Prior to the start of the US war on Iraq, tens of millions of people around the world and millions of people in the US took to the streets to protest the war.  Yet, although people in nearly every country in the world opposed a US invasion of Iraq, a large majority of Americans supported the war on Afghanistan.

A smaller portion of the country protested the war against Afghanistan.  This is likely because (as we’ve been told), the Taliban housed and sponsored al-Qaeda, the group that attacked us on 9/11.  Most Americans wanted to get even and to stop al-Qaeda there so they could not attack us again.  Unfortunately, this is not what happened.  And needless to say, the war on Iraq has not gone well.

Former White House Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke calls the Iraq war a major national mistake and an “unnecessary tangent.”  He says Iraq posed no threat to the US.  The right war, according to Clarke, was “to fight for the elimination of al Qaeda, to stabilize nations threatened by radical Islamic terrorists, to offer a clear alternative to counter the radical ‘theology’ and ideology of the terrorists, and to reduce our own vulnerabilities at home” (p. 239).  Clarke already had laid out a plan to do this, but it never did reach President Bush.  Clarke claims President Bush made Iraq the “central front in the war on terror.”  Clarke says: “He turned it from a nation that was not threatening us into a breeding ground for anti-American hatred.” (p. xviii).

Former Senator Bob Graham, who would later co-chair the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 intelligence failures, agrees with Clarke that the war on Iraq is a folly that left the war on terrorism incomplete “and a battered al-Qaeda … able to regroup and recruit” (p. xv).  Graham says the war on Iraq is a diversion and his best proof is that we obviously cannot fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan and another war in Iraq because we diverted military and intelligence resources from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq in as early as February 2002.

According to Graham, President Bush (in early 2002) directed intelligence and military resources necessary to win the Afghanistan war to Iraq, which at the time was still unauthorized.  This includes most of the armed Predator aircraft even when UBL was surrounded in Tora Bora.  Graham reports on a meeting with General Tommy Franks (Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command from July 2000 through July 2003) where Franks said: “Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan ... Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq.  The Predators are being relocated.  What we are doing is a manhunt.  We have wrapped ourselves too much in trailing Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.  We’re better at beating a meat axe than finding a needle in a haystack.  That’s not our mission, and that’s not what we are trained or prepared to do.”  Franks also said: “We can finish this job in Afghanistan if we are allowed to do so.  And there is a set of terrorist targets after Afghanistan.  My first priority would be Somalia – there is no effective government to control the large number of terrorist cells.  Next, I would go to Yemen.  Its president is willing to help in the war on terrorism, but has no capabilities to do so.  Iraq is a special case.  Our intelligence there is very unsatisfactory.  Some Europeans know more than we do on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction ...”  Note: Tommy Franks reportedly denies this, and this is not the account Franks provides in his book, American Soldier.  Keep in mind, however, Bob Graham’s 2,500 notebooks (every experience and conversation he has is documented in his notes each day).

 This document provides some evidence suggesting the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were planned in advance and that each may have different goals than those officially stated.  It also identifies some of the key problems plaguing each war.  Look for the references, all prior to 9/11, of the need for a “Pearl Harbor” attack to transform the US military and US foreign policy in line with the ideology of the neo-Conservatives in the White House.

Afghanistan

·         In 1992, Colin Powell tells members of Congress that we should develop significant power to assure that no one will ever challenge us again on the world stage … this shows he is a supporter of US global hegemony.
 
·         August 1996 -- UNOCAL and Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia reach an agreement with state companies in Turkmenistan and Russia to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.  UNOCAL is hopeful that the Taliban will stabilize the country for a pipeline through Afghanistan.  Some State Department officials are even ok with the Taliban because they think they will bring stability to the country, thereby allowing the pipeline to go through. 

·         October 1997: Former National Security Advisor to President Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski publishes his book, The Grand Chessboard, where he says Eurasia is the key to determine world dominance and Central Asia is the key to that.  He says that for the US to maintain its place in the world order, it must prevent any adversary from controlling that region.  He writes: “The attitude of the American people toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent.  The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.”  He says Americans will not accept the Central Asian strategy “except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (Pearl Harbor reference #1).  Yet, in a later book, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership (2004), he sharply criticizes President Bush’s foreign policy.  In this book, Brzezinski still argues in favor of hegemony, but a co-optive form of it.  Although he still comes across as a foreign policy hawk, he says we must address the root causes of terrorism and not engage in pre-emptive war unless as a last resort.  As a result of his government service, Brzezinski was widely acknowledged as an advocate of peaceful engagement, human rights, and forming & utilizing peaceful alliances instead of unilateral, go-it-alone policies.  He was, however, intimately involved in planning for support the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, a policy he feels today is justified based on the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 ·         December 1997, Members of the Taliban traveled to Texas to visit UNOCAL while George W. Bush was governor.  The Taliban agree to the deal will do so only if the US officially recognizes the Taliban regime. (Keep in mind that Bush, Cheney, and Rice are oil people … Rice had been on Chevron’s Board of Directors since 1991 and has an oil tanker named after her … Cheney still gets deferred payments from Halliburton, his oil company … Bush headed Harken oil, a failed company until it was funded by Saudis and awarded a contract in the Persian Gulf).

 ·         November 1998 -- former President George Bush meets with the bin Laden family on behalf of the Carlyle Group in Jeddah Saudi Arabia.  They also meet in January 2000.

 ·         March 1999: Executive Director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Andrew Krepinevich testifies before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities and says: “There appears to be general agreement concerning the need to transform the US military into a significantly different kind of force from that which emerged victorious from the Cold and Gulf Wars.  Yet this verbal support has not been translated into a defense program supporting transformation … the critical mass needed to effect it has not yet been achieved.  One may conclude that, in the absence of a strong external shock to the United States – a latter-day ‘Pearl Harbor’ of sorts – surmounting the barriers to transformation will likely prove a long, arduous process.”  (Pearl Harbor reference #2)

 ·         April 2000: The US is given permission to expand its US Qatar military base … From September–December 2001, the US military is building up forces in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and makes permanent bases there too, as well as in Kyrgyzstan (which is only 200 miles from China) … In January 2002, the US improves bases in 13 locations in nine countries in Central Asia. … All of the countries are led by corrupt dictatorships, and plagued by social and economic problems.  Some speculate the US presence is increasing Muslim resentment.

