Iraq, the Media, and Looking Ahead

It has been awhile since I posted anything on Iraq. My outrage and disgust has not diminished, but the pen has tired. Today it looks like the country is slipping further into all out Civil War after the destruction of a Shia holy site.

Strategies, More of the Same
There has been much discussion in the policy journals about how to “win” in Iraq. The darling of the moment, published in Foreign Affairs, is Andrew Krepinevich’s “oil spot” strategy.[1] Krepinevich advises that instead of trying to control the entire country, U.S. forces should pacify a small area and spread outward. The strategy has a catchy name, the endorsement of military luminaries like John McCain[2], and vivid imagery. It will also undoubtedly lead to more war, bloodshed, and terrorism.

Every “sensible” person knows the U.S. cannot simply withdraw without creating an Iraqi civil war in its wake. In reality there is already a low intensity Civil War. Sectarian strife and religious killing has been steadily increasing since the invasion. The question is no longer if we can prevent it from happening, it is now can we do anything to mitigate it. I haven’t seen much that is convincing because most suggestions, like the “oil spot” strategy, overlook an obvious characteristic of the conflict: the presence of occupational troops is the biggest contributing factor to the insurgency and Iraqis, by large majorities, support resistance to the occupation.

The lively discussion is mostly irrelevant however, the strategy we are currently following is to withdraw American troops and replace their presence with aerial bombing; a sensible strategy if the goal is to create more destruction and mayhem.[3] Several studies have found that American bombs are responsible for more civilian deaths than anything else in the conflict.[4] In the west, we may see the distinction between an accidental bombing that destroys an apartment building or kills a wedding party but it is unlikely Iraqis appreciate the nuance. As we replace troops with bombs, the situation worsens.

It is likely that there is no easy answer or brilliant strategy to put things back together again in Iraq, but the absence of a clear strategy is not an excuse to advocate more violence and prolong the occupation with minor modifications. This elementary moral logic is unlikely to be acknowledged or understood by those in power who feel compelled to speak and act in pseudo-macho clichés like “bring ‘em on” or “stay the course” to appear strong, steely eyed, and unflinchingly resolute. Strength is admitting when you are wrong or when your current ideas no longer hold to reality and accepting the responsibility and personal embarrassment.

There will be no meaningful discussion or action until we rid ourselves of moral pretenses and false revisionism. We need to realign our priorities and place the wishes and views of the people we are supposedly fighting on behalf of above our own when determining what we do for them. To this point their wishes and opinions have been mostly marginalized.

Current State of Dialogue
It is difficult to pin down an accurate description of the West’s framework for discussion about the Iraq war. This is because the arguments, like the pretexts, shift as if built upon a foundation of sand to best rationalize the needs of any given situation. Rather than deal with every interpretation, I am limiting this discussion to two tracks that appear frequently:
1. Moral imperialism
2. The final confrontation.

In many discussions the invasion is an example of what neoconservative Francis Fukuyama calls the U.S.’s “virtuous imperialism.”[5] Much discussion and hand wringing goes into considering how well our mission to bring democracy to the Arab hordes is going. (The assumption that the war was idealistic folly is beyond question.) Fukuyama laments that the inability of occupational authorities to manage the postwar period may have setback “the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad.” The narrative presupposes that neoconservatives were blinded by their idealistic belief in liberty and American military from seeing possible difficulties in the war ahead.

Many “liberal hawks” threw their hats into the ring with these crusading idealists to support the war. Today, they can hardly admit they were both wrong and foolish to do so.

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, a self described liberal, explains why he supported the war.

“The Iraq war is not the product of oil avarice, or CIA evil, but of a surfeit of altruism, a naive compulsion to do good. That entire collection of neo- and retro-conservatives -- George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and particularly Paul Wolfowitz -- made war not for oil or for empire.
...
This is why so many liberals, myself included, originally supported the war. It engaged us emotionally. It seemed . . . well, right -- a just cause.”[6]

Cohen backhandedly offers a new legal justification for war, “emotional engagement.” If it smells like a “just” war, then it probably is.

