Iraq
- Incompetence, Intransigent Ignorance and, Ultimately, Failure
News items regarding current crises in
Iraq are almost unavoidable. Also hard to miss are the frustrations of Faux
News talking heads who are, it seems, desperate to find a way to pin this latest
international crisis on the current President of the United States. Failing to
do so, they will then impugn "leadership' in the quest to point fingers. I
would submit that their goals are reachable, but they must shift their sights
regarding which POTUS they need to hold accountable. Unfortunately, they and
other "Rabid Right" pundits are apparently unable (or unwilling) to submit current events to realistic
analysis via the lens of history, so I will attempt to do it for them. Because
this is essentially an op-ed piece, I won't footnote or cite, but I will assure
the reader that all sources and cites are documentable and documented. Where I
interject opinion it will be obvious. So.....how did we get here?
Actually we must go back five presidents
to see the origins of US policy in the region which shape our ends today. Jimmy
Carter, facing yet another energy (can you say oil?) crisis, proposed what came to be called the
"Carter Doctrine" Apparently every President in last half century
wishes to leave a "doctrine" statement as a legacy and Carter was no
different. The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President Jimmy
Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980. It stated that the United States would use
military force if necessary to "defend its national interests in
the Persian Gulf." It was issued
in response to the Soviet's 1979 invasion
of Afghanistan, and was intended to deter the Soviet Union, at that time still
our Cold War adversary, from seeking to create hegemony in the Gulf.. Of course, this
overlooks the fact that typically, the term "hegemony" implies
cultural dominance, and the principal Soviet and Islamic states couldn't have
been more different.
This fine point will essentially remain lost from 1979 to 2014. The following significant
sentence, crafted by Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski, fairly well outlines the gist and intent of the doctrine: " Let our position be absolutely clear:
An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will
be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of
America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including
military force." This closely tracks the wording on the "Truman Doctrine,"
and Carter insisted that the sentence be included in the speech "to make it very
clear that the Soviets should stay away from the Persian Gulf." Like the
Truman Doctrine, the Carter Doctrine was formulated as a Soviet domination
preventive. Unlike the Truman doctrine, it also extended the threat of US
intervention to a part of the region where societal norms were tribal,
violently sectarian, controlled by
supremely corrupt leaders, and universally hostile to outside interference, as
the Soviets would discover over the ensuing decade as they were foiled in
their attempts to establish control over Afghanistan, hindered, of course, by
the Taliban, supported by US weapons and funding. By the decade's end the
Soviets would be gone, but the lesson apparently unlearned.
Jump ahead
ten years, or so to 1990, when on the second day of August, Iraqi forces
invaded Kuwait. Immediate US response was to condemn the actions, while
essentially no US news agency really gave the background of the hostilities a
line of print. Origins of conditions predating the Iraqi invasion stem from conditions in Iraq
as far back as 1982, when, assisted by US aid, Iraq launched a counter
offensive against Iran in their war which had been ongoing since the Iranian
revolution. Iraq, concerned that Iran's 1979 revolution would
embolden Iraqi Shiites to attempt a
revolution of their own in Iraq, launched an invasion of its own against Iran.
In March 1982, Iran began a successful counteroffensive
and the U.S. increased its support for Iraq to prevent Iran from forcing a
surrender. In a bid to open full diplomatic relations with Iraq, the country
was removed from the U.S. list of State
Sponsors of Terrorism. With Iraq's newfound success in the war, and the
Iranian refusal of a peace offer in
July, U.S. arms sales to Iraq reached a record high in 1982. When Saddam
Hussein expelled known terrorist Abu Nidal to Syria at U.S. request in November 1983, none other
than Donald Rumsfeld met Saddam as a
special envoy to cultivate ties. Although the ceasefire essentially
finalized recognized Iraq's victory, in August 1988, Iraq was heavily
debt-ridden and tensions within the nation were rising. Part of the source of
this unrest was financial, but a significant portion was sectarian. After all,
as a nation, Iraq had beaten Iran, but there were many Shiites in Iraq for whom
this was a sectarian issue first, a national one second. Most of Iraq's
considerable accumulated war debt was
owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq pressured both nations to forgive the
debts, but they refused. Also lost in translation was the disturbing (at least
to me) fact that a biological weapons
(BW) program in Iraq had begun in the early 1980s with help from the U.S. and
Europe in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972.
It is difficult to create a definitive
timeline for the deterioration of relations between Iraq and it's southern
neighbors, most of whom had supported its military efforts in the North,
against Iran. In the post (Iran) war financial debacle of Iraq, a key issue was
the world market price of oil. Iraq was an OPEC member, but an OPEC member with
serious national and international debt, which oil profits would help defray.