 ·         April 2001: An “Independent Task Force,” Sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations, publishes The Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges For The 21^st Century where it writes “[T]he United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, suffering on a recurring basis from the negative consequences of sporadic energy shortages. These consequences can include recession, social dislocation of the poorest Americans, and at the extremes, a need for military intervention.”  The document is on-line (http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/jaa01/jaa01.pdf).

 ·         September 11, 2001 – On the night of the worst terrorist attacks against this country, President Bush writes in his diary, “The Pearl Harbor of 21^st Century took place today … We think it’s Osama bin Laden.”

 ·         September 15, 2001 – CIA Director George Tenet briefs President Bush on a plan to take out the Taliban in Afghanistan and take over the country.  He also presents the “Worldwide Attack Matrix” that outlines covert operations in 80 countries that are underway or recommended.

 ·         America’s war on Afghanistan began October 2001 and is ongoing.  Afghanistan was a failed state prior to our war there, due to its long war with the Soviet Union and the subsequent civil wars that followed.

 ·         The war began only after President Bush made demands to the Taliban that were unmet.  These included delivering al-Qaeda leaders and terrorists to the US, releasing all foreign nationals, protecting foreign aid workers and diplomats, closing terrorist training camps, and giving US access to the training camps to make sure they were closed.  The Taliban ultimately agreed to meet to talk about convincing their leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to hand over UBL to the US, but President Bush felt the offer was insincere.  The war also began after the Taliban refused to abide by a UN Security Council resolutions from December 2000 and September 2001 calling for the Taliban to hand over UBL.  As of this writing, the US war on Afghanistan has killed between 1,000 and 5,000 civilians, and 20,000-50,000 total people in Afghanistan.

 ·         Former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke says that the US was slow to put ground forces in Afghanistan where al Qaeda was, and allowed them to escape ... we knew Tora Bora was a good place to hide for al Qaeda leaders and we had photographed it and mapped its caves, yet we did not stop UBL from going there and escaping ... UBL is still at large, as is the leader of the Taliban ... Afghanistan is still unstable ... warlords affiliated with the Taliban and mujahedeen are still in power in most of Afghanistan.

 ·         Clarke also asserts that America should have established a security presence in Afghanistan but did not, so Hamid Kharzi was given little authority outside of the capital city of Kabul.  Plus our economic and development aid to the country was slow and inadequate.  Heck, we even forgot to include them in the 2004 budget one year forcing Kharzi to come to the US and request money!

 ·         Clarke says that the US response to al Qaeda was slow and small.  He says Bush “began by again offering the Taliban a chance to avoid US occupation of their country and, when that failed, he initially sent in only a handful of Special Forces.  When the Taliban and al Qaeda leaders escaped, he dispatched additional forces but less than one full division equivalent, fewer US troops for all of Afghanistan than the number of NYPD assigned to Manhattan” (Clarke, p. 245) ... no US troops gave chase of the Taliban when they fled ... we relied on the Northern Alliance to do this for us.  Not until November 25 (seven weeks after we started our war there) did the US insert ground forces (one Marine unit) to take and hold a former al Qaeda and Taliban facility near Kandahar.  This did not include any effort to seal the border with Pakistan or to cut off the al Qaeda escape routes.

 ·         Richard Clarke also points out that al Qaeda has grown since 9/11 ... recruitment of al Qaeda is up ... there were more terrorist attacks in the 30 months after 9/11 than before it!  In June 2004 the State Department claimed that attacks were down but it had to withdraw its annual report on terrorism and re-release it when it found its numbers were inaccurate – terrorism had actually increased!  Senator Bob Graham agrees with Clarke and says it is the war on Iraq that let “and a battered al-Qaeda left able to regroup and recruit” (p. xv).

 ·         February 2002 -- it is reported that US bases in Afghanistan have been placed along the proposed pipeline route.

 ·         Zalmay Khalizad is President Bush’s Ambassador to Kabul, Afghanistan.  He previously worked under Paul Wolfowitz and conducted a risk analysis for UOCAL for the proposed $2 billion gas pipeline.  He also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 in defense of the Taliban.

 ·         Afghanistan’s new leader, Hamid Kharzai, was a paid consultant for UNOCAL and had also been a Deputy Foreign Minister for the Taliban.

Iraq:

·         March 1992: The Defense Planning Guidance is written by now Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and now Vice President Chief of Staff Lewis Libby.  It calls for pre-emptive attacks against threatening regimes in order to protect against terrorism and assure access to raw resources.  According to Bernard Weiner, the document called for “a new order” that accounts “sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership” and a military power capable of “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”  According to the document, military intervention in Iraq is necessary to assure “access to vital raw material, primarily Persian Gulf Oil” and to prevent the spread of WMDs.  Excerpts from the document include:

“The number one objective of U.S. post-Cold War political and military strategy should be preventing the emergence of a rival superpower.

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.

There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

Another major U.S. objective should be to safeguard U.S. interests and promote American values.

… The U.S. should aim "to address sources of regional conflict and instability in such a way as to promote increasing respect for international law, limit international violence, and encourage the spread of democratic forms of government and open economic systems."

The draft outlines several scenarios in which U.S. interests could be threatened by regional conflict: "access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism or regional or local conflict, and threats to U.S. society from narcotics trafficking."

The draft relies on seven scenarios in potential trouble spots to make its argument -- with the primary case studies being Iraq and North Korea.

 If necessary, the United States must be prepared to take unilateral action.  There is no mention in the draft document of taking collective action through the United Nations.  The document states that coalitions "hold considerable promise for promoting collective action," but it also states the U.S. "should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies" formed to deal with a particular crisis and which may not outlive the resolution of the crisis.  The document states that what is most important is "the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S." and that "the United States should be postured to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated" or in a crisis that calls for quick response.

