Iraq is mentioned. A Lengthy Ramble Ensues.
In response to the previous blog Georgina made a very good point, and it's a sentiment that I think a lot of people share. Essentially she stated that President Bush should not be blamed for invading Iraq when the intelligence he was given was so badly flawed. It makes sense. Given the info he saw, what else was he supposed to do? While I understand this viewpoint, I do feel that the Iraq war was a serious mistake, so I wanted to take this opportunity to state why and list a few of the reasons.
First of all, at no point in the years prior to the war was a serious threat ever posed by Hussein. Thanks to the extremely harsh sanctions imposed after his failed invasion of Kuwait, Iraq became one of the most poverty stricken countries in the Middle East. Military spending in Iraq was one-half of one percent of what we spent here in the states, okay? In other words, we spent 99.5 percent more on the military than Hussein did. They had no money and no ability to advance their weapons technology. After the mid-1990's the idea that Iraq could pose a threat to the worlds only global super-power was absurd, and quite frankly a little bizzare. (I'll never forget the sight of Colin Powell waving around that fake vial of anthrax at the UN, warning that MILLIONS of people could die if we didn't stop the all-powerful Hussein. It was a bit over the top.)
Furthermore, to suggest that President Bush was given an assessment of Iraq that led him to believe we needed to invade is false. This never happened. There was, in the CIA, an enormous amount of information on Husseins capabilities. Much of it was outdated, but nearly all of it was conflicting. There was absolutely no consensus within the CIA that Hussein posed even the tiniest threat to America. Bush, we now know, ignored the analysts who warned that Hussein had no WMD's. Conversely, he was more than happy to believe any shred of info, no matter how sketchy, that indicated Hussein was stockpiling illegal weapons.
Here is a quote from a 2003 New York Times article relating to Hussein's nuclear capabilities:
"The tubes were 'only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,' Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House, though, embraced the disputed theory that the tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, AN IDEA FIRST CHAMPIONED IN APRIL 2001 BY A JUNIOR ANALYST at the C.I.A. Senior nuclear scientists considered that notion implausible"
So, a single analyst makes an assessment that the actual nuclear weapon experts disagreed with, yet Bush went with the junior analyst? It's why I disagree with Georgina: Bush did not receive bad info. He heard what he wanted to hear and ignored the rest, which, in my opinion, is incompetent.
Some might still reject this idea that Bush selectively ignored intelligence. And if he did, wasn't it because of 9-11? Didn't we learn that we have to respond to threats BEFORE they can happen? First of all I would just repeat: Iraq was in no way a threat, so responding to a non-threat doesn't really make sense. But more importantly, the invasion of Iraq was in no way a response to the lessons of 9-11, despite what Bush would have you to believe. A conserative think tank (whose members included Cheney and Bush) wrote a letter to President Clinton in 1998 which includes the following statement:
"The current policy [towards Iraq]...is dangerously inadequate. In the long term this means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. THAT NOW NEEDS TO BECOME THE AIM OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power."
[The capitalization is my own; you can view the full letter at:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm]
Who specifically is this letter from? Amongst others: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and several other members of the Bush administration, as well as Fox News analyst William Kristol. In other words, this idea that we invaded Iraq becasue "9-11 changed everything" is complete nonsense. The people who now run the Pentagon were arguing for an invasion a full 3 years before the events of 9-11.
Also, it reinforces my earlier point: we did not invade Iraq because Bush was given bad information. The Iraq invasion had been a longstanding goal of the Bush team and, as a result, he simply ignored the good intelligence that was repeatedly given to him.
Now, I do not believe that the invasion was for the purpose of seizing oil (that was actually something Nixon proposed). In the 90's Bush, Cheney, and the other members of a conservative think tank concluded that the only way to stabilize the world in the post-Cold War era would be to alter the current tensions in the Middle East. They argued that by overthrowing Hussein's regime and installing a democracy, the United Stated could actually bring the world closer to global stability. This is why, before the Iraq invasion, Bush repeatedly stated he wanted to "democratize" the Middle East. The war had more to do with this broader goal than with the phony threat Hussein posed. And like I said, Nixon wanted to seize oil fields in the Middle East. Clinton ordered two assassination attempts on Hussein. Toying around with the Arab world is one of the oldest (and most flawed) pursuits in the history of U.S. foreign policy. It's the mistake that we can't seem to stop making.
Anyway, this is why I was never on board with the war. It was premised upon a really bad idea thought up by rich, white elitists. I would much rather see our troops in Afghanistan going after Bin Laden, a job we are currently leaving to Afghan and Pakistani forces. And our military? They're now the well-armed and well-trained police force of Iraq. Nice.
