We have a substantial amount of information at our disposal to help us figure out what lwas behind the decision to invade Iraq. The leaked British documents known as the Downing Street Minutes are a primary source for what the war planners were thinking about before the war. These are leaked documents from the highest levels of the British government unencumbered by considerations of what the public may think. The documents offer evidence of a criminal conspiracy. Conspiracy is a loaded word, but in this case it is no joke.[1]
The British plainly stated the real motive for war: “regime change by military means.” They also admitted this was an illegal justification for war because it did not qualify as self-defense as defined in UN article 51, nor did it fit the newly acquired doctrine of humanitarian intervention, and the Security Council had not authorized the use of force. They went on to note that the US was insisting they had the right to invade under an interpretation they alone in the world maintained, which is another way of saying the US is a rogue state with contempt for world opinion and rule of law.
The war had already begun during these discussions. One document corroborates accounts in the press that the US had doubled the rate of bombing months before the war had been approved, “Defense Secretary (Rumsfeld) said that the US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime.” But the British did not abandon the criminal war effort; instead they devised “a realistic political strategy… necessary to justify government military action.”
They planned to force the Security Council to authorize the war by creating a conflict with a clandestine bombing campaign that could be blamed on Saddam or by cynically manipulating the UN inspections to create an incident that would justify military action. The planners reasoned “that an ultimatum could be cast in terms” that would “wrongfoot Saddam” on inspections. Saddam would “refuse to allow in the UN inspections,” “expel them”, or they might find “significant evidence of WMD.” If any of the above happened they could pressure the Security Council to authorize the war. They hoped “to create the conditions in which [they] could legally support military action.” Recall that the inspections were ostensibly meant to avert war. That was a cynical deception. If the above failed they could reluctantly fall back on “American hegemon.”
Many still mistakenly believe we are there because of bad intelligence regarding WMD. I won’t review the full record, but the Memos do say some interesting things about the topic. They discussed the need for a “public relations strategy” and “time… required to prepare public opinion.” It was to be “an information campaign which has to be closely related to an overseas information campaign.” This “media campaign” would “give full coverage to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, including his WMD.” So that was the plan to "prepare" domestic and foreign opinion for the war. A question should immediately be raised, what was the internal estimation of the threat Saddam posed to the free world with his weapons programs compared to what was said publicly during the “information campaign”?
They acknowledged that “the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran,” therefore it did not “justify military action” Saddam had been bottled up, “since 1991, the policy of containment has been partially successful: sanctions have effectively frozen Iraq’s nuclear program. Iraq has been prevented from rebuilding its conventional arsenal to pre-Gulf War levels; ballistic missile programs have been severely restricted; biological weapons and chemical weapons programs have been hindered… [and] Saddam has not succeeded in seriously threatening his neighbors… Even the best survey of Iraq’s WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW fronts” The worrisome programs “have not, as far as we know, been stepped up.”
Links to terrorism were also dubious: “U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is so far frankly unconvincing … there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL and Al Qaida,” and “there is no recent evidence of Iraq complicity with international terrorism. There is therefore no justification for action against Iraq.” These assessments demonstrate they knew they were facing a serious “problem of bringing public opinion to accept the imminence of a threat from Iraq.” The comparison of internal assessments to what was said publicly is striking. Just as one example recall that Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney both invoked the likelihood of a mushroom cloud from an Iraqi nuke over an American city.
The memos are significant evidence that everyone knew the war was illegal. They considered that unremarkable. But it did present two problems. First, they would be indictable as war criminals. Second, there was the familiar problem of public opinion. To deal with the first problem they tried to manipulate the UN Security Council into green lighting the invasion. They approached the second problem with a carefully coordinated media relations campaign they hoped would convince the public that military action was necessary. They clearly stated the real objective, “regime change.” But why did the US planners want regime change? The memos leave that question open for the most part, so we should turn to other sources.