Liberal hawk George Packer calls anyone who believed with certainty that the Iraq war would lead to disaster a “second rate mind.”[7] Packer goes on to express his belief that a “war’s merits could not be known in advance.” Apparently, international legalisms have no bearing on a war’s legitimacy. One wonders if he would use the same standards when discussing Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, or any other war for that matter. Fukuyama describes the exceptionalism that frees American actions from the moral constraints that apply to the rest of the world. “American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality” so “other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power." Case closed.

The commentators that favor this framework overlook some obvious evidence that contradicts the preferred storyline. Namely, neoconservative literature frankly discusses power concepts and expanding American hegemony in crass terms. It is not all spasms of idealism and “naive compulsions to do good.”

Jonah Goldberg gleefully attributes the eponymously named “Ledeen Doctrine” to iconic neoconservative Michael Ledeen. The doctrine holds that "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."[8] Doe-eyed Idealism understood well by schoolyard bullies and mafia dons.

Irving Kristol, one of the fathers of neo-conservatism, once put his conception of American idealism: “insignificant nations, like insignificant people, can quickly experience delusions of significance… In truth, the days of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ are never over… Gunboats are as necessary for international order as police cars are for domestic order.”[9] When insignificant people fail to appreciate the “unusually high degree of morality” in American foreign policy and dare to think the resources in their country belong to them, send in the gunboats, and put them “against the wall” to show them “we mean business.”

In 1998, the preeminent neoconservative think-tank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), implored Bill Clinton to invade Iraq or else “a significant portion of the world’s oil supply will be put at hazard.”[10] (Searches for the words “liberty”, “democracy”, or “freedom” in that two page document about why the U.S. should invade Iraq will net 0 results.)

Paul Wolfowitz, widely considered one of the more idealistic of the neocons, was one signatory to the PNAC letter. Six years earlier, Wolfowitz authored a leaked Defense Planning Guidance document during Bush Sr.’s presidency. The document was a five-year planning statement for fys 1994-1999. His naïve idealism manifested itself, “In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil.” Elsewhere, the U.S. would “buttress… vital economic relationships” by maintaining its “status as a military power of the first magnitude in the area.”[11]

This is not to say that neoconservative rhetoric does not revel in idealistic constructs in public journals like the Weekly Standard and National Review. That the neoconservative movement sometimes papers over crass and cynical motives is not surprising. That is almost without exception a characteristic of every imperialistic movement from all shades of the political spectrum. Rationalization is not a new feature of human psychology. We should remember that every mass criminal and imperialist has their side of the story; we do not take them at their word but their actions. This is elementary logic, again all too often ignored by commentators who somehow only see “surfeits of altruism.”

We now turn to the second framework I mentioned, which argues that the invasion of Iraq was necessary to avoid fighting terrorists “on our streets, in our own cities”, the words of George Bush. This is a direct contradiction of the first framework outlined above, but the same people employ both rhetorical frameworks depending on the needs of the situation. For example, when asking Congress for more war funding, the administration appeals to the first. When explaining why we cannot leave, they go for the second.

(In 2003, Bush addressed the nation: “Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front… We are fighting that enemy in Iraq … today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.” His point is straightforward, we invaded Iraq to fight terrorists and avoid fighting them in our streets.[12] Compare that to the ubiquitous rhetoric about liberating Iraqis from tyranny and our gift of freedom.)

This framework has some plausibility, intelligence analysts predicted the war would enhance terrorism and their expectations have been met. Terrorist attacks increased sharply after the war, an increase that western intelligence analysts attribute to the war in Iraq. The Bush administration initially corrupted the annual State Department report on terrorism to obscure this fact, and then discontinued it altogether. Intelligence agencies around the globe, including the CIA and Mossad (Israel), agree that Iraq is a new terrorist training ground. Faiza Saleh Ambah reports in the Christian Science Monitor, “As the insurgency continues in Iraq, the risk is that the country becomes a regional training ground for terrorists - as Afghanistan was in the 1990s - creating newly radicalized and experienced jihadis who return home to cause trouble in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere.

