November 24, 2005
The
details revealed thus far from the investigation that led to the
five-count indictment against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby seem to indicate
that the efforts to expose the identity of undercover CIA operative
Valerie Plame Wilson went far beyond the chief assistant to the
assistant chief. Though no other White House officials were formally
indicted, the investigation appears to implicate Vice President Richard
Cheney and Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser,
in the conspiracy. More importantly, the probe underscores the extent
of administration efforts to silence those who questioned its argument
that Iraq constituted a serious threat to the national security of the
United States. Even if no other White House officials ever have to face
justice as a result of this investigation, it opens one of the best
opportunities the American public may have to press the issue of how
the Bush administration led us into war.
Spurred
by the Libby indictment, the Downing Street memo, and related British
documents leaked earlier this year, some mainstream pundits and
Democratic Party lawmakers are finally raising the possibility that the
Bush administration was determined to go to war regardless of any
strategic or legal justification and that White House officials
deliberately exaggerated the threats posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in
order to gain congressional and popular support to invade that oil-rich
country. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid stated for the first time
on October 28, the day of the indictment, that the charges raise
questions about "misconduct at the White House" in the period leading
up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that must be addressed by President
Bush, including "how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated
intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to
discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president." [1]
Indeed,
even prior to the return of United Nations inspectors in December 2002
and the U.S. invasion of Iraq four months later, it is hard to
understand how anyone could have taken seriously the administration's
claims that Iraq was somehow a grave national security threat to the
United States. And, despite assertions by administration apologists
that "everybody" thought Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and an advanced nuclear
program immediately prior to the March 2003 invasion, the record shows
that such claims were strongly contested, even within the U.S.
government.
Pre-invasion Skepticism
In
the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were many
published reports challenging Bush administration claims regarding
Iraq's WMD capabilities. Reputable journals like Arms Control Today, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Middle East Policy,
and others published articles systematically debunking accusations that
Iraq had somehow been able to preserve or reconstitute its chemical
weapons arsenal, had developed deployable biological weapons, or had
restarted its nuclear program. Among the disarmament experts
challenging the administration was Scott Ritter, an American who had
headed the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) division that looked
for hidden WMD facilities in Iraq. Through articles, interviews in the
broadcast media, and Capitol Hill appearances, Ritter joined scores of
disarmament scholars and analysts in making a compelling and -- in
hindsight -- accurate case that Iraq had been qualitatively disarmed
quite a few years earlier. Think tanks such as the Fourth Freedom
Foundation and the Institute for Policy Studies also published a series
of reports challenging the administration's claims.
And
there were plenty of skeptics from within the U.S. government. For
example, the State Department's intelligence bureau noted how the
National Intelligence Estimate -- so widely cited by war supporters of
both parties -- did not add up to "a compelling case" that Iraq had "an
integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons."[2]
Even the pro-war New Republic observed that CIA reports in
early 2002 demonstrated that "U.S. intelligence showed precious little
evidence to indicate a resumption of Iraq's nuclear program."[3] A
story circulated nationally by the Knight-Ridder wire service just
before the congressional vote authorizing the invasion noted that "U.S.
intelligence and military experts dispute the administration's
suggestions that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose an imminent
threat to the United States" and that intelligence analysts in the CIA
were accusing the administration of pressuring the agency to highlight
information that would appear to support administration policy and to
suppress contrary information.[4]
Late in the Clinton administration, the Washington Post reported
U.S. officials as saying there was absolutely no evidence that Iraq had
resumed its chemical and biological weapons programs[5] and there was
no reason to believe that this assessment had changed. Just five weeks
before the congressional vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq, another
nationally syndicated Knight-Ridder story revealed that there was "no
new intelligence that indicates significant advances in their nuclear,
biological, or chemical weapons programs." The article went on to note,
"Senior U.S. officials with access to top-secret intelligence on Iraq
say they have detected no alarming increase in the threat that Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein poses to American security."[6]
In an August 2002 report published for Foreign Policy in Focus, I argued that "there is no firm proof that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction."[7] In an article in Tikkun just
before the outbreak of the war, I discounted claims that pro-Israeli
interests were pushing the United States to invade by noting, "there
are reasons to believe that Iraq may not have any more capability to
attack Tel Aviv than it does to attack Washington."[8] In the cover
story I wrote for the September 30, 2002 issue of The Nation magazine,
I reminded readers that the International Atomic Energy Agency had
declared in 1998 that, after exhaustive inspections and oversight, it
had found nothing to suggest that Iraq still had a nuclear program. I
also observed how inspectors from UNSCOM had estimated that at least
95% of Iraq's chemical weapons program had been similarly accounted for
and destroyed.[9] The remaining 5%, I argued, could have already been
destroyed, but the Iraqis did not maintain adequate records.
