Among the statements for which US secretary of defense Don Rumsfeld is justly famed, the two that most stand out are his reaction to the looting of Baghdad — “Stuff happens” — and his pinpointing of Saddam’s banned weapon stockpiles — “They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” He’s at it again, and this time he has company: John Bolton.

One of the legion of issues that arose during Bolton’s ill-fated confirmation hearings before the administration had him air-dropped into the UN ambassadorship was a substantiated accusation that he tried to have two State Department intelligence analysts reassigned when they wouldn’t back his position that Cuba had an active biological warfare program.

Apparently, they were right: In a new National Intelligence Estimate, reported by Knight Ridder’s Warren Strobel, the US has backed off from earlier unequivocal statements about the alleged program.

The new finding on Cuba is based on a U.S. intelligence-community-wide assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, completed last year.

In that estimate, which is classified, “the Intelligence Community unanimously held that it was unclear whether Cuba has an active biological weapons effort now, or even had one in the past,” the State Department report states.

A senior State Department official, briefing reporters on the document, said biological weapons programs are “some of the most difficult activities to verify” because the facilities needed are small.

Also, the technologies needed to make bioweapons are in some cases indistinguishable from those necessary for a pharmaceutical industry or for constructing defenses against biological weapons, which is permitted under international law.

The senior official, briefing on condition of anonymity, said the report was written to reflect that “there are a couple different views within the administration” on Cuba’s efforts.

Indeed. There’s Bolton, and there’s everyone else.

Yesterday, Rumsfeld echoed his certainty about the location of Saddam’s banned weapons by guaranteeing the acceptance of Iraq’s constitution in the October referendum. From a Department of Defense press release:

FORT IRWIN, Calif., Aug. 30, 2005 - The draft constitution submitted to the Iraqi National Assembly will not be voted down by the public, even if some Sunni groups don’t agree with the document, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said here Aug. 29.

Speaking at a town hall meeting with soldiers and family members, including 32 Purple Heart recipients and a brigade of the 4th Infantry Division deploying to Iraq in December, Rumsfeld stressed the difficulty of the process the Iraqis are going through right now.

“That’s tough stuff they’re doing,” he said. “They’re trying to get a piece of paper that will impose order. What a leap of faith.”

Rumsfeld compared the Iraqis’ process to America’s constitutional process many years ago, saying that establishing a democracy is not easy, and the media has not recognized the magnitude or the difficulty of the work being done.

“Everyone would like it to be perfect, but life isn’t perfect and democracy is not perfect,” he said. “It’s not efficient; it takes time.”

Indeed. Stuff happens.

Meanwhile, in a graphic illustration of imperfection and inefficiency, the US ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, is busy telling the government, who insist that the document submitted to Parliament over Sunni objections is the final draft, that it isn’t “a final, final draft.” He made the remark during a press conference with a Sunni spokesman who to0k the opportunity to denounce the constitution and, with the US ambassador standing at this side, accuse the country’s interior minister of slaughtering Sunnis.

As Middle East historian and Iraq war chronicler Juan Cole notes, the spectacle of a US ambassador lending his imprimatur to an apparently extra-legal alteration of another country’s constitution is, to say the least, unusual.

This event is truly extraordinary, and I am afraid that it does not reflect well on the job Khalilzad is doing in Baghdad.

What would Americans think about it if the British ambassador in Washington held a joint press conference with an American politician; if the ambassador alleged that the US constitution could be tinkered with by himself, Bush and Hilary Clinton; and stood there while that politician accused Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of having 36 political enemies kidnapped and shot in the head?

The Los Angeles Times story on the press conference notes that Khalilzad “laughed uncomfortably” while the Sunni politician, Adnan Dulaimi, leveled his charges against the interior minister, and notes that that portion of the event was pulled from the state television network.

Neither situation, Bolton’s insistence that Cuba is actively engage in biowarfare development and the continuing administration efforts to intervene in Iraq’s constitutional process even after Bush celebrated the finalization of the current draft, is likely to improve this country’s already seriously battered image in the rest of the world. When the US amabassador to the UN levels bogus charges against another UN member state and the US ambassador to Iraq openly attempts to undermine the independence of that country’s democratic process, our commitment to the values we espouse could be seen as something less than absolute.

But hey: Stuff happens.

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