In fact, there's evidence it's already happened in Kuwait. In the past month, the tiny Gulf state has been rocked by a series of shootouts with Muslim militants, some of whom learned their craft by working alongside Iraqi insurgents.”[13] Douglas Jehl writes about a CIA report asserting, “the war was likely to produce a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.”[14]

The effects of turning Iraq into the “central front” where the West fights Muslim terrorists are most disastrous for Iraqis. Iraqi civilian society, already devastated by decades of war and sanctions, is deteriorating rapidly. Sectarian violence is sharply escalating, access to potable water and electricity is declining, unemployment is higher, and malnutrition rates among children have almost doubled leading to protein “wasting” and brain damage.[15] Already abnormally high cancer rates are shooting up as the U.S. pours more radioactive depleted uranium over the country, itself a war crime. And on. (Iraqi opinion is generally marginalized or ignored altogether, a topic we will return to shortly.)

Both frameworks obscure that the war was initially about weapons of mass destruction. They also completely ignore the issue of international legality, which has clearly defined requirements for what is a just war. Both presuppose that the U.S. should make war when and where it wishes for any reason, by virtue of what Fukuyama describes as America’s ‘uniquely virtuous morality.’ The astute observer may note that only later, well after the war had begun and the WMD pretexts crumbled, in an inversion of the chronology for cause and effect, did these moralistic motives manifest.

Criticisms of Press Coverage
Hawks frequently malign the press for not telling the story straight in Iraq. The most common criticism is that they don’t report enough of the good news and focus too closely on the bad.

Is this criticism fair? To begin addressing this question one would have to derive a good vs. bad ratio of proportionate coverage and a way to measure the ratio; basic metrics. The “acceptable” range would be comparable to other conflicts. I know of no one who has undertaken the task - or any other empirical approach for that matter - the boundaries are left in the air, unspoken. I won’t undertake the enormous task of deriving those analytical metrics and figuring out if the coverage is unfairly good or bad. I am only interested in the assumptions behind the charge.

The assumptions are:
1. the press intentionally underreports good stories such as school openings and the rebuilding efforts to undermine the war and
2. the press glorifies bad news.

Critics maintain that the press does not present enough good news to counterbalance their coverage of violence, strife, corruption, torture, death squads, and destruction. (For example, a coalition of hawkish radio hosts and commentators traveled to Iraq in 2005 to find the good news.)

Let us look at a few comparative examples. Consider the news coverage of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, would it have been acceptable for Saddam Hussein to respond to criticism for gross human rights abuses and crimes under his rule by pointing to Iraq’s advanced (at the time) medical and educational systems? Both were among the best in the Middle East before the devastating sanctions of the 1990s. In spite of U.S. Republican Senator Alan Simpson’s objection in 1990 that the press was unfairly maligning Saddam Hussein, most decent people should agree that the grotesque regime of Saddam Hussein is not in any way mitigated by or should be balanced with coverage of things that were going well. (Simpson was part of a contingent of American Senators led by Bob Dole that went to Iraq to greet Hussein in 1990. A Kuwaiti transcript records Simpson, “I am now aware that you are a strong and intelligent man and that you want peace. I believe that your problems lie with the Western media and not with the U.S. government. … The press is spoiled and conceited. All these journalists consider themselves brilliant political scientists. They do not want to see anything succeeding or achieving its objectives. My advice is that you allow those bastards to come here and see things for themselves.”[16])

We only have to look south for another comparative example: Cuba. Cuba is one of the world’s most efficient and self-sustaining agricultural societies in the world. It also regularly exports doctors to people in need throughout South America. (Castro’s human rights abuses, which are both substantial and deplorable, are also lighter in comparison to other states in the region, such as Colombia.) Does Cuba’s successful agricultural program and medical achievements in any way mitigate the lack of democracy and political repression under the Castro dictatorship? No. How many of these people object to the coverage of Cuba’s human rights abuses on the grounds that the press does not give enough attention to their agricultural and medical achievements? None.