Iraq also accused Kuwait of exceeding its
OPEC quotas for oil production. In order for the cartel to maintain its desired
price of $18 a barrel, some production restraint and discipline was required.
The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait were consistently overproducing; the latter
at least in part to repair losses caused by Iranian attacks in the Iran–Iraq
War and to pay for the losses of an internal economic scandal of their own
creation. The result was a sharp decrease in the oil price to as low as $10 a barrel. This supply/demand imbalance resulted
in a loss of $7 billion a year to Iraq,
equal to its 1989 balance of payments deficit. In other words. Kuwait and the
Emirates' refusal to stick to previously agreed upon production quotas was disastrous for the Iraqi economy! Resulting
revenues were barely adequate to provide the basic costs of running government,
let alone repair Iraq's damaged infrastructure. Jordan and Iraq both asked
The Emirates and Kuwait for more discipline,
with little success. To the Iraqi government it was perceived as a form of economic warfare, which
it claimed was aggravated by Kuwait slant-drilling across the border into
Iraq's Rumaila oil field.
At
the same time, Saddam looked for closer ties with those Arab states that had
supported Iraq in the war. This was supported by the U.S., who believed that
Iraqi ties with pro-Western Gulf states would help bring and maintain Iraq
inside the U.S.' sphere of influence. The
Iraq–Kuwait dispute also involved Iraqi claims to Kuwait as Iraqi territory. Kuwait had been a part of the Ottoman
Empire's province of Basra, something that Iraq claimed made it rightful Iraq
territory. Its (Kuwait's) ruling dynasty, the al-Sabah family, had concluded a
protectorate agreement in 1899 that assigned responsibility for its foreign
affairs to the United Kingdom. The UK drew the border between the two countries
in 1922, making Iraq virtually landlocked. This British intervention in the
Middle east following World War I and continuing into the post WWII
period in pursuit of its own energy interests would prove as unsustainable
as it had in Palestine, and in much the same way served to destabilize the
region, in this case disadvantaging a relatively large nation, Iraq, in favor
of a small oil rich sheikdom, Kuwait, which adamantly rejected any and all Iraqi attempts to secure
further sea access provisions in the region.
In early July 1990, Iraq complained about
Kuwait's behavior, such as not respecting their quota, and openly threatened to
take military action. On the 23rd, the CIA reported that Iraq had moved 30,000
troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, and the U.S. naval fleet in the Persian Gulf
was placed on alert. On 15 July 1990,
Saddam's government laid out its combined objections to the Arab League,
including that oil production policy
moves were costing Iraq $1 billion a year, that Kuwait was still using the
Rumaila oil field, that loans made by the UAE and Kuwait could not be
considered debts to its "Arab brothers". He threatened force against
Kuwait and the UAE saying "The policies of some Arab rulers are American
... They are inspired by America to undermine Arab interests and
security."
Discussions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,
mediated on the Arab League's behalf by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, were
held on 31 July and led Mubarak to believe that a peaceful course could be
established. The result of the Jeddah talks was an Iraqi demand for $10 billion
to cover the lost revenues from Rumaila; the Kuwaiti response was to offer $9
billion. The Iraqi response was to immediately order the invasion. On 2 August 1990, Iraq launched the invasion
by bombing Kuwait's capital.
Almost immediately the drive to show cause for
UN and U.S. involvement in this dispute began. Clearly,
there had been a violation of Kuwaiti territory, even if those borders were the
subject of dispute. US resolve was fueled by urgent requests from the Saudis (a
monarchy rich in oil with some sectarian issues of their own). There were many
media stories decrying the brutality of Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait. Almost every word except the key one
"oil" was thrown about the print and
broadcast media.
The U.S. and the U.N. gave several public
justifications for involvement in the conflict, the most prominent being the
Iraqi violation of Kuwaiti territorial integrity. In addition, the U.S. moved
to support its ally Saudi Arabia, whose importance in the region, politically and as a key
supplier of oil, made it of considerable geopolitical importance. Shortly after
the Iraqi invasion, U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney made the first of several
visits to Saudi Arabia where King Fahd requested U.S. military assistance. The
Pentagon stated that satellite photos showing a buildup of Iraqi forces along
the Saudi border were this information's source, but this was later shown to be
false. A reporter for the St. Petersburg Times acquired two commercial Soviet
satellite images made at the time in question, which showed nothing but empty
desert.
