Asked in a question-and-answer session afterward about apparent American intelligence failures in Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged it was a question of critical importance that would be examined by the commission appointed on Friday by President Bush, but emphasized that the panel would look at intelligence successes as well as shortcomings.

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks drew several pointed questions from the audience challenging how the administration could defend its doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against perceived threats when the precise intelligence needed for such a strategy apparently failed in the case of Iraq.

"If you're going to live in this world and it is a dangerous world, you do have to have elegant intelligence," Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged.

But he repeatedly defended the get-them-before-they-get-us doctrine in an age when terrorists are threatening to acquire and use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as "something that has to be weighed and considered by all of us" given the possible catastrophic consequences.

A year ago at this same international security conference, the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Mr. Rumsfeld sparred with European officials, notably Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, over whether NATO member countries should gird for war with Iraq or allow weapons inspectors to continue their search. Thousands of antiwar demonstrators gathered then in the streets of Munich.

This year, with the Bush administration needing European troops to help stabilize and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington has sought to smooth over the trans-Atlantic rift, including a major speech in Switzerland last month by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Conference participants this week said they sensed that tensions had eased, replaced by a desire to move beyond the dispute and to combat common security problems, like terrorism and the spread of illicit arms. This year, relatively few protesters turned out.

In this climate, many officials here expected a tempered, if not conciliatory speech on Saturday from Mr. Rumsfeld, who is still regarded by many Germans and French, in particular, as a villain for his dismissive remarks about "old Europe." Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld, feisty and unyielding, appeared eager to put a potential adversary on the defensive as he laid out the administration's rationale for the war in the absence of any illegal Iraqi weapons.

"Think about what was going on in Iraq a year ago with people being tortured, rape rooms, mass graves, gross corruption, a country that has used chemical weapons against its own people," he said in response to a question, his voice rising, his hands chopping the air for emphasis.

He then turned the question back on the audience. "There were prominent people from representative countries in this room that opined that they really didn't think it made a hell of a lot of difference who won," he said, nearly shouting. "Shocking. Absolutely shocking."

Asked whether America's stature in the world had been diminished since the war, he acknowledged the Iraq war had taken its toll, but contended that it was more because of biased reporting by Arab media like Al Jazeera than anything the United States had done. "I know in my heart and my brain that America ain't what's wrong in the world," he said.

Some European participants said they were stunned by what they called Mr. Rumsfeld's arrogance, especially in light of the apparent intelligence failures in Iraq. "His view is, `We're right, they're wrong, and we'll continue to be right,' " said Christoph Bertram, director of the German Institute for International Politics and Security in Berlin. "It was a performance of `We know better.' "

Other participants said the speech illustrated a problem of Europeans and Americans talking past each other on critical security issues.

Speaking to the conference before Mr. Rumsfeld's address, Mr. Fischer, the German foreign minister, said of the Iraq war that "events have proven the position we took at the time to be right." But he then repeatedly called for both sides to set aside their views on the war and work closely to ensure that Iraq does not fall victim to former members of Mr. Hussein's government and foreign terrorists operating in Iraq.

"We have to win the peace together," said Mr. Fischer, adding that only United Nations involvement could bring legitimacy to the process of restoring Iraqi sovereignty. "We must develop a common strategy with which to prevail over the jihadists."

Mr. Fischer proposed that the United States and Europe pool their resources to save the Middle East from what he called a crisis of modernization that was fostering terrorism and instability in the region.

He proposed a wide-ranging Middle East initiative to enhance security, bolster local economies and strengthen democratic institutions in Middle Eastern nations, like the rule of law and political freedoms. He urged that NATO members pursue the initiative before the alliance's summit meeting in Istanbul in June.

In a brief interview after Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks, Mr. Fischer declined to comment on them except to say, "I think we have to look for the positive aspects."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Bush's WMD intelligence panel includes 3 Dems
Pittsburg Post-Gazette -- February 7, 2004

Who knew about WMD claim: Rudd
news.com.au -- February 7, 2004

LABOR today demanded to know whether pre-war advice that Iraq had only the remnants of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was given to government ministers.

The Age newspaper reported Roger Hill, who led a UN weapons inspection team in Iraq in 1998, told Australian troops before the war in Iraq that Iraq did not (not) have the ability to launch WMD at its neighbours.

Mr Hill, who formerly served in the Special Air Service, reportedly briefed SAS troops that Iraq had almost no capacity to use WMD in the battlefield.

Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said Mr Hill's briefing to the troops contradicted public statements made at the time by Prime Minister John Howard on Iraq's WMD capability.