 ·         These excerpts are on-line (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html).  A New York Times analysis is also online (http://www.911truth.org/readingroom/whole_document.php?article_id=86). 

·         According to PBS’s Frontline: “Controversy erupts after the draft is leaked to the press. The White House orders Defense Secretary Cheney to rewrite it. In the new draft there is no mention of preemption or U.S. willingness to act alone.”  This suggests our nation’s leaders were not quite ready for such a major shift in foreign policy.  The election of George W. Bush to the White House provided the rationale for the shift.    (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html)

 ·         January 1993: Dick Cheney, while Secretary of Defense, releases his “Defense Strategy for the 1990s” which reasserts the case for US global domination.  Bill Clinton’s inauguration means the plan is not put into place.  The document is on-line (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/naarpr_Defense.pdf).

 ·         1996-1998: When US intelligence was tracking UBL’s satellite phone calls, he made 260 calls to 27 numbers in Britain, more than 200 calls to Yemen, 131 calls to Sudan, 106 calls to Iran, 67 calls to Azerbaijan, 59 calls to Pakistan, 57 calls to Saudi Arabia, 13 calls to a ship in the Indian Ocean, 6 calls to the US, 6 calls to Italy, 4 calls to Malaysia, and 2 calls to Senegal.  But he makes ZERO calls to Iraq!

 ·         July 1996: Richard Perle (who later would become chairman of President Bush’s Defense Policy Board), then a member of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), authors a paper “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which calls for a hard line Israel headed by Binyamin Netanyahu aimed at a restoration of Zionism.  The plan starts with the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which would then destabilize the Middle East, including, it is hoped, new governments in Syria, Iran, and Lebanon.  The document is on-line (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/860941/posts).

 ·         June 1997: The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) issues its statement of principles, which include shaping the new century to be favorable to American principles and interests, achieving a foreign policy that does the same, increasing defense spending significantly, challenging regimes hostile to our interests and values, and accepting our role in the new world as the sole superpower.

 ·         January 1998: PNAC sends a letter to President Bill Clinton calling for war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a hazard to the world’s oil supplies.  It calls for the US to go it alone and says the US should not be crippled by the UN.  Ten of the 18 signatories end up in George W. Bush’s first administration (including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowtiz, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, Presidential Advisor for the Middle East Elliot Abrams, and Special Iraq Envoy Zalmay Khalizad).

 ·         In part, the letter reads:

 “Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate.  The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.  In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.  In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.  That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy … We believe the US has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf.  In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.”

 The letter is on-line (http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm).

 ·         According to former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the 9/11 Joint Congressional Inquiry, in 2000, the National Commission on Terrorism, chaired by Ambassador Paul Bremer (who would later head the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq) advised targeting states that support terrorism (Afghanistan, Syria, and North Korea were mentioned but Iraq was not).

 ·         September 2000: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” is published by PNAC.  It is commissioned by future VP Dick Cheney, future Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, future Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and future Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby.  It calls for maintaining US global dominance, a military force in the Middle East, military control of space, regime change in China, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran, and other countries, the development of forms of biological warfare that can be used to target specific genotypes, and preparations for multiple theater wars. 

 ·         The report essentially calls for Pax Americana, an American empire, with a greater emphasis on “Homeland Defense,” preparation for multiple wars, and transformation of the US armed forces.  It asserts the US right to secure global hegemony, and this depends, in no small part, to a US presence in the Middle East.  For example, the document states … “the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security.  While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein” (p. 14).

 ·         The report puts forth the “axis of evil.”  For example, it states “… adversaries like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they seek to dominate” (p. 4).  Further, the report states: “The current American peace will be short-lived if the United States becomes vulnerable to rogue powers with small, inexpensive arsenals of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction.  We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or other similar states to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself” (p. 75).

 ·         The report also states the US right to topple hostile regimes: “American military preeminence will continue to rest in significant part on the ability to maintain sufficient land forces to achieve political goals such as removing a dangerous and hostile regime when necessary” (p. 61).

 ·         The report also explicitly calls for the militarization of space and the implementation of “Star Wars” type programs to achieve this goal, as well as increased defense spending to the tune of $15 to 20 billion per year.

 ·         The report also calls for the establishment of more US military bases overseas to serve as “deployment bases” and “forward operating bases,” as well as expansion of US nuclear weaponry.

 ·         The report says the desired changes will take a long time, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”  (Pearl Harbor reference #3) 

 ·         The report is on-line (http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf).

 ·         A comparison of this document with President Bush’s National Security Strategy of the United States (September 2002) is telling.  In it, President Bush asserts the US right to prevent any nation from challenging us economically, politically, or militarily.  According to Bernard Weiner, the similarities include:

 1) the policy of "pre-emptive" war – i.e., whenever the U.S. thinks a country may be amassing too much power and/or could provide some sort of competition in the "benevolent hegemony" region, it can be attacked, without provocation. (A later corollary would rethink the country's atomic policy: nuclear weapons would no longer be considered defensive, but could be used offensively in support of political/economic ends; so-called "mini-nukes" could be employed in these regional wars.);

 2) international treaties and opinion will be ignored whenever they are not seen to serve U.S. imperial goals;

 3) The new policies "will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia." 

In short, the Bush Administration seems to see the U.S., admiringly, as a New Rome, an empire with its foreign legions (and threat of "shock & awe" attacks, including with nuclear weapons) keeping the outlying colonies, and potential competitors, in line. Those who aren't fully in accord with these goals better get out of the way; "you're either with us or against us."

 The Strategy is on-line (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf).

 ·         January 30, 2001: First National Security Council meeting is held ten days after Bush’s inauguration.  It was focused on Iraq, including finding a way to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

 ·         February 1, 2001: Second National Security Council meeting in President Bush’s Administration is held and regime change in Iraq is a central topic.  Rumsfeld talks in depth about what a post-Saddam Iraq would be like.  Memo titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq” is discussed.