I
furthermore noted that the shelf life for the weaponized lethality of
any purported Iraqi chemical and biological agents had long since
expired. And I pointed out that Saddam Hussein was able to develop his
earlier WMD programs only through the import of technology and raw
materials from advanced industrialized countries, a scenario no longer
possible due to the UN embargo in effect since 1990.
In
the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent inspections
regime, virtually any aggressive military potential by Iraq was
destroyed. Before UNSCOM was withdrawn, its agents reportedly oversaw
the destruction of 38,000 chemical weapons, 480,000 liters of live
chemical-weapons agents, 48 missiles, six missile launchers, 30 missile
warheads modified to carry chemical or biological agents, and hundreds
of pieces of related equipment capable of producing chemical weapons.
In late 1997, UNSCOM head Richard Butler reported that his agency had
made "significant progress" in tracking Iraq's chemical weapons program
and that 817 of the 819 Soviet-supplied long-range missiles had been
accounted for. There were believed to be a couple of dozen Iraqi-made
ballistic missiles unaccounted for, but these were of questionable
caliber. There was no evidence that Iraq's Scud missiles had even
survived the Gulf War, nor did Iraq seem to have any more rocket
launchers or engines.[10] UNSCOM also reported no evidence that Iraq
had been concealing prohibited weapons subsequent to October 1995.[11]
Even if Iraq had been able to engage in the mass production and
deployment of nuclear or chemical weaponry, these weapons would almost
certainly have been detected by satellite and overflight reconnaissance
and destroyed in air strikes.
"Though
the development of potential biological weapons would have been much
easier to conceal, there was no evidence to suggest that Iraq had the
ability to disperse their alleged biological agents successfully in a
manner that could harm troops or a civilian population, given the
rather complicated technology required. For example, a vial of
biological weapons on the tip of a missile would almost certainly be
destroyed on impact or dispersed harmlessly. Israeli military analyst
Meir Stieglitz, writing in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot,
noted: "There is no such thing as a long-range Iraqi missile with an
effective biological warhead. No one has found an Iraqi biological
warhead. The chances of Iraq having succeeded in developing operative
warheads without tests are zero."[12]
Frightening
scenarios regarding mass fatalities from a small amount of anthrax
assumed that Baghdad possessed the highly sophisticated means of
distributing such toxins by missile or aircraft. To become a lethal
weapon, highly concentrated amounts of anthrax spores must be inhaled
and then left untreated by antibiotics until the infection is too far
advanced. The most realistic means of anthrax dispersal would be from
an aircraft. For the attack to be successful, the winds would have to
be just right, no rain could fall, the spray nozzles could not clog,
the target population could not be vaccinated, and everyone would need
to linger around the area chosen for the attack. Given this unlikely
scenario, one can understand why in autumn 2001 unknown terrorists
chose instead to send spores through the mail to indoor destinations in
the eastern United States. This was found to be a relatively efficient
means of distribution, even though it resulted in only a handful of
deaths.
