Baghdad in color versus Baghdad in rhetoric

In last night's presidential debate Senator John McCain continued to hit on the theme that the so-called "Surge" in Iraq has been a remarkable success. The reason for the recent fall in violence is an open question, but some of it is surely due to the "Surge", that is more boots on the ground, but there are other reasons for the decline in violence, namely, the bribes we've been paying to the Sunni insurgents, and the ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. Also, there is the more important question of how much progress has been made in reconciling Iraq's warring factions. Moreover, if we are "winning," in Iraq, as Senator McCain, never fails to remind us, then when can we expect the Iraqi government to be able to govern on its own? Sadly, Senator McCain didn't have answer.

What kind of success is the "Surge?" Was it a brilliant tactic that won the war for us, and turned Iraq away from the brink of a full-scale civil war and onto the path of liberal democracy and economic prosperity?

Here is a telling video shot by an Iraqi journalist who witnessed the "success" of the Surge first hand. He now calls Baghdad a "city of walls." As you watch the video ask yourself if you think that Baghdad looks like a city that is prosperous and open, that has a well-developed civic ethic, that is strong and united, and that possesses all the spontaneous delights of a happy community?

The "success" of the Surge in color:

The 'Surge' comes under fire

It is now becoming part of the accepted wisdom that the 'Surge' has been successful in bringing down the level of violence in Iraq. While it is fortunate that violence in Iraq has declined, it's not clear that the Surge is wholly responsible for this. In a previous post I cited the work of conservative columnist Paul Sperry who suggested the Surge not only involved increasing the number of troops in Iraq, especially in Baghdad, but also involved handing out cash bribes to Sunnis to cease resisting the U.S. occupation.

Confirmation for this continues to roll in, but I find it amazing that the media -- especially the so-called liberal media -- seems reluctant to report these findings. I encourage everyone to read Steve Simon's essay in Foreign Affairs The Price of the Surge, because he provides a more even-handed analysis of the Surge. Violence has gone down, yes, but at what cost? And are we any closer to establishing a political reconciliation among Iraq's various ethnic enclaves?

However, he does discuss the cash 'bribes' we've been providing to the Sunnis and why this has been a significant factor in alleviating the violence in Iraq. He writes :

"The deals were mediated by tribal leaders and consisted of payments of $360 per month per combatant in exchange for allegiance and cooperation. Initially referred to by the United States as 'concerned local citizens,' the former insurgents are now known as the Sons of Iraq. The total number across Iraq is estimated at over 90,000.

The Sunni sheiks, meanwhile, are getting rich from the surge. The United States has budgeted $150 million to pay Sunni tribal groups this year, and the sheiks take as much as 20 percent of every payment to a former insurgent -- which means that commanding 200 fighters can be worth well over a hundred thousand dollars a year for a tribal chief."

It's important to note that these are former Sunni insurgents, that is "terrorists," who have been responsible for killing Americans. But because the United States could not find a way to militarily bring down the violence and the war was becoming increasingly unpopular at home it seems a silent deal was struck between the commanders on the ground and the Sunnis. So far the 'bribes' seem to be working, but is this really much of a success?

The author also notes that the ethnic cleansing that went on in 2006 and early 2007 segregated the Shiites and Sunnis so that now they live in their own communities. A recent study done by professors at the University of California at Los Angeles confirms this.

Night light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never returned, suggesting that ethnic cleansing by rival Shiites may have been largely responsible for the decrease in violence for which the U.S. military has claimed credit, the team reports in a new study based on publicly available satellite imagery.

It seems premature to declare the Surge a success because clearly other factors are at play. Finally, though, we should remember that the ultimate purpose of the Surge was not just to decrease the level of violence in Iraq, but to provide the embattled Iraqi government time to reconcile with dissident factions. While no one knows the future of Iraq, we do know that we had no cause to invade and occupy Iraq and all the "successes" in Iraq are ultimately for naught.