 ·         February 2001: Documents planning regime change for Iraq in the Bush Administration are created, including one titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq” and another “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oil Contracts.”

 ·         February 2001 – According to reporter Greg Palast: “The State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam. US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator. On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained, ‘It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime.’”

 ·         March 2001 – Palast also reports that Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq … Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose.  In March 2003, some of this information is discovered by Judicial Watch and posted on its web site.  The materials are located on-line (http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml).

 ·         April 30, 2001: First Deputies Meeting on terrorism is finally held in the Bush Administration.  The discussion was focused on Iraq, not UBL or al-Qaeda!

 ·         April 2001: A report titled Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21^st Century commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations and former US Secretary of State James Baker is submitted to Vice President Cheney.  It says the central dilemma for the US is that “the American people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience.”  It warns that the US is running out of oil and that “the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma” with one of the consequences being that there is a “need for military intervention” to secure our oil supply.  It argues that Iraq should be overthrown so that we can control its oil.

 ·         Spring 2001: An article in the Army War College’s journal by Jeffrey Record, a former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee says it is legitimate to shoot in the Persian Gulf on behalf of lower gas prices.  He also says it is all right to use Presidential subterfuge in the promotion of a conflict. … in April 2001, Tommy Franks, Commander of US forces in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, says to Congress that his command’s key mission is “access to the region’s energy resources.”

 ·         August 6, 2001 -- Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board, says there are three challenges to the US after the cold war: Saddam Hussein, North orea, and Iran.  This becomes President Bush’s “axis of evil” in his January 2002 State of the Union address.

 ·         August 2001 – Deputy Executive Director of PNAC Thomas Donnelly tells the Washington Post that the US should embrace its role as the world’s only superpower.  During the summer of 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered a study of ancient empires including Macedonia, Rome, and the Mongols to see how they maintained dominance.

 ·         September 4, 2001 – Bush cabinet members meet to discuss terrorism for only the second time.  Neither Bush nor Cheney is there … CIA Director George Tenet stresses al-Qaeda, Secretary of State Colin Powell outlines a plan to pressure Pakistan to stop supporting them, but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is only interested in Iraq.

 ·         September 11, 2001 – Donald Rumsfeld is given information hours after the attacks that three of the names on the airplane passenger manifests are suspected al-Qaeda operatives. Notes from people in the National Military Command Center with Rumsfeld show he wanted “the best info. Fast.  Judge whether good enough to hit SH at same time.  Not only UBL.”  … “Go massive.  Sweep it all up.  Things related and things not.”  He also sets up a small team of defense officials to focus on connecting Iraq with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.  In fact, it is reported that by May 2002 Rumsfeld has asked the CIA on ten occasions to find evidence linking Iraq to the terror attacks of 9/11. 

 ·         September 12, 2001 – Officials discuss attacking Iraq … Rumsfeld says Iraq should be part of the first round of the war on terrorism and that Iraq has better targets than Afghanistan … Colin Powell agrees with Richard Clarke that the focus should now be on al-Qaeda but also says: “Public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible.”  Bush says the goal should be to replace the Iraqi government and the military warns him it will need a large force and months to prepare.

 ·         September 12, 2001 – President Bush says to Richard Clarke, see if Saddam did this.  This is now not denied by the White House, who says it probably happened … Bush was told that there was no cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda but he still wanted another report to examine it anyway.

 ·         Clarke claims that after 9/11, President Bush was explicitly not concerned with international law.  After Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said war could not be pre-emptive, Bush said: “No!  I don’t care what the international lawyers say.  We’re going to kick some ass!” (p. 24).

 ·         In the early morning hours of 9/12, the day after the attacks, Clarke walked into a White House meeting expecting to talk about “what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term.”  Instead, he “walked into a series of discussions about Iraq.”  According to Clarke, he had heard from friends in the Pentagon that word was we would be invading Iraq some time in 2002!  Clarke claims that on 9/12, Paul Wolfowitz insisted the attacks were too coordinated to have been conducted without a state sponsor, and that Iraq had to be involved.  In fact, Wolfowitz made the same argument in April 2001 at the first Bush Administration Deputies meeting on terrorism, saying that the first attack on the World Trade Center also was assisted by Iraq.  By that afternoon, according to Clarke, Donald Rumsfeld also was talking about Iraq.  Rumsfeld said there were no decent targets in Afghanistan and that Iraq had better targets.  President Bush said we needed to change the government of Iraq, not just bomb it! (pp. 30-31).

 ·         President Bush also directed Clarke on September 12^th: “Look, 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 is linked in any way.”  Clarke responded that al Qaeda attacked us the day before and Bush replied: “I know, I know but ... see if Saddam was involved.  Just look.  I want to know any shred.”  Clarke said he would look again, but then pointed out: “But, you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq.  Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen.”  Bush replied: “Look into Iraq, Saddam” (p. 32).  A meeting the next day looked into the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and found that there was no cooperation between the two.  A memo was drafted and sent to President Bush.

 ·         Paul Wolfowitz, then assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, insisted all along that Iraq also attacked us in 1993 the first time the World Trade Center was attacked.  In spite of overwhelming evidence against the convicted bomber Ramzi Yousef, Wolfowitz followed the logic of American Enterprise Institute writer Laurie Mylroie that the real attacker worked for Saddam Hussein and was safely in Baghdad.  Clarke insists he wanted there to be evidence linking the first attack to Iraq, so that a war on Iraq might even be justified, but no such evidence exists.

 ·         Ironically, according to Clarke, it is Iran that played a role in the 9/11 attacks and that funds and encourages attacks against us.  Iran also funds Hezbollah, who historically has attacked US ally Israel.  In 1995, when Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Haliburton, Cheney opposed US sanctions against Iran!  The 9/11 Commission also reported that Iran played a role in the 9/11 attacks.