Another valuable comparison is the press’s treatment compared to Washington and Pentagon assessments. We only have access to a small portion of government documentation, but it is enough to draw some general conclusions. In January 2006, New York Times reporter James Glanz reported the testimony of government witnesses before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The witnesses testified that, “virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq’s oil, electricity, water and sewerage sectors has fallen below pre-invasion values.” These are measurements directly related to the ongoing rebuilding efforts, which are of course the source of good news the media does not report enough of. (Consider also that these quality of life indeces were already devastated by decades of corrupt rule, war, and sanctions, so it would have been hard for them to decline.)[17]

Government audits have found corruption and theft to be endemic to the rebuilding effort so unfairly maligned in the press. Billions of dollars have disappeared from the books into the pockets of corporations, politicians, and contractors. Much of the money is resurfacing as funds for the insurgency.[18] In January 2006, James Glanz reports on an official record of the occupation from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction,

“A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq, and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital elevator that had been improperly certified as safe.

The audit… expands on its previous findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion as the American occupation poured money into training and rebuilding programs in 2003 and 2004.”[19]

In the summer of 2005, Ed Harriman followed auditors in Iraq to report their assessment:

“The ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan. But there is a difference: the US government funded the Marshall Plan whereas Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the ‘liberated’ country, by the Iraqis themselves.

There was $6 billion left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and revenue from resumed oil exports (at least $10 billion in the year following the invasion). Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on 22 May 2003, all of these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), so that they might be spent by the CPA ‘in a transparent manner . . . for the benefit of the Iraqi people’. Congress, it’s true, voted to spend $18.4 billion of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. But by 28 June last year, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20 billion of Iraqi money, compared to $300 million of US funds.

The ‘financial irregularities’ described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community … have discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it went.”[20]

The GAO and Pentagon auditors were remiss by not including more of the good news.

Intelligence

"I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass."

- George Bush, the night of 9/11/2001

“Judge whether good enough hit S.H." – meaning Saddam Hussein – "at same time. Not only UBL…
Go massive… Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

- Donald Rumsfeld, afternoon of 9/11/2001

The accumulated evidence has not been kind to the Bush Administration with respect to the use of prewar intelligence. Bush has thus far avoided taking direct responsibility for Iraq by crediting “unanimously” incorrect intelligence and Congress, who he has claimed had access to the same intelligence he did. (Congress rebutted this claim with a nonpartisan report that stated, “The president, and a small number of presidentially designated Cabinet-level officials, including the vice president ... have access to a far greater overall volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding intelligence sources and methods." The report goes on to detail specific differences and what they do not have access to.[21]) The Bush Administration has deflected criticism by ascribing false positions to their critics. Many believe the president cherry-picked intelligence and pressured intelligence analysts to give them the “right” information and suppress intelligence that contradicted what they wanted to hear. The evidence to support these charges is overwhelming.

Some of Bush’s defenders argue that he wouldn’t have lied because he knew he would get caught.[22] This is harder to argue because no one can say for certainty what was in their heads. It is also beside the point; criminals are not forgiven for acting upon their distorted perception of reality. Dick Cheney was insisting the U.S. had found mobile chemical weapons labs up to six months after the initial finding had been thoroughly discredited by the DIA. Did he lie to us or himself? It hardly matters. It is likely there was a high degree of self-deception involved, not surprising. But they also may have believed the war and occupation would go well – their initial planning indicates this is what they believed – and after that it would be left to legal scholars and marginal dissidents to quibble over technical legalities. Conventional wisdom holds that Americans support wars that go well, or at least they forget about them quickly.

The perception that there was an international consensus on (mistaken) intelligence is simply wrong. We now know that a number of intelligence agencies warned the U.S. about suspect sources. We also know the CIA’s objections and qualifications were suppressed in favor of the “right” evidence.

Paul Pillar was a CIA analyst for years before leaving in 2005. He has commented pointedly: “In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized. As the national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, I witnessed all of these disturbing developments.” [23] Pillar’s criticism is quite accurate and speaks directly to what is in dispute.

