Iraq's phantom WMDs.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The credibility of the Bush administration's central rationale for an invasion of Iraq began to erode days after U.S. forces rolled into Baghdad, and has been crumbling ever since.

The latest blow came Wednesday, when the Iraq Survey Group reported that Saddam Hussein had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and had no means of producing them. Sanctions and weapons inspections had neutralized Iraq's ability to threaten its neighbors years before the United States led the invasion 18 months ago.

The survey group's report changes nothing in the presidential campaign. Sen. John Kerry continues to criticize President Bush's decision to go to war, while the president has not backed down from his position that the invasion was necessary.

Americans should push the pause button on this debate and consider a question that will need to be addressed no matter who is elected in November: How is it that intelligence agencies' evaluations of Iraq's capabilities came to be so far off the mark?

One answer is that some U.S. intelligence agencies were skeptical of the evidence suggesting that Iraq posed a threat. The Bush administration, however, consistently favored the most alarming assessments, and then presented those assessments in the most threatening possible light.

Yet, it's too simple to explain the invasion as having resulted entirely from a triumph of convictions over evidence. The notion that Iraq was dangerous was not concocted by the Bush administration.

The Clinton administration held much the same view before leaving office. Nearly all members of Congress, including Kerry, embraced the idea that Iraq was a threat. Other nations, including some that opposed the U.S.-led invasion, believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, based in reports of their own intelligence agencies.

Saddam himself did nothing to discourage this belief - which helps explain why so many were wrong. He'd demonstrated a willingness to use weapons of mass destruction in the past. By allowing the world to believe he still had them, Saddam kept adversaries such as Iran at bay. Iraq's phantom weapons were one of history's most convincing bluffs - so convincing that, ironically, it proved fatal to Saddam's regime.

The world's inability to see through Saddam's bluff is instructive. The next time the United States must decide between war and peace based on an appraisal of another country's capabilities and intentions, people should remember that governments can practice deceptions, particularly where transparency is absent. They should bear in mind that intelligence reports are often myopic or downright wrong.

In Iraq, the costs of misreading the situation are growing every day.