 ·         Mid September 2001 – Retired General Wesley Clarke says there is a concerted effort to pin 9/11 on Iraq.  He says he got a phone call from an overseas think tank urging him to push an Iraq connection on his TV appearances.

 ·         After 9/11, former White House Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke points out that President Bush claimed on numerous occasions, as did other members of his Administration, that Iraq was linked to al Qaeda, yet the 9/11 Commission concludes there is no evidence of this link.

 ·         Mid September, 2001 – A report tries to link Iraq and al-Qaeda by saying Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi spy in the Czech Republic in April 2001.  This is based on a single informant in the local Prague Arab community.  In fact, the story is false and there is no meaningful connection (see Thompson, pp. 321-322).  Not only has the 9/11 Commission dismissed it, so too have the French and the British in October 2002.  Britain says Iraq has purposely distanced itself from al-Qaeda not embraced it.

·         September 13, 2001 – According to PBS Frontline: “Wolfowitz expands on the president's words [where the President said to the nation that he would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them"] at a Pentagon briefing. He seems to signal that the U.S. will enlarge its campaign against terror to include Iraq: ‘I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign.’ Colin Powell and others are alarmed by what they view as Wolfowitz's inflammatory words about "ending states." Powell later responds during a press briefing: "We're after ending terrorism. And if there are states and regimes, nations that support terrorism, we hope to persuade them that it is in their interest to stop doing that. But I think ending terrorism is where I would like to leave it, and let Mr. Wolfowitz speak for himself." (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html)

·         September 15, 2001 – Paul Wolfowitz claims a 10-50% chance Iraq was involved in 9/11.  He, Donald Rumsfeld, and  Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith argue in memos over the next days that Iraq should be included in the first round of responses to 9/11.

 ·         September 17, 2001 – A top secret document signed by President Bush outlines a plan for going to war on Afghanistan and that directs the Pentagon to begin preparing for an invasion of Iraq.  The document orders the military to be ready to occupy Iraq’s oil fields if the country acts against US interests.  According to the media, Iraq becomes the central focus of the Bush Administration for the next nine months.  Richard Clarke asserts that President Bush claimed on numerous occasions, as did other members of his Administration, that war on Iraq was a last resort, yet he began planning for the Iraq war early in his first term.

 ·         September 19, 2001 – The Defense Policy Board has 19 hours of discussion on Iraq … attendees include Chairman Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi … Secretary of State Colin Powell is not invited!  The attendees write a letter to President Bush calling for the overthrown of Saddam Hussein, which is published as a letter from PNAC on September 20, 2001.  Secretary of State Colin Powell delays an attack on Iraq by stating there is no link between Iraq and 9/11.  According to Richard Clarke, President Bush relied on Iraqi exiles such as Ahmed Chalabi for intelligence regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and paid them millions of dollars for it, even though much of it turned out to be false.  In fact, Bush admitted on ABC News to Diane Sawyer that he invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990! (Clarke, p. 266!)

 ·         September 20, 2001 – President Bush says to Prime Minister Tony Blair that Afghanistan would be first and then Iraq would be next.

 ·         Late September 2001 – Former CIA Director James Woolsey and Paul Wolfowitz fly to London to look for evidence that would support President Bush’s goal of regime change in Iraq.   Colin Powell and George Tenet are kept out of the loop.

 ·         September-December, 2001 -- President Bush says he wants UBL dead or alive.  “If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken.”  “I want justice.  And there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’”.  Then on December 18, 2001, Bush says: “Our objective is more than bin Laden.”  His January 2002 State of the Union speech lays out an axis of evil with no mention of UBL.  On March 8, 2002, Bush says: “We’re going to find him.”  On March 13, Bush says: “He’s a person who’s now been marginalized … I just don’t spend that much time on him … I truly am not that concerned about him.”  On April 6, 2002, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers says: “The goals has never been to get bin Laden.”  Finally, Bush starts answering questions about UBL by talking about Saddam Hussein!

 ·         October 2001 – The Counterterrorism Evaluation Group is created by Douglas Feith … it creates analysis at odds with years of CIA data that concludes there are links between al-Qaeda and Iraq … compare with Office of Special Plans, also created by Feith, which was specifically intended to second-guess CIA and DIA data.  The office relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, and was led by Abram Shulsky, a scholarly expert in the works of the political philosopher Leo Strauss.  The Straussian movement has many adherents in and around the Bush Administration.  In addition to Paul Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, they include William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, and Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, who is particularly close to Donald Rumsfeld.

 ·         Ahmad Chalabi was convicted in Jordan for crimes associated with his bank and sentenced in absentia to years of hard labor in prison.  The information he provides is typically false, and thus his code name is “Curveball”!  America paid Chalabi’s National Iraqi Congress $33 million.  During the Iraq war, he allegedly told Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence that we had broken its top secret communications code.

 ·         October-November 2001 – According to reporter Greg Palast, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz convinces the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq.  His plan scopes out the "sale of all state enterprises" -- that is, most of the nation's assets, "… especially in the oil and supporting industries."

 ·         November 21, 2001 – President Bush directs Donald Rumsfeld to devise a secret plan to attack Iraq.

 ·         President Bush said in February 2002: “We have totally routed out one of the most repressive governments in the history of mankind, the Taliban.”  But the Taliban still exists, even today.  More recently President Bush said Iraq was on its way to becoming a free nation like Afghanistan ... but Afghanistan is still not free from the Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters.

 ·         February 7, 2002 – President Bush signs an Executive Order saying that members of al-Qaeda will not be afforded protections of the Geneva Conventions, but that: “The United States will hold states, organizations, and individuals who gain control of United States personnel responsible for treating such personnel humanely and consistent with applicable law.”  Yet, it also says: “I hereby reaffirm the order previously issued by the secretary of defense to the United States Armed Forces requiring that the detainees be treated humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.”  This means when not appropriate and inconsistent with military necessity, captured enemy combatants may be tortured.  This Executive Order is on-line (http://lawofwar.org/Bush_torture_memo.htm).  An analysis of the memos that led to this Order, including that by now Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, can be found at: http://lawofwar.org/Torture_Memos_analysis.htm

 ·         February 16, 2002 – National Security Council directive signed by Bush establishes goals and objectives for going to war with Iraq, which is in opposition to what Bush and his officials had been saying publicly about no plans for war on Iraq.  This is a diversion from al-Qaeda as resources are shifted from Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf.