Other justifications for foreign involvement
included Iraq’s history of human rights abuses under Saddam. Iraq was also
known to possess biological weapons and chemical weapons, which Saddam had used
against Iranian troops during the Iran–Iraq War and against his own country's
Kurdish population in the Al-Anfal Campaign. It was not known (or, at least publically
stated) if those chemical weapons had been produced in laboratories set up
using US technical aid in the 1980s during the Iran Iraq war. Iraq was also
known to have a nuclear weapons program, but the report about it from January
1991 was partially declassified by the CIA on 26 May 2001.
While undeniably there were human rights
abuses committed in Kuwait by the invading Iraqi military, the alleged
incidents which received most publicity in the U.S. were inventions of the public
relations firm hired by the government of Kuwait to influence U.S.
opinion in favor of military intervention. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of
Kuwait, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the U.S. It
hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 million, paid
by Kuwait's government. Understand this - Kuwait paid a PR firm billions to
create a public outcry for the first Gulf War.
Among many other means of influencing U.S.
opinion (distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to U.S. soldiers deployed in
the region, 'Free Kuwait' T-shirts and speakers to college campuses, and dozens
of video news releases to television stations), the firm arranged for an
appearance before a group of members of the U.S. Congress in which a woman
identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described
Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the
floor.
The story was an influence in tipping both
the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the
testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven
Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military
actions in a 52–47 vote. A year after the war, however, this allegation was revealed
to be a complete fabrication! The woman who had testified was found to be a
member of Kuwait's Royal Family, in fact the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to
the U.S. She hadn't even lived in Kuwait
during the Iraqi invasion! It must be noted that if the seven Senators had
voted the opposite the US may never have been involved in the Gulf War at all.
This of course discounts the deep Bush family ties to all things Saudi,
including money!
The
course and the cost of the war is well known and doesn't bear outlining here
for brevity's sake. What does bear analysis is the way the war ended, with a
negotiated settlement which stopped short of a true invasion and toppling of
the Saddam Hussein government. Maybe the most prescient and two faced statement
ever uttered on the subject comes from (then
Secretary of Defense) Dick Cheney, who when asked about what some
viewed as stopping short of the goal line, said, " I would guess if we had
gone in there, we would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the
country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody
home..... And the final point that I
think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could
have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties, and while
everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict,
for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it
wasn't a cheap war. And the question in my mind is, how many additional American
casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is, not that damned many.
So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but
also when the President made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and
we were
not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and
govern Iraq.— Dick Cheney. Of course, as Vice President to another
Bush, Cheney apparently had a change of heart, as he supported Junior's
invasion of Iraq with far less justification!
The aftermath of the war has its share of
horrors, but for the US, probably none more important that "Gulf War
Syndrome." There have been many attempts to lay such causes, as have been
postulated, at the feet of the Iraqis. Everything from oil smoke to chemical
weapons has been blamed.
Many returning Coalition soldiers reported
illnesses following their action in the war. Common symptoms that were reported are chronic
fatigue, Fibromyalgia, and Gastrointestinal disorder. There has been widespread
speculation and disagreement about the causes of the illness and the reported
birth defects. Researchers have said that they did not have enough information
to link birth defects with exposure to toxic substances. Some factors
considered as possibilities include exposure to depleted uranium, chemical
weapons, anthrax vaccines given to deploying soldiers, and/or infectious
diseases. Major Michael Donnelly, a USAF officer during the War, helped
publicize the syndrome and advocated for veterans' rights in this regard.
Depleted uranium was used By US and Coalition forces in the war in
tank kinetic energy penetrators and 20–30 mm cannon ordnance. DU is a
pyrophoric, genotoxic, and teratogenic heavy metal. This means than in addition
to spontaneously combusting it can cause developmental aberrations and genetic
mutations. Many have cited its use during the war as a contributing factor to a
number of instances of health issues in the conflict's veterans and surrounding
civilian populations.
Some say that Depleted uranium is not a
significant health hazard unless it is taken into the body. External exposure
to radiation from depleted uranium is generally not a major concern because the
alpha particles emitted by its isotopes travel only a few centimeters in air or
can be stopped by a sheet of paper. Also, the uranium-235 that remains in
depleted uranium emits only a small amount of low-energy gamma radiation.
However, if allowed to enter the body, (as in the powder created upon impact
with a tank) depleted uranium, like natural uranium, has the potential for both
chemical and radiological toxicity with the two important target organs being
the kidneys and the lungs. while the menu of causes of Gulf War Syndrome may
never be fully identified, the results will last through the generation who
fought in the first Desert War.