A Light Shines in the Darkness and the Darkness Comprehends it not: Ron Paul Exits the Stage

Last week Ron Paul officially ended his campaign for the presidency, and so once again "politics as usual," carries the day. The Ron Paul campaign was the most electrifying in years successfully tapping into America's growing disenchantment with the Bush Administration. The record of the last eight years has been a cruel one: record high gas prices, preventable terror attacks, anemic job growth, and a baseless and costly war. Ron Paul was the only candidate who spoke to all these concerns, and his record of consistency and principle was able to spark a revolution throughout the country. He was not an establishment candidate, but one grown out of America's populist soil: anti-war protesters, civil libertarians, gun-rights' activists, tax opponents, vegan radicals, and all those who feel alienated and distrustful of the two parties.

While his candidacy was always a long-shot he was still able to raise tens of millions of dollars, outperform Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo in the Republican primaries, and call attention to important matters that otherwise would have been neglected. Just how boring -- or more boring -- would the Republican debates have been without Ron Paul railing against the Iraq war, the follies of nation-building, and the deceitful conmen known as Neocons? Without him stirring controversy, the debates would have been pitiful, bland, and monochrome.

Despite the success of the Ron Paul campaign it all comes to naught unless it influences the direction of public policy. Will the Ron Paul revolution continue under some other banner, or will his troopers just resign themselves to defeat, with some returning home and others returning to the ineffectual Libertarian party?

Even with the strong anti-war sentiment in the country, the Republican Party and the larger conservative movement have built a little cocoon around George Bush and moral sanctity of the Iraq war. Neither Bush's leadership nor the wisdom of going to war is open to question. Many in the Democratic Party are against the war and probably support an immediate withdrawal, but the leadership has capitulated to almost all of Bush's demands, and their attitude seems to be that "yes, Iraq was a mistake, but we just can't pick up and leave." Of course, this idea ensures that our occupation of Iraq will be indefinite.

Regardless, the American people had a choice to set a better course for themselves and their country, and either because of indifference, habit, defeatism, ignorance, apathy or whatever, they chose politics as usual.

So get used to the new 100 year war.

A day that should live in infamy: March 19th 2003

Today is the fifth anniversary of a great national tragedy, the war in Iraq. However, President Bush still doesn't see it that way and today he delivered a speech strewn with the same old bromides he's been using for years.

On this day in 2003, the United States began Operation Iraqi Freedom. As the campaign unfolded, tens and thousands of our troops poured across the Iraqi border to liberate the Iraqi people and remove a regime that threatened free nations.

It is ridiculous to suggest that our invasion of Iraq was an humanitarian act of goodwill meant to "liberate" the Iraqi people. The war in Iraq has killed ten of thousands of Iraqi civilians, fueled a sectarian conflict and so destabilized the country that John McCain recently said we may have to occupy Iraq for one hundred years. What kind of liberation is this?

When President Bush says that Iraq threatened "free nations," it is just a bald faced lie. After the conclusion of the first Gulf War comprehensive sanctions were imposed on Iraq, causing its weapon's programs and economy to drift into disrepair. Iraq had no intention of threatening anyone. Iraq's neighbor to the north, Turkey, was also against the war. President Bush also kindly forgot to mention that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were nowhere to be found.

Aided by the most effective and precise air campaign in history, coalition forces raced across 350 miles of enemy territory -- destroying Republican Guard Divisions, pushing through the Karbala Gap, capturing Saddam International Airport, and liberating Baghdad in less than one month.

President Bush speaks as if the operation to "liberate" Iraq was an unrivaled display of military genius. The reality is that Iraq was such a broken and poor country that it was easy for us to race across the southern border and occupy Baghdad. Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times and a supporter of the war in Iraq, said, after a brief visit to the country in 2003, "we defeated the Flintstones." He noted that outside of the major cities, Iraq wasn't even in our millennium.

What our troops found in Iraq following Saddam's removal was horrifying. They uncovered children's prisons, and torture chambers, and rape rooms where Iraqi women were violated in front of their families. They found videos showing regime thugs mutilating Iraqis deemed disloyal to Saddam. And across the Iraqi countryside they uncovered mass graves of thousands executed by the regime.

