Iraq War and Geopolitics

8/6/2019 Iraq War and Geopolitics

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Iraq War and Geopolitics

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by Anup Shah This Page Last Updated Sunday, August 01, 2004

This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/464/geopolitics. To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print

version:o http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/464

This web page has the following sub-sections:

1. American Imperialism?

2. Breaking with OPEC3. Financial and Economic Warfare

4. Democracy Domino Theory5. A Neo-conservative Agenda

6. Long Term U.S. Military Bases In Iraq; A Coaling Station for Continued Dominance inthe Region

7. Why Iraq? What About Other Nuclear Threats?

American Imperialism?

In an opinion piece in the Indian daily, The Hindu, a vivid comment of contradiction and chargesof American imperialism were made, not unlike those being made for many years around theworld by various people:

Using Napolean as a mouthpiece, George Bernard Shaw makes a telling comment on BritishImperialism, which is no less - if not more - apposite to the American imperialism of our time.He says: There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; butyou will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights youon patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperialprinciples; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles and cutoff his king's head on republican principles. America is no different. It claims to act in terms of

international law; but feels free to subvert international norms whenever it wants. It supports theauthority of the United Nations but turns its back on the U.N. to suit its convenience. Itglobalises trade in the name of fairness; and most unfairly usurps the major trade benefits to itsown advantage. It launches a war to secure the largest oil reserves in the world but pretends itfights for peace. It claims to act in the name of democracy, but leaves behind battered stateswherever it has gone. It fights a war for peace, but makes huge profits by the sale of arms thatfollows. Its peacekeeping results in war. Its war brings no peace. No sooner are its interests
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maintained, it leaves behind a debris of enfeebled states. It is never at a loss for an effectivemoral attitude.

Rajeev Dhavan,After the deluge, The Hindu, April 18, 2003

An article in the Washington Postalso noted some parallels:

Eighty-six years ago, another powerful invading army had just entered Baghdad. At the sametime, other divisions driving north-eastwards from Egypt were occupying Palestine. Urged on bytheir own strategists and intellectuals, these forces would soon advance upon Damascus. Theywould exercise great influence upon Iran and the Persian Gulf states. Donning the mantle ofliberators, they would encourage regime change in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They would sendout messages of hope that the entire Arab world may rise once more to greatness and renownnow that its oppressors were defeated. These were folks determined to make the entire MiddleEast secure and stable -- a blessing to the world, no doubt, but a particular blessing to their ownhegemonic nation, and that nation was Great Britain.

Paul Kennedy, The Perils of Empire, Washington Post, April 20, 2003, Page B01

An article in theAsia Times (April 10, 2003) notes one effect of the media and propaganda: TheBush administration, the Pentagon and the breathless, embedded cheerleaders of Americancorporate media are ecstatic. The whole planet is horrified it says, giving a hint to perhaps thegeopolitical ramification of opposing a power.

Other nations may fear that if they don't fall into line maybe they will be next. Bush'swarning shortly after September 11, 2001 of if you are not with us, you are against usmust ring very sharply in some parts of the world.

Nations who do not fall into line may not be of the violent, despotic nature, it might justbe a nation's attempt at an alternative path to development, perhaps to break the mold ofundue influences from more powerful countries.

However, such attempts have, in the past, usually been destroyed or contained by thepowers that may lose out, in case these nations provide an example for other nations.This, many believe, especially in the Third World is why so many of the anti-colonialbreaks for freedom in the post World War II era resulted in the new and former imperialpowers overthrowing popular leaders and supporting dictatorships, or puppetgovernments.

The Third World in general still suffers the poverty and disparities and many refer totoday's global configuration as representing a neo-imperial or neo-colonial era. (The

U.S.'s apparent move towards what some call Empire, in recent years, may be different toimperialism or colonialism as it is normally understood, but the effects and the issue ofpower still remain.) In addition, such oppression by dictators and oppressive rulers hasfueled terrorism, which at various times has also attempted to target the foreign powersthat have supported those rulers in various ways.

For more details on these aspects, see for example the page on this site about control ofresources. (It also has links to a lot more information on this vast topic.)
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An irony of this conflict may be that Iraq might actually see a somewhat genuine democracy(though this is not by any means guaranteed, if events of the few weeks after the first threeweeks of the bombardment are to go by) on the local and national scale, but on the internationalarena, the concern is whether this government will be a puppet regime or in some way bend tothe demands of external powerful nations such as the U.S. and U.K.

Some describe America's actions as imperialist. Consider the following for example, which alsosuggests how reshaping or rebuilding Iraq may look honest, but may be for underlying imperialmotives:

On November 11, 2000, Richard Haass - a member of the National Security Council and specialassistant to the president under the elder Bush, soon to be appointed director of policy planningin the state department of newly elected President George W. Bush - delivered a paper in Atlantaentitled Imperial America. For the United States to succeed at its objective of globalpreeminence, he declared, it would be necessary for Americans to re-conceive their role from atraditional nation-state to an imperial power. Haass eschewed the term imperialist in

describing America's role, preferring imperial, since the former connoted exploitation,normally for commercial ends, and territorial control. Nevertheless, the intent was perfectlyclear:

To advocate an imperial foreign policy is to call for a foreign policy that attempts to organize theworld along certain principles affecting relations between states and conditions within them. TheU.S. role would resemble 19th century Great Britain ... Coercion and the use of force wouldnormally be a last resort; what was written by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson aboutBritain a century and a half ago, that The British policy followed the principle of extendingcontrol informally if possible and formally if necessary, could be applied to the American roleat the start of the new century.

The existence of an American empire is no secret. It is widely, even universally, recognized inmost parts of the world, though traditionally denied by the powers that be in the United States.What Haass was calling for, however, was a much more open acknowledgement of this imperialrole by Washington, in full view of the American population and the world, in order to furtherWashington's imperial ambitions. The fundamental question that continues to confrontAmerican foreign policy, he explained, is what to do with a surplus of power and the many andconsiderable advantages this surplus confers on the United States. This surplus of power couldonly be put to use by recognizing that the United States had imperial interests on the scale ofBritain in the nineteenth century. The world should therefore be given notice that Washington isprepared to extend its control, informally if possible and formally if not, to secure what itconsiders to be its legitimate interests across the face of the globe. The final section of Haass'paper carried the heading Imperialism Begins at Home. It concluded: the greater risk facingthe United States at this juncture...is that it will squander the opportunity to bring about a worldsupportive of its core interests by doing too little. Imperial understretch, not overstretch, appearsthe greater danger of the two.