It
is hard to imagine that an Iraqi aircraft, presumably some kind of
drone, could somehow penetrate the air space of neighboring countries,
much less far-off Israel, without being shot down. Most of Iraq's
neighbors have sophisticated anti-aircraft capability, and Israel has
the most sophisticated regional missile defense system in the world. As
one British scientist put it: "To say they have found enough weapons to
kill the world several times over is equivalent to the statement that a
man who produces a million sperm a day can thus produce a million
babies a day. The problem in both cases is one of delivery systems."[13]
In
short, in the months and years leading up to the invasion, it should
have been apparent that all of Iraq's nuclear weapons-related material
and nearly all of its chemical weapons were accounted for and
destroyed; virtually all systems capable of delivering WMDs were also
accounted for and destroyed; there were no apparent means by which key
components for WMDs could have been produced domestically; and, a
strict embargo on military hardware, raw materials, and WMD technology
had been in place for more than a dozen years. No truly objective
observer, therefore, could have come to any other conclusion than that
it was highly unlikely that Iraq still had any offensive WMD capability
and that it was quite possible that Iraq may have indeed completely rid
itself of its proscribed weaponry, delivery systems, and weapons
production facilities.
It
also became apparent early on that at least some of the evidence of
Iraqi WMDs offered by the Bush administration was highly questionable
and was contradicted by independent sources. Furthermore, given that
the United States supported Saddam Hussein's government in the 1980s
when it really did have chemical weapons, an advanced biological and
nuclear weapons program, and hundreds of long-range missiles and other
sophisticated delivery systems, one finds it hard to imagine how Iraq
could be a threat after these dangerous weapons had been destroyed or
otherwise rendered harmless. Indeed, virtually every U.S. military
intervention in the last half century -- from the alleged "unprovoked
attacks" on U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin to the supposed
"endangered American medical students" in Grenada to the nonexistent
"chemical weapons factory controlled by Osama bin Laden" in Sudan --
has been based upon purported evidence presented by various
administrations that later proved to be false.
As
a result, one would have thought that more people in Congress and the
media would have approached the question of Iraq's WMDs as would a
public defender of an admittedly disreputable client in the face an
overzealous prosecutor with a history of fudging the facts: look
skeptically at the government's case for holes in the evidence and
unsubstantiated conclusions. They were not hard to find.
Killing the Messengers
The
outing of Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA affiliation was apparently a means
of punishing Ambassador Joseph Wilson for going public with his charges
that the Bush administration had misled the public with its claims
regarding Iraq 's WMD programs. The leak served as a warning to any who
would dare challenge administration efforts to frighten the American
public into accepting an illegal and unnecessary war.
As first reported by the Washington Post,
Scooter Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney made frequent trips to CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to pressure analysts to come up with
assessments that would "fit with the Bush administration's policy
objectives."[14] CIA analysts who resisted such manipulation "were
beaten down defending their assessments."[15]
Indeed,
virtually all of us who refused to buy into the bipartisan hysteria
regarding the phony "Iraqi threat" were subjected to systematic efforts
to undermine our credibility. New Republic publisher Martin
Peretz accused me of "supporting Saddam Hussein," Sean Hannity of Fox
News suggested that my research was funded by terrorists, and the National Review Online falsely
accused me of anti-Semitic statements that I never made. Scott Ritter,
a Marine veteran and registered Republican, was labeled a traitor, and
administration supporters started spreading rumors that he was a
pedophile. When International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director
Mohammed el Baradei reiterated that there was no evidence of Iraq
attempting to restart its nuclear program, Cheney insisted that "Mr. El
Baradei is frankly wrong." The vice president then falsely claimed that
the IAEA had "consistently underestimated or missed what it was that
Saddam Hussein was doing"[16] and insisted that there was no validity
to the IAEA's assessments, despite their more than 1000 inspections --
mostly without warning -- in Iraq since the early 1990s. Later, the
Bush administration had El Baradei's phone wiretapped in an
unsuccessful effort to find information to discredit him.[17]
When
administration skeptics weren't being attacked, we were being ignored.