It's undeniable that Saddam Hussein ran Iraq like a prison state, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that President Bush -- or Cheney or Rumsfled -- were acting out of compassion when they decided to invade Iraq. If their concern was Iraq's humanitarian plight, why didn't they speak out against the U.N. sanctions that were killing innocent Iraqis, mostly children? Why didn't Donald Rumsfeld speak out against Iraq's use of chemical weapons when he was sent as a personal envoy of Ronald Reagan in 1983 to forge closer ties between our two countries? Saddam has been running a prison state for over twenty years, sanctions have been killing Iraqis for over ten, and President Bush wants us to believe that suddenly everyone in his Administration grew a heart? President Bush pretends to express sympathy for Iraq because it gives him the excuse he needs to implement his real objective: military and financial dominance of Iraq.

The battle in Iraq has been longer and harder and more costly than we anticipated -- but it is a fight we must win. So our troops have engaged these enemies with courage and determination. And as they've battled the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they have helped the Iraqi people reclaim their nation, and helped a young democracy rise from the rubble of Saddam Hussein's tyranny.

The Bush Administration originally claimed the war in Iraq would cost $60 billion, but now it's run up into the hundreds of billions with no end in sight. Also, how will we know when we "win" in Iraq? Bush never says.

Bush also never bothers to list the horrible costs of the war. He can say that Saddam's torture chambers are now empty, but what about the fact that our invasion of Iraq triggered the world's third largest refugee crisis? Or the fact that tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers have been wounded? There have been no real benefits to the war in Iraq, just the old saw that we must stay in Iraq and hope things will get better.

Hopefully one day Americans will remember March 19th 2003 in the same way they remember the September 11 terror attacks or Pearl Harbor. It should be remembered as a national tragedy, a day in which a band of war criminals lied this nation into a pointless, costly, and treacherous war.

President Bush's cocktail of fear

The Pentagon released a report this week stating that there were no direct ties between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda. While this information isn’t entirely new, it does officially seal the case against the Bush Administration and further exposes the treachery that led us to war. In his famous Mission Accomplished speech President Bush reminded Americans on why we had to invade Iraq:

We have removed an ally of al-Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

This argument -- that Iraq had WMD and “connections” to al-Qaeda -- was one Americans heard over and over in 2002, and because it met no opposition -- not from Democrats or the media -- it blazed the road to war. However, both these arguments were entirely fictional. Iraq was never an ally of al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime was not developing, stockpiling, or amassing weapons of mass destruction. This was all part of the Bush Administration’s cocktail of fear -- claim Iraq is developing poison gases, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons; that they are plotting with al-Qaeda; that time was against us; that a “mushroom cloud” may blossom over a U.S city -- and the American people drank it right up.

So while it surely served the Administration's purpose to portray Iraq as a nation arming for war and threatening the peace of the entire world, the reality was far different. At the conclusion of the first Gulf War the United Nations imposed comprehensive sanctions on Iraq that stifled its economy and impoverished its people. For instance, by 1999 the U.N. estimated that 1.7 million Iraqi civilians had died due to the sanctions, perhaps a half million were children. Iraqis lacked basic sanitation and access to medical care. UNICEF reported that 4500 children under the age of five were dying each month from hunger and disease. The sanctions ultimately were responsible for creating a famine in Iraq that probably killed millions. Such facts belie any suggestion that Iraq was a threat to the United States. How can a nation that cannot even feed its own people threaten the world's remaining super-power?

Economist Joseph Stiglitz has a new book about Iraq called the Three Trillion Dollar War. Of course, it would probably be more accurate to call it the Three Trillion Dollar Scam. The belief that a poor, starving and impoverished nation could threaten this country, or the belief that occupying Iraq would be in our national interests has to be one of the most costliest scams in history. So far, no one has been held accountable for this scam, which also shows that it is one of the greatest crimes in history.

What's so great about the Surge?

