Salon: The lies that led to war

05/19/2005

A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush
intended all along to invade Iraq—and lied about it to the American
people. The full gravity of his offense has not yet sunk in.

By Juan Cole, http://www.Salon.com

May 19, 2005 | When Newsweek’s source admitted that he had
misidentified the government document in which he had seen an account of
Quran desecration at Guantánamo prison, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di
Rita exploded, “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch
said. How could he be credible now?”

Di Rita could have said the same things about his bosses in the Bush
administration.

Tens of thousands of people are dead in Iraq, including more than 1,600
U.S. soldiers and Marines, because of false allegations made by
President George W. Bush and Di Rita’s more immediate boss, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, about Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of
mass destruction and equally imaginary active nuclear weapons program.
Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice repeatedly made unfounded allegations that led to the
continuing disaster in Iraq, much of which is now an economic and
military no man’s land beset by bombings, assassinations, kidnappings
and political gridlock.

And we now know, thanks to a leaked British memo
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/downing_street_memo/index.html
concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush
administration—contrary to its explicit denials—had already made
up its mind to attack Iraq and “fixed” those bogus allegations to
support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about
Iraq.

Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It
should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the
prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the
health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at
stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that
George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even
before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror
attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify
his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the
war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense.

The media circus around the Newsweek story arrived in time to further
divert attention from the explosive British memorandum. Although the
leaked Downing Street memo, published by the London Times on May 1,
revealed the deeply dishonest and manipulative way that the Bush
administration took the United States (and the United Kingdom) to war
against Iraq, the American press corps studiously ignored it for two
weeks.

The memo reported a July 2002 meeting of key British Cabinet and other
officials, held when Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British
intelligence service, MI6, returned from a trip to Washington. It
revealed that the decision to go to war had already been made by that
point: “Military action was now seen as inevitable,” the notes by
British national security aide Matthew Rycroft revealed. Dearlove
reported, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence
and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Members of the British Cabinet were worried by the news, the memo shows,
since they knew that the case against Iraq was tissue-thin in
international law and that there were several more egregious sinners in
the weapons area than Iraq. Because the United Kingdom, unlike the
United States, is a member of the International Criminal Court, its
officials had to worry about being tried for war crimes if they became
involved in an illegal war of aggression launched by Bush and lacking
U.N. Security Council sanction. Prime Minister Tony Blair put his hopes
in a ploy. He thought that Bush should arrange for the United Nations to
demand a return to Iraq of weapons inspectors, with the hope that Saddam
Hussein would refuse, thus creating a legal justification for war
acceptable to the international community.

On May 6, Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and John Walcott said
that a former high official in the U.S. government told them that
Dearlove’s remarks were “an absolutely accurate description of what
transpired” during his visit. This past Monday, White House spokesman
Scott McClellan finally responded to the leaked document but denied that
he had read it. Regarding the allegation that Bush fixed the
intelligence around the Iraq war policy he said, “The suggestion is just
flat-out wrong. Anyone who wants to know how the intelligence was used
only has to go back and read everything that was said in public about
the lead-up to the war.”

It is hard to see how this absurdly vague methodology could actually
refute the memo’s charges or, indeed, to know what exactly McClellan was
driving at. He added, “The president of the United States, in a very
public way, reached out to people across the world, went to the United
Nations, and tried to resolve this in a diplomatic manner.” But as the
memo makes clear, that “reaching out” was fraudulent, a smoke screen to
cover a decision that had already been made. Bush went to the United
Nations reluctantly and against the advice of the Cheney and Rumsfeld
faction, mainly as a way of giving Saddam an ultimatum that would form
the basis for a war.

The Bush administration, and some credulous or loyal members of the
press, have long tried to blame U.S. intelligence services for
exaggerating the Iraq threat and thus misleading the president into
going to war. That position was always weak, and it is now revealed as
laughable. President Bush was not misled by shoddy intelligence. Rather,
he insisted on getting the intelligence that would support the war on
which he had already decided. A good half of Americans, opinion polls
show, now believe that the president actively lied to them about Iraq.
In another, less cynical, flag-waving and intimidated age, this
conclusion would provoke a scandal. The question would be, What did
George W. Bush decide about Iraq, and when did he decide it?

The leaked British document demonstrates that the moment of decision was
far earlier than the Bush administration publicly admitted. On Aug. 7,
just weeks after the Dearlove visit to Washington, Cheney said in
California that no decision had been made on Iraq. When Bush met with
Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan on Aug. 26, 2002, CNN reported that
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press, “The president
stressed that he has made no decisions, that he will continue to engage
in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the
Middle East, steps in Iraq.” On Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney was interviewed by
Tim Russert on “Meet the Press.” Russert asked, “Will militarily this be
a cakewalk? Two, how long would we be there and how much would it cost?”
Cheney replied, “First of all, no decision’s been made yet to launch a
military operation.”