In September 2002, a month before the vote to authorize the invasion, I
contacted the chief foreign policy aide to one of my senators, Democrat
Barbara Boxer of California, to let him know of my interest in
appearing before an upcoming hearing on Capitol Hill regarding the
alleged threat that Iraq posed to the United States. He acknowledged
that he and other staffers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
were familiar with my writing on the topic and that I would be a
credible witness. He passed on my request to a staff member of the
committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware. I was
never invited, however. Nor was Scott Ritter, Phyllis Bennis of the
Institute for Policy Studies, or anyone else who expressed skepticism
regarding the administration's WMD claims. The bipartisan Senate
committee only allowed those who were willing to come forward with an
exaggerated view of Iraq 's military potential to testify.
The
basis of the constitutional framework of checks and balances between
the three branches of government rests in part upon the belief that
Congress does not allow the executive branch to remain unquestioned on
issues of national importance. Senator Biden, however, was apparently
determined to give the Bush administration a free ride. In the words of
Aldous Huxley, "The survival of democracy depends on the ability of
large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of
adequate information." [18] As he prepares for a likely presidential
run in 2008, serious questions must be raised regarding Biden's
commitment to democracy.
Public
opinion polls at the time showed that the only reason that a majority
of Americans would support going to war was if Iraq was developing
weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United
States. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, ruled out other justifications for an
invasion, stating, "The president has not linked authority to go to war
to any of those elements."[19] It is not surprising, then, that the
administration was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to silence
those who recognized that Iraq did not have the weapons programs and
delivery systems that the administration claimed.
The Complicity of the Democrats
These
bogus claims by the Bush administration regarding Iraq's alleged
military threat are now well-known and have been frequently cited. And
Republicans in Congress have blocked demands by some Democrats that a
serious investigation be undertaken regarding the manipulation of
intelligence regarding Iraq's military capability.
It
is important to recognize, however, that the leadership of the
Democratic Party was also guilty of misleading the American public
regarding the supposed threat emanating from Iraq . It was the Clinton
administration, not the current administration, which first insisted --
despite the lack of evidence -- that Iraq had successfully concealed or
relaunched its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs.
Clinton's fear-mongering around Iraqi WMDs began in 1997, several years
after they had been successfully destroyed or rendered inoperable.
Based upon the alleged Iraqi threat, Clinton ordered a massive four-day
bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, forcing the evacuation
of UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors. As many of us had warned just prior to
the bombing, this gave Saddam Hussein the opportunity to refuse to
allow the inspectors to return.
Clinton
was egged on by leading Senate Democratic leaders, including Minority
Leader Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Carl Levin, and others who signed a
letter in October 1998 urging the president "to take necessary actions,
including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspected Iraqi
sites, to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to
end its weapons of mass destruction programs."[20] Meanwhile, Clinton's
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was repeatedly making false
statements regarding Iraq's supposed possession of WMDs.
During
Fall 2002, in an effort to counter and discredit those of us
questioning the Bush administration's WMD claims, congressional
Democrats redoubled their efforts to depict Saddam Hussein as a threat
to America's national security. Democrats controlled the Senate at that
point and could have blocked President Bush's request for the authority
to invade Iraq. However, in October, the majority of Democratic
senators, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Assistant Minority
Leader Harry Reid, voted to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq at
the time and circumstances of his own choosing on the grounds that Iraq
"poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United
States ... by ... among other things, continuing to possess and develop
a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, [and]
actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability."[21]
In
a Senate speech defending his vote to authorize Bush to launch an
invasion, Senator Kerry categorically declared, despite the lack of any
credible evidence, that "Iraq has chemical and biological weapons" and
even alleged that most elements of Iraq's chemical and biological
weapons programs were "larger and more advanced than they were before
the Gulf War." Furthermore, Kerry asserted that Iraq was "attempting to
develop nuclear weapons," backing up this accusation by falsely
claiming that "all U.S. intelligence experts agree" with that
assessment. The Massachusetts junior senator also alleged that "Iraq is
developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of delivering
chemical and biological warfare agents [that] could threaten Iraq's
neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf." Though it
soon became evident that none of Kerry's allegations were true, the
Democratic Party rewarded him in 2004 with its nomination for
president.