... Many of the features of contemporary imperialism, such as the development of the worldmarket, the division between core and periphery, the competitive hunt for colonies or semi-


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colonies, the extraction of surplus, the securing of raw materials to bring back to the mothercountry, etc. are part of capitalism as a global system from the late fifteenth century on.Imperialism, in the widest sense, had its sources in the accumulation dynamic of the system (asbasic as the pursuit of profits itself), which encouraged the countries at the center of the capitalistworld economy, and particularly the wealthy interests within these countries, to feather their own

nests by appropriating surplus and vital resources from the periphery - what Pierre Jale calledThe Pillage of the Third World. By a variety of coercive means, the poorer satellite economieswere so structured - beginning in the age of conquest in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries- that their systems of production and distribution served not so much their own needs as those ofthe dominant metropoles. Nevertheless, the recognition of such commonalities in imperialism inthe various phases of capitalist development was entirely consistent with the observation thatthere had been a qualitative change in the nature and significance of imperialism thatcommenced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

...In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the principal global reality was the decline inBritish hegemony and the increased rivalry among the advanced capitalist states that followed,

leading to the First and Second World Wars. The rise of the Soviet Union in the context of theFirst World War posed an external challenge to the system eventually leading to a Cold Warstruggle between the United States, the new hegemonic power of the capitalist world economyfollowing the Second World War, and the Soviet Union. The fall of the latter in 1991 left theUnited States as the sole superpower. By the end of the 1990s the United States had gained on itsmain economic rivals as well. The result of all of this by the beginning of the new century, asHenry Kissinger declared in 2001 inDoes America Need a Foreign Policy?, was that the UnitedStates had achieved a pre-eminence not enjoyed by even the greatest empires of the past.

This naturally led to the question: What was the United States to do with its enormous surplusof power? Washington's answer, particularly after 9/11, has been to pursue its imperial

ambitions through renewed interventions in the global periphery - on a scale not seen since theVietnam War. In the waging of its imperial War on Terrorism the U.S. state is at one with theexpansionary goals of U.S. business.

Richard Haass (whose responsibilities in the present administration were extended to includethose of U.S. coordinator of policy for the future of Afghanistan) pointed out in his bookIntervention, that regime change often can only be accomplished through a full-scale militaryinvasion leaving the conquered nation in ruins and necessitating subsequent nation-building

... Such a nation-building occupation, Haass stressed, involves defeating and disarming anylocal opposition and establishing a political authority that enjoys a monopoly or near-monopolyof control over the legitimate use of force. (This is Max Weber's well-known definition of astate - though imposed in this case by an invading force.) It therefore requires, as Haass observedquoting one foreign policy analyst, an occupation of imperial proportions and possibly ofendless duration.

It is precisely this kind of invasion of imperial proportions and uncertain duration that nowseems to be the main agenda of Washington's War on Terrorism. In the occupation and nation-building processes following invasions (as in the case of Afghanistan), explicit colonialism, in


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the most brazen nineteenth century sense, will be avoided. No formal annexation will take place,and at least a pretense of local rule will be established from the beginning, even during directmilitary occupation. Nevertheless, a central goal will be to achieve some of what colonialism inits classic form previously accomplished. As [a co-editor ofMonthly Review, Harry] Magdoffpointed out,

Colonialism, considered as the direct application of military and political force, was essential toreshape the social and economic institutions of many of the dependent countries to the needs ofthe metropolitan centers. Once this reshaping had been accomplished economic forces - theinternational price, marketing and financial systems - were by themselves sufficient to perpetuateand indeed intensify the relationship of dominance and exploitation between mother country andcolony. In these circumstances, the colony could be granted formal political independencewithout changing anything essential, and without interfering too seriously with the interestswhich had originally led to the conquest of the colony.

Something of this sort is occurring in Afghanistan and is now being envisioned for Iraq. Once a

country has been completely disarmed and reshapedto fit the needs of the countries at the centerof the capitalist world, nation-building will be complete and the occupation will presumablycome to an end. But in area that contain vital resources like oil (or that are deemed to be ofstrategic significance in gaining access to such resources), a shift back from formal to informalimperialism after an invasion may be slow to take place - or will occur only in very limited ways.Informal control or the mechanism of global accumulation that systematically favors the corenations, constitutes the normal means through which imperialist exploitation of the peripheryoperates. But this requires, on occasion, extraordinary means in order to bring recalcitrant stateback into conformity with the market and with the international hierarchy of power with theUnited States at its apex.

At present, U.S. imperialism appears particularly blatant because it is linked directly with war inthis way, and points to an endless series of wars in the future to achieve essentially the sameends. However, if we wish to understand the underlying forces at work, we should not let thisheightened militarism and aggression distract us from the inner logic of imperialism, mostevident in the rising gap in income and wealth between rich and poor countries, and in the nettransfers of economic surplus from periphery to center that make this possible. The growingpolarization of wealth and poverty between nations (a polarization that exists within nations aswell) is the system's crowning achievement on the world stage. It is also what is ultimately atissue in the struggle against modern imperialism.

John Bellamy Foster,Imperial America and War, Monthly Review, May 28, 2003 (Emphasisis original)

Further insights are provided by Jim Lobe, writing forInter Press Service noting how some U.S.neo-conservative thinking is dangerously echoing 19th century ideologies typical in the BritishEmpire of superiority:

While Washington appears to have found that out in Iraq, it is still remarkable how 19th centuryimperial ideology has come to dominate U.S. foreign policy these days.
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There was, of course, the favourite neo-conservative notion that U.S. troops would liberateIraq and that the locals would welcome with gratitude a U.S. occupation that would hand offpower to a western-educated and financed Iraqi banker who had not set foot in Baghdad since theage of 14. If gratitude were not forthcoming, then shock and awe would compel theircooperation.

As the Wall Street Journal wrote in an updated version of its 19th century British counterpart,The way to win friends in the Middle East is not by appeasement ... it is by showing we havethe will to wield force on behalf of our values and interests.

Jim Lobe, True Reactionaries, Inter Press Service, March 12, 2004

Stephen Cohen, contributing editor ofThe Nation magazine asks some key questions about theimpacts of the war and whether it will lead to the objectives that George Bush stated:

But critics of the war have no reason to regret their views. No sensible opponent doubted that the

world's most powerful military could easily crush such a lesser foe. The real issue was andremains very different: Will the Iraq war increase America's national security, as the BushAdministration has always promised and now insists is already the case, or will it undermine anddiminish our national security, as thoughtful critics believed?

In the weeks, months and years ahead, we will learn the answer to that fateful question byjudging developments by seven essential criteria:

(1) Will the war discourage or encourage other regional preemptive military strikes,particularly by nuclear-armed states such as, but not only, Pakistan and India?