The president released a version of the white paper outlining the CIA’s intelligence on Iraq to the public before the war. The public version was much shorter than the classified one. The reason was because Bush had trimmed out all the dissenting analysis and assessments of the reliability for specific claims. Pillar notes, “in the fall of 2002 … at the administration's behest, the intelligence community published a white paper on Iraq's WMD programs -- but without including any of the community's judgments about the likelihood of those weapons' being used.”[24] Dana Priest reports the Senate’s reaction to discovering the discrepancy, “The White Paper, released Oct. 4, 2002, and based on a classified assessment given to Congress, was the public's only look at the intelligence that policymakers used to decide whether Iraq posed enough of a threat to warrant immediate military action.

Yet the 28-page public document turned estimates into facts, left out or watered down the dissent within the government about key weapons programs, and exaggerated Iraq's ability to strike the United States, the investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found.” [25]

The Bush administration warned that Iraq could launch unmanned aerial vehicles that could reach American shores and disperse chemical weapons. At the time they made these claims, the U.S. air force and U.S. weapons experts in Baghdad had already concluded that Iraq was incapable of such a feat, and that the vehicles did not exist. The level of deception is compounded when one considers that the U.S. controlled much of the Iraqi air space, Iraq was incapable of attacking neighboring countries without the U.S. knowing about it, much less a transoceanic flight with unmanned aircraft that could mount a serious assault on U.S. citizens.[26]

Condoleezza Rice warned us about “mushroom clouds” over an American city on national television, and stated that we knew they were using uranium tubes for nuclear processing. That claim came from a shipment of uranium tubes intercepted in Jordan, which a low level CIA analyst believed were for nuclear processing. The International Atomic Energy Agency, Energy Department, and more senior level CIA analysts had already discredited his analysis at the time of Rice’s television appearance; they found the tubes were only suitable for rocket production, allowed under U.N. restrictions.[27]

German intelligence warned the U.S. against using the information gleaned from one of their source’s codenamed “Curveball” because he was an alcoholic, suffered from emotional problems, and his information could not be verified. Yet, in 2005, five senior German intelligence officials claimed, “the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.” The Bush administration used “curveball” as their source to make claims about biological weapon capabilities. Not only did Bush ignore German intelligence, but he also ignored evidence gathered from UN weapons inspectors that disproved Curveball’s claims from right before the war. The only CIA analyst who met Curveball and looked into his background reported that he was completely unreliable. His superiors pressured him to shut up about his findings.[28]

Then there is the infamous Niger Claim that appeared in the State of the Union and led to the indictment of Dick Cheney’s top aide after the White House illegally leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent. This again, like Curveball, is another rebuttal of the argument that the world’s intelligence communities were unanimous in the assessments presented by the White House. In December of 2005 Bob Dogin reported in the Los Angeles Times, “More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.” There is an extensive record of communications verified by both intelligence agencies. [29]

Murray Waas writes in the National Journal about the alleged relationship between Saddam Husseing and Al Qaeda. In spite of repeated attempts to link Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda, it is now known that the President knew within days of 9/11 “that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda,” according to recently declassified documents. Furthermore, American intelligence believed Hussein was monitoring Al Qaeda because he believed it was a threat to his regime indicating they had an antagonistic relationship. Although George Bush has stopped short of claiming there was an operational relationship between the two parties, he has implied it many times and many of the people serving directly under him have made the claim outright. For instance, Donald Rumsfeld said in 2002 "we have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities." In 2001, 3 months after reading the intelligence briefing mentioned above, Dick Cheney said on national television, "[I]t's pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack." (It wasn’t confirmed, Atta was in West Virginia at the time – as Cheney knew.) [30] Paul Pillar writes at length:

“The greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD … but the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the ‘alliance’ the administration said existed. The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the ‘war on terror’ and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood.

The issue of possible ties between Saddam and al Qaeda was especially prone to the selective use of raw intelligence to make a public case for war. In the shadowy world of international terrorism, almost anyone can be ‘linked’ to almost anyone else if enough effort is made to find evidence of casual contacts, the mentioning of names in the same breath, or indications of common travels or experiences. Even the most minimal and circumstantial data can be adduced as evidence of a ‘relationship,’ ignoring the important question of whether a given regime actually supports a given terrorist group and the fact that relationships can be competitive or distrustful rather than cooperative.

The intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and al Qaeda. Yet it was drawn into a public effort to support that notion.”[31]

November 6, 2005, Douglas Jehl reports, “A top member [Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi] of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.” The intelligence report stated that Libi “was intentionally misleading the debriefers.” After reading doubts about the reliability of Libi’s testimony, possibly obtained under torture, the Bush administration continued to refer to him as “credible.” Libi was the primary source for Bush’s October 2002 statement in Cincinnati that, “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.“[32]

Some of the internal record as revealed in the Downing Street Memos indicates that British intelligence did not believe the threat from Iraq required military action. These are important documents because they offer a frank look at the thoughts of British and American political leadership before the war. Fair warning, only a “citizen with extreme views” and “a paranoid theory” will read these documents, according to liberal commentator Michael Kinsley.[33] We shall proceed with caution in the off chance Kinsley’s belief that truth is not to be found in the primary documentary record, but in the speeches written by a team of PR specialists and read to the public by politicians for the purposes of mustering public opinion, may be wrong.

The documents are primarily discussions between British officials in reaction to American policy planners. They all agree that war is a foregone conclusion and attempt to figure out how to make it happen with some legal justification, or “political conditions for military action” and “the preparation of domestic opinion” as they put it.[34]

It is clear that like the German and French, British intelligence had their own assessments on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, apart from what we have been told was the international consensus. Downing Street foreign policy aide Mathew Rycroft wrote to Foreign Policy Advisor David Manning, “Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran” [35] In the Iraq Options Paper, the defense secretary assessed Iraq’s weapons capabilities, “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… there is no recent evidence of Iraq complicity with international terrorism. There is therefore no justification for action against Iraq.” [36] Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair that the threat posed by Iraq did not “justify military action.”[37] (For a broader discussion of the media’s treatment and contents of these memos see here or here.)

The Downing Street documents were very explicit about the need to create a legal justification for war. In contrast to liberal elites writing in the Washington Post, “emotional engagement” was not enough. They believed UN authorization would be their best bet and to this end they tried a number of cynical tactics. They wanted to use the entry of UN inspections to create an incident that would lead to war. Saddam, to their surprise, allowed inspectors into the country. Washington and Britain then hoped the inspectors would find illicit weapons to spark the war; they didn’t, as predicted by several former weapons inspectors. Concurrently, U.S. and British forces covertly started a massive bombing campaign in Iraq to provoke a reaction, well before the war officially began. (Also alluded to in the Downing Street Memos as “spikes of activity.”)[38] British barrister Phillippe Sands uncovered a plan proposed by George Bush to disguise a UN plane and fly it through Iraqi airspace to provoke an attack.[39]

It is true that the Bush administration did not fabricate all their claims out of whole cloth, but it is also true that no one has accused them of doing so. Much of the world did believe Iraq probably had WMDs. But it is clear that the Bush Administration went beyond what was known and misrepresented the evidence in such a way that it would frighten the public and rally support for a war in the wake of September 11, 2001. The accurate criticism, which has been successfully sidestepped thus far, is that they acted dishonestly when they misrepresented the findings of intelligence agencies to push for war. We have briefly surveyed British, American, German, French, international intelligence assessments, and the testimony of intelligence analysts.

Iraqi Opinion
It is rarely discussed or considered in the West, but Iraqis have their own thoughts and opinions on the U.S. led invasion and occupation. The West has done a lot of research in the form of public polling so there is a lot of information available to understand their views. This aggregated research reveals Iraqis increasingly, and by a majority, opposed to the occupation and want all occupational troops to withdraw either immediately or on a short timeline.

In poll after poll, Iraqis express distrust for the occupational authority – ranking them at the bottom compared to other institutions. When the pro- U.S. Kurdish segment of the population is excluded, the numbers rise sharply. During Iraqi elections, U.S. backing for a candidate always correlates with a drop in that candidate’s popularity. Virtually all of the parties had immediate withdrawal as part of their platform, a request that was acknowledged and immediately overturned by Bush and Blair. They explained why they couldn’t leave, “security.”

