www.justiceblind.com

There are 2 major points I want to make tonight.

1)                The war on Iraq was NOT in response to 9/11 as claimed by the Bush Administration and is NOT part of the “global war or terror” as claimed by the Bush Administration.  This is rhetoric NOT reality.

2)                The so-called “surge” of troops in Iraq is NOT a “surge” as claimed by the Bush Administration.  This is rhetoric NOT reality.

 
Point 1:

 
·                    The war on Iraq was in fact long sought after and planned for by people who would become members of the W. Bush White House

 
o       1992 -- Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense under W. Bush & the main architect of the invasion of Iraq), was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the first Bush administration. Published Defense Planning Guidance which was to be used in-house for the development of Defense Department policy into the future … Central premise was that since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. had the unprecedented opportunity to be the world’s only superpower and that foreign and military policy should be guided by well-planned strategies to prevent both “hostile powers” and “other advanced industrial nations” from challenging our dominant position. The document discussed regional conflict arenas that are likely to threaten U.S. dominance, including “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil,” advocated unilateral and preemptive military actions when “collective action cannot be orchestrated,” and stated that the Defense Department’s “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.”  After the document is leaked to the NY Times, the Bush administration disowned the document and Wolfowitz and others who helped to craft the policy are referred to as “the crazies.”

 
o       1996 -- Richard Perle (head of the Defense Policy Board under W. Bush), Douglas Feith (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under W. Bush), and David Wurmser (Feith’s assistant and then Dick Cheney’s assistant) wrote document entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm that was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.  The argument was that Israel should aggressively “shape its strategic environment” by making a clean break with the Oslo peace process and, most significantly, by removing Saddam Hussein from power as the first step towards eliminating the anti-Israeli governments in Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

 
o       1997 -- The Project for a New American Century was established.  It was a foreign policy think tank (an offshoot of the New Citizenship Project, created by the Project for the Republican Future).  A central player is William Kristol whose father, Irving Kristol, is one of the original neo-conservatives.  Founding associates of PNAC became major players in W Bush’s administration: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad.  PNAC embarked on developing policy that views the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as the primary goal of U.S. foreign and military policy.

 
o       1998 -- In January, 18 principals of PNAC (including the above mentioned key players) sent a letter to President Clinton advocating (1) a strategy that …should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power; (2) that such removal …now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy; (3) that the U.S. must have …a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing; (4) that if Saddam were to remain in power …a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will be put at hazard;  and (5) that the U.S. has the unilateral right to take …military steps to protect our vital interests in the Gulf.  This letter was followed by another to Clinton in February and another a month later to House Speaker Gingrich and Senate Majority leader Lott basically arguing the same.

 
o       2000 -- In September, PNAC published a document entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.  Its central premise is that the 21^st century will be the American Century since there is no rival who can challenge U.S. military and economic power in the world.  The ability to maintain power over all challengers is dependent upon … a globally preeminent military capability to be supported by massive increases in U.S. military expenditures so that the U.S. could fight multiple theater wars that would demonstrate the futility of challenging U.S. hegemony.  The document argued that the real weakness of U.S. global military presence and capabilities is in the Persian Gulf region and that there is an obvious need for a permanent and substantial U.S. military presence in that region to protect longstanding American interest in the region.  The need for a large, permanent U.S. military presence in the region … would endure even should Saddam pass from the scene.  It called for a streamlining of the U.S. military and vast increases in military budgets, but also significant transformations in the vision of U.S. foreign policy (it calls for taking on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea).  In its most revealing moment, this document stated (on page 51) that the necessary transformation of U.S. foreign and military policy advocated by PNAC …is likely to be long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

 
ONE YEAR LATER WE GET 9/11! (which President W. Bush described in his diary as “the Pearl Harbor of the 21^st Century”)

 
o       2002 -- The National Security Council, under the supervision of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, issued The National Security Strategy of America, the official statement of security policy since September 11, 2001.  PNAC policy – the work of the “crazies,” becomes the official policy of the US government under W. Bush who said, during the debates with Al Gore, that he believed in a humble foreign policy, that the role of the United States was not to go around the world telling other countries that they have to do things our way, and that he did not believe in nation building.

 
Point 2:

 
·                    The proposal by W. Bush to “surge” troop levels in Iraq is actually an “escalation” of the war.

 
o       The word “surge” is defined as “to rise and fall actively” (as in a ship surging in heavy seas; “to rise and move in waves or billows” as in the sea was surging; “to rise suddenly to an excessive or abnormal value” as in the stock market surged to a record high; and “to move with a surge or in surges” as in a person feeling the blood surging into his face.  Surge implies something that comes in and then goes out, like a surge in the ocean.

 
o       “Escalation” is defined as “to increase in intensity, magnitude, etc” as in to escalate a war; and “to increase in extent, volume, number, amount, intensity, or scope” as in a little war threatens to escalate into a huge ugly one.  Escalation implies something that comes in, stays in, makes things worse than they already are, like a surge in troops to Iraq.

 
Conclusion: Based on these two points, and what has happened since the US invaded Iraq, we know that the war was a mistake.  The war is lost.  Sending in more troops is not a surge aimed at winning, it is an escalation meant to maintain and extend the war for reasons related to the ideology of those people who were called in the 1990s “the crazies” – “the crazies” who now happen to occupy the White House!