The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) gives a bit of insight into why the foreign policy establishment wanted regime change. PNAC is a right-wing organization that publishes papers on American foreign policy. They openly applaud US hegemony and advocate a new American empire. They believe the UN should be dismantled and advocate that the US use military power to maintain access and control over the world’s resources. Many of the people currently in power are members of PNAC, icluding vice president Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, early backers of the group included Jeb Bush, the president's brother; Richard Armitage, now deputy secretary of state; Robert Zoellick, now U.S. trade commissioner; I. Lewis Libby, now Cheney's top aide; and Zalmay Khalilzad, once America's special envoy to Afghanistan. In 1998 PNAC wrote a letter to President Clinton urging him to go to war with Iraq. They argued that the “uncertainty” of leaving Saddam in power would put “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil… at hazard.” The signatories included Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.[2]
PNAC believes in a world order with the US sitting at the top making decisions for the rest of the world. Empire is not a bad thing. They believe a US empire can promote democratic values and protect its interests, seemingly without contradiction. Many of these men also have long standing ties to the private energy sector.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former top aide of 16 years, recently described these operatives as a “cabal” within the Administration that hijacked American foreign policy with disastrous consequences. He left with Powell at the beginning of George Bush’s second term and spoke out recently at a foreign policy forum where he said, “we had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly. That’s how serious we thought about it.”[3]
Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports that within the administration there were conflicting views about what should be done with Iraqi oil. His analysis is based on several documents he obtained from the State Department, including a 300 page document on how to privatize Iraqi oil. Some of the documents pre-date 9/11, corroborating other evidence that the Iraq war was planned well before 9/11 with oil as one of the primary considerations. Palast reports that the PNAC faction of the administration favored a privatization plan to sell off the Iraqi oil fields to Western oil companies. Ultimately they hoped to break OPEC with Iraqi oil.[4]
Incidentally the oil industry did not favor this plan of action or the Iraq war in general because it would likely destabilize the world market. Oil execs are primarily concerned with profit motive, while the PNAC cabal was driven by a vision of American military dominance and control over natural resources.
Coalition authority Chief Paul Bremer began implementing the plan with his infamous 100 laws to restructure Iraq’s economy, which no sovereign nation would have accepted. Before he left Iraq Bremer stacked the Iraqi ministries with appointees that would serve 5 year terms. The laws called for the privatization of Iraq’s state owned enterprises, allowed 100 percent foreign ownership of Iraqi business, freed foreign firms from Iraqi laws and taxes – even if they poison the environment or negligently kill, allowed foreign banks to purchase up to half of Iraqi banks, and suspended all restrictions on goods and money leaving or entering the country.
The Bremer laws opened the country up for exploitation and corruption. The ministry appointments ensured a compliant power structure. For example, then Finance Minister Abu Adel Mahdi whom the Washington Post favorably described as “the smooth, urbane face of the party, and he appears not in clerical robes, but in a Western suit” carrying “a message of moderation” held a Washington press conference where he said, “So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.” The London Review of Books recently reported on the consequences of these laws and American occupation. They reported that a recent audit revealed that under Bremer’s oversight almost nine billion dollars was “unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it went.” In addition “$20 billion of Iraqi money” had been paid to foreign corporations “compared to $300 million of US funds.”[5]
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason," – Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, 2003
The Administration admittedly had many motives and for a decade had been yearning for war. The motivations that are commonly accepted, disarming WMDs and democracy building, should be discarded. Democracy building was appended well after the occupation begun. It is a rhetorical appeal to the American people’s value system, democracy building was never considered in the DSM or other primary source documents. The claim that it was a matter of national security is absurd; the DSM also demonstrates that the war planners knew well Iraq had been contained and was not a threat requiring an immediate war. The media relations campaign worked rather well considering that no WMDs ever turned up but the original claim is still seriously considered. They were likely hoping for a quick and easy war that would undermine any post facto criticisms of their original claims. Their belief in American military power betrayed them. The public would forgive and forget the blatant misrepresentations if the war ended quietly.
The given rationales are plainly false, and the real motivations are not difficult to divine with an administration largely comprised of oil/energy men and unapologetic American imperialists. But, the consequences of the Administration’s corruption and hubris are beginning to erode their power. A special investigator is expected to hand out indictments for many of these people in the coming weeks over the intentional leak of a CIA agent. That is of course a footnote in the volumes of crimes they have committed, impermissible because it goes against the establishment. There is a parallel to the Nixon administration and Whitewater. Nixon oversaw the illegal and monstrous bombing of 3 countries in Southeast Asia and allowed the FBI to systematically spy on and assassinate US citizens – a program known as COINTELPRO, but was undone by a minor crime against the establishment with a burglary of the democratic party. The lessons to be learned are fairly straightforward, virtually no crimes are large enough to be punished if the crimes are perpetuated against the weak. Attacks that go against the system are dysfunctional and immediately prosecuted.
Notes:
[1] The memos are Iraq Legal Background Memo, Ricketts Memo, Manning Memo, Iraq Options Paper, Meyer Memo, Cabinet Office Paper, Straw Memo, and the Downing Street Minutes.
[2] The PNAC letter can be found online at http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
[3] The transcript of Lawrence Wilkerson’s speech can be found online at http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Wilkerson%20Speech%20--%20WEB.htm
[4] Article originally published in Harper’s, Palast has updates at his web site here http://www.gregpalast.com
[5] Bremer's 100 laws
Juhasz, Antonia. The Hand-Over That Wasn't: Illegal Orders give the US a Lock on Iraq's Economy. Los Angelos Times, 5 August 2004
On corruption see among others Harriman, Ed. Where Has All the Money Gone? London Review of Books. Vol. 27 No. 13. 7 July 2005
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