Pentagon policy chief says Bush administration overemphasized weapons as reason for warBy ROBERT BURNS - AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The top policy adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says the administration erred by building its public case for war against Saddam Hussein mainly on the claim that he posssessed banned weapons.
The comment by Douglas J. Feith, who is preparing to leave after four years as the undersecretary of defense for policy, is a rare admission of error by a senior administration official, although he stressed that he remains convinced that President George W. Bush was correct in deciding that war against Iraq was necessary.
"I don't think there is any question that we as an administration, instead of giving proper emphasis to all major elements of the rationale for war, overemphasized the WMD aspect," he said, using the acronym for the mass-killing chemical and biological weapons that the administration repeatedly claimed the now-deposed Iraqi president possessed prior to the March 2003 invasion and that it cited as the main reason for attacking.
"It would have been better had we done a better job of communicating in all of its breadth the strategic rationale for the war," Feith said in an hour-long Associated Press interview Tuesday at his home in suburban Washington.
One of the architects of the administration's strategy for the war on terror, Feith strongly defended the decision to invade Iraq.
The mistake, he said, was not adequately explaining to the American public and to the world that the reasons for deposing Saddam by force extended beyond the claim _ now shown to be false _ that Iraq had stockpiles of banned weapons.
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