While there can be some room for
discussion of the whys and wherefores of U.S. involvement in the First Gulf
War, and while there was certainly little global understanding of (and little interest in publicizing)
Iraq's real motivation for its actions,
the fact remains that most of the nations of the world believed Saddam Hussein
had overstepped the constraints of civilized nations. In hindsight, had the
Coalition not intervened, Kuwait might today indeed, be the Iraqi province of
Basra, with whatever that might imply for regional security.
Total United States casualties for the
Persian Gulf War were 148 killed in action and 458 wounded. Total casualties of
the other coalition members were 77 killed in action and 830 wounded.
Approximately one-quarter of the
casualties were caused by misdirected fire from coalition troops. Estimates
of Iraqi casualties range from 30,000 to 100,000 killed, and from 100,000 to
300,000 wounded.
The Security Council approved a resolution
on March 2 setting the terms of surrender. Iraqi military commanders agreed to
accept terms the following day. Meanwhile, Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq rose
in rebellion against Saddam Hussein on March I and the Kurds in northern Iraq
rose in rebellion on March 5. Both the Shiites and the Kurds were temporarily
victorious, but by March 20 the Shiite rebels were defeated and by April 3 the
Kurds were in retreat.
1990-2000-
Interregnum
The 1990s were a period
of watchful waiting with regard to Iraq. Many Americans, showing a typical
everyman lack of sophistication and geopolitical awareness continued to grumble
about how we "quit halfway to Baghdad." but fortunately the new
occupant of the White House, a Rhodes scholar with an acute sense of geopolitics,
had a more balanced sense of reality vis- a- vis the region and it's quagmires.
even as late as 1994, former SecDef
Cheyney was singing the same song,
when asked again why we left stopping short of Baghdad..., "Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we
would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There
would have been a US occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were
willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to
Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you
going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you
take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing
pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west,
part of eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it
for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose
and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity
of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go
that far and try to take over Iraq." Dick Cheney - 1994.
Through most of the Clinton years Iraq
policy followed UN policy of weapons inspections and economic sanctions, with
occasional relaxing such as "oil for food" and the like. In 1996, in a plot approved, at least tacitly
by the White House, the CIA recruited officers within Saddam's inner circle to help
in a military coup d'état. The plotters were told that the US would recognize
them as Iraq's new leaders. They were given special mobile phones with direct
lines to the CIA, But Saddam was ready. A special unit of Iraqi intelligence
had studied every coup of the 20th century and they penetrated this one.
Saddam's agents burst into homes across Baghdad and tortured and executed
hundreds of officers. Then Saddam's agents found the CIA's phones. An Iraqi
intelligence officer placed a call. A US agent answered. He was told, '"Your men
are dead. Pack up and go home.'" "In Dec., [1998]
Saddam ended Iraqi cooperation with UNSCOM and accused the UN of espionage. On
Dec. 15, UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler reported that the Iraqis were refusing to
cooperate with inspectors and the next day, President Clinton -- on the eve of
the House impeachment vote -- ordered Operation Desert Fox, a four-day
bombardment of key Iraqi military installations. It is conducted without UN
Security Council approval."
Round
two - Bush's War
The reasons and circumstances surrounding
the current involvement and impending
disaster that is the U.S. adventure in Iraq are much hazier and much
less definitive in nature. By one account,
the current Iraq occupation was not the result of provocation , but of an
intentional ramping up of military intransigence and public opinion
manipulation. With the election of
George W. Bush as president in 2000, the U.S. moved towards a more aggressive
policy toward Iraq. The Republican Party's campaign platform in the 2000
election called for "full implementation" of the Iraq Liberation Act
as "a starting point" in a plan to "remove" Hussein. After
leaving the George W. Bush administration, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said
that
"an attack on Iraq had been planned since Bush's inauguration, and that
the first United States National Security Council meeting involved discussion
of an invasion." While
there had been some earlier talk of action against Iraq, the Bush
administration waited until September 2002 to call for action, with White House
Chief of Staff Andrew Card saying, "From a marketing point of view,
you don't introduce new products in August."
Now
we are left to either believe that Secretary O'Neill is a categorical liar
(why?) or face the fact that this war wasn't a response to aggression, but
rather a public relations effort to justify war. Confirmation comes from
several sources close to the Bush white house, including several statements
made to Bob Woodward, who was given closer access to the white house than any
political author, ever.
O'Neill told Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind
in The Price of Loyalty: George W.
Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill that Bush's
hawk-dominated regime, led by vice-president Dick Cheney, defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice, was determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime
in Iraq from “day one”. He reported that
at the first National Security Council meeting, 10 days after Bush's
inauguration in January 2001, the ousting of Hussein was “topic A” on Bush's
agenda. According to O'Neill, “From the
start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could
take him out and change Iraq into a new country... It was about finding a way
to do it. That was the tone of it. The president essentially said ,"Fine.
Go find me a way to do this.", O'Neill told the January 10 Time magazine.
Following 9/11, in order to convince the
US public that the “war on terrorism” should include Iraq, the Bush inner
circle set about systematically
inventing, spreading and fuelling fears that Hussein possessed weapons of mass
destruction — chemical, biological and nuclear — and was prepared to pass them
to terrorists to be used against the US. “In the 23 months I was there”, O'Neill told
Time magazine, “I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of
weapons of mass destruction. There were allegations and assertions by people...
I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real
evidence.”
Suskind told CBS television's 60 Minutes on
January 11 that he had seen "thousands of official documents" that
confirmed O'Neill's account and threw light on Washington's true motive in
going after Iraq, including memos titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq” and
“Foreign suitors for Iraqi oilfield contracts”, which included maps for future
oil exploration. O'Neill's claims were further given credibility in March with
the release of Richard Clarke's Against
All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. Clarke, who was the Bush
administration's national coordinator for counter-terrorism and sat on the
National Security Council (the position he also held during the Clinton
presidency), accused the Bush administration of, prior to 9/11, downgrading the
Clinton administration's focus on combating al Qaeda.
In December 2002, a senior representative
of the head of Iraqi Intelligence,, contacted former Central Intelligence
Agency Counterterrorism Department head Vincent Cannistraro stating that
Hussein "knew there was a campaign to link him to 11 September and prove
he had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)." Cannistraro further added that
"the Iraqis were prepared to satisfy these concerns. I reported the
conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand
aside and they would handle it." Cannistraro stated that the
offers made were all "killed" by the George W. Bush administration
because they allowed Hussein to remain in power, an outcome viewed as
unacceptable. It has been suggested that Saddam Hussein was prepared to go into
exile if allowed to keep $1 billion USD.
Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak's national security advisor, Osama El-Baz, sent a
message to the U.S. State Department that the Iraqis wanted to discuss the
accusations that the country had weapons of mass destruction and ties with
Al-Qaeda. Iraq also attempted to reach the U.S. through the Syrian, French,
German, and Russian intelligence services.
In spite of what
appeared to be good faith efforts to contact the U.S. and refute Bush
administration claims regarding WMDs and Biologics, there seemed to be no
listening ears if the solution resulted in Hussein still in power.
In January 2003,
Lebanese-American, Imad Hage, a Bush administration War on Terror consultant, met with the chief of Iraqi intelligence's
foreign operations, Hassan al-Obeidi. Obeidi told Hage that Baghdad did not
understand why they were being targeted, and that they had no WMDs. He then
made the offer for Washington to send in 2000 FBI agents to confirm this. He
additionally offered petroleum concessions, but stopped short of having Hussein
give up power, instead suggesting that elections could be held in two years.
Later, Obeidi suggested that Hage travel to Baghdad for talks; he accepted. Later
that month, Hage met with General Habbush and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq
Aziz. He was offered top priority to U.S. firms in oil and mining rights,
UN-supervised elections, U.S. inspections (with up to 5,000 inspectors), to
have al-Qaeda agent Abdul Rahman Yasin (in Iraqi custody since 1994) handed
over as a sign of good faith, and to give "full support for any U.S.
plan" in the Arab-Israeli peace process. They also wished to meet
with high-ranking U.S. officials. On 19 February, Hage faxed Michael Maloof (of
the DoD's Office of Special Plans) his report of the trip. Maloof reports
having brought the proposal to Jamie Duran. The Pentagon denies that either
Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld, Duran's bosses, were aware of the plan.