In October 2005, the British defense leaked a military poll of Iraqi opinion to the press. The findings were quite extraordinary and necessary to understand the viability of “oil spot” strategies. 67% of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation. According to the same poll, 65% support violent resistance against occupational troops (excluding the Kurds.) 82% “strongly opposed” the presence of coalition troops. Earlier polls have revealed that the level of opposition is directly proportional to the presence of American troops, further undermining Krepinevich’s plan.[40]

The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) released a poll in January 2006. It found that 80% of Iraqis believed the U.S. was building permanent military bases. 76% did not believe the U.S. would withdraw if asked. 70% favored a timeline for withdrawal, and an alarming 88% of Sunnis approved of attacks on U.S. forces.[41]

These numbers may surprise Americans that read newspapers, considering the shameful distortions from Western reporters. [42]

Democracy
Western commentators have lauded Bush for handing over sovereignty and autonomy to Iraqis. Many people, otherwise critical of Bush, applaud his democracy project in Iraq. Their analysis appears to be largely based on his grandiloquent tributes to the power of democracy and God’s gift of liberty to mankind. They are inspiring speeches, his writers rightly deserve praise.

Opinion polls are not the only measure of democracy and sovereignty; another measure is the autonomy/independence of the Iraq government. In November 2005, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani pleaded before the UN that he was powerless to stop the U.S. from using his country as a military base from which to attack other countries. He added that he was of course opposed to such action. He said, “I categorically refuse the use of Iraqi soil to launch a military strike against Syria or any other Arab country… But at the end of the day my ability to confront the US military is limited and I cannot impose on them my will.”[43]

The U.S. has also dominated Iraq’s economy in ways that no sovereign state would accept. They have rewritten laws to exempt foreign corporations from taxes and criminal prosecution. They have eased restrictions on the percentage of allowable foreign ownership. They have allowed Saddam Hussein’s laws against organized labor and worker’s rights to stand. A team of international lawyers based in London point out that all of this is contrary to international law, The Hague Regulations and Fourth Geneva Convention specifically, and a gross violation of Iraqi sovereignty.[44]

Bush has said the conflict is an international conflict, the “central front” in the war on terrorism. True, there are some foreign fighters; but the reality is that Iraqis are primarily fighting the conflict. The conflict is national in character, mostly Iraqis resisting occupation. Military commanders in Iraq have repeatedly reported a very low number of foreign fighters. There are splits within the insurgency because many Iraqis do not want foreign jihadists in their country pushing their Islamic theocracy upon them. The rift has escalated in some places such that Iraqi insurgents are attacking Al Qaeada forces.[45]

Returning to the main point, Iraq is still not democratic. The iron hand of the occupational authorities is visible in all economic, military, and political institutions. When the wishes of Washington conflict with the wishes of Iraqis, invariably Washington wins, a fact Iraqis clearly recognize.

Conclusion
To untangle ourselves from this mess and mitigate the ongoing disaster we created, we need to cease speaking in moral platitudes and instead begin accepting responsibility. We should pay reparations for the destruction we have wrought on Iraq’s people. (Reperations rather than occupational soldiers will do likely do more to rebuild Iraq's shattered civilian infrastructure.) We need to consider the will of Iraqis above our own opinions about what we think we should do in their country. The war is a crime of aggression as a matter of fact, as conceded by many of the war planners and it is time we face our own crimes.[46]

A reformation needs to take place in our intellectual culture, when someone can attribute support for war because it “engaged us emotionally” in one of our largest newspapers, something is wrong. The international legal framework for the use of force should not be tossed aside for such an arbitrary standard.

Tragically, there may not be an answer or strategy that reverses the trend of growing violence and murder. The U.S. and Brittan will share responsibility for what happens in the future, no matter what form their involvement takes.

