Looks Like U.S. Peddled Weapons of Mass Dissemblance

As the days and weeks go by, the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq reminds me of O.J.’s search for the real killer. At some point, we may as well give it up and go play golf.

I don’t want to lower my expectations, but with no weapons, no Saddam Hussein and no Osama bin Laden, I’d be happy if they find a guy in a fright wig carrying three grenades and a hunting knife.

The frustrated Pentagon has assembled a new team of 1,000 gumshoes to go sift sand, even though the top Marine commander in Iraq told The Times that U.S. intelligence was “simply wrong” about Hussein’s plan to use chemical or biological weapons during the war.

Meanwhile, CIA snoops have turned a magnifying glass on themselves after a concerned band of retirees called the agency’s prewar efforts an “intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions.”

None of this looks good for those who spun horror stories about weapons of mass destruction as a key part of the justification for war. So I checked back with one of them to see what he makes of the dance in the desert.

You may recall from my last dispatch that Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles) met with President Bush before the war and vowed his support. Berman thought the war made sense for a number of reasons, but he says he wouldn’t have supported it without nasty weapons figuring into the equation.

“If he didn’t have them, then he’s just another dictator,” Berman said of Saddam Hussein.

If there was nothing there, Berman said, no chemical or biological weapons and no production capabilities, and the U.S. either had shoddy intelligence or fabricated it, “I will be both angry and embarrassed.”

But Berman quickly added that he’s not ready to give up the hunt, and that’s partly because he did his own intelligence-gathering before the war. He cornered Clinton administration officials and current or former CIA, Department of Defense and National Security Council sources, all of whom thought Hussein had an arsenal.

Besides, Berman said, it makes no sense that the Bush administration would have faked it, knowing the truth would bite back after the war. And it makes no sense that Hussein would have resisted inspections, endured sanctions and invited his own demise, if he had nothing to hide.

OK, fine. Then where are the weapons? If the evidence wasn’t faked, it sure looks like it might have been hyped.

The weapons might have been destroyed, Berman said, in which case he’d like to see evidence of it before long. And they might have been moved out of the country, which would also be nice to nail down.

“It can be moved inside vehicles,” said the congressman, a member of the House Committee on International Relations. “There was a lot of traffic between Syria and Iraq, and there were even movements between Iraq and Iran.”

Not finding weapons isn’t the only thing bothering Berman. He wishes we would have found Hussein, that the Baath element would have laid down its guns by now, and that an interim government would have been formed.

On the up side for Berman, Hussein can no longer persecute his own people, the United States has demonstrated it will risk lives to take out despots in the name of human rights and economic reform, and the war has helped push an effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian madness.

But those weapons are nagging at him.

“I told my constituents he had them, and I voted not simply because he had them, but it was a key part of what tipped me on the side of this military campaign,” Berman said.

“But if I’m wrong, then, boy. The embarrassment, to me, is unimportant. The credibility of the U.S. in the rest of the world, and with its own public, is going to hurt us for a long time to come.”

Since he brought it up, I’d like to say two words about that.

What credibility?

As someone who opposed the war for the predictable chaos that exists today in Iraq, the bogus link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and the fact that we may have alienated reliable allies and inspired new armies of terrorists, I can still respect an honest difference of opinion.

But now comes Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, admitting weapons of mass destruction weren’t the core reason for the war. The White House just pitched it that way because it seemed convenient at the time, perhaps because other explanations didn’t get much traction.

“For bureaucratic reasons,” Wolfowitz said, “we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”

I’m glad Hussein is gone -- for now, at least -- and hope his bones turn up at the bottom of a crater.

But it seems to me that if you’re going to send American soldiers to their deaths, and kill Iraqi soldiers and civilians in the process, you ought to at least level with people as to the reason.

If those weapons do turn up, you can bet the spin cycle will be thrown into reverse, and we’ll be told that’s the real reason we fought this war.

And they will turn up, Berman said. But it sounded more like a wish than a promise.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.