"Given the number of us that had warned them [the Democrats] beforehand, they have no one to blame but themselves."
So says Stephen Zunes in his excellent article below. At last, someone puts it all together, detailing the Dems' willing and eager participation in the prewar lies. Stephen Zunes is one of many Zmag and Counterpunch contributors who before the war exposed the bipartisan lies, and who now (below) reminds us in detail how the Dems HELPED Bush lie. What's more he exposes how the Dems CONTINUE to help Bush lie, but now vis-a-vis Iran and Syria.
This article is incredibly important given a) the Dems' current pose ("you lied to us and made us vote for a bad,bad war whah whah whah") and b) that in 2006 liberals will no doubt say "don't demonstrate, campaign for Democrats.
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Foreign Policy in Focus - Nov 14, 2005
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/2925
Libby Indictment May Open Door to Broader Iraq War Deceptions
By Stephen Zunes
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 andin
hindsightaccurate 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 Estimateso widely cited by war supporters of
both partiesdid 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. 3A 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 centuryfrom 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 Sudanhas
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 inspectionsmostly without warningin 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
insisteddespite the lack of evidencethat 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, whoin the face of growing public skepticism of
the Bush administration's WMD claimsrushed 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 Senatewho had access to the same intelligencevoted 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 thatthrough whatever combination of
dishonesty or stupiditychose 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.
[Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus
(www.fpif.org), a professor of Politics at the University of San
Francisco, and the author of
Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common
Courage Press, 2003).]
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the
International Relations Center (IRC, formerly the Interhemispheric
Resource Center, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for
Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). ©2005. All rights
reserved.
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