Notes:[1]Krepinevich, Andrew, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005
[2]McCain, John. Current History. January 2006
[3]Hersh, Seymour. New Yorker, 5 December 2005
[4] L. Roberts, R. Lafta, R. Garfield, J. Khudhairi, G. Burnham. The Lancet, Volume 364, Issue 9448.
Schwartz, Michael. "A Formula For Slaughter: The American Rules of Engagement from the Air." Tomdispatch.com, 10 January 2006
Knickmeyer, Ellen. Washington Post. 24 December 2005
[5] Fukuyama, Francis. New York Times Magazine. 19 Feburary 2006
[6] Cohen, Richard. "Hollywood’s Crude Cliches." Washington Post. 13 December 2005
[7] Packer, George. Los Angeles Times. 13 October 2005
[8] Goldberg, Jonah. National Review. 23 April 2003
[9] Chomsky, Noam. Deterring Democracy. South End Press. 1992. Original article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 13, 1973
[10]Project for the New American Century. Letter to President Clinton. 26 January 1998
The signatories are a who’s who of Bush Administration advocates and officials. It includes Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, William Bennet, John Bolton, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick, and Paul Wolfowitz
[11] New York Times, 8 March 1992
[12] Bush, George. "President Addresses the Nation." Transcript. September 7, 2003
[13]Ambah, Faiza. Christian Science Monitor. 8 Feburary 2005
[14] Jehl, Douglas. New York Times. 22 June 2005
[15] Vick, Karl. “Children Pay Cost of Iraq’s Chaos.” Washington Post, 21 November 2004.
[16]Fisk, Robert. The Independent. 30 December 2000
[17] Glanz, James. New York Times. 9 Feburary 2006
[18]Worth, Robert & Glanz, James. New York Times. 5 February 2006
[19]Glanz, James. New York Times. 24 January 2006 and 25 January 2006
[20] Harriman, Ed. London Review of Books. Vol.27 No 13, 7 July 2005
[21] Landay, Jonathan. Knight Ridder. 15 December 2005.
For the full report see, "Report: Congress as a Consumer of Intelligence Information," Congressional Research Service, 14 December 2005
[22] See for example, Hughes, John. Christian Science Monitor. 16 November 2005
[23]Pillar, Paul. Foreign Affairs. March/April 2006
[24]ibid, see 23
[25]Priest, Dana. Washington Post. 12 July 2004
[26]Staff, "Iraqi Drones Not for WMD," Associated Press, 24 August 2003
[27] Barstow, David & Broad, William & Gerth, Jeff. New York Times. 3 October 2004
[28]Drogin, Bob and Goetz, John. Los Angeles Times. 20 November 2005.
Drogin, Bob. Los Angeles Times. 11 July 2004
[29]Hamburger, Tom & Wallsten, Peter & Drogin, Bob. Los Angeles Times, 11 December 2005
[30] Waas, Murray. National Journal. 22 November 2005
[31]ibid, see 23
[32] Jehl, Douglas. New York Times, 6 November 2005
See also Isikoff, Michael, “Distorted Intelligence?”, Newsweek, 25 June 2003.
[33] Kinsely, Michael. Washington Post. 12 June 2005
[34] Downing Street Memos, "Cabinet Office Paper: Conditions for Military Action," 21 July 2002
[35] Downing Street Memos, "Manning Memo," 23 July 2002
[36] Downing Street Memos, "Iraq Options Paper"
[37] Downing Street Memos, "Straw Memo"
[38] “Spikes of activity”, ibid – see above
Smith, Michael, "General Admits to Secret Air War," Sunday Times UK, 26 June 2005
See also, Scahill, Jeremy, “The Other Bomb Drops,” The Nation, 1 June 2005
Scahill:

It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.

But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002 - a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.

[39] Sands, Phillippe. Lawless World. Viking Adult, 20 October 2005
[40] Rayment, Sean. Telegraph, 23 October 2005
Soriano, Cesar & Komarow, “Poll: Iraqis out of Patience.” USA Today, 28 April 2004.
Ricks, Thomas, “80% in Iraq Distrust Occupation Authority,” Washington Post, 13 May 2004
[41] PIPA. “What the Iraqi Public Wants,” 31 January 2006
[42] Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, “Media Advisory: Ignoring Iraqi Opinion in the Name of Democracy,” 2 June 2004.
[43] Staff, Middle East Online, 1 November 2005
[44] See my previous work and related notes, here.
Looking in the Butcher’s Window: Part II. Specifically the Annex.
[45]Filkins, Dexter, New York Times, 12 January 2006
[46] ibid, see discussion of Downing Street Minutes above