Kerry
supporters claim he was not being dishonest in making these false
claims but that he had been fooled by "bad intelligence" passed on by
the Bush administration. However, well before Kerry's vote to authorize
the invasion, former UN inspector Scott Ritter personally told the
senator and his senior staff that claims about Iraq still having WMDs
or WMD programs were not based on valid intelligence. According to
Ritter, "Kerry knew that there was a verifiable case to be made to
debunk the president's statements regarding the threat posed by Iraq's
WMDs, but he chose not to act on it."[22]
Joining
Kerry in voting to authorize the invasion was North Carolina Senator
John Edwards, who -- in the face of growing public skepticism of the
Bush administration's WMD claims -- rushed to the president's defense
in an op-ed article published in the Washington Post . In his
commentary, Edwards claimed that Iraq was "a grave and growing threat"
and that Congress should therefore "endorse the use of all necessary
means to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction."[23] The Bush administration was so impressed with
Edwards' arguments that they posted the article on the State Department
website. Again, despite the fact that Edwards' claims were groundless,
the Democratic Party rewarded him less than two years later with its
nomination for vice president.
By
2004, it was recognized that the administration's WMD claims were bogus
and the war was not going well. The incumbent president and vice
president, who had misled the nation into a disastrous war through
false claims, were therefore quite vulnerable to losing the November
election. But instead of nominating candidates who opposed the war and
challenged these false WMD claims, the Democrats chose two men who had
also misled the nation into war through the same false claims and who
favored the continued prosecution of the war. Not surprisingly, the
Democrats lost.
Kerry's
failure to tell the truth continues to hurt the anti-war movement, as
President Bush to this day quotes Kerry's false statements about Iraq's
pre-invasion military capability as a means of covering up for the lies
of his administration. For example, in his recent Veteran's Day speech
in Pennsylvania in which he attacked the anti-war movement, President
Bush was able to say, "Many of these critics supported my opponent
during the last election, who explained his position to support the
resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President
of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to
disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of
weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave
threat, to our security'."
Despite
the consequences of putting forth nominees who failed to tell the truth
about Iraq's WMD capabilities, current polls show that New York Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also made false claims about the alleged
Iraqi threat, is the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination
for president in 2008. In defending her vote authorizing President Bush
to invade Iraq, Mrs. Clinton said in October 2002, "It is clear ...
that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his
capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying
to develop nuclear weapons."[24]
In
his Veteran's Day speech, Bush was able to deny any wrongdoing by his
administration by noting how "more than a hundred Democrats in the
House and the Senate -- who had access to the same intelligence --
voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." If the Democrats
had instead decided to be honest and take a critical look at the phony
intelligence being put forward by the administration, they would have
said what so many of us were saying at the time: it was highly unlikely
that Iraq still had such weapons. Instead, by also making false claims
about Iraqi WMD capability, it not only resulted in their failure to
re-take the House and Senate in the 2004 elections, but they have
effectively shielded the Bush administration from the consequences of
its actions.
Even
some prominent congressional Democrats who did not vote to authorize
the invasion were willing to defend the Bush administration's WMD
claims. When House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi appeared on NBC's Meet the Press in
December 2002, she claimed: "Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and
biological weapons. There is no question about that."[25] Despite
repeated requests for information, her staff has been unwilling to
reveal what led the Democratic leader to make such a groundless claim
with such certitude.
Now
that the Democrats are finally speaking out against the
administration's phony WMD claims, conservative talk show hosts,
columnists, and bloggers have been dredging up scores of pre-invasion
quotes by Democratic leaders citing non-existent Iraqi WMDs. As a
result, though the Republicans have undoubtedly been hurt by their
false statements on the subject, the Democrats are not likely to reap
much benefit. Given the number of us that had warned them beforehand,
they have no one to blame but themselves.
