, clear empirical evidence rather than merely guesswork; and when comparing to the Abu Ghraib scandal, where there were graphic photos and an internal investigative report, much less information was available regarding this matter characterized as “intelligence failure.”

Making an assertion that questioned the moral integrity of the president without strong evidence would be a rather risky interpretive choice. One reason is that Bush attributed to the ISG experts a role of moral integrity. Another is that Bush had lumped together the people who were deceived by inaccurate intelligence and their motivations. This included all the intelligence agencies in the U.S. and their collaborators “around the world,” the highest-level staff of his own administration, and the entirety of the U.S. Congress, whose members presumably had access to more intelligence information than the American public. In the previously cited interview with Russert, Bush said, “We didn’t find the stockpiles we thought would be there. We didn’t find the stockpiles everybody thought would be there.”²⁵ A rather large stock of credible epistemic authorities was thus evoked. A critic would thus risk symbolically countering the combinative integrity, credentials, and knowledge of many people—including many who have exclusive access to information.

The appointment of a new fact-finding commission (led by former Democratic Senator Charles Robb and federal appellate court Judge Laurence Silberman) was a corrective act that served symbolic and evidentiary purpose. In so doing, Bush positioned himself as if he was a disinterested leader seeking to rectify the technical problem. Stating the importance of intelligence in executing the War on Terror effectively, Bush proclaimed: “We are determined to figure out why. We’re also determined to make sure that American intelligence is as accurate as possible for every challenge in the future.”²⁶ These words implicitly proffered the idea that his administration did not know in advance of the original causes of the intelligence-related errors, and that the issue was one of technical accuracy rather than of political manipulation enacted by his administration. But at a collective level, this action at least symbolized the nation’s commitment to the truth. And the more extensive such investigative efforts were—in which case a team of nine appointees was to direct the interviewing of several hundred people and review thousands upon thousands of pages of documents—the more the symbolic message was conveyed.

In sum, by knowing how to activate the idea system effectively at the codification level—to navigate and intermix both the empirical and ideational modes of codification—Bush elegantly defended his interest in the scene of contemporary politics. While relegating the causes of national errors to “intelligence failure,” the roots of which existed in a state of empirical uncertainty yet to be investigated, he simultaneously used various means to clarify the various ideational certainties. That the technical cause of the grave misestimation still needed to be discovered, the solution would certainly come from the integrity of his administration, the U.S. government, and the American nation as a whole.