(2) Indeed, will the Iraq war stop the proliferation of states that possess nuclear weapons orinstead incite more governments to acquire them as a deterrent against another US regimechange?

(3) Will the war, and the long US occupation that seems likely to ensue, reduce the recruitmentof young Arabs by terrorist movements or will it inspire many new recruits?

(4) With or without more recruits, will the war decrease or increase the number of terrorist plotsagainst the United States, whether at home or abroad?

(5) Will the war help safeguard the vast quantities of nuclear and other materials of mass

destruction that exist in the world today, and the expertise needed to operationalize them, ormake them more accessible to evil-doers?

(6) In that connection, will Russia--which has more ill-secured devices of mass destruction thanany other country and which strongly opposed and still resents the US war--now be more, or less,inclined to collaborate with Washington in safeguarding and reducing those weapons andmaterials?
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(7) Finally, considering the rampant anti-Americanism it has provoked, will the war result inmore or fewer governments willing to cooperate with--individually or in multinationalorganizations like the United Nations--George W. Bush's stated top priority, the war againstglobal terrorism?

It is by these crucial (and measurable) criteria that the American people, and any politician whowants to lead them, must judge the Administration's war in Iraq and President Bush's ownleadership.

Stephen Cohen,Are We Safer?, The Nation, April 17, 2003

Back to top

Breaking with OPEC

Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but

also on the other countries of the world as well.

Dick Cheney, 1990, quoted by John Chapman, The Real Reasons Bush Went to War, TheGuardian, July 28, 2004

One of many criticisms against war from many angles has been that one of the U.S.'s real interestwas to break the OPEC cartel and have a more compliant regime that would help serve U.S.'sinterests more. The Washington Posthighlighted this:

Iraq's resumption of oil exports under a new government would expose OPEC to considerableuncertainty. Iraq has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves. Flows of Iraqi oil to the

world market unconstrained by OPEC quotas could further erode the cartel's already limitedability to set prices and might even trigger a price war, eating into the profits of its membercountries. Such an outcome would surely delight the Bush administration as well as buyers ofgasoline in the United States, the world's largest oil consumer. With that in mind, commentators-- particularly in Europe -- have contended that the real purpose of Bush's war in Iraq was to putin place a government that would break OPEC. Such an outcome would dismay the world'slargest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran.

Peter S. Goodman, U.S. Adviser Says Iraq May Break With OPEC, Washington Post, May17, 2003, Page E01

The advisor which hinted the above was Philip J. Carroll, who formerly headed Royal DutchShell in the U.S. and now and is now chairs a commission selected by the Pentagon to adviseIraq's Ministry of Oil. Commenting on the above-cited concerns about breaking OPEC, the Postnoted that Carroll repeatedly rejected suggestions that he is an instrument of any such policy,saying that he is merely an adviser. In the final analysis, Iraq's role in OPEC or in any otherinternational organization is something that has to be left to an Iraqi government, he said. Itmay well be true that he is not an instrument of such policy, or he may be naive, or he may belying. Different people will likely interpret this in different ways.
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But oil is perhaps not the only factor, as common as that seems to be as the reason critics opposethe war. It may indeed be one of many other factors, which, for example, Indian researchorganization, Aspects of India's Economy, details. They highlight that geopolitical dominance inthe wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is a key factor, which implies usingmilitary, political and economic means to challenge other rivals (e.g. a France/German centered

European power, China and possibly others), control the Middle East for oil and such resources,and other such aspects. Undermining, or at least further controling the United Nations wherepossible seems to be another outcome of this crisis, regardless of whether that was an initialobjective or not.

Back to top

Financial and Economic Warfare

On April 16, 2003, the Pentagon revealed that thewar has cost the U.S. $20 billion to date, andwas growing by about $2 billion a month. The U.S. think tank, Council on Foreign Relations, a

month earlier said in a report that reconstruction costs could be about $20 billion per year forseveral years.

As the cost of war web site reports, the cost for American citizens is very high indeed. (Theircounter on their home page, as of September 28, 2003, reveals a cost of over $76.5 billionalready.)

Yet, less reported are the truly wider costs and repercussions of the war.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) held aseminar between April 14 and April 17, 2003 on the regions economic progress. Side

Note At this seminar the Commission's Executive Secretary, Mervat Tallawi saidwar in Iraq

could cost Arab countries a trillion dollars in lost Gross Domestic Product (GDP),on top of the 600 billion already lost from the previous Gulf War.

In addition, she added that between four and five million jobs had been lost followingthe previous Gulf war and that was expected to rise to between six and seven million as aresult of the current conflict.

This could explain yet another reason why so many Arab countries were against the warthis time.

For the Pentagon and the U.S., it would seem the $20 billion (and rising) figure would bea profitable venture, given that the U.S. is attempting to award reconstruction contracts to

afew American companies, some of which are controversial for havingtiesor relationsin some way to the Republican party.

But this is geopolitical in nature as well. The trillion dollars is not just fromreconstruction, but from many knock-on effects that would affect the rest of theeconomy, so it shouldn't be assumed that this war is being waged for reconstructioncontracts, as they would not approach a trillion dollars, though there is large amounts ofmoney involved, nonetheless.
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Yet, as Tim Shorrock comments, Wolfowitz is turning history on its head.

Japan was not the inspiration for the democratic upsurge that swept through East Asia in the1980s. Instead, it was the junior partner to the United States during the cold war, whenWashington created an alliance of anticommunist dictators who supported American foreign

policy while repressing their own people. Those policies didn't inspire democracy in Asia; ifanything, they helped to stifle it.

The symbiotic relationship between Washington and Tokyo was forged in 1948, when the UnitedStates reversed course in its occupation of Japan to focus on the containment of communism.Almost overnight, US policy shifted from punishing Japanese bureaucrats and industrialistsresponsible for World War II to enlisting them in a global war against the Soviet Union andChina. The shift was symbolized by Nobusuke Kishi, who was prime minister from 1957 to1960. Kishi was minister of commerce and industry in the wartime Tojo Cabinet and labeled aClass A war criminal for helping run Japan's colonial empire in Manchuria.

...Japanese industry profited handsomely by supplying the Pentagon with steel, munitions andeven napalm when the United States fought wars in Korea and Vietnam. Then, as Washingtonpropped up South Korea's Park Chung Hee, the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos and Indonesia'sSuharto with vast quantities of military aid, Japan kept their economies alive with financial aidand investments from Mitsui, Sumitomo and other big corporations. Japan's collaboration withWashington was carefully hidden from the Japanese public but greatly appreciated by Americanleaders, as shown from newly declassified documents stored in the National Archives.