 ·         April 2002 – March 2003 – the State Department begins its “Future of Iraq” project which is intended to develop plans for post-Saddam Iraq.  It is made up of 17 working groups, yet the project is underfunded ($5 million).  Still, it produces 13 volumes of reports and 2,000 pages.  Media accounts suggest none of the report was used in post-war Iraq.

 ·         April 2002 – British Prime Minister Tony Blair visits President Bush in Crawford, Texas and tells Bush that the UK intends to support military action to bring about regime change.  First, however, a coalition will have to be constructed, public opinion will have to be shaped, and people will have to be convinced that all efforts to eliminate WMDs through weapons inspections were exhausted.

 ·         May 2002 – US military increases bombing of targets in no-fly zones in Iraq, dropping 7.3 tons of ordinance this month, compared with 0.3 tons the prior month.

·         June 2002 -- According to PBS Frontline, in a speech to West Point, President Bush “cites the realities of a new post-Cold War era and outlines a major shift in national security strategy -- from containment to preemption.  "Our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." The president also calls for an American hegemony: "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge." Both strategic aims -- preemption and hegemony -- echo the recommendations Paul Wolfowitz made back in 1992 in his controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft.” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html)

 ·         June 2002 – March 2003 – Operation Southern Focus is initiated, where bombing of no-fly zones increases tremendously.  US and British planes flew 21,736 sorties over Southern Iraq and dropped 606 bombs on 391 targets.

 ·         June 2002 – US and British planes drop 10.4 tons of ordinance on targets in Iraq no-fly zones.

 ·         July 2002 – The US military releases its new Defense Planning Guidance which lays out a plan to prevent any other power from challenging the US.  It even says preemptive use of nuclear weapons is justified.  A news briefing and slides associated with the document are on-line (http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/t05102002_t0510dpg.html).

 ·         August 2002 – President Bush’s advisers advocate attacking Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Egypt, Burma.  …

·         According to PBS Frontline, Colin Powell “reports trouble getting U.S. allies on board for a war with Iraq and wants to consult the U.N. At a private dinner with Bush on Aug. 5, Powell warns the president that the U.S. should not act unilaterally and must fully consider the economic and political consequences of war -- particularly in the Middle East.  Powell's view is championed by Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser in the Bush I administration, who publishes an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 15 in which he argues that Bush is moving too quickly on Iraq, and advocates pressing for the return of U.N. inspectors.  Soon after, Vice President Cheney emerges as the administration voice advocating action against Iraq.  In a Nashville speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Cheney warns that ‘a return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of [Saddam's] compliance with U.N. resolutions.’  Cheney also outlines a larger, long-term strategy whereby regime change in Iraq could transform the Middle East: ‘Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab 'street,' the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are 'sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.' Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.’  As Bush leaves for an August vacation in Crawford, Texas, he agrees to take his case to the U.N. and asks his advisers to start preparing the speech. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html).  Bush’s speech to the UN on September 12, 2002 seems to favor the Powell approach to resolving the Iraq problem, but only five days later President Bush’s National Security Strategy is released, which reifies the PNAC vision of preemptive and unilateral war.

 ·         August 2002 – US and British planes drop 14.1 tons of ordinance on targets in Iraq no-fly zones.

 ·         August 5, 2002 – US military planners decide that the operation to depose Saddam Hussein will begin with an air offensive in the no-fly zones, and with special forces operations aimed at weakening air defenses.  The US and British also build up forces in Kuwait in preparation for an invasion.  In September 2002, planes drop 54.6 tons of ordinance, in October, they drop 17.7 tons of ordinance, in November, they drop 33.6 tons of ordinance, and in December, they drop 53.2 tons of ordinance.

 ·         August 2002 – Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Science Board recommends the creation of a super-intelligence support group it calls “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group” or P2OG, to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare intelligence and cover-up and deception.  The body would launch secret operations aimed at stimulating reactions among terrorists (that is to provoke terrorism) and states possessing WMDs so that the US could respond quickly to threats and attacks.

 ·         Senator Bob Graham says that: “In the fall of 2002, the President allowed intelligence agencies under his control to present erroneous, misleading, and incomplete information to the Congress, our allies, and the American people in support of the war in Iraq” ... “The President further adulterated that intelligence by selective use and presentation of the evidence to justify a preemptive war to the American people and the Congress, and to the world community at the United Nations” (p. 231).  He achieved this through secret agencies such as the Office of Special Plans.  According to Senator Bob Graham, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans in 2002.  According to Graham:

 “the Office of Special Plans circumvented the standard processes for reviewing intelligence and operated free of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has supplied operational intelligence information to Secretaries of Defense for over forty years.  If you set up competing intelligence collection agencies, the users will simply take information from the agency whose conclusions are closest to what the user wants to hear, especially if one of those agencies is created simply to validate pre-formed opinions.  Therefore, it was no surprise that the Office of Special Plans came up with some of the most terrifying – and inaccurate – claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and some of the most wildly optimistic pictures of the reception Americans would be given should we invade” (p. 158).

 ·         Dick Cheney, for example, alleged: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.  There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us ... Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon” (Graham, p. 178).  This logic made the case for war with Iraq a “slam dunk” according to CIA Director George Tenet.  Amazingly, a study by the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform found that in October 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had made nearly 100 misleading or inflated statements about the threat posed by Iraq.  Yeah, like the mushroom cloud!!!  Bush said: “America must not ignore the threat gathering against us.  Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

 ·         Graham alleges that when President Bush approached Congress on September 12th, 2001 for authorization to use force (against Afghanistan presumably), he actually left the language so broad that it would have justified any attack against any nation preemptively – it was a blank check.  See p. 105 for the wording ... it ends with “and to deter and preempt any related future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.”  Thus, Senators concerned with the language drafted an alternative and “granted the President the authority to use force against those nations, organizations, and persons that were learned to be connected to the tragedy of September 11" (p. 105).  So, since Iraq was NOT connected to 9/11, the war on Iraq was NOT justified by the use of force resolution passed by Congress.

 ·         The “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002” (passed October 16, 2002) was based on the following justifications: Iraq posed a threat with its WMDs, to both the United States and his neighbors; Iraq violated its cease-fire agreement; Iraq attempted to thwart weapons inspectors; Iraq brutally suppresses its civilian population; Saddam Hussein authorized an assassination attempt against President Bush; Iraq harbors terrorists and has links with al-Qaeda; the US Congress passed laws (in August 1998) allowing the President “to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations.”  Congress as stated that the “policy of the United States [should be] to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.”

 ·         The resolution gave the President the authority to use military force against Iraq to defend the national security of the United States [even though Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the US] and to enforce all relevant UN Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq [even though the UN Security Council resolutions only promised serious consequences for violation but not war].  Further, the resolution required the President, within 48 hours, to demonstrate that relying on diplomatic or other peaceful means alone will either not adequately protect the national security of the United States from Iraq OR will not lead to enforcement of all relevant UN Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. [UN weapons inspections and sanctions against Iraq are widely acknowledged to have been effective at containing Saddam Hussein.  Even Colin Powell said, in remarks to Egyptian Foreign Minister Amre Houssa (February 24, 2001), that: "Sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

 ·         This comes after the 2000 National Commission on Terrorism, chaired by Ambassador Paul Bremer (who would later head the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq), which advised targeting states that support terrorism (Afghanistan, Syria, and North Korea were mentioned but Iraq was not).  The Commission’s executive summary states, in part: “U.S. policies must firmly target all states that support terrorists.  Iran and Syria should be kept on the list of state sponsors until they stop supporting terrorists. Afghanistan should be designated a sponsor of terrorism and subjected to all the sanctions applicable to state sponsors.  The President should impose sanctions on countries that, while not direct sponsors of terrorism, are nevertheless not cooperating fully on counterterrorism. Candidates for consideration include Pakistan and Greece.”  The document outlines from “potential terrorist threats from a growing number of groups opposed to perceived American hegemony.”  Yet, the words Iraq and Saddam Hussein do not appear in the document.  Its findings are on-line (http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/commission.html).

 ·         Senator Bob Graham decided to propose amending the use of force resolution in October 2002 to explicitly allow the US to go after any group that threatened us, to launch a true global war on terror.  At this time, the State Department had identified thirty-four international terrorist organizations, of which six shared characteristics of great concern: al-Qaeda, abu Nidal, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Liberation Front, and Hezbollah (each is sponsored by a state that has WMDs, each has a long history of hating and killing Americans, and each has the ability to strike within the US).  Congress gave the President the authority to go after only one of these groups.  President Bush’s reply was that the Graham Amendment would slow the progress on considering the current resolution.  Graham’s Amendment lost 88-10.  The other resolution was passed 77-23 to give the President the authority he wanted.

 ·         Senator Bob Graham made efforts to get a sense of whether Iraq actually posed a threat to the US.  The Joint Inquiry by Congress that Graham co-chaired called CIA Director George Tenet to a closed session.  After his testimony, the Senators requested to see the National Intelligence Estimate on the rationale for invading Iraq and the military and post invasion occupation expectations (the NIE is prepared by the National Intelligence Council and is the most comprehensive analytical document produced by the office of the Director of Central Intelligence ... according to Graham, “It represents the combined wisdom of the intelligence agencies, with agencies encouraged to include their qualifications, nuances, and dissents in the final recommendation so that the reader can evaluate the credibility of the final estimate” [p. 179].  Tenet said NO NIE HAD BEEN REQUESTED BY THE WHITE HOUSE AND NONE HAD BEEN PREPARED!!!

 ·         So, the Senators requested an NIE as soon as possible ... Tenet said he could not produce the full NIE because his people were too busy with other intelligence functions, but he said he would prepare an NIE on Iraq’s programs of developing, building, and storing weapons of mass destruction.  About three weeks later, a classified NIE was delivered, and it was roughly 90 pages long.  According to Graham, the NIE did not justify the claim that the case against Iraq was a slam dunk.  Graham says the NIE justified the war only if you ignore the caveats, dissenting views, and assessment of Saddam Hussein himself.  Graham notes that the NIE concluded that “Saddam had shown little desire to attack the United States and had few if any contacts with al-Qaeda and no particular interest in assisting Osama bin Laden” (p. 181).

 ·         Graham and the Senators asked Tenet to declassify the NIE on October 2 so it could be seen by the American people.  The declassified report was returned two days later and was 25 pages long.  Graham says they were struck that the production value of the unclassified version equaled or exceeded that of the classified version – it had maps, photos, and tables.  Its conclusions were ominous and frightening and predicted a nuclear armed Iraq within one to ten years, an Iraq with more biological weapons than before the Gulf War, and an Iraq with unmanned aerial vehicles that were intended to be used to deliver biological agents [all of this was untrue by the way].

 ·         As it turns out, the White House asked the CIA in the spring of 2002 for a document that could be used to make the public case for war on Iraq.  This was the unclassified document given to the Joint Inquiry two days after it was requested [So this means the White House asked for a document that was inconsistent with the whole truth, simply to justify a war!].  As noted by Graham: “The problem was that it did not accurately represent the classified NIE we had received just days earlier.  Gone were the assessments of Saddam Hussein’s intentions that had made the classified version of the document more balanced ... Intent is a huge component of an intelligence assessment, and here it had been selectively removed” (p. 183).

