Arms Issue Seen as Hurting U.S. Credibility Abroad (washingtonpost.com): "In last year's State of the Union address, President Bush used stark imagery to make the case that military action was necessary. Among other claims, Bush said that Hussein had enough anthrax to 'kill several million people,' enough botulinum toxin to 'subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure' and enough chemical agents to 'kill untold thousands.'
Now, as the president prepares for this State of the Union address Tuesday, those frightening images of death and destruction have been replaced by a different reality: Few of the many claims made by the administration have been confirmed after months of searching by weapons inspectors.
... "The foreign policy blow-back is pretty serious," said Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Board and a supporter of the war. He said the gaps between the administration's rhetoric and the postwar findings threaten Bush's doctrine of "preemption," which envisions attacking a nation because it is an imminent threat.
The doctrine "rests not just on solid intelligence," Adelman said, but "also on the credibility that the intelligence is solid." "
- posted by geoff @ #