The questions that weren't asked before the Iraq war

More than two decades after the invasion of Iraq, it's easy to say what went wrong. It's more useful to ask what someone could have asked, at the time, with the information then available. The record shows that several of the right questions were in fact raised. What was mostly missing was the follow-up: the second and third question that turns a concern into an answer.

This article sticks to findings that official reviews and the participants' own later accounts have established. People still disagree, sometimes sharply, about motives and responsibility, and we note those disagreements where they matter.

Question one: how strong is the weapons evidence?

The central public case for war in 2002 and early 2003 was that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was working to rebuild a nuclear weapons program. In October 2002 the U.S. intelligence community produced a National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, on those programs, and Congress voted that same month to authorize the use of force.

After the invasion, no stockpiles of the kind described were found. In July 2004 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report, approved by members of both parties, that examined the NIE judgment by judgment. Its most quoted conclusion was that most of the estimate's major judgments were either overstated or not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting. The committee pointed to analysts' assumptions about Iraq, to weak human sources, and to dissent within the agencies that didn't come through clearly in the final product.

The questions that might have surfaced this in 2002 were not exotic. How many independent sources support this judgment? Has anyone met them? Which agencies disagree, and why? What would we expect to see if this judgment were wrong? The NIE itself contained some dissents in its body, for example on whether aluminum tubes Iraq had sought were meant for nuclear centrifuges. Later reporting suggested that relatively few members of Congress read the full classified estimate before voting, rather than its summary. Whether more reading would have changed votes is unknowable, but the questions were available to ask.

Question two: how many troops will it take after the war?

On February 25, 2003, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki was asked at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing how many soldiers would be needed to occupy Iraq. He answered that it would be something on the order of several hundred thousand. Two days later, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a House committee that such estimates were "wildly off the mark." Shinseki retired that summer as scheduled, and his estimate became one of the most discussed predictions of the war.

The exchange is a good example of a question that was asked, answered, and then not pursued. Natural follow-ups would have been: what assumptions produce the lower number? What happens to that number if the Iraqi army and police don't remain intact? Who has done the planning for postwar security, and can Congress see it? Later accounts by officials, journalists and military historians describe postwar planning as thin, though people involved still disagree about who was responsible and whether more troops would have changed the outcome.

Question three: what will it cost?

In September 2002, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey told a newspaper that a war could cost $100 billion to $200 billion. The administration distanced itself from the figure, and other officials suggested much lower costs, with some arguing that Iraqi oil revenue would help pay for reconstruction. Lindsey left his post later that year.

Total costs ended up far higher than any of the prewar figures, though estimates vary widely depending on what is counted (direct military spending, veterans' care over decades, interest on borrowing). The useful prewar questions here were plain ones about method: what does this estimate include? What does it leave out? What happens to it if the occupation lasts five years instead of one?

Question four: what did the press ask?

Journalism faced its own reckoning. In May 2004, The New York Times published an editors' note acknowledging that some of its prewar coverage had relied too heavily on sources with an interest in regime change and had not been rigorous enough. Other outlets made similar, if quieter, assessments.

Several reporters at the time did ask hard questions, and some of their work holds up well. But the overall pattern, as the self-assessments describe it, was a familiar one: claims from officials and exiles were reported prominently, and skepticism, when it appeared, ran later and less visibly. The questions every reporter is taught to ask (how does this source know? who else confirms it? what does the other side say?) were asked unevenly.

The disagreement that remains

It would be wrong to suggest there's consensus on everything. Supporters of the decision argue that intelligence agencies in several countries believed Iraq had weapons programs, that Saddam Hussein's government had a long record of using chemical weapons and obstructing inspectors, and that leaders had to decide under uncertainty. Critics argue that doubts in the intelligence were downplayed in public, that warnings about the occupation were brushed aside, and that the war's costs in lives and money were foreseeable. In 2008 the Senate Intelligence Committee released further reports on how prewar intelligence was used by policymakers; that phase of the inquiry split the committee largely along party lines.

What the case teaches about asking

The Iraq record is useful precisely because the questions weren't secret. Each of the four above was raised by someone with standing to raise it. What tends to fail is persistence, the willingness to ask the second question when the first answer is confident but thin. Our guide for reporters and our piece on questions senators can ask at confirmation hearings both come back to the same habit: when an answer sounds certain, ask what it rests on.