In Wolfowitz's rosy view of history, the millions of Koreans, Filipinos and Indonesians whorebelled against their authoritarian governments were following in Japan's footsteps. That isfalse. In reality, democratic activists in those countries endured torture, imprisonment and

military repression imposed by governments backed by the Pentagon, financed by Japan andtolerated by Wolfowitz and other American officials in the name of US national security.

On April 7, Wolfowitz told the Washington Post that he met quite a few dictators up close andpersonal in my life. Indeed he has. It was under Wolfowitz's watch at the State Department thatReagan invited South Korean military dictator Chun Doo Hwan to the White House in February1981, nine months after Chun murdered hundreds of demonstrators in Kwangju. And it wasWolfowitz, who was US ambassador to Indonesia during the 1980s, who urged Congress to lookbeyond the important and sensitive issue of human rights to acknowledge the strong andremarkable leadership of President Suharto.

Tim Shorrock,A Skewed History of Asia, The Nation, April 17, 2003

President Bush made a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6,2003, reiterating that there was a greater need for democracy and freedom in the Middle East ingeneral. But, as Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco notes that
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[President Bush] failed even once to say a critical word about any non-democratic U.S. ally inthe region. It is noteworthy, for example, that he called for spreading freedom from Damascusto Tehran but not from Riyadh to Cairo.

...Few people familiar with the Middle East could disagree with his observation that support for

dictatorial regimes has not led to greater stability. However, there are no indications that theBush administration is planning to stop its support for governments that deny freedom orotherwise promote freedom in the region.

It is hypocritical in the extreme to state that Many Middle Eastern governments now understandthat military dictatorship and theocratic rule are a straight, smooth highway to nowhere, but somegovernments still cling to the old habits of central control when the United States is the primarybacker of such regimes in the region.

Stephen Zunes,Noble Rhetoric Supports Democracy While Ignoble Policies SupportRepression, Foreign Policy In Focus, November 2003

After listing a number of examples of how the U.S. has backed non-democratic regimes in theregion even now, Zunes adds that

Until the extent of the repression and the American complicity in the repression is recognized, itwill be difficult to understand the negative sentiments a growing number of ordinary people inthe Islamic world have toward the United States. Therefore, self-righteous claims by Americanleaders that the anger expressed by Arabs and Muslims toward the United States is because ofour commitment to freedom only exacerbates feelings of ill-will and feeds the rage manifestedin anti-American violence and terrorism.

Stephen Zunes,Noble Rhetoric Supports Democracy While Ignoble Policies SupportRepression, Foreign Policy In Focus, November 2003

For more information on this aspect, see for example the following:

Giovanni Arrighi in his bookThe Long Twentieth Century (Verso Press, 1994), andChaos and Governance in the Modern World System (University of Minesota Press,1999). He also describes the development of Asia as being financed by the U.S. via Japanthrough military keynesianism economic policies, that the development andindustrialization of most developed regions was related to the high military spending thatcame from the Cold War, etc, and the stimulous that gave to various economies.

J.W. Smith also highlights this in his work,Economic Democracy; The Political Strugglefor the 21st Century (3rd Edition, 2003), which is also on-line infull. He also details howin the fight against communism, and also for the former imperial powers, to try andcontain breaks for freedom (as most of the former colonized world managed to breakfree after World War II reduced the power of imperial nations), those former powerssupported dictatorships and puppet regimes.
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A high-ranking military officer in the U.S. revealed how Defense Department extremistssuppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war against Iraq. In doing so,the officer also gave some more insights into neoconservative ideology and thinking. At thesame time, some of the suggestions above, regarding possible geopolitical reasons for war werealso mentioned:

From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Officeof Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. MiddleEast policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office,and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagonused to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in thePentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefullyconsidered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysispromulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of thepresident.

While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and Americanforeign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing ofthe Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that thisagenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people.Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to takeCongress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a

war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with myaccount.

...

War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congressand to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false.Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell therest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flexU.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regionalruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked

imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupyingcould have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeedhave supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chancefor an honest debate.

Karen Kwiatkowski, The New Pentagon Papers, Salon.com, March 10, 2004
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Jim Lobe, Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War, Inter Press Service, February 20,2004

Lobe also notes in the same article that Chalabi's family has extensive interests in a companythat has already been awarded more than 400 million dollars in reconstruction contracts.

Back to top

Long Term U.S. Military Bases In Iraq; A Coaling Station

for Continued Dominance in the Region

TheIndependentreported (April 21, 2003) that Bush administration officials said the UnitedStates is planning to use Iraq to maintain a long-term strategic foothold in the Middle East thatwould include the right to use four of the country's military bases.

For a while there has been concern about the U.S. geostrategic interests in the Middle East, andhow the Iraq war would aid in that as mentioned, for example, on this page's military expansionsection. This may partially explain the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia as well.

Retired U.S. General, Jay Garner, who Lobe also mentioned above, had also revealed more aboutthis, and Lobe noted that this strategy had been suggested by the neo-conservative PNAC as partof the means to secure global dominance and the Middle East in particular:

Asked [in an interview with theNational Journal] how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq,Garner replied, I hope they're there a long time, and then compared U.S. goals in Iraq to U.S.military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992.

One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (theIraqi authorities), he said. And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights inthe south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade.

Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling stationfor the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is forthe next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East, Garneradded.

While U.S. military strategists have hinted for some time that a major goal of war was to

establish several bases in Iraq, particularly given the ongoing military withdrawal from SaudiArabia, Garner is the first to state it so baldly.

Until now, U.S. military chiefs have suggested they need to retain a military presence just toensure stability for several years, during which they expect to draw down their forces.

If indeed Garner's understanding represents the thinking of his former bosses, then the ongoingstruggle between Cheney and the Pentagon on the one hand and the State Department on the
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other over how much control Washington is willing to give the United Nations over thetransition to Iraqi rule becomes more comprehensible.

Ceding too much control, particularly before a base agreement can be reached with whateverIraqi authority will take over Jun. 30, will make permanent U.S. bases much less likely.

Jim Lobe, Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War, Inter Press Service, February 20,2004

Back to top

Why Iraq? What About Other Nuclear Threats?

