*A Keeper*: exactly how Bush built his false case for war

[G_j]

The Paper Trail
by John Prados
National security analyst John Prados spells out exactly how Bush built his false case for war and sold it to Congress and the American people. This one you'll want to print and save for future reference.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_paper_trail.php

In all the heat and noise of the suitability, or lack thereof, of American intelligence before the Iraq war, the elephant in the closet remains the White House and President George W. Bush himself. Intelligence is supposed to inform policymaking. The charge made about Iraq is that the intelligence was really used to sell the war, to hoodwink America. This is no academic debate, but rather an issue with legal ramifications and moral implications that reach directly into the Oval Office. There will be much to be said over coming months about the performance of the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. intelligence community as a whole and the products they delivered, but that is the more academic debate. Today’s aim is to shine light on the White House question: how did George Bush further distort U.S. intelligence estimates, and to what end?

The White House pronouncements in their proper context show quite clearly how the hoodwinking progressed. A good point of departure is the speech President Bush made to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002. As Congress considered a resolution that would permit the use of force in Iraq, Bush’s mission that day was to reinforce the message conveyed by the U.S. national intelligence estimate given to Congress and the CIA white paper that distilled that document. Reinforce it he did. President Bush took one allegation disputed in the intelligence estimate—that Iraq had a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to dispense chemical or biological weapons—and recited it as fact. Bush attributed to Iraq’s own admission the claim, actually drawn from a British government paper, that Iraq had produced 30,000 liters of anthrax (in fact, a number in excess of the British estimate, which was of a potential amount) and to U.N. inspectors the further claim that really Baghdad had “likely produced” 60,000 to 120,000 liters of that potent agent. These figures far exceeded anything in U.S. intelligence estimates (and none of these stocks were used in the war or could be found afterward). Bush also said, explicitly, “Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases,” a claim highly disputed within the intelligence community but again relayed as fact.

With these and additional assertions, President Bush got his congressional resolution. This permitted the president to utilize force to ensure compliance with “all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions” and against the continuing threat posed by Iraq. No part of the law allowed war for the purpose of regime change, to compel changes in Iraqi government internal actions, or for any other purpose. The authority to use force was explicitly linked to the sole question of the alleged Iraqi weapons. If Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the U.N. resolutions by definition would have stood as fulfilled and the authorization for a U.S. war would expire. Thus, Iraqi weapons stood at the very heart of the entire Bush enterprise. The drive for war required not only the assertion that Iraq possessed these weapons, but also the avoidance of any judgment by UN inspectors that Saddam had been effectively disarmed.

The set of charges in the Bush October 2002 speech became a litany driven home by repetition in an orchestrated series of speeches and interviews of senior U.S. officials, statements by White House spokesmen and papers released by the White House. When UN inspectors returned to Iraq in December and the Baghdad government supplied a comprehensive statement of its weapons programs and efforts to disarm, discrediting that report became the next hurdle. The State Department and CIA jointly crafted a fact sheet that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell released on Dec. 19 with the assertion that Baghdad was in “material breach” of the U.N. disarmament resolutions. This document did not actually analyze the contents of the Iraqi declaration. Rather, it hit the same points featured in the previous U.S. litany of charges about Iraq. Remarkably, it was in the State/CIA fact sheet —not in Bush’s State of the Union Address a month later—that the administration first used the bogus charge that Saddam had sought uranium from Niger, asserting that “The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger.” It is also of interest that the State/CIA paper dropped Bush’s huge exaggeration of Iraqi anthrax production. Neither point was picked up by the media at the time; no one called the Bush administration on its assertions.

..more..

[G_j]

1. kick

[G_j]

2. worth a bookmark in my book....

:kick:

[Eloriel]

3. Me too

:kick:

[Karenina]

4. The TRUTH will OUT!

:kick:

[devinsgram]

7. Exactly, this administration forgot about the truth

and the fact that eventually, the truth always comes out. It might take awhile, but goes around, comes around. The sad point is that a lot of lives were lost before the truth finally came to light.

[Guaranteed]

5. What exactly does someone DO with 120,000 liters of anthrax?

Destroy the whole world? The universe???

I think the US would be the only country stupid enough to make that much of such a potent weapon.

[G_j]

6. Aint that the truth

"I think the US would be the only country stupid enough to make that much of such a potent weapon."

[Quahog]

8. This passage is SO important

"No part of the law allowed war for the purpose of regime change, to compel changes in Iraqi government internal actions, or for any other purpose. The authority to use force was explicitly linked to the sole question of the alleged Iraqi weapons. If Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the U.N. resolutions by definition would have stood as fulfilled and the authorization for a U.S. war would expire. Thus, Iraqi weapons stood at the very heart of the entire Bush enterprise."

When people talk loosely about "who voted for the war" (e.g., Kerry), often they fail to understand the true nature of the war powers legislation that was placed before congress. The author is correct: bush* was authorized to use force against Iraq if Iraq could be shown conclusively to be in violation of UN resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction. If this could not be shown conslusively, the limits of the law had been reached and permission to use force was not granted.

This was a sensible piece of legislation, which, had it been adhered to legally by the administration, would NOT have facilitated the invasion of Iraq. bush* simply ignored the letter of the law, and took the passage of the legislation to mean that he had carte blanche to wage whatever sort of war he wished at any time he saw fit. The real dereliction of duty by our senators (Kerry included) came when they failed to stand up and scream bloody murder when the tanks rolled prior to the conditions of the law being met.

Of course, here again the imperial arrogance of the bush* whitehouse would likely have trumped any efforts by anyone in congress to slow the launch of the invasion. Any politician who argued that the criteria set out by the law had not been met for starting a war would have been met with, "Oh yes they have, we say they have, so they have, so shut up." Which, I must say, has worked remarkably well as a political strategy over the last four years. I'm often astonished at how willing Americans are to accept "It's true because I say it is" as a foundation for a conclusion reached by our selected government. I'd challenge anyone who feels that such statements truly settle issues to try a similar tack at work, or at home with the spouse, and see just how far they get.

Ultimately, then, the "legality" of the bush* invasion of Iraq hinges solely on whether we had credible evidence of Saddam's WMD's, and whether we had exhausted all diplomatic resources for establishing the veracity of that evidence, as well as for facilitating disarmament. Clearly, as Hans Blix noted at the time, we had not done our due diligence in this regard. Most of the rest of the world's leaders saw the holes in the evidence and gathered the magnitude of our failure to provide justification for our attack; this explains why only delusional co-dependents (UK) and those most reliant on the flow of American dollars (South Korea) were willing to join the fray. The much despised Germans, French, Russians, Chinese and others knew that Colin Powell was blowing smoke, and they weren't going to reward the administration's sloppy intelligence with a vote of support. And in retrospect, they were right.

At the end of the day, bush* "broke the law" when he started his war. I'm no expert on international rules of engagement and so forth, but it seems to me that one could credibly argue that the man and his cohorts are in fact war criminals. If Iraq posed no threat to anyone per the parameters of the war powers legislation, then what can we call the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis other than "ethnic cleansing?"