Last year President Bush implemented a new strategy in Iraq -- the "surge" -- aimed at increasing security in Baghdad, and putting another 4,000 troops in the Anbar province to fight the Sunni insurgents. At first, the results didn't look too promising. When General Patraeus released his interim report on the "surge" in July 2007 coalition fatalities were at an all time high. Still, General Patraues claimed the "surge" had been moderately successful.

Since then there has been a remarkable decline in U.S fatalities, and now they are at an all time low. While the immediate reaction is to attribute this decline to the "surge" there may be other factors at work.

Conservative columnist Paul Sperry argues that the reduction in violence isn't so much due to the troops as it is the cash "bribes" we are offering to the tribal sheiks in the Anbar province. He writes:

The only, 'success' in Anbar is really just a return on U.S. financial inducements to tribal sheiks. Instead of dropping bombs in Iraq, we're now dropping bundles of cash in the laps of insurgents who without the crude bribes would no doubt return to ambushing our troops.

There is also corroborating evidence from the TimesOnline:

The Sunday Times has witnessed at first hand the enormous sums of cash changing hands. One sheikh in a town south of Baghdad was given $38,000 (£19,000) and promised a further $189,000 over three months to drive Al-Qaeda fighters from a nearby camp.

.

If these cash "bribes" are responsible for the reduction in violence then we can say that in all respects the "surge" has been a failure. Perhaps the White and military were growing weary of all the negative press coming out of Iraq and wanted to turn back the tide. The Sunni insurgency was just too difficult for us to handle, so instead we tried a new approach: bribery.

This makes me wonder that if the part about the Sunnis turning against al-Qaeda is just a cover story. Al-Qaeda's presence in Iraq is hotly debated and, I suspect, wildly inflated. In fact, I doubt al-Qaeda has any real presence in Iraq at all. Perhaps we refer to foreign "terrorists" in Iraq as al-Qaeda because most of the foreign fighters come from Saudi Arabia and Bush doesn't want to alienate one of our "allies."

However, I think the military just decided to hand out cash bribes to the Sunnis and invented the part about them turning against al-Qaeda. The military cannot just claim we are paying off the insurgents to keep the violence down, so they concocted a story to make the "bribes" appear legitimate.

This is all speculation at this point, and I invite any criticism, but we cannot trust the White House and military to tell us the truth about Iraq.

The Robb Silberman Report: Just the Facts

The Robb Silberman Report was released on March 31, 2005, but its conclusions never did seem to penetrate the debate about our intelligence on Iraq and the WMD controversy. We often still hear many say that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, or had dual-use programs, or was trying to acquire uranium from Niger, or surreptiously hid its weapons in Syria. The Robb Silberman report repudiates all of these claims.

On Nuclear Weapons:

"Based on its post-war investigations, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) concluded--contrary to the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments--that Iraq had not tried to reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991."

"The Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had not tried to reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991. 77 It concluded that Iraq's efforts to develop gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment ended in 1991, as did Iraq's work on other uranium enrichment programs, which Iraq had explored prior to the Gulf War. 78 The ISG also found no evidence that Iraq had taken steps to advance its pre-1991 work in nuclear weapons design and development."

"The Iraq Survey Group also found no evidence that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991. 113 With respect to the reports that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, ISG interviews with Ja'far Diya Ja'far, the head of Iraq's pre-1991 enrichment programs, indicated that Iraq had only two contacts with the Nigerien government after 1998--neither of which was related to uranium. 114 One such contact was a visit to Niger by the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican Wissam Zahawie, the purpose of which Ja'far said was to invite the Nigerien President to visit Iraq (a story told publicly by Zahawie). 115 The second contact was a visit to Iraq by a Nigerien minister to discuss Nigerien purchases of oil from Iraq--with no mention of "any kind of payment, quid pro quo, or offer to provide Iraq with uranium ore, other than cash in exchange for petroleum." 116 The use of the last method of payment is supported by a crude oil contract, dated June 26, 2001, recovered by the ISG."