Many have noted that North Korea and others might be a more real nuclear/wmd threat than Iraqwas (especially given more and more is coming out to confirm that Iraq may not have been athreat that it was made out to be). Yet, the Bush Administration still went for Iraq. Jonathan

Schell suggests that one reason was that it was because the U.S. could do so, as it would be lessrisky than to go against someone with real WMD ambitions. In addition it would help achieveU.S. geopolitical interests:

In this larger plan to establish American hegemony, the Iraq war had an indispensable role. If theworld was to be orderly, then proliferation must be stopped; if force was the solution toproliferation, then pre-emption was necessary (to avoid that mushroom cloud); if pre-emptionwas necessary, then regime change was necessary (so the offending government could neverbuild the banned weapons again); and if all this was necessary, then Iraq was the one country inthe world where it all could be demonstrated. Neither North Korea nor Iran offered anopportunity to teach these lessons - the first because it was capable of responding with a major

war, even nuclear war, and the second because even the Administration could see that USinvasion would be met with fierce popular resistance. It's thus no accident that the peril ofweapons of mass destruction was the sole justification in the two legal documents by which theAdministration sought to legitimize the war - HJR 114 and Security Council Resolution 1441.Nor is it an accident that the proliferation threat played the same role in the domestic politicalcampaign for the war - by forging the supposed link between the war on terror and nucleardanger. In short, absent the new idea that proliferation was best stopped by pre-emptive use offorce, the new American empire would have been unsalable, to the American people or toCongress. Iraq was the foundation stone of the bid for global empire.

Jonathan Schell, The Empire Backfires, Alternet, March 12, 2004

Justifying the Iraq War and WMDs

Author and Page information

by Anup Shah
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This Page Last Updated Sunday, September 10, 2006

This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds. To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print

version:o

http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/463

Various justifications were made for war, but on almost all grounds, those basis lookincreasingly flaky, with either exaggerated claims, or even lies.

This web page has the following sub-sections:

1. Saddam Hussein Captured

2. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)1. Iraq Study Group Does not Find WMD

2. WMD Inspection Team is Not Neutral

3. Donald Rumsfeld Concedes that WMDs May Not Exist4. Hints From Early On that WMDs May Not Exist5. Colin Powell Originally Claimed Saddam Hussein Not a Threat; Concedes

WMDs Unlikely to be Found6. History Will Forgive Him If No WMDs Found, Blair Says, Because Dictator

Removed7. 2006: Bush Admits no WMDs, and no link between Saddam and 9-11

3. Accustations of Bush and Blairs Intelligence Being Exaggerated or Outright Lies1. Doubts from many top experts about intelligence quality

2. Intelligence which was often qualified with uncertainty was presented as solid3. The Hutton Report and the BBC

4. Powell Admits Mobile Lab Claims FalseBut This is an Old Story4. Pressuring Officials to State a Link Between 9-11 and Saddam Hussein

5. The Legal Case for War Is Questioned, Again6. Pressure for Investigations into Intelligence and War Justification

1. Bush and Blair Order Inquiries Beginning Of 20042. The Butler Report Finds Serious Flaw in Intelligence on Iraq

1. Serious Flaw in Butler Report: No Investigation of Political

Accountability2. A number of these findings were known before the war

7. Should Bush, Blair, and Hussein all be tried for War Crimes?

Saddam Hussein Captured

Having managed to kill his two sonswho have been responsible for horrible crimes as varioustelevision footage has shownthe U.S. searched for Saddam Hussein for months.

On December 13, 2003, Saddam Hussein was finally captured, after months of eluding U.S.forces. He was found hiding in a hole-like underground hideout, near his home town of Tikrit.
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obalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#Intelligencewhichwasoftenqualifiedwithuncertaintywaspresentedassolidhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#TheHuttonReportandtheBBChttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#PowellAdmitsMobileLabClaimsFalseButThisisanOldStoryhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#PressuringOfficialstoStateaLinkBetween9-11andSaddamHusseinhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#TheLegalCaseforWarIsQuestionedAgainhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#PressureforInvestigationsintoIntelligenceandWarJustificationhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#BushandBlairOrderInquiriesBeginningOf2004http://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#TheButlerReportFindsSeriousFlawinIntelligenceonIraqhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#SeriousFlawinButlerReportNoInvestigationofPoliticalAccountabilityhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#SeriousFlawinButlerReportNoInvestigationofPoliticalAccountabilityhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#Anumberofthesefindingswereknownbeforethewarhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/463/justifying-the-war-and-wmds#ShouldBushBlairandHusseinallbetriedforWarCrimeshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_iraq_timeline/html/saddam_captured.stm


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Side Note

Before and since his capture people have been debating if he should be held on trial at theInternational Criminal Court (ICC), or by local Iraqi judges.

The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council recently announced that a court would be establishedto try former members of the Baathist regime, presided over by Iraqi judges. Saddam Husseincould be tried there.

Amnesty International, for example, said that whether it is a trial in Iraq, or in an internationalcourt, the issue of fairness and indepenence that meets international standards is paramount, andthat the trial process must not be turned into a political revenge agenda. In addition, Amnestyalso reiterated a suggestion that some non-Iraqi judges also be included in the process to helpwith impartiality and expertise in such complex cases:

Amnesty International urges that the option of including non-Iraqi expertise in the tribunal is

fully explored. While Iraq has a strong legal tradition, there have not been prosecutions forcomplex crimes such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. While it would be importantthat such trials take place in Iraq, it is not clear that the independence and impartiality ofprosecutors and judges can be guaranteed in a highly politicized context.

Iraq: Only justice can serve the future of Iraq, Amnesty International AI Index: MDE14/183/2003 (Public), News Service No: 283, December 15, 2003

(See this sites section on the ICC for more information about the ICC.)

For many, the capture justified the war. The Bush Administration constantly claims he was a

threat to the entire world, and so he has managed to get rid of this world, which is now a saferplace. While it might seem appropriate to congratulate America for getting rid of this tyrant, itshould be noted that he was an American ally in the past, (aspreviously mentioned on this site),and he was helped with weapons of mass destructions. Removing him can, in that context, bethought less of as a noble gesture, but instead, about time at least. Prize-winning author andIndian activist Arundhati Roy noted on the front page of the Indian daily, The Hindu Times:

Plenty of anti-war activists have retreated in confusion since the capture of Saddam Hussein.Isnt the world better off without Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly.

Lets look this thing in the eye once and for all. To applaud the U.S. armys capture of Saddam

Hussein and therefore, in retrospect, justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq is like deifyingJack the Ripper for disembowelling the Boston Strangler. And thatafter a quarter centurypartnership in which the Ripping and Strangling was a joint enterprise. Its an in-house quarrel.Theyre business partners who fell out over a dirty deal. Jacks the CEO.