Some
Democrats have defended their pre-invasion claims by citing the 2002
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's Continuing Programs for
Weapons of Mass Destruction from the CIA, which appeared to confirm
some of the Bush administration's claims. However, there were a number
of reasons to have been skeptical: For starters, this NIE was compiled
in a much shorter time frame than is normally provided for such
documents. Oddly, the report expressed far more certitude regarding
Iraq's WMD capabilities than all reports from the previous five years
despite the lack of additional data to justify such a shift. When the
report was released, there was much stronger dissent within the
intelligence community than about any other declassified NIE.
Some
have defended the Democrats by saying that if they had insisted on hard
evidence to support the administration's WMD claims, they would have
been accused of being weak on national defense. This excuse has little
merit, however, since Republicans accuse Democrats of being weak on
defense whatever they do. For example, even though congressional
Democrats voted nearly unanimously to grant President Bush
extraordinary war powers immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks and
strongly supported the bombing of Afghanistan, this patriotic exhibit
did not prevent the White House from falsely accusing Democrats of
calling for "moderation and restraint" and offering "therapy and
understanding for our attackers."[26] Similarly, even though 2004
Democratic presidential nominee Kerry defended America's right to
unilaterally invade foreign countries in violation of the United
Nations Charter and basic international legal standards, President Bush
still accused him of believing that "in order to defend ourselves, we'd
have to get international approval."[27]
In
reality, it appears that the Democrats were as enthusiastic about the
United States invading and occupying Iraq as were the Republicans and
that the WMD claims were largely a means of scaring the American public
into accepting the right of the United States to effectively renounce
20 th century international legal norms in favor of the right of
conquest. Indeed, Senators Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton all subsequently
stated that they would have voted to authorize the invasion even if
they knew Iraq did not have WMDs. Given their apparent eagerness for an
excuse to go to war in order to take over that oil-rich nation, they
seem to have been willing to believe virtually anything the Bush
administration said and dismiss the concerns of independent strategic
analysts who saw through the falsehoods.
This
may help explain why congressional Democrats had been so reluctant,
until faced with enormous pressure from their constituents following
the Libby indictments, to push for a serious inquiry regarding the Bush
administration's misleading the American public on Iraqi WMDs: the
Democrats were guilty as well. It may also explain why pro-Democratic
newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post were
so unwilling to publicize the Downing Street memos and so belittled
efforts by the handful of conscientious Democrats such as John Conyers
to uncover WMD deceptions. Such failures have led both newspapers'
ombudsmen to issue rare rebukes.
Even
after it has become apparent that the Bush administration had been
dishonest regarding Iraq's alleged threat, Democrats still seem
unwilling to take a more skeptical view of administration claims
regarding alleged WMD threats from overseas. For example, congressional
Democrats have overwhelmingly voted in favor of legislation targeting
Syria and Iran based primarily on dubious claims by the Bush
administration of these countries' military capabilities and alleged
threats to American security interests. Given that the vast majority of
Democrats who hyped false WMD claims regarding Iraq were re-elected in
2004 anyway, they apparently believe that they have little to lose by
again reinforcing the administration's alarmist claims of threats to
U.S. national security.
Current Ramifications
There
is growing awareness that the American people were lied to by their
government and needlessly drawn into war. How does this deception
impact what the United States should do regarding Iraq today?
Three
years ago politicians in both parties successfully scared the American
people into believing that the national security of the United States
would somehow be threatened if we did not invade Iraq. These same
politicians now expect us to believe that U.S. national security will
be jeopardized unless we continue to prosecute the war.
Some
thoughtful activists and intellectuals who opposed the invasion of Iraq
have since concluded that because the elected Iraqi government is
reasonably representative of the majority of the Iraqi people, because
much of the insurgent movement is dominated by fascistic Islamists and
Baathists, and because the Iraqi government is too weak to defend
itself, U.S. armed forces should remain. These activists argue that
even though the premise of the invasion was a lie and the occupation
was tragically mishandled, the consequences of a precipitous U.S.
military withdrawal would result in a far worse situation than exists
now.