These conclusions are not ambiguous -- Iraq had no nuclear weapon program and did not try to acquire uranium from Niger. To this day, however, Bush apologists still claim that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Africa.

On Biological Weapons:


"Contrary to the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments, the ISG's post-war investigations concluded that Iraq had unilaterally destroyed its biological weapons stocks and probably destroyed its remaining holdings of bulk BW agent in 1991 and 1992. 221 Moreover, the ISG concluded that Iraq had conducted no research on BW agents since that time, although Iraq had retained some dual-use equipment and intellectual capital. 222 The ISG found no evidence of a mobile BW program."

"The Iraq Survey Group found that the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments about Iraq's BW program were almost entirely wrong. The ISG concluded that "Iraq appears to have destroyed its undeclared stocks of BW weapons and probably destroyed remaining holdings of bulk BW agent" shortly after the Gulf War."

"Nevertheless, the ISG "found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes."

On Chemical Weapons:

"After the war, the ISG concluded--contrary to the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments--that Iraq had unilaterally destroyed its undeclared CW stockpile in 1991 and that there were no credible indications that Baghdad had resumed production of CW thereafter."


"The ISG concluded--contrary to the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments--that Iraq had actually unilaterally destroyed its undeclared CW stockpile in 1991 and that there were no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of CW thereafter. 482 Iraq had not regained its pre-1991 CW technical sophistication or production capabilities prior to the war."

"Regarding Iraq's dual-use chemical infrastructure and personnel, the Iraq Survey Group found no direct link to a CW program. Instead, investigators found that, though Iraq's chemical industry began expanding after 1996, in part due to the influx of funds and resources from the Oil-for-Food program, the country's CW capabilities remained less than those which existed prior to the Gulf War."

"In sum, the Iraq Survey Group found no direct link between Iraq's dual-use infrastructure and its CW program."

"Still, given that, of the dozens of CW munitions that the ISG discovered, all had been manufactured before 1991, the Intelligence Community's 2002 assessments that Iraq had restarted its CW program turned out to have been seriously off the mark."

On Delivery Systems:

"Following its exhaustive investigation in Iraq, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had indeed been developing small UAVs, but found no evidence that the UAVs had been designed to deliver biological agent. 555 Instead, the ISG concluded that Iraq had been developing and had flight tested a small, autonomous UAV intended for use as a reconnaissance platform, 556 and had developed a prototype for another small UAV for use in electronic warfare missions."

"The Iraq Survey Group concluded that, although Iraq had pursued UAVs as BW delivery systems in the past, Iraq's pre-Operation Iraqi Freedom program to develop small, autonomous-flight UAVs had actually been intended to fulfill reconnaissance and airborne electronic warfare missions. The ISG found no evidence suggesting that Iraq had, at the time of the war, any intent to use UAVs as BW or CW delivery systems."

Conclusions:


"Having gained access to Iraq and its leaders, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that the unlikely course of voluntary abandonment by Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction was, in fact, the reality."

"According to the ISG, Saddam's regime, under severe pressure from United Nations sanctions, reacted by unilaterally destroying its WMD stockpiles and halting work on its WMD programs."

Unfortunately, not a single person was ever held responsible for this massive "intelligence" failure nor does there seem to be any outrage that the entire justification for war was a hoax.

Brit Hume: Fox's fact-free journalist

In response to the Center for the Public Integrity's report on the false statements made by President Bush and other top officials regarding Iraq's WMD in the two years following 9/11, Brit Hume, a Fox News anchor, had this to say:

A study by two self-described non-profit journalism organizations accuses President Bush and his advisers of 935 false statements about the threat from Iraq in the two years following the 9-11 attacks. But a large number of those statements were drawn from repeated assertions that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- a concept nearly universally accepted by most of the world's intelligence services at the time.

Bush apologists always defend President Bush by claiming "everyone thought Iraq had those weapons of mass destruction." However, this isn't correct, and it's based upon a misunderstanding of two separate intelligence claims.