Arundhati Roy,Do turkeys enjoy thanksgiving?, The Hindu, January 18, 2004
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Introducing a new global survery analyzing war and human rights,Human Rights Watchexecutive director, Kenneth Roth, noted:

The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a humanitarian intervention, andneither can Tony Blair. Saddam Husseins atrocities should certainly be punished, and his worst

atrocities, such as the 1988 genocide against the Kurds, would have justified humanitarianintervention then. But such interventions should be reserved for stopping an imminent orongoing slaughter. They shouldnt be used belatedly, to address atrocities that were ignored inthe past.

Kenneth Roth,New Global Survey Analyzes War and Human Rights, Human Rights Watch,January 26, 2004

In a key note speech, Roth concluded that the war on Iraq could not be regarded as humanitarian:

In sum, the invasion of Iraq failed to meet the test for a humanitarian intervention. Most

important, the killing in Iraq at the time was not of the exceptional nature that would justify suchintervention. In addition, intervention was not the last reasonable option to stop Iraqi atrocities.Intervention was not motivated primarily by humanitarian concerns. It was not conducted in away that maximized compliance with international humanitarian law. It was not approved by theSecurity Council. And while at the time it was launched it was reasonable to believe that theIraqi people would be better off, it was not designed or carried out with the needs of Iraqisforemost in mind.

Kenneth Roth, War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention, Human Rights Watch WorldReport, January 2004

But some see the capture of Saddam Hussein as being also used as a propaganda opportunity toside-step the issue of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and the lack of progesson that front.

Back to top

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)

Questions are being asked, even in the mainstream about the location of the weapons of massdestruction (WMDs). Saddam Husseins alleged WMDs and their immediate availability anddanger was central to the case for war in Iraq.

Months after the war has ended, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) still has notrevealed anything that could justify war and match the scarey picture portrayed by the Bush andBlair administrations.

Iraq Study Group Does not Find WMD
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The U.S.s leading man in charge of this search for WMDs in 2003, David Kay, had signaled hisintention to resign before the release of Iraq Study Groups final autumn 2004 report. Whileciting personal reasons, many analysts took this as a sign to mean an end of major efforts tolocate WMDs. QuotingNewScientist.com, for example:

Paul Rogers, at the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University, UK, thinks [David]Kays planned departure is significant: My reading is that its a serious part of downgrading thewhole procedure. I think its highly unlikely that anything will be found.

Iraqs possession of banned WMD was one of the major justifications used by the US and UKfor invading Iraq in March. The failure to find them is a political embarrassment to bothgovernments.

Rogers believes the Bush administration is shifting its stance, and no longer sees finding theWMD as a priority. Instead, he says, officials are focusing on the atrocities carried out bySaddam Hussein as the key reason for going to war.

Theyve made a transition with the truth and my guess is theyre pretty well convinced theresnothing serious to be found, he told New Scientist. While that may be totally different to whatwe were told eight months ago, that is the new line.

Lead Iraq weapons seeker to quit, NewScientist.com News Service, December 13, 2003

Towards the end of January, David Kay did resign. He toldReuters that WMDs probably did notexist:

Undercutting the White Houses public rationale for the war on Iraq, Kay told Reuters by

telephone shortly after stepping down from his post on Friday that he had concluded there wereno such stockpiles to be found.

I dont think they existed, Kay said. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles producedafter the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I dont think there was a large-scale productionprogram in the '90s, he said.

I think we have found probably 85 percent of what were going to find, said Kay. I thinkthe best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production and thats what were reallytalking about, Kay said.

The United Nations' top nuclear watchdog said on Saturday he was not surprised at Kaysconclusion. I am not surprised about this, International Atomic Energy Agency chiefMohamed ElBaradei told Reuters. We said already before the war, that there was noevidence of this, so this is really not a surprise.

Tabassum Zakaria,Ex-Arms Hunter Says Iraq Had No Banned Stockpiles, Reuters, January24, 2004 [Emphasis Added]
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Furthermore, as reported by The Guardian, Kay noted that Iraq had abandoned its efforts toproduce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons:

Further damage to Downing Streets case for going to war came from Dr Kay, who saidyesterday that the CIA and other intelligence agencies had failed to recognise that Iraq had all

but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after thefirst Gulf war.

He told the New York Times that his team discovered that Iraq had plunged into what he called avortex of corruption around 1997 and 1998.

Iraqi scientists realised that they could go to Saddam and present plans for weapons programmesand receive large amounts of money, without making good their promises.

David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor,Iraqi who gave MI6 45-minute claim says it wasuntrue, The Guardian, January 27, 2004

In addition, as the above cited article also notes, the Iraqi exile group in London which claimsto have supplied MI6 with the intelligence about Saddams 45-minute capability admitted thatthe information might have been completely untrue.

For some, Kays comments are devastating enough to suggest impeachment:

Can we now talk impeachment?

The rueful admission by the chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay that Saddam Hussein didnot possess weapons of mass destruction or the means to create them raises the prospect that the

Bush administration is complicit in the greatest scandal in U.S. history. Yet, we hear no calls fora broad-ranging investigation of the type that led to the discovery of Monica Lewinskysinfamous blue dress.

. But a mere three days after the State of the Union Address, Kay quit and told the world whatthe Bush administration had been denying since taking office: That Saddam Husseins regimewas but a weak shadow of the semi-fearsome military force it had been at the time of the firstGulf War; that it had no significant chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs orstockpiles still in place; and that the U.N. inspections and Allied bombing runs in the 1990s hadbeen much more effective than their critics had believed at destroying the remnants of theseprograms, which simply eroded into dust.

Im personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons ofmass destruction, Kay told the New York Times. We dont find the people, the documents orthe physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on. I think theygradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990s. Somewhere in the mid-1990s the largechemical overhang of existing stockpiles was eliminated. The Iraqis say the they believed that[the UN inspection system] was more effective [than U.S. analysts believed it was], and they

didnt want to get caught. [Emphasis Added]
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The maddening aspect of all this is that we havent needed David Kay to set the recordstraight. The evidence of the Bush administrations systematic abuse of the facts and its ownintelligence has been out there for all who wanted to see it for nearly two years. Thats why 23former intelligence and foreign service employees of the United States governmentincludingseveral who quit in disgusthave been willing to speak out in Robert Greenwalds shocking

documentary Uncovered. The story they tell is one of an administration that decided to go towar for reasons that smack of empire-building, and then constructed a false reality in order to sellit to the American people. Is that not an impeachable offense?

