Dear Senator Bayh:

As you know, this past week the Iraq Survey Group concluded its search for weapons of mass destruction. As all Americans should recall, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was predicated upon the existence of such weapons and the need to neutralize them before they could be used against us and our allies.

Before the war Vice President Cheney said, "[T]here is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
President Bush charged, "Saddam Hussein is a man who told the world he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he's got them." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "There's no debate in the world as to whether they have those weapons . . . . We all know that. A trained ape knows that."

The Iraq Survey Group consisted of 1,700 people but, in an oversight, perhaps, no trained apes. They spent more than two years and millions of taxpayer dollars looking for what the Bush administration described as an enormous arsenal of WMDs. They found nothing.

Interviewed last week, President Bush insisted that the invasion and occupation, which has cost billions and billions of dollars and taken the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 Americans (the coalition deaths of the past week are listed below) has been worth it. This, even though the weapons the troops were sent to neutralize never existed. Incredibly, the president says he would send the same people to their deaths again knowing the weapons didn?t exist.

The president and his advisers believe they should be forgiven for starting the war because everyone thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Not so. Go back and read news articles of the time. Almost no authority outside of the White House believed such an arsenal existed or could exist after 10 years of weapons inspections and an economic embargo.

When you voted to authorize the Iraq invasion I'm sure you were of the belief described at the time by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer -- that the president and secretary of defense wouldn't be asserting WMDs existed if it wasn't true and if they didn't have absolute proof. Now that you know that wasn't the case, aren't you angry? Aren't you embarrassed? You should insist on a full accounting of the faulty intelligence relied upon by the administration. But don?t stop there. Demand that the president apologize to Congress, to the world, even to Saddam Hussein, whom he called a liar when he was telling the truth.

The invasion of Iraq represents one of the most monstrous errors of judgment in U.S. history. It demands the resignation of those whose skewed vision, if not outright negligence, led to it. This group includes Secretary Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Rice and Vice President Cheney. And I needn't remind you of where Harry Truman believed the buck stopped.

No matter how many times the Bush administration insists otherwise, there were ways to prosecute Saddam Hussein for his crimes without destroying an entire country to get at him. Now that we know for certain that Saddam didn't possess the means to threaten those beyond his borders, the central flaw in the doctrine of preemption has been exposed: It relies on guesswork and mind reading. Not the kind of stuff on which lives should be wagered.

You occupy a position of power and influence. Have you learned the lesson? What are you going to do to keep tragedies like this from being repeated?

With great concern,

Ed Cohen,
writing on behalf of
Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition