GEORGE HUNSINGER offers a skewed presentation of "facts" in his article on Iraq ("Fog of war," Feb. 10). First, he leaves the impression that David Kay resigned as chief weapons inspector because no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq. Kay always planned to leave his post, so there is nothing suspect in his standing down.

More important, Hunsinger intimates that Kay's testimony represents a slam dunk in favor of the proposition that Iraq had no WMD. But anyone who watched Kay's testimony oil C-Span or read the transcripts knows that Kay's position is far more complex and nuanced than that. He cited multiple violations by Iraq of United Nations demands and resolutions, given what has been discovered, including "starter kits" for various deadly chemicals like ricin.

In response to Senator Edward Kennedy's charge that somehow the administration distorted intelligence, Kay was unequivocal in maintaining that, given the preponderance of the evidence and its detailed nature, he too would have made the same judgment call. We also learned how corrupt, disorganized and volatile Iraq's internal situation was, with Saddam Hussein retreating into delusion as Iraqi scientists and military personnel created their own stashes of weapons and likely went "free lance" in selling stuff, secreting it or securing it across the Syrian border.

Intelligence always involves judgment calls: it is a task of interpretation, something theologians are familiar with. The concatenation of the best intelligence has to be put together into a coherent narrative: the dots must be connected. There will no doubt be times when the dots do connect; times when they appear to connect but do not, at least not in the way one assumed; yet other instances, like 9/11, when intelligence does not connect the dots and the results are catastrophic. (In fairness to the intelligence community, it should be noted that the "domestic" and "offshore" agencies were forbidden by law to talk to one another. That problem was corrected by the Patriot Act--which received overwhelming congressional support, with but one vote against it in the Senate. It is unfortunate that the legislation received an inflammatory name, as it is really a codification and expansion of changes already made in 1978 and approved by President Jimmy Carter.)

Then there is the matter of the "revelations" of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill about the Bush administration's early discussions of invading Iraq--a tempest in a teapot if ever there was one. Of course regime change in Iraq was discussed early on. Regime change was, after all, the policy of the United States, stated explicitly by the Clinton administration. (On this see multiple statements by Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, etc.) An invasion was planned for 1998; the sought-for regime change never took place, although the Clintonites insisted that one was justified, given Iraq's repeated violation of UN resolutions. All of this is a matter of public record. it would be the height of irresponsibility were a new administration to fail to review the actions, plans and policies of its predecessor and to discuss the feasibility, of certain scenarios.

I don't understand how any person of decency can claim in good conscience that an invasion of Iraq, whether undertaken by the Clinton administration as at least provisionally planned, or by the Bush administration, as has taken place, was wholly unprovoked. John Gaddis, one of the directors of the Grand Strategy program at Yale, points out that some version of preemptive or preventive use of force has been part of U.S. policy since the days of John Quincy Adams. In the Kennedy years it was called "anticipatory' self-defense." Hunsinger seems shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in Casablanca. Surely we should all be a bit more worldly than that! This doesn't mean we should rush to support any particular instance of intervention. But to pretend this is something brand-new does violence to political history and distorts widely known facts.

Perhaps the above reality is why both former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton supported the Iraq invasion, with Senator Clinton underscoring the available intelligence concerning what Iraq had stockpiled at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war and had never accounted for. One can argue about whether the postwar situation has been well or badly handled, of" course. But to suggest that some egregious violation occurred with the invasion itself is simply false. To this end, Hunsinger erroneously claims that any military action requires "explicit authorization from the UN Security Council." This claim would never hold up in any court. A prerequisite for UN membership is that a political entity be sovereign. Sovereignty means that a country is the judge of its own security needs and requirements. While it may be desirable to seek multilateral authorization or participation, it is by no means required.

It also seems odd that a multilateralist or internationalist like Hunsinger would enshrine state sovereignty as a highest good; hence, the crossing of borders in each and every ease as a violation. Did Hunsinger rail against the Clinton administration's bombing of Serbia in support of the beleaguered Kosovars? For consistency's sake, I hope so.

Members of the Clinton administration have told in memoir after memoir of how they planned from the very beginning to bypass the Security Council, knowing they could never get authorization to intervene against the Serbs, given that a Russian veto was well-nigh a certainty. Faith in the UN did nothing for the Bosnian Muslims as UN "peacekeepers" stood by and watched as Serbian boys and men were rounded up to be slaughtered. Faith in the UN did nothing for Tutsis slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands at the hands of Hutus in Rwanda.

To conclude: it strikes me as quite surprising for a Christian theologian to call for lifting the "fog of war." Perhaps Hunsinger fails to appreciate what yon Clausewitz's famous phrase means. It does not mean that one's thinking apparatus is fogged or that one has gone off the rails ethically. What Clausewitz meant was that wars are always undertaken and carried out in ways that cannot be crystal clear. Wars elude full transparency. Soldiers fight in one small context and do not have access to the whole picture--as indeed they cannot, for it is epistemologically impossible. This sense of the fog of war cautious against rigidity in planning and thinking. Surely it is far, far better for policy-makers and military leaders to remain constantly aware of the fog of war in order that they not overpredict what they can do, and when, and how, and so that they do not become overconfident about their ability to control events.

Abraham Lincoln--well aware of the fog of war as he formulated strategic doctrine for federal troops, instituted military commissions, temporarily suspended habeas corpus and all the rest--stated wisely that "God's purposes are not our own." We van never be absolutely certain about any action undertaken in the political realm, and often such actions have ironic, unintended and even tragic consequences (something Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood quite well--and wrote about knowingly). Christians are taught that we are all caught in the coils of" the noetic effect of sin. It follows that none of us can know all there is to know. There is a tone of self-certainty that flows from Hunsinger's accumulated bullet items. When a more accurate, because more complete, account is offered of the claims he makes, we can see that they lack the knock-down certainty that he proffers.

Jean Bethke Elshtain

Chicago, Ill.

George Hunsinger replies:

I regret the ad hominem style of attack that Jean Bethke Elshtain adopts. One wonders what, if anything, would make her change her mind about the war. I certainly don't regard her as a reliable narrator about David Kay, who said recently to a Senate panel: "It turns out we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing." Admittedly, Kay has made many appearances by this time and has voiced views of all different shades. I suspect he's been under immense pressure. Yet his cumulative, relentless stream of statements seems to have pushed the president's approval rating to the "tipping point."

Largely because of Kay, Bush now faces a widening credibility gap. The newly appointed Iraq Intelligence Commission seems so restricted in scope and lacking in independence that many see it as a cover-up.