One is left with the inescapable
conclusion that the POTUS and the "neo-cons" in his service, chief
among them "Scooter" Libby, Paul, Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice, had
little interest in a peaceful resolution to "the Iraqi question." Douglas
Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and others had
been openly calling for regime change in Iraq since the late 1990s and used their positions in the Bush
administration to make the case for war after 9/11, aided by a chorus of
sympathetic media pundits at places like the American Enterprise Institute, and
the Weekly Standard. No serious scholar would claim that that they "bamboozled" Bush and
Cheney into a war, but by numerous documented accounts they had been openly
pushing for war since 1998 and they continued to do so after 9/11. As
neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan later admitted, he and his fellow
neoconservatives were successful in part because they had a "ready-made
approach to the world" that seemed to provide an answer to the challenges
the U.S. faced after 9/11, i.e. show our muscle and kick someone's ass. For that cabal of schemers, a nation
like Iraq was a well defined target vice some shadowy figure holed up, God
knows where, in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Of course, the raison d'être for any plan
involving military action had to be clear and present danger and /or preemptive
action to prevent it. What better motivator than to invoke the memory of 9/11
and subtly maneuver the blame or at least complicity for it onto the already dirty shoulders of the Hussein regime?
The POTUS mob was
careful at first not to definitively associate Iraq with blame for the 9/11
attacks, since there existed absolutely no proof of such linkage. While not making
any explicit declaration alleging Iraqi culpability in the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, administration officials did, at various times, imply a
link. In late 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed"
that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence
official. Later, Cheney called Iraq the "geographic base of the terrorists
who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Steven Kull, is the director of the
Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.
In March 2003, he noted that "The administration has succeeded in creating
a sense that there is some connection between 11 Sept. and Saddam Hussein".
At the same time a New York Times/CBS poll had shown that almost half of the
American people believed there was Iraqi
complicity in 9/11 and that Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in the 11
September attacks. The Christian Science
Monitor observed about the same time that, while "Sources knowledgeable about U.S.
intelligence say there is no evidence that Hussein played a role in the 11
Sept. attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding Al Qaeda... the
White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to
maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq and demonstrate
seriousness of purpose to Hussein's regime." The Monitor went on to report that, while
polling data collected "right after 11 Sept. 2001" showed that only 3
percent mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein, by January 2003 attitudes "had
been transformed" with a Knight Ridder poll showing that 44% of Americans
believed "most" or "some" of the 11 September hijackers
were Iraqi citizens; although, of course, they were Saudi citizens, but we didn't blame
the Saudis or their leaders.
In September 2002, the Bush administration
said attempts by Iraq to acquire thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes
pointed to a clandestine program to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.
Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council just before the war, referred
to the aluminum tubes. A report released by the Institute for Science and
International Security in 2002, however, reported that it was highly unlikely
that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium. Secretary Powell later admitted he had
presented an inaccurate case to the United Nations on Iraqi weapons,
based on sourcing that was wrong and in some cases "deliberately
misleading." The Bush
administration also asserted that the Hussein government had sought to purchase
yellowcake uranium from Niger. On 7 March 2003, the U.S. submitted intelligence
documents as evidence to the International Atomic Energy Agency. These
documents were dismissed by the IAEA as forgeries,
with the concurrence in that judgment of outside experts. At the time, a US
official (Joe Wilson) stated that the evidence was submitted to the IAEA
without knowledge of its provenance and characterized any mistakes as
"more likely due to incompetence not malice". His reward for telling
the truth was that his CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame was outed by a Bush staffer.
Despite the total absence of credible indicators, The Bush administration's overall rationale
for the invasion of Iraq was presented in graphic (charts and photos) detail by
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council on
5 February 2003. He summarized the data thus, "We
know that Saddam Hussein is
determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's threatened determined
to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression... given what we
know of his terrorist associations (code
word)and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him,
should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time
and the place and in the manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in
a much weaker position to respond? The United States will not and cannot run
that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of
weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option,
not in a post–September 11 world. " Later Secretary Powell would
admit: "Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect
to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power
against his neighbors." Similarly, assertions of operational links between
the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda have largely been discredited by the intelligence
community, and Secretary Powell himself later admitted he had no proof.
In addition to making the argument that Iraq was not the top strategic priority
in the war on terrorism or in the Middle East, critics of the war also
suggested that it could potentially destabilize the surrounding region. One such
prominent critic had was Brent
Scowcroft, ( National Security Advisor to George H. W. Bush) who wrote In a 15 August 2002 Wall Street Journal
editorial entitled "Don't attack Saddam", "Possibly the most dire consequences
would be the effect in the region... there would be an explosion of outrage
against us... the results could well destabilize Arab regimes", and,
"could even swell the ranks of the terrorists." If only the son had
taken advice from his father's advisors!
The White House was not alone in being
complicit in the massive misinformation campaign which helped sell Bush's war. One study found that in the lead up to the Iraq
War, most U.S. sources were overwhelmingly in favor of the invasion. It (The
U.S. invasion of Iraq) was the most
widely and closely reported war in history. Television network coverage was
largely pro-war and viewers were six
times more likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war. The New
York Times ran a number of articles describing Saddam Hussein's attempts to
build weapons of mass destruction. A September 8th, 2002 article titled "U.S. Says Hussein
Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" would be discredited, leading The New
York Times to issue a public retraction and apology, admitting it was not as rigorous as it
should have been.
At the start of the war in March 2003, as
many as 775 reporters and photographers were traveling as "embedded
journalists." These reporters agreed
in writing to limitations regarding what
they were allowed to report on. When asked why the military decided to embed
journalists with the troops, Lt. Col. Rick Long of the U.S. Marine Corps
replied, "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information
warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information
environment." In 2003, a study
released by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting showed that, 64% of total
sources were in favor of the Iraq War while total anti-war sources made up 10%
of the media (only 3% of US sources were anti-war). The study looked only at 6
American news networks after March 20 for three weeks. In like manner, a September, 2003 poll revealed that seventy percent of
Americans believed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of
9/11. 80% of Fox News viewers were found to hold at least one such belief
about the invasion, compared to 23% of PBS viewers. Ted Turner, founder
of CNN, openly stated that Rupert
Murdoch was "Using Fox News to advocate an invasion." A post-2008 election
poll by FactCheck.org found that 48% of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks, the
group concluded that "voters, once deceived, tend to stay that way despite
all evidence."
After the French expressed grave doubts
regarding the "reasons" for invading Iraq, a major falling out
occurred. It was at first Bush vs. Chirac, and later Powell vs. de Villepin.
French fries were renamed freedom fries, in a silly response to a serious
charge. A call for a
boycott on French wine was launched in the United States and the New York Post
covered on the 1944 "Sacrifice" of the GIs France would had
forgotten. A week later, on 20 February, the British newspaper The Sun published
a special issue entitled "Chirac is
a worm" and included personal attacks such as "Jacques Chirac has
become the shame of Europe". Actually both newspapers were , on orders,
parroting the opinion of their owner,
U.S. billionaire Rupert Murdoch, a military intervention supporter and a George
W. Bush partisan. Lately, Murdoch has resorted to much more mundane things,
such as cell phone hacking and pie dodging.
Soooo, it happened again, U.S. military
might squashing a much weaker foe for the second time, but this was vengeance
with a difference. We were going to show the world how to build a democracy in
an Arab, sectarian country, even though "W" had refuted any idea regarding
"nation building." Refusing to even consider what had been done by his predecessors in Japan and Germany,
Bush rubbed the Iraqi's collective noses with a good old dose of "Our way
or the highway. " a lowlight of
this fantasy was displayed to all Americans when, On 1 May 2003, Bush landed on the aircraft
carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, to give a speech announcing the end of major
combat operations in the Iraq war. Bush's landing was criticized by opponents
as an unnecessarily theatrical and expensive stunt. Clearly visible in the
background was a banner stating "Mission Accomplished." The banner,
made by White House staff and supplied by request of the United States Navy, was
criticized as premature.
At the time of "mission accomplished"
140 Americans had died in the campaign. This is 3% of the total body count, 97%
of which happened after the arrogant display of hubris shown on the flight deck
of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Typically, in the media managed atmosphere so prevalent
in the Bush regime, the cameras had to shoot from such an angle so as not to
show that the Lincoln was really very close to San Diego (very visible) and
that the staged arrival by air was an unnecessary, and ego boosting maneuver on
Bush's part.
But,
"hey, we came, we saw, we kicked their ass; what could go wrong ?" To begin with, the idea of removing Saddam suffered
from a liberal application of the Law of Unintended Consequences, complicated
by more really, really bad management from the White House which apparently
believed that the Iraqis would rollover and ask us to scratch their tummies in gratitude.
Initially, the problems of managing the nation building which Bush had earlier
disavowed and Cheney (remember him, Mr. "We shouldn't overthrow Iraq's
government?") had earlier warned of,
had come home to roost.
Perhaps the most
telling factoid is that at a meeting with three Iraqi Americans,
while planning for the war, Bush was clearly unfamiliar with the terms “Sunni”
and “Shiite,” as well as the differences between them. Per a staffer who has
since expressed deep regret over his involvement in the mess that is Iraq, "
Two months before he ordered U.S. troops into the country, the President of the
United States did not appear to know about the division among Iraqis that has
defined the country’s history and politics. He would not have understood why
non-Arab Iran might gain a foothold in post-Saddam Iraq. He could not have
anticipated U.S. troops getting caught in the middle of a civil war between two
sects he did not know existed. (We) The Bush administration exhibited an
incredible culture of arrogance in viewing Iraq as a blank slate onto which we could impose our will. The most enduring
misconception that still reigns is that there is such a thing as a single Iraq.