The administration continued the charade that no decision had been taken
through the end of 2002 and into 2003. In a White House press conference
on Dec. 17, 2002, a questioner asked Fleischer, “The L.A. Times today
published a poll that found that 72 percent of Americans, including 60
percent of Republicans, said the president has not provided enough
evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq. Is the president losing
the public relations battle here in the United States?”

“Well, one, I think that I’ll just state what is well known,” Fleischer
replied. “The president will not make any decision about war and peace
and the possibility of putting some of our nation’s best men and women
in harm’s way on the basis of a poll. He will do it on the basis of his
judgment as commander in chief and what it will take to save and protect
American lives in the event that he reaches the conclusion Saddam
Hussein will indeed engage in war against the United States or provide
terrorists with weapons to engage in war against the United States, just
like on September 11th with the attack. And if he reaches that judgment,
he will do so because the information he has and the judgment he makes
suggest that, not because of a poll.”

The British memo is only the most decisive in a long list of documents
that make it inescapably clear that Bush had decided to go to war long
before. Indeed, Bush had decided as early as his presidential campaign
in the year 2000 that he would find a way to fight an Iraq war to unseat
Saddam. I was in the studio with Arab-American journalist Osama Siblani
on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” program on March 11, 2005, when Siblani reported a May 2000 encounter he had with then-candidate Bush in a hotel in Troy, Mich. “He told me just straight to my face, among 12 or maybe
13 Republicans at that time here in Michigan at the hotel. I think it
was on May 17, 2000, even before he became the nominee for the
Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him out, when we
talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”

According to Siblani, Bush added that “he wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and gathering threat against the United States.” Siblani points out that Bush at that point was privy to no classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs and had already made up his mind on the issue.

Siblani’s account of Bush’s stance is virtually identical to the
impressions Dearlove brought back from Washington a little over two
years later: “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” Iraq had long played
the great white whale to W.’s Ahab, and the chance to move decisively
against Saddam was intrinsic to his presidential ambitions.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill described to Ron Susskind in “The
Price of Loyalty” the first Bush national security meeting of principals
on Jan. 30, 2001. He writes that after Bush announced he would simply
disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “unleash Sharon,” he
made it clear that Iraq would be a priority. “The hour almost up, Bush
had assignments for everyone ... Rumsfeld and [Joint Chiefs chair Gen.
H. Hugh] Shelton, he said, ‘should examine our military options.’ That
included rebuilding the military coalition from the 1991 Gulf War,
examining ‘how it might look’ to use U.S. ground forces in the north and
the south of Iraq ... Ten days in, and it was about Iraq.” Bush hit the
ground running with regard to Iraq, shunting aside key U.S.
foreign-policy goals—such as a resolution of the Arab-Israeli
conflict—in favor of exploring military options against Saddam
Hussein. O’Neill reports a sense at the meeting that the reluctance to
commit ground forces to an Asian war, a legacy of the Vietnam War, had
ended with the advent of the Bush presidency.

An Iraq war might have been a hard sell, even for the skilled and highly
manipulative Bush team. But Sept. 11 ensured that they could get
congressional approval and public support for a war. Americans were
angry and willing to lash out in any direction specified by the
president. Former terrorism czar Richard Clarke related that on the
evening of Sept. 12, 2001, Bush “grabbed a few of us and closed the door
to the conference room. ‘Look,’ he told us, ‘I know you have a lot to do
and all ... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over
everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in
any way...’” When Clarke protested that it was clearly an al-Qaida
operation, Bush insisted, “Just look. I want to know any shred ... Look
into Iraq, Saddam.” According to Clarke, Bush said it “testily.”

Clarke reveals that Rumsfeld was already, on the afternoon of Sept. 12,
“talking about broadening the objectives of our response and ‘getting
Iraq.’” Although early accounts of National Security Council meetings
after the attacks highlighted the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz in pressing for an immediate war on Iraq, it has become
increasingly clear that he was only one such voice, and hardly the most
senior.

Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to
war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about
this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the
U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks
after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth
over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account
that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.

Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004
report, “The Path to War.” Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner
at the White House, “attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice,”
where “Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. ‘Rumors
were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack
Iraq,’ Meyer remembers.” When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived
in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted
MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we
can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in
Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and
al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq.
Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the
risks to the United Kingdom of an “Iraq first” policy in Washington.

Meyer told Vanity Fair, “Blair came with a very strong message—don’t
get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban.”
He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon
London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq. But he
managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, “Bush said, ‘I agree with
you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with
Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.’” Meyer also said, in spring
2004, that it was clear “that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn’t
be to discuss smarter sanctions.” In short, Meyer strongly implies that
Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by
promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.