But, this is all the way I read it, I could be totally wrong. Other viewpoints are welcome. Thanks.
First of all, at no point in the years prior to the war was a serious threat ever posed by Hussein. Thanks to the extremely harsh sanctions imposed after his failed invasion of Kuwait, Iraq became one of the most poverty stricken countries in the Middle East. Military spending in Iraq was one-half of one percent of what we spent here in the states, okay? In other words, we spent 99.5 percent more on the military than Hussein did. They had no money and no ability to advance their weapons technology. After the mid-1990's the idea that Iraq could pose a threat to the worlds only global super-power was absurd, and quite frankly a little bizzare. (I'll never forget the sight of Colin Powell waving around that fake vial of anthrax at the UN, warning that MILLIONS of people could die if we didn't stop the all-powerful Hussein. It was a bit over the top.)
Furthermore, to suggest that President Bush was given an assessment of Iraq that led him to believe we needed to invade is false. This never happened. There was, in the CIA, an enormous amount of information on Husseins capabilities. Much of it was outdated, but nearly all of it was conflicting. There was absolutely no consensus within the CIA that Hussein posed even the tiniest threat to America. Bush, we now know, ignored the analysts who warned that Hussein had no WMD's. Conversely, he was more than happy to believe any shred of info, no matter how sketchy, that indicated Hussein was stockpiling illegal weapons.
Here is a quote from a 2003 New York Times article relating to Hussein's nuclear capabilities:
"The tubes were 'only really suited for nuclear weapons programs,' Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.'But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House, though, embraced the disputed theory that the tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, AN IDEA FIRST CHAMPIONED IN APRIL 2001 BY A JUNIOR ANALYST at the C.I.A. Senior nuclear scientists considered that notion implausible"
So, a single analyst makes an assessment that the actual nuclear weapon experts disagreed with, yet Bush went with the junior analyst? It's why I disagree with Georgina: Bush did not receive bad info. He heard what he wanted to hear and ignored the rest, which, in my opinion, is incompetent.
Some might still reject this idea that Bush selectively ignored intelligence. And if he did, wasn't it because of 9-11? Didn't we learn that we have to respond to threats BEFORE they can happen? First of all I would just repeat: Iraq was in no way a threat, so responding to a non-threat doesn't really make sense. But more importantly, the invasion of Iraq was in no way a response to the lessons of 9-11, despite what Bush would have you to believe. A conserative think tank (whose members included Cheney and Bush) wrote a letter to President Clinton in 1998 which includes the following statement:
"The current policy [towards Iraq]...is dangerously inadequate. In the long term this means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. THAT NOW NEEDS TO BECOME THE AIM OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power."
[The capitalization is my own; you can view the full letter at:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm]
Who specifically is this letter from? Amongst others: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and several other members of the Bush administration, as well as Fox News analyst William Kristol. In other words, this idea that we invaded Iraq becasue "9-11 changed everything" is complete nonsense. The people who now run the Pentagon were arguing for an invasion a full 3 years before the events of 9-11.
Also, it reinforces my earlier point: we did not invade Iraq because Bush was given bad information. The Iraq invasion had been a longstanding goal of the Bush team and, as a result, he simply ignored the good intelligence that was repeatedly given to him.
Now, I do not believe that the invasion was for the purpose of seizing oil (that was actually something Nixon proposed). In the 90's Bush, Cheney, and the other members of a conservative think tank concluded that the only way to stabilize the world in the post-Cold War era would be to alter the current tensions in the Middle East. They argued that by overthrowing Hussein's regime and installing a democracy, the United Stated could actually bring the world closer to global stability. This is why, before the Iraq invasion, Bush repeatedly stated he wanted to "democratize" the Middle East. The war had more to do with this broader goal than with the phony threat Hussein posed. And like I said, Nixon wanted to seize oil fields in the Middle East. Clinton ordered two assassination attempts on Hussein. Toying around with the Arab world is one of the oldest (and most flawed) pursuits in the history of U.S. foreign policy. It's the mistake that we can't seem to stop making.
Anyway, this is why I was never on board with the war. It was premised upon a really bad idea thought up by rich, white elitists. I would much rather see our troops in Afghanistan going after Bin Laden, a job we are currently leaving to Afghan and Pakistani forces. And our military? They're now the well-armed and well-trained police force of Iraq. Nice.