After all, the President misled Congress into approving his preemptive war on the grounds thatIraqs weapons of mass destruction threatened our very survival as a nation. If we hesitated andallowed the UN inspectors who were on the ground in Iraq to do their job, a mushroom cloudover New Yorkto use Condoleezza Rices imagerymight well be our dark reward. NowDavid Kaywho, it should be remembered, originally defended the war and dismissed the workof the UN inspectorshas spent $900 million dollars and the time of 1400 weapons inspectors todiscover what many in the CIA and elsewhere had been telling us all along. Are there to be no

real repercussions for such a devastating official deceit?

Robert Scheer,Kay Testimony Impeaches Bush, Alternet, January 26, 2004

Another major concern at this point is that only American and British forces have been involvedin this search, and currently not the U.N. inspections team.

AsReuters reported, (April 17, 2003) the United States does not want the U.N.inspectors back any time soon, saying it prefers to do the job itself.

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald(April 24, 2003), both in Washington and inNew York, the U.S. announced that the United States will not permit United Nations

weapons inspectors to return to Iraq, saying the US military has taken over the role ofsearching for Saddams weapons of mass destruction and that both the White Houseand the US ambassador to the UN said they saw no role in postwar Iraq for the UNweapons inspection teams.

AFPreported in December 2003, that the United Nations weapons inspection team(UNMOVIC) noted that it still hadnt been given accessto the US-organized Iraq StudyGroups interim report on weapons of mass destruction.

WMD Inspection Team is Not Neutral

Given the large number oflies, fabrications and exaggerations (many proven by the U.N.

inspection team itself), and ignoring for a moment what right the U.S. has to make thisimposition on the United Nations (for it is theoretically meant to work the other way) the concernthat many have is if WMDs are supposedly found, what is the chance that it is a genuine find andnot somehow a setup by the U.S. and U.K., as there is a lot at stake for them politically if nothingis found.

It has been common knowledge that the U.S. has not liked Blix because his reports werenot favorable to them. The above Sydney Morning Heraldarticle also adds a possibility
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that the U.S. might allow the U.N. weaspons inspection team in after Blix has ended histerm (in June) and a new head is in place.

Without an independent (i.e. U.N.) inspection team, the credibility of any finds will bequestioned, as Hans Blix himself hadsuggested.

The U.N. inspection team had international credibility and was believed by most nations

to be doing a good job, and just needed some more time. The weapons of mass destruction argument was the main thrust for military action

initially. As that argument started to lead to dead ends, the U.S. and British shifted theirpropaganda tactics to also highlight the moral case, to justify a war of liberation.

In addition, as theAssociated Press reported (May 23, 2003), Hans Blix has questionedwhether WMDs actually exist or not.

When asked if he believed that weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq, [U.N. chief weaponsinspector, Hans] Blix expressed cautious doubts. I originally thought that the Americans beganthe war believing that they existed. Now, I believe less in that possibility. But, I do not know.Nevertheless, when one sees the things that the United States tried to do to show that the Iraqis

had nuclear arms, such as the non-existent contract with Niger, one does have many questions.

If no weapons of mass destruction are found, the war in Iraq will mark the second failedmilitary mission since the Sept. 11 tragedy. The first was the invasion of Afghanistan, ostensiblyto destroy the Al Qaeda network and capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. Al Qaeda isresurgent in southern Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar remain at large.

It is perhaps for this reason that the White House has been so adept at converting both theAfghanistan and Iraqi conflicts into wars of liberation. This redefinition of their originalpurpose may play well with the American public, but it is causing the United States to lose allcredibility with Middle Easterners, who see liberation as a well-worn code term for

conquest, and the search for weapons of mass destruction as mere pretext for the extension ofAmerican hegemony over the region.

William O. Beeman, The Elusive Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Pacific News Service, April17, 2003 [link is to reposted version at Alternet.org]

Donald Rumsfeld Concedes that WMDs May Not Exist

As early as the end of May 2003, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself concededthat Iraqi WMDs may not exist:

Several US military officers involved in the hunt in Iraq have raised the possibility that theillegal arms might have been destroyed, but the official line in Washington has been that SaddamHussein had artfully hidden them, and sooner or later they would be found.

But now, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary and one of the leading hawks on Iraq, hasadmitted that the weapons may not exist. We dont know what happened, he told the Councilof Foreign Relations in New York. It is also possible that [Saddams government] decided theywould destroy them prior to a conflict.
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Two months later, Rice reportedly said, We are able to keep his arms from him. His militaryforces have not been rebuilt.

Powell boasted this was because Americas policy of containment and its sanctions hadeffectively disarmed Saddam.

Pilger claims this confirms that the decision of US President George W Bushwith the fullsupport of British Prime Minister Blair and Howardto wage war on Saddam because he hadweapons of mass destruction was a huge deception.

In his report, Pilger interviews Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend ofBushs father and ex-president, George Bush senior.

McGovern told Pilger that going to war because of weapons of mass destruction was 95 percent charade.

Paul Mulvey,Journo claims proof of WMD lies, News.com (Australia), September 23, 2003

In September 2004, Colin Powell admitted that WMDs will probably never be found.

History Will Forgive Him If No WMDs Found, Blair Says, Because Dictator

Removed

As part of a visit around the globe, Tony Blair was in the U.S., and in a speech to Congresssuggested that history might forgive him if WMDs are not found because he contributed toridding the world of an evil dictator. Not only is this a weak admission that they might not exist,but, to be quite blunt, as stated above and elsewhere on this sites section on Iraq, Tony Blair and

the U.S. have not really cared about the plight of Iraqi civilians, else the sanctions policy whichthey had a lot of influence over would not have decimated and contributed to the deaths of somany people. Perhaps to achieve geopolitical aims (discussed further below), propaganda wasused to convince citizens of U.K. and U.S.A. that it is right to wage war. Debates will no doubtgo on for a long time on whether the war was worth it or not because Saddam Hussein wastoppled, but issues such as whether or not people like Bush and Blair really cared about theplight of Iraqi citizens, the impacts of sanctions, which former top U.N. staff described asgenocidal, etc. do not typically get as much analysis.

Interestingly, Tony Blair alleged that British and American weapons hunters had unearthedmassive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories in Iraq. Yet this was

contradicted by an unlikely sourcePaul Bremer, head of the occupation forces in Baghdad.

In an interview with Londons ITV-1, Bremer dismissed Blairs allegation. when the claimwas put to Bremer, he said it was not true. Unaware that it had been made by Mr Blair, theAmerican proconsul said it sounded like a red herring put about by someone opposed tomilitary action to undermine the coalition. He said I dont know where those words come from,but that is not what David Kay has said. I have read his report, so I dont know who said that
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It sounds like someone who doesnt agree with the policy sets up a red herring, then knocks itdown.

