Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a high-ranking Bush administration official makes a tragic mistake, gets caught, and finds himself promoted. The latest example is Robert Joseph.
The man who insisted that President Bush make the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa is poised to assume a top State Department job that would make him the lead US arms negotiator with Iran and North Korea, according to administration officials.
Robert G. Joseph, a special assistant for national security to President Bush until a few months ago, is on the short list to become undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, the nation’s senior diplomat in charge of negotiating arms control treaties, said the officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named.
The CIA warned everyone that the uranium story was bogus, but Joseph was instrumental in making sure Bush used the claim — “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” — in the State of the Union anyway. Indeed, it was Joseph who “negotiated” with the CIA over how the phrase could be in the speech.
If there was to be a war, the nation had to be scared, facts be damned. Now, true to form, he’s up for a promotion to a critically significant administration position.
White House and intelligence officials have identified [Joseph] as the official who included the uranium claim in the president’s 2003 State of the Union address, despite strong CIA objections. Joseph has said he believed the CIA’s disagreement was over the sourcing of the assertion, not whether the claim was accurate, the White House said about six months after the speech. But the apparent willingness of the administration to consider promoting someone who was involved in one of its biggest embarrassments drew immediate fire from critics.
“He should have been fired or reprimanded,” said Joseph Cirincione, a senior arms-proliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “We see instead that he could be given the key position in the Department of State for all treaty and nonproliferation matters.”
Greg Thielmann, who served as the State Department’s top analyst on weapons of mass destruction until the fall of 2003, summed this up nicely.
“That’s what they do for people who make mistakes in Iraq — award them or promote them in the State Department.”
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that Joseph’s position is dependent on Senate confirmation. Dems may not have the votes to block him, and Senate Republicans may not have the courage to question his qualifications, but at a minimum, there’ll be a chance for a slew of embarrassing questions during his confirmation hearings.