But, this is all the way I read it, I could be totally wrong. Other viewpoints are welcome. Thanks.
posted by Samwick @ 10:55 AM
6 Comments:
At 8:17 PM,
Tonto said…
Well since you mentioned me, I felt I had to respond to parts of your statements which I mostly agreed with, and you can shed some more light on a few things I don't know as well.
I do agree that the sanctions were working. As the importance of food for oil program shows. I agree the invasion was not for oil and we were going to war no matter what. But 9/11 or not don't you think the invasion of Iraq was likely to happen in that region since every president had put it off? Even the other Bush and Clinton wanted to go in as well but just covertly and find Hussein and take him out. Clinton didn't have a reason to go in but wanted to.
I do agree invading at this time and circumstance may be a terrible mistake. there must be a reason no wanted to go there before, so why now? I do not know. Every president has been dancing around this guy for a while but when would have been a good time? He was such a horrible man and the few friends I have with family there are in general grateful and pleased [especially when their phone lines work] Hussein is gone. Even though they are afraid of the chaos now, they still feel they have a future. A member of my friend's family over there is an Orthodox priest and the first mass he was able to have [now that Hussein was gone] in his house he said was spent weeping out of joy. that is why I do not know how to feel about all of this?
The invasion seems to have been a long standing goal of the last three presidents if the opportunity knocked. I do agree there was a broader goal of putting the presence of the US in the area rather than just to take out Hussein out but he was a hero in that part of the region for standing up to the US in the Gulf war so taking him out was a warning to everyone...Right or wrong...and in the aftermath of 9/11 is that a bad thing?
But I also disagree with the war because I do not see an end in sight. We have everything to lose and they have nothing left to lose and everything to gain so we will be there a really long time and then some. The US is the antithesis of everything they hope for themselves so I do not know how we can be embraced over there in the near future.
At 5:08 AM,
Christopher said…
Hi Matt – Yours is an excellent analysis of the reasons for the Iraq adventure.
One aspect of US dealings with Iraq not much discussed in the mainstream media is that the US wanted Saddam to remain in power in Iraq after 1991, seeing him as the lesser of all evils. You may remember that after Saddam was kicked out of Kuwait, there were simultaneous uprisings against him by both the Shi’ites and Kurds - uprisings which Saddam was only able to put down because the US army, obviously under instructions, stood by and watched while Saddam’s Republican Guards suppressed these two rebellions extremely bloodily - a cause of much resentment, particularly Shi’ite, against the US, even today.
The George HW Bush administration considered that without a strongman like Saddam, Iraq would break up, causing a power vacuum which Iran would at least partially fill in Iraq’s Shi’ite south. And an independent Kurdish state in the north would have upset Turkey, an important NATO ally, since this would have caused the Kurds in Turkey to agitate for a single Kurdistan consisting of the Kurdish areas in both Turkey and Iraq, something which Turkey was adamant should never happen and had fought to suppress over many years.
Only with the advent of the George W Bush administration was it decided that Saddam should be got rid of. Why? I think one reason was that overthrowing Saddam was a way for George W Bush to outdo his father. Remember that all his life, George W had stood in the shadow of his father. No matter how hard he tried, George W had always come up short, something which must have rankled in the core of his psyche. And George W’s feelings of inferiority could not have been ameliorated by the insinuations that, because of the hanging chads in Florida and their like, he was not a legitimate president.
The prime reason for going into Iraq was, as you indicated, the exhortations of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), the think tank whose principals - among them Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Pearl - recommended, in a report issued in 1998, that the US become in effect the world’s policeman, and should assert its global power through, among many other things, establishing a beefed-up military presence in the important areas of the world, in particular the oil producing middle-east.
Interestingly, the writers of the report opined that its recommendations were unlikely to be put into practice unless something like Pearl Harbour happened, which would create public support for recommendations of the PNAC which, after 9/11, became, in effect, the Bush Doctrine under his National Security Strategy.
Because Saudi Arabia had asked the US to remove its base there, there was only one other feasible country to which to re-locate it, which was Iraq. Establishing bases in Iraq would give the US the power to control the flow of oil to the other countries of the world, in particular China, a potential challenger for world supremacy, whose appetite for oil is growing exponentially. When last I heard, the US had constructed, or was in the process of constructing, 14 bases in Iraq.
Also, in the patriotic fervour of post-9/11 and the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan, George W was on a roll. So the invasion of Iraq became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus, starting in the middle of 2002, the banging of the drums of war began to be heard out of the White House, and the rest is history.