“Insurgency, civil war ,Iranian strategic triumph, the breakup of Iraq, an
independent Kurdistan, military quagmire. These are all consequences of the
American invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration
failed to anticipate.”
One of
the very few things done right, post invasion was the appointment of retired General
Jay Garner to lead the post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq, along with
three deputies, including British Major-General Tim Cross. Garner was regarded
as a natural choice by the Bush administration given his earlier similar role
in the north. General Garner was to develop and implement plans to assist the
Iraqis in developing governance and reconstructing the country once Saddam
Hussein was deposed. Following the defeat of the central regime in Baghdad,
there was widespread looting, rampaging, and general chaos throughout Iraq.
Some of the most important monuments, such as the national museum, were under
attack. Furthermore, the infrastructure of the country was in ruins, ministries
were broken into, and government records were destroyed. The situation in Iraq
became chaotic and anarchic. The only ministry which was protected by the
occupying forces was the oil ministry. In addition, many exiled leaders from
Iran and some from the West returned to Iraq. The Bush Administration selected Garner to lead the Coalition Provisional
Authority (an intermediary government) in an attempt to rid Iraq of the chaos
and anarchy that consumed the area. Garner's plan was to choose government
officials from the former Iraqi regime to help lead the country. Garner began
reconstruction efforts in March 2003 with plans aiming for Iraqis to hold
elections within 90 days and for the U.S. to quickly pull troops out of the
cities to a desert base.
Unfortunately, apparently Garner had
serious disagreements (not "apparently," he says as much in his
book!) with the Bush Administration, especially Donald Rumsfeld, regarding who
should govern Iraq and how soon. Part of Garner's plan was the realization that
the majority of persons capable of running a government and maintaining order
were former Iraqi Army officers and police men. When it became known that
Garner intended "politically rehabilitating" the army and police to a
great extent, he was summarily replaced, after only two months in the job. by
civilian Paul Bremer.
After
Washington recalled General Garner,
Rumsfeld appointed Paul Bremer as his replacement, giving him only two weeks to
prepare for the administrative post of heading the CPA, the Coalition
Provisional Authority. Bremer and most of his senior staff did not speak Arabic
and had never been to Iraq. Many lacked area expertise as well as post conflict
experience. The Bush Administration was so disorganized that it failed to
inform Bremer of the State Department’s 15-volume study on governing Iraq after
a war, before granting him authority to exercise “all executive, legislative
and judicial functions in Iraq.” Though Garner had promised to form a new Iraqi
government immediately following the invasion, Bremer immediately assumed
authority and announced there would be no interim Iraqi state. He
dismantled the remaining Iraqi state by dismissing the military and banning the
top four levels of Ba’ath party officials from holding any position of power.
For almost eighty years, Sunni Arabs were the machinery of Iraqi unity, keeping the country together -
by force sometimes, but together. The
American invasion ended Sunni Arab rule. Now, in a few strokes of a pen, Bremer
completed Iraq’s revolution by destroying the institutions on which Sunni Arabs had relied to rule Iraq –
the military, the security services, and the Ba’ath Party. Bremer had ended
Iraq’s time as a unitary nation, by destroying the threads which held it,
albeit tenuously, together. Bremer's incompetence in organizing non ex army, ex
police and ex Ba'athists to provide security and the restoration of general
services like water and electricity also fueled the post-war chaos in Iraq. His
delay in forming a government allowed any potential Iraqi unity in the wake of
Saddam to disintegrate into sectarian violence, which it did and has.
Conclusion
Bremer is
long gone, as are the lives of over 4000 American serviceman since
"Mission Accomplished." They are all victims of incompetence and execrable
judgment from 2000 to 2008. Like a
Chinese finger puzzle, tribal Arab and non-Arab nations alike are easier to get
involved in than to disengage from. The vast portion of the disaster that was, and
is, Iraq is at the feet of George W.
Bush, who apparently is not bright enough to fully appreciate what he allowed
to happen. The present state of affairs has us even speaking to Iran, against
whom we aided Iraq in the 1980s, which seems an eternity ago. What
will happen? Who knows? But I will opine that at some point, the same idiots
who supported Bush as he waded into the Big Muddy will find a way to blame
President Barack Obama, whatever the outcome.