The United Nations did recognize that there were still outstanding issues regarding unaccounted for WMD in Iraq. Lt. Gen Hussein Kamel, who defected from Iraq in August of 1995, told the CIA that he personally oversaw the destruction of Iraq's stockpile of weapons in the summer of 1991. However, the United Nations did not witness this destruction, so they could not verify it. So this became a controversy throughout the intelligence world: did Iraq really destroy its weapons in the summer of 1991, or did it conceal them for later use? No one really knew. As Hans Blix defined the problem, "One must not jump to the conclusion that they [WMD] exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented."

In 2002 was the Bush Administration claiming that Iraq did not destroy its weapons in the summer of 1991? No, they were making an entirely separate intelligence claim, namely, that in 2002 Iraq "renewed" production of biological and chemical weapons and began to actively seek a nuclear weapon. The subtitle of the October 2002 NIE was Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction. In other words, it had nothing to do with whether or not Iraq did destroy weapons back in 1991, but instead claimed that Iraq had begun new weapon programs in order to wage war and threaten the United States.

The question "Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction?" is imprecise. Does it mean: did Iraq not destroy its weapons back in 1991? Or does it mean: Did Iraq "renew" production of biological and chemical weapons in 2002?

The United Nations was trying to answer the first question, while the Bush Administration and the U.S. 2002 NIE were trying to answer the second. Hans Blix was agnostic on the first question, while the Bush Administration was certain on the second. So the specific intelligence claims made by the Bush Administration were not universally accepted.

For instance, on March 17th 2003 President Bush made the following claim:

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

However, when the United Nations (UNMOVIC) left Iraq they reached a far different conclusion:

UN INSPECTORS FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF PROHIBITED WEAPONS PROGRAMMES
AS OF 18 MARCH WITHDRAWAL, HANS BLIX TELLS SECURITY COUNCIL

Says New Environment in Iraq, with Full Access and Cooperation,
Should Allow Establishment of Truth about ‘Unaccounted for’ Items

On March 18th UNMOVIC, the most sophisticated source of direct intelligence in Iraq, says there is no evidence of any WMD programs. While President Bush says there is "no doubt" Iraq continues to possess WMD.

Brit Hume is obviously not aware of the facts, is not interested in the facts, but only is interested in performing his duties as a shill for the Bush White House and the war in Iraq.

WMD: The Lie that Lingers

A recent report by the Center for Public Integrity has chronicled at least 935 "false statements" made by top Bush administration officials regarding Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and "connections" with al-Qaeda. While this report has gotten a good amount of buzz, and made a big splash in the blogosphere, it doesn't present any new information. We've known the intelligence on Iraq's weapons program has been wrong since 2004, if not earlier, and that Iraq had no operational connection with al-Qaeda.

Unfortunately, this report didn't do much to clear up some of the confusing and vexing issues surrounding the Bush Administration's use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Needless to say, this topic is politically explosive, so it's very difficult to make any kind of definitive statement that doesn't immediately provoke a torrent of partisan rancor. But we cannot understand the WMD controversy without first wading through the political muck, so that's where we must begin.

Politically, there are two very different versions of the WMD controversy. The first, which is the favorite of Democrats, is that President Bush and top administration officials deliberately made false statements about Iraq's WMD to frighten the American people to justify a war with Iraq. The second, which is popular among Republicans, is that Bush was simply repeating the conclusions of U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, and that the decision to invade Iraq was based on a genuine concern to protect the United States from Iraq's dangerous arsenal of WMD. If the first is true, Bush is a rotten war criminal. And if the second is true, then Bush is courageous leader who simply was misled by U.S. intelligence.

Anytime there is a suggestion that Bush "lied" to the country about Iraq's WMD, then Republicans make the argument that Bush's statements are no different from the Democrat's. Bush and the Republicans are not the only ones who thought Iraq had WMD. Here are some quotes by Democrats:

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
-- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002"

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
-- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
-- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
-- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

We can see that Bush's statements on Iraq's WMD program are really not so different from the Democrat's. So does this prove that there was no chicanery going on? Were we all wrong, as Bush supporters like to say? Or was there an effort to influence the intelligence to justify a war with Iraq? The intelligence world is full of secrecy, anonymous sources, and murky details, so a crystal clear picture of what went on is going to be difficult, but we have enough background information to make reasonable conclusions.