But when the interviewer told Bremer the statement was actually made by Tony Blair, hechanged his tune, saying There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public,, adding

that the group had found clear evidence of biological and chemical programs ongoing andclear evidence of violation of UN Security Council resolutions relating to rockets.

Scott Ritter: How the British Spy Agency MI6 Secretly Misled A Nation Into War With Iraq,Democracy Now! December 30, 2003

2006: Bush Admits no WMDs, and no link between Saddam and 9-11

Indeed, in August, 2006, at a press conference, President Bush admitted that Iraq had no WMDsand had nothing to do with the 9-11 terrorist attacks:

1. President George W. Bush:

Now, look, I didntpart of the reason we went into Iraq wasthe mainreason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of massdestruction. It turns out he didnt, but he had the capacity to make weapons ofmass destruction.

imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even moretrouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred thatpeople came and killed 3,000 of our citizens.

2. Reporter:

What did Iraq have to do with that?


What did Iraq have to do with what?

4. Reporter:

The attack on the World Trade Center?


Nothing, except for its part ofand nobody has ever suggested in thisadministration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was aIraqthelesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken.Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were orderedby Iraq.
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President Bush Admits Iraq Had No WMDs and Nothing to Do With 9/11, DemocracyNow!, August 22, 2006

Until the handover of power to Iraqis, Iraq was, in effect, being run by the Americans and theBritish. Even since the handover, critics claim the US does hold most influence. In the aftermath

of the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime, intelligence documents and other findings arecoming to light. However, given the control by the U.S. and U.K., in the eyes of many aroundthe world, any American and British findings may not be credible. Some reports may even befabrications or the truth, but we would never be certain. For example, the CIA and Iraqiopposition groups claim to have found documents showinglinks between Al Jazeera andSaddam Husseins regime. Yet, as the previous link also highlights, given that the find was bythe CIA, this might serve to further tarnish Al Jazeeras image which has often been a thorn inthe side of the American and British propaganda battle.

As a result, it is hard to know for sure without independent verification if these are fabricationsor truths, etc. In theprevious page, about the build up to the war, more detail was provided about

how the U.S. and U.K. (as well as others) had, in the past, supported Saddam Husseinsmurderous regime, for example, when he used chemical weapons on his own people. WithBritish and American intelligence controlling the intelligence findings in Iraq now, it would belikely that the darker aspects of U.S., and British involvement could be ommitted. It is evenpossible that French and other less favourable nations involvements may be highlighted andleaked to reporters.

All this risks going down the avenue of conspiracy because control is by the occupying power.History is written by the victor is a common phrase and a much accepted part of war andculture. In modern times, such writing of history could involve sanitizing some aspects, andhighlighting others, and result in revisionist history. For more on this angle and how

propaganda has been used in various ways, and how history has been written by the victors, seefor example, the Institute for Economic Democracy web site.

Back to top

Accustations of Bush and Blairs Intelligence Being

Exaggerated or Outright Lies

Around the end of May, and the beginning of June, the mainstream started to ask more and moreabout the WMDs. The administrations of George Bush and Tony Blair started to come under

more pressure about things like various leaks about possible exaggeration, lying and/orpressuring their intelligence services to produce favorable reports regarding the existence ofWMDs, and so on. (Yet, as mentioned on the previous page about the build up to war, longbefore Iraq was invaded, intelligence services were being pressured to come out with morefavorable reports, even when agencies such as the CIA itself had questioned the existence ofWMDs or the likelihood that Saddam posed a threat to the U.S. or the world.)

Doubts from many top experts about intelligence quality
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As Jime Lobe ofInter Press Service says (June 2, 2003), When all three major U.S.newsweekliesTime, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Reportrun major features onthe same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a majorscandal.

A South African newspaper,Daily News noted (June 9, 2003) that an intelligence report, whichsaid there was no proof that deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein posed a growing threat tothe West, was suppressed by the British government. Similar reports came out on many Britishmedia outlets at the time.

Britains The Guardian newspaper also revealed (May 31, 2003), that Colin Powell and JackStraw had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims. For example, the newspaper articlementioned that, The [British] foreign secretary [Jack Straw] reportedly expressed concern thatclaims being made by Mr Blair and President Bush could not be proved. The problem, explainedMr Straw, was the lack of corroborative evidence to back up the claims. and that Much of theintelligence were assumptions and assessments not supported by hard facts or other sources.

USA Today reported on June 17, 2003, that former CIA director Stansfield Turner accused theBush administration Tuesday of overstretching the facts about Iraqi weapons of massdestructionin making its case for invading that country. This criticism adds the retiredadmirals name to a list of former intelligence professionals concerned that the CIA and itsintelligence reports were manipulated to justify the war, the article also notes.

The Sydney Morning Heraldsummarizes (June 21, 2003) how most of the intelligence thathelped go to war was garbage. The article comments on the dossiers from British andAmerican intelligence that as three legislative bodies in the US, Britain and Australia reviewthat intelligence, some of it is becoming shaky. In one instance it was manufactured. In others,

the intelligence was hedged with qualifications that were somehow dumped once it appeared inpolitical speeches or declassified reports. The effect of this was that Theres more and moreevidence that public opinion in our three countries was manipulated by the Bush Administrationwith the fragments of intelligence that they had, said Jonathan Dean, a security analyst with theUnion of Concerned Scientists in Washington.

While revealed back in March that claims of obtaining Uranium from Africa were lies andreported on this sites previous page about thebuild up to war, further, a former U.S. ambassadorto Iraq who was dispatched to Niger in 2002 to investigate these claims had reported that theseclaims had no substance (but the Bush Administration still decided to quote this as Britishintelligence). But as MSNBCandNBCnoted, the ambassador, Joseph Wilson charged the Bushadministration of wreklessly making the charge, knowing it was false:

Wilson published an article in July alleging, however, that the White House recklessly made thecharge knowing it was false.

We spend billions of dollars on intelligence, Wilson wrote. But we end up putting somethingin the State of the Union address, something we got from another intelligence agency, something
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we cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no on-the-groundpresence.

Alex Johnson with Andrea Mitchell, CIA Seeks Probe of White House, MSNBC and NBC,September 26, 2003

Hans Blix, according to the Washington Post(June 22, 2003) said he suspected that Baghdadpossessed little more than debris from a former, secret weapons program when the UnitedStates invaded the country in March.

In addition, Blix lashed out at both Washington and Iraq bastards who hadtried to underminehim in his three year post. While speaking to the Guardian (June 11, 2003) he accused the Iraqisof spreading

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