That the Afghanistan war went so well quickly enabled Bush to begin
planning for an attack on Iraq. Bob Woodward reports in “Plan of Attack”
that Bush asked Cheney for an Iraq war plan on Nov. 21. On Nov. 26 the
Independent reported that Bush had called Saddam Hussein “evil” and
demanded that he accept U.N. weapons inspectors. On Nov. 27 Howard
Fineman of Newsweek reported a conversation with Bush aboard Air Force
One in the wake of the successful Afghanistan campaign. “He wants to
avoid the more profound mistakes his dad made...: his failure, at the
end of the Gulf War, to stop—once and for all—Saddam Hussein in
Iraq from threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction.”

Nov. 27, 2001, was a significant date. Gen. Tommy Franks in his memoirs
reveals that he received an unexpected call from Rumsfeld. “General
Franks, the president wants us to look at options for Iraq.” Franks knew
exactly what the call portended. “Son of a bitch, I thought. No rest for
the weary.” There would be another war. The die had already been cast.

On Dec. 31 Newsweek reported, “In principle, Bush and his
national-security team have decided that Saddam has to go, U.S.
officials say. ‘The question is not if the United States is going to hit
Iraq; the question is when,’ says a senior American envoy in the Middle
East.” The article notes Bush’s oft-stated caution that no final
decision had been made, but dismisses it on the basis of insider
information. The main credit for this article was given to Christopher
Dickey and John Barry, but Sami Kohen is listed as reporting from
Turkey. Since a U.S. ambassador is quoted, and Kohen was the only one of
the coauthors in the Middle East, he is likely the one who got the
quote. Was his source Ambassador W. Robert Pearson?

Former Sen. Bob Graham of Florida says in his memoirs, “Intelligence
Matters,” that on Feb. 19, 2002, he visited the U.S. Central Command.
Franks revealed to him that the command was no longer engaged in a war
in Afghanistan. Graham was taken aback. Franks told the stunned senator,
“Military and intelligence personnel are being re-deployed to prepare
for an action in Iraq.” The implementation phase had already begun.

In April 2002, Tony Blair went to see Bush at his Crawford, Texas,
ranch. Vanity Fair reports that Blair stressed the need to get the
backing of the United Nations for an Iraq war if he was going to swing
Parliament behind it.

This long-term obsession of George W. Bush, then, was the background of
the meeting in Washington with Dearlove in July 2002. Although Dearlove
reported on a change of mood, such that the Iraq war was now a sure
thing, he was probably actually observing that Bush had moved it to the
front burner. By late July or very early August 2002, according to
Vanity Fair, Blair had called Bush. A senior White House official who
saw the transcript remarked, “The way it read was that, come what may,
Saddam was going to go; they said they were going forward, they were
going to take out the regime, and they were doing the right thing.”
Blair, he said, did not need any convincing. Both Blair and Bush would
go on telling the public for months afterward that no final decision had
been made about going to war.

It was also in midsummer 2002 that Franks asked Rumsfeld for $750
million to begin making preparations in Kuwait toward an Iraq war. The
request, reported in Woodward’s “Plan of Attack,” provoked a good deal
of controversy. Many in Congress felt that no specific appropriation had
been made for such preparations, and the money was essentially taken
from Afghanistan appropriations without congressional approval.

From Bush’s meeting in May 2000 with Osama Siblani and 12 Republicans in
a hotel room in Troy, Mich., until July 2002, his obsession with
attacking Iraq never wavered. His first national security meeting was
all about Iraq. He seriously considered attacking Iraq before
Afghanistan after Sept. 11, and Blair had to argue him into the
Afghanistan war. He had Rumsfeld ask Gen. Franks for an Iraq war plan on
Nov. 27, 2001. The sense that Dearlove had, that the die had been
inexorably cast by July 2002, was entirely correct.

But it is no positive reflection on the head of MI6 that he had not been
able to discern that the die had been cast long before. The Downing
Street memo is remarkable only for the frankness with which it
acknowledges the illegality of the planned war and Bush’s policy of
“fixing” the intelligence around the policy. That the decision was made
first, and various pretexts advanced for it in the aftermath, is now
clear to the public.

Why has there not been more outrage in the United States at these
revelations? Many Americans may have chosen to overlook the lies and
deceptions the Bush administration used to justify the war because they
still believe the Iraq war might have made them at least somewhat safer.
When they realize that this hope, too, is unfounded, and that in fact
the war has greatly increased the threat of another terrorist attack on
U.S. soil, their wrath may be visited on the president and the political
party that has brought America the biggest foreign-policy disaster since
Vietnam.

About the writer

Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian
history at the University of Michigan and the author of “Sacred Space
and Holy War” (IB Tauris, 2002).