News Release

October 9, 2002

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Defense Expert Says CIA Is Right, Deterring Iraq Is the Best Option
Assessment of Iraq suggests a U.S. attack would provoke Hussein to retaliate with terrorism

WASHINGTON -- Cato Institute Director of Defense Policy Studies Ivan Eland issued the following statement in reaction to the CIA's newly declassified assessment of Iraq:

Upon prodding by Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA declassified its judgments on the likelihood of Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction. Those judgments severely undercut the wisdom of the Bush administration's apparent desire to invade Iraq. The CIA noted that Iraq now appears to be deterred from initiating terrorist attacks against the United States with conventional, biological or chemical weapons. But if the United States did invade Iraq and attempted to depose Hussein, the CIA concluded that he probably would be more likely to conduct such attacks.

In fact, according to the CIA's analysis, he might decide that the extreme action of helping radical Islamic terrorists in carrying out a biological or chemical attack on the United States would be his last chance to get revenge by taking a large number of American victims with him.

The uncovering of such analysis shows that the policy of deterring and containing Iraq does work and that a more aggressive policy of invasion could prove disastrous. The U.S. government's national security policy is supposed to enhance the security of the nation, not detract from it. Risking terrorist attacks against the United States with conventional, biological, or chemical weapons to remove a thug -- who has been successfully deterred and contained for more than a decade -- from a small, poor, developing nation defies common sense. The CIA's now declassified assessment confirms what opponents of a U.S. invasion of Iraq have been arguing in public all along.