So, there was no single reason for the Iraq invasion, but important ingredients were George W’s personal psychological needs, oil, and, most of all, the assertion of US global power as the world’s policeman, as rationalized by the intellectual gurus of the PNAC.
At least, this is how I see it.
At 8:04 AM,
Tonto said…
I now Christopher's comments are also correct,...better to deal with the one nut you know then all the factions you do not. That has been the reason to stay way until now.
But I wanted to ask you Matt after I saw what you posted on thehounds.blogspot.com. Even though the Middle East may hate us you must admit they hate each other just as much? And we don't invade Saudi Arabia because we can pretend to work with them and the governments of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt are secretly happy Hussein is gone. He was a menace to them as well. I know they will never say that but there was no love lost between the governments of these countries and Hussein. It seems easy to know that Iraq over the rest would be targeted and then Iran for all the same reasons. They have caused a lot of problems to their own area historically.
At 10:08 AM,
Samwick said…
Hi Georgina, good points. Your statement: "We don't invade Saudi Arabia because we can pretend to work with them and the governments of Saudi Arabia" is one I agree with. I just think that anyone who supports the Iraq invasion based on Husseins few contacts with Al Qaeda needs to explain why that only selectively applies to one country. None of the publically stated reasons for the war ever made sense to me, so the question "why didn't we invade Saidi Arabia?" is a rhetorical one. Also, you point out (both here and in the previous blog) that Clinton wanted to oust Hussein, and you are right. I think it's ironic that the policies of Bush and Clinton are virtually indistinguishable, down to their choice for a post-Hussein leader (both guys loved Chalabi). Clinton wanted the same thing for Iraq, he just wasn't willing to initiate a full scale invasion the way Bush was. Bush, atleast, had some idea of what would be necessary, whereas Clintons failed assassination attempts really didn't make any sense at all. I mean, what did he think would happen with Hussein dead and no US or UN military presence around? Ulike a lot of liberals, I was never on board with Clinton.
Christopher: Thanks for your response! It's depressing to me that so few Americans have taken the time to read the writings from the Project For a New American Century. It's made up of the same people who now run our country....they openly discuss what they plan to do with the world, they openly refer to America as an empire, and yet most people have never even heard of it. You're right, without 9-11 I doubt Bush could have pulled this invasion off, he really wasted no time in getting out of Afghanistan and into Iraq.
Your point: "Establishing bases in Iraq would give the US the power to control the flow of oil to the other countries of the world, in particular China, a potential challenger for world supremacy" This is exactly what Wolfowitz argued in the 90's...that Americas goal should be to remove the potential for a competing super-power, so I agree with you. A lot of liberals get stuck on the oil thing, but it's an issue of power and leverage, and it's one of the oldest tactics in human history (anyone interested in this can google "hydraulic despotism"). Take care guys!
At 4:46 AM,
Anonymous said…
ric ottaiano talked of the underlying premise still being correct, or something like that. How? It was never correct. The WMD argument was never truly believed by those in power in either the US or the UK. It was a smokescreen to mask an agenda, that being control - specifically, control of dwindling oil supplies. The laughable and sick irony is that this grasping at other nations' assets and claiming it's in the name of democracy, the white American way and the Christian God will do nothing to prevent what's coming - only major lifestyle changes for every single person, especially in the US, will change that. If it's not already too late. If we're already in freefall, then gods help us - within a few decades we're either going to boil or freeze. We've already got the floods getting worse each year.
WMD - who has the most? The most dangerous nutjob in the world, that's who! There's only one thing worse than an imperialist capitalist and that's an imperial capitalist with an evangelical agenda. Hallelujah!
In short, Americans will drown or cook or freeze to death long before any of those scary foreigners ever have the chance or ability to inflict major damage. They don't have the capacity to wage war. Mother Earth, on the other hand, does. And to be fair, she didn't fire the first salvos, did she?
At 4:51 AM,
Anonymous said…
And Georgina, surely the point is not to argue whether or not middle-eastern nations hate/have hated each other, but to acknowledge that it's nobody else's damn business and we shouldn't be interfering in sovereign nations, whether we acknowledge their systems of belief and government as valid or no?
Besides, last I knew the US was and remains full of people who hate each other and do not get along. Would that justify knocking their heads together and wading in like big cocks with a big plan? I think not. I'ts not as if Bush ever intervenes to do good - he cuts back on giving money for good things when it comes to the UN. It's only bombs and oil this dangerous freak is interested in. He scares me and I'd be a fool to claim otherwise. He's a scary motherfucker who stands at the helm of a motley crew hellbent on screwing up the world for Jesus and the dollar.
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