A fact often overlooked is that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)was a seismic shift in thinking about Iraq. The Robb-Silberman report, a task force commissioned by President Bush to look into the intelligence failure, states the following, “The October 2002 NIE reflected a shift, however, in the Community's judgments about the state of Iraq's BW program. Previous Community estimates had assessed that Iraq could have biological weapons; the October 2002 estimate, in contrast, assessed with ‘high confidence’ that Iraq ‘has’ biological weapons.”

“The Intelligence Community's assessment of Iraq's CW programs and capabilities remained relatively stable during the 1990s, judging that Iraq retained a modest capability to restart a chemical warfare program. The October 2002 NIE therefore marked a shift from previous assessments in that it concluded that Iraq had actually begun renewed production of chemical agents on a sizable scale.”

Is it not suspicious that the October 2002 NIE gave the Bush Administration the justification it needed to initiate a war with Iraq? Are we to believe that the intelligence agencies just so happened to produce so much bad intelligence right when the Bush Administration was trying to sell a war? More importantly, the October 2002 NIE seems to provide an ex post justification for Dick Cheney’s August 26, 2002 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars where he makes the following alarming statements,

“The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.”

“Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon”

“Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

Of course, only the most Pollyannaish would object to war if this was all true. However, this wasn’t true, nor was it supported by U.S. intelligence at the time. George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, said in his book _At The Center of The Storm_ that Cheney’s speech “went well beyond what our analysis could support,” but he failed to say so at the time. The Vice President had just concocted his own intelligence report out of whole cloth that had no basis in fact. It’s also important to note that Cheney wasn’t just claiming that Iraq had renewed production of biological and chemical weapons, but that Saddam’s intent was to use these weapons to wage aggressive wars, to blackmail the world, and threaten the United States. Cheney’s speech inaugurated the propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to our national security, and only a war -- regime change -- could guarantee our safety. In this light, was it really bad intelligence or political intelligence?

Another seldom mentioned fact about the October 2002 NIE was that it was a rushed job. Typically, it takes about ten months to produce a NIE, but the one on Iraq’s WMD was completed in about 19 days. This fact alone proves the NIE was a political document, because there wasn’t sufficient time for all the raw data to be properly digested and assimilated throughout the various organs of U.S. intelligence. Instead of the normal gestation period of ten months, it came into being after three weeks, useless and stillborn, with its conclusions barely surviving a few months of exposure. The Robb Silberman report states, “The time pressures of the October 2002 NIE also may have hampered the normal thorough review before dissemination.” Of course, this “time pressure” is really political pressure, because the Bush Administration needed the intelligence community to give them a document that could justify a war -- mission accomplished.

While the Robb Silberman report provides a painstaking and thorough analysis of how certain aspects of the intelligence community went awry, the main points can be summed up briefly. In short, the Bush Administration was alleging that in 2002 Iraq had “renewed” production of biological and chemical weapons and was actively seeking a nuclear weapon. Once we remove the layers and layers of intelligence “assumptions,” “best guesses,” and “interpretations,” we see only a paucity of evidence that could barely survive a moment’s scrutiny. The conclusion that Iraq was seeking a nuclear weapon mainly came down to two bits of information: aluminum tubes and a forged uranium document. The conclusion that Iraq had extensive mobile biological weapon labs came down to one source, an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball, who was unreliable and a known fabricator. The conclusion that Iraq had renewed production of chemical weapons came down to satellite imagery that showed “suspicious” truck activity, and, again, Curveball. That was it. The entire case for war in Iraq was built upon a flimsy house of cards that could hardly stand on its own.

However, what is even more troublesome is that after the publication of the October 2002 NIE, its conclusions came into immediate question. On March 7th, 2003 the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) released its findings about the state of Iraq’s nuclear program. These findings eviscerated the claims made by Dick Cheney and the 2002 NIE. The IAEA exposed the uranium documents as crude forgeries and concluded that the aluminum tubes were not designed for enriching uranium.

