The art of lying to the public

It never fails. What goes around ... Just a few years ago, Republicans were outraged because president Bill Clinton did not tell the truth about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. It was hard to tell what upset them more: the president's acts or the American public's seeming indifference to them.

Now, Democrats are equally upset because of the White House's belated admission that President George W. Bush told untruths in this year's State of the Union speech, and their outrage is amplified by the fact that most people do not seem to care.

This time, the Democrats have a case: The credibility of the Bush administration, especially the quality of its intelligence, has never been more important. The charges first uttered against Iraq are being echoed in claims that Iran and North Korea are building nuclear weapons. This time, there is growing agreement that the danger is real, but the controversy swirling around the Iraqi allegations has cast a shadow over all US claims, and complicated efforts to cobble together the international coalition needed to stop those countries from proliferating.

The administration claimed that Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat to the United States and the world. That was the official rationale for brushing aside containment and the UN monitoring programme - Remember them? The guys who couldn't find weapons of mass destruction? - and proceeding with a 'pre-emptive war'.

It turns out that not only was the evidence less than compelling, but some of it was outright fake. And US intelligence agencies knew that. The question that remains unanswered is how Mr Bush could declare in his State of the Union speech that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Africa when a former US ambassador had already travelled to the country in question - on the instructions of the CIA - and determined that the evidence was forged. CIA head George Tenet has taken the blame, but his 'confession' raises as many questions as it answers. Why did he approve a statement that the CIA had removed from another speech delivered in October, when he knew the evidence was false?

Equally troubling is the transformation of 'concerns' into certainties. For example, Iraq purchased aluminium tubes that had several uses, only one of which was nuclear weapons development. The US government's most expert analysts thought they were not suited for building nukes, but their views were ignored and the possibility that they might have been used for nuclear weapons became 'proof' of Iraq's intentions.

Finally, there are questions about US co-operation with the UN teams that were monitoring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. Although the US challenged their work on a daily basis, it has since been revealed that the US was withholding information from the monitors. The US charge that the monitors were ineffectual sounds awfully self-serving if they were being denied information that would have helped them. The US - like Britain and Australia - is a democracy, and its leaders have an obligation to tell citizens the truth about what they are doing and why. Good intentions are not enough. Risks change and options have to be rebalanced. Without an 'imminent Iraqi threat', containment makes a lot more sense. Without honest leaders and an informed citizenry, democracy becomes a meaningless exercise.

On another level, the scapegoating of CIA Director Tenet threatens to demoralise the intelligence community. The president says Mr Tenet still enjoys his confidence, which is to be expected - especially if he is playing the fall guy. But the rest of the intelligence people are not so lucky. Their work has been ignored, disparaged and cooked to fit a policy recipe. As Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired intelligence analysts, concluded in a recent memo to the president, 'The glue that holds the intelligence community together is melting under the hot lights of an awakened press. If you do not act quickly, your intelligence capability will fall apart ...'

Finally, there is the problem of American credibility. An administration that plays fast and loose with evidence - even a mere 16 words in a presidential speech - can make no claim to lead the international community. Every declaration and policy this administration makes will now be subject to heightened scrutiny and scepticism.

Nothing could be worse for a government that seems so thin-skinned and is now facing truly imminent threats.

Brad Glosserman is director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based think tank