"Here we have John Howard's credibility torpedoed amidships," Mr Rudd said.

Not everyone got it wrong on Iraq's weapons
The International Herald Tribune -- February 6, 2004

WASHINGTON 'We were all wrong," David Kay, the Bush administration's former top weapons sleuth in Iraq, recently told members of Congress after acknowledging that there were probably no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Kay insisted that the blame for the failure to find any such weapons lay with the U.S. intelligence community, which, according to Kay, provided inaccurate assessments.

The Kay remarks appear to be an attempt to spin potentially damaging data to the political advantage of President George W. Bush.

The president's decision to create an "independent commission" to investigate this intelligence failure only reinforces this suspicion, since such a commission would only be given the mandate to examine intelligence data, and not the policies and decision-making processes that made use of that data. More disturbing, the commission's findings would be delayed until late fall, after the November presidential election.

The fact, independent of the findings of any commission, is that not everyone was wrong.

WMD panel shouldn’t blame CIA, diplomat says
MSNBC -- February 6, 2004

SEATTLE - Joseph Wilson, the retired diplomat who sparked a furor with revelations about his own findings in the run-up to the Iraq war, said Friday the nation’s intelligence system is due for an overhaul.

Wilson, in an interview with MSNBC.com, said President Bush’s appointment of an independent commission to study intelligence failures in Iraq and elsewhere could play a useful role if it sets the stage for reform.

But Wilson, whose wife was famously “outed” as a CIA agent after he went public with his concerns about White House misstatements, warned that the commission will serve no useful purpose if it becomes a pawn in a blame game over Iraq.

“The accountability for this war in Iraq does not lie with (CIA director) George Tenet and the intelligence community,” he said. “It resides with the president of the United States and his war Cabinet advisers.”

Intelligence officials warned that Iraq WMD information was iffy
Knight-Ridder Tribune via oudaily.com -- February 6, 2004

Jonathan S. Landay
WASHINGTON — Dubious intelligence about Iraq’s biological weapons programs found its way into the Bush administration’s case for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq despite the fact that officials warned in May 2002 that some of the information might be unreliable or fabricated.

Transcript: CIA director Tenet's address on intelligence
The National Business Review (New Zealand) -- February 6, 2004

- mark 2-06-2004 2:15 pm [link]

'Bogus Use of Intelligence,' Not CIA, to Blame for WMD Claims
Falls Church News-Press -- February 5, 2004

By Nicholas F. Benton
The Bush administration's use of false claims that "weapons of mass destruction" posed an imminent threat to the U.S. and its allies as a pretext for a preemptive and unilateral invasion of Iraq was based on "bogus use of intelligence" by Bush, and was not a failure of the intelligence community. So asserted the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak in an extraordinary briefing yesterday at the Virginia state headquarters of the Dean for President campaign in the City of Falls Church. "The allegation that the blame lies with the CIA is bogus, as well," he said. "I expect the White House to slow-roll the investigation until the final results are not in until after the election."

Howard joins wave of doubt over WMD
stuff.co.nz -- 04 February 2004

By TOM ALLARD, PETER FRAY in London and agencies
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has conceded for the first time that Australia's intelligence on Iraq could have been wrong, while the United States has admitted it might never have launched the invasion had it known there was no stockpile of illegal weapons.

"In the fullness of time it might be demonstrated that the advice was inaccurate," John Howard said yesterday as it emerged that he had received a copy of Parliament's report into the apparent prewar failures of spy agencies.

[Seen at The Memory Hole.]

US officials knew in May Iraq possessed no WMD
Blair comes under pressure as Americans admit it was widely known that Saddam had no chemical arsenal
The Observer -- February 1, 2004

Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff and Paul Harris
Senior American officials concluded at the beginning of last May that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, The Observer has learnt.

Intelligence sources, policy makers and weapons inspectors familiar with the details of the hunt for WMD told The Observer it was widely known that Iraq had no WMD within three weeks of Baghdad falling, despite the assertions of senior Bush administration figures and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong
The Atlantic Monthly -- January/February 2004

by Kenneth M. Pollack
Let's start with one truth: last March, when the United States and its coalition partners invaded Iraq, the American public and much of the rest of the world believed that after Saddam Hussein's regime sank, a vast flotsam of weapons of mass destruction would bob to the surface. That, of course, has not been the case. In the words of David Kay, the principal adviser to the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), an organization created late last spring to search for prohibited weaponry, "I think all of us who entered Iraq expected the job of actually discovering deployed weapons to be easier than it has turned out to be." Many people are now asking very reasonable questions about why they were misled.

The Lie Factory
Mother Jones -- January/February 2004

Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.