“There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminum tubes in question.”

The 2002 NIE maintained that Iraq had renewed production of chemical weapons, but this also came into question after the United Nations team (UNMOVIC) spent months in Iraq acting on the best U.S. intelligence. Hans Blix states, “And among the 700 inspections that we performed, none brought us any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.” So the United States could not provide a single bit of intelligence to corroborate the conclusion that Iraq had facilities producing chemical weapons.

Finally, in regards to the conclusion that Iraq had extensive mobile biological weapon labs, this came from a single source, Curveball, who was known to be unreliable prior to October of 2002. The Robb Silberman report states, “Indications of possible problems with Curveball began to emerge well before the 2002 NIE...The analysts' resistance to any information that could undermine Curveball's reliability suggests that the analysts were unduly wedded to a source that supported their assumptions about Iraq's BW programs.”

What does all this mean? It demonstrates conclusively that every bit of raw data that went into the October 2002 NIE --the intelligence document that paved the way for the war in Iraq -- had either been debunked or called into question before President Bush initiated “hostilities” on March 19th 2003. Simply, Bush took the United States to war even though the entire case for war had gone up in plume of smoke.

So how do we assess culpability? On October 11th the Senate approved the resolution to grant President Bush authority to wage war in Iraq. So after this date, the decision to go to war is entirely invested in President Bush. It was after this date that the conclusions made in the 2002 NIE came into question. The uranium documents were exposed as forgeries. Hans Blix found no traces of chemical weapons, and Curveball was widely known as a fabricator. So the most relevant question is: was the belief that Iraq had WMD just as solid in March of 2003 as it was in October of 2002? The answer is obviously “no.” Intelligence is a dynamic process -- conclusions can and do change. There is no reason to stay wedded to assumptions if the evidence changes. If President Bush was truly concerned about the accuracy of the intelligence, he could’ve called for another NIE, or permitted Congress and the Senate to cast another vote in light of the latest intelligence. However, he used his “authority” to wage war and the rest is history.

Ultimately, the war in Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction, or protecting this country from a rogue regime. That was merely a convenient sales pitch for the war. The war in Iraq was about something else. But that's another story.

Is war with Iran on the horizon?

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITEE TESTIMONY -- ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, February 1, 2007

It seems as if the United States is always on the cusp of plunging into a full scale war with Iran. Last year, President Bush made the allegation that Iran was responsible for providing sophisticated "explosively formed projectiles" to the Iraqi insurgency. This year the State Department added the Al-Qods to the list of terrorist organizations. Finally, there has been much saber rattling over Iran's nuclear weapon program, and while the latest NIE on Iran defused much of the tension, the White House remains adamant that Iran is determined to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Last weekend there was an "incident" in the the strait of Hormuz in which Iranian speedboats "swarmed" several Navy ships. During the communication there was a threat, "I am coming to you...you will explode in a few minutes." Originally, the Pentagon claimed that this threat came from one of the speedboats, but now things are not so clear. Supposedly, it may have came from shore, or from another merchant freighter in the strait. However, this doesn't stop President Bush from playing up this incident for all it's worth:

"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere, so the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late."

You're not imagining things if you think this rhetoric sounds awfully familiar.

We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.

This was from a speech in Cincinnati made on October 9th, 2002 as part of the Administration's attempt to justify the use of force in Iraq.

Americans need to understand that those who formulate America's foreign policy, the Neocons, are adamant that the United States overthrow Iran's regime, and occupy the region. We must interpret all events in this light. It's very possible that there will be an attempt to provoke Iran or possibly stage a "Gulf of Tonkin" incident to start a war with Iran. We should be skeptical of any report released by the Pentagon or the White House that alleges Iran is "threatening" the United States. America will not benefit from a war with Iran, but the Administration desperately wants one, and right now there is no telling how far they will go to get one.