Such
a case might be worth consideration if the Bush administration and
congressional leaders had demonstrated that they had the integrity,
knowledge, foresight, and competence to successfully lead a
counterinsurgency war in a complex, fractured society on the far side
of the planet. To support the continued prosecution of the Iraq War,
however, would require trusting the same politicians who hoodwinked the
country into that war in the first place. A growing number of
Americans, therefore, have come to recognize that any administration
dishonest enough to make the ludicrous pre-war claims of an Iraqi
military threat and any Congress that -- through whatever combination
of dishonesty or stupidity -- chose to reinforce these false assertions
simply cannot be trusted to successfully control the insurgency,
extricate the United States from further military involvement, and
successfully facilitate Iraq's development as a peaceful, secure,
democratic country.
End Notes
1. Senator Harry Reid, remarks before the floor of the U.S. Senate, Oct. 28, 2005.
2. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Simon & Schuster, 2004.
3. John B. Judis & Spencer Ackerman, "The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War," The New Republic, June 30, 2003.
4. Jonathan Landay, "CIA Report Reveals Analysts Split over Extent of Iraqi Nuclear Threat," Knight-Ridder Newspapers, October 4, 2002.
5. Karen DeYoung, "Baghdad Weapons Programs Dormant: Iraq's Inactivity Puzzles U.S. Officials," Washington Post, p A 19, July 15, 1999.
6. Jonathan Landay, "Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials," Knight-Ridder Newspapers, September 6, 2002.
7. Stephen Zunes, "Why Not to Wage War with Iraq," Foreign Policy in Focus Talking Points, Aug. 27, 2002.
8. Stephen Zunes, " Iraq, the United States, and the Jews," Tikkun, March 2003.
9. Stephen Zunes, "The Case Against War," The Nation, September 30, 2002.
10. Institute for Policy Studies, " Iraq 's Current Military Capability," February 1998.
11. Barton
Gellman, "Iraq Cooperating on Inspections: Failure to Find Weapons May
Diminish Support for UNSCOM," p A27, March 20, 1998.
12. Cited by Rep Cynthia McKinney, on PBS "Newshour," February 10, 1998.
13. Dr. Julian Perry Robinson, The Independent, March 7, 1998.
14. Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, "Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure from Cheney Visits," Washington Post, p A1, June 5, 2003.
15. Seymour
Hersch, "The Stovepipe: How Conflicts Between the Bush Administration
and the Intelligence Community Marred the Reporting on Iraq's Weapons,"
New Yorker, October 27, 2003.
16. NBC, Meet the Press, March 16, 2003.
17. Dafna
Linzer, "IAEA Leader's Phone Tapped: U.S. Pores Over Transcripts to Try
to Oust Nuclear Chief, Washington Post, December 12, 2004, p. A01.
18. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, ch. 6.
19. Cited in Jonathan Schell, "The Empire Backfires," The Nation, March 11, 2004.
20. Letter to President Bill Clinton, Oct. 9, 1998.
21. Senate Joint Resolution 45 authorizing the use of United States armed forces against Iraq, October 11, 2002.
22. Scott Ritter, "Challenging Kerry on His Iraq Vote," Boston Globe, August 5, 2004.
23. John Edwards, "Congress Must Be Clear," Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2002.
24. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), October 10, 2002.
25. NBC, Meet the Press, December 15, 2002.
26. Karl
Rove from a July 22, 2005 speech in New York. White House spokesperson
Scott McClelland defended his remarks, claiming that President Bush's
chief political adviser was "simply pointing out the different
philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war
on terrorism." See Jim Abrams, "Dems Say Rove Should Apologize or
Resign," Associated Press, June 23, 2005.
27. Third Bush-Kerry debate, in Tempe, Arizona, October 13, 2004.
:: Article nr. 18137 sent on 25-nov-2005 00:31 ECT
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