 ·         Compare Tenet’s “slam dunk” with the following facts offered by Graham: 1) We had no human penetration inside Iraq and, therefore, no means of independent, current verification of the intelligence; 2) The Defense Department was relying on exiles, especially the Iraqi National Congress and its leader Ahmad Chalabi; 3) Intelligence from other countries that whose intelligence we trust raised serious doubts that Saddam Hussein had the capabilities that were attributed to Saddam Hussein!

 ·         Graham then sought more information from Tenet because of the discrepancies and three days later Tenet sent a three-page response.  In it were these words:

    “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] against the United States.

    Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact revenge.”  Graham concludes: “In short, Saddam Hussein posed no threat to his neighbors or to the United States as long as he was left alone.  Only when he was threatened did he become dangerous, and at that point it became possible that he might partner with a non-Iraqi terrorist organization” (p. 187).  See the testimony of CIA Director George Tenet to the Joint Inquiry where he said the likelihood of a WMD attack by Saddam Hussein was low unless he was attacked, in which case it would be high (pp. 187-188).

 ·         Information on Iraqi and al-Qaeda links is classified!!!  It is illogical anyway.  As explained by Graham, Saddam Hussein’s “leadership was not about pan-Islamic brotherhood or Muslim fundamentalism.  It was about retaining and expanding his own power.  Those facts alone argue that Saddam would not want to grant a foothold in Iraq to a group like al-Qaeda, which would be capable of undermining his power at home” (p. 189).  In fact, the only evidence of an Iraq and al-Qaeda link established by Colin Powell when he made the US case for war to the UN was that a group affiliated with al-Qaeda (whatever that means) operated training camps in Iraq.  The only problem was it operated in the Northern no-fly zone, where Saddam Hussein had no power and where the US could have bombed them at any time.  Tenet even said to the Joint Inquiry: “Our understanding of the relationship between Saddam Iraq and al-Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability.  Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank” (p. 189).

 ·         Ray McGovern, retired CIA agent with 27 years experience, including preparing National Intelligence Estimates and Presidential Daily Briefings that outline threats posed by terrorists, is now member of the Veterans of Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).  He says the war on Iraq is about O.I.L. (an acronym that stands for Oil, Israeli survival, and Logistics or bases in the Middle East).

 ·         McGovern says that the CIA was intended to be a “central intelligence agency,” a one-place stop for all needed information about any nation.  It was intended to give its unvarnished opinion and to serve no particular agenda.  According to him, the CIA was not supposed to change the minds of government officials on policies but to given them all the relevant facts so they can make the best informed decision.  McGovern asserts this is not the case today and that the CIA broke its own ethic when it provided President Bush with faulty intelligence based on the pressure put on it from Vice President Dick Cheney and his office.  This supports the case made by Bob Graham.  McGovern calls the CIA’s NIA on Iraq to Congress in October 2002 the worst estimate ever delivered by the CIA.

 ·         McGovern also claims that the outing of CIA Agent Valerie Plame was done not only to spite former Ambassador Joe Wilson (who showed that the document on which the claim that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger was a forgery), but also to send a message to all intelligence analysts that revealing anything counter to the case for war has high costs.

 ·         In the fall of 2002, President Bush sets up a high-level interagency task force among Deputies Committee members to review all available information on post-war Iraq to provide recommendations to President Bush.  Media accounts suggest information by the Office of Special Plans take precedence.  Among the many conclusions drawn include that the US will likely be involved in a lengthy occupation, that the US would not necessarily be greeted as liberators, and that Iraqi oil will be used to pay for Iraqi reconstruction.

 ·         Also in the fall of 2002, according to reporter Greg Palast, Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, is brought in by the Pentagon to plan the management of Iraq's oil fields, working with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.  According to Palast, this is after “Grover Norquist and other corporate lobbyists meet secretly with Defense, State and Treasury officials to ensure the invasion plans for Iraq include plans for protecting ‘property rights.’”  Palast says: “The result was a pre-invasion scheme to sell off Iraq's oil fields, banks, electric systems, and even change the country's copyright laws to the benefit of the lobbyists' clients. Occupation chief Paul Bremer would later order these giveaways into Iraq law.”  Carroll refuses to participate saying: “There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved.”

 ·         September 2002 – Philip Zelikow, who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) that reports directly to the president, and who would later go on to serve as Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission (in spite of being in the room when President Bush received specific warnings about an al-Qaeda attack on the US), said to a gathering at the University of Virginia: “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel…And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.”

 ·         October 2002 – Ahmed Chalabi meets with executives of three major oil companies to help decide how Iraqi oil will be divided up after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

 ·         October 7, 2002 – President Bush makes a nationally televised speech where he makes allegedly false and exaggerated statements in defense of the forthcoming war on Iraq.  It includes claims related to aluminum tubes, Saddam Hussein’s nuclear capabilities, Iraqi drone aircraft, giving WMDs to terrorists, Iraq’s training of al-Qaeda members in bomb-making, poisons, and deadly gas, and Iraq’s treating of an al-Qaeda member is a Baghdad hospital.

 ·         November – December 2002 – National Security Council member Elliot Abrams, in charge of Near East and North Africa, leads a group charged with putting together post-invasion plans for Iraq.  He puts forth a proposal for the US to take de facto control of US oil fields.  This is the same man, who in 1991, pleaded guilty to two counts of lying to Congress under oath in relation to the secret and illegal operation mounted by the Reagan administration to fund the CIA-organized contra mercenaries’ war on Nicaragua (the Iran-Contra affair).

 ·         In December 2002, Richard Perle says: “No stages.  This is total war.  We are fighting a variety of enemies.  There are lots of them out there.  All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, and then we will do Iraq … this is entirely the wrong way to go about it.  If we just let out vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war … our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

 ·         December 2002 – Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz receives a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment that says the costs of occupation and care of Iraq would come out of Iraqi oil.  The report was commissioned by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon’s director of New Assessment.

 ·         December 2002 – The Oil and Energy Working Group, part of the State Department’s “Future of Iraq” project, meets and discusses plans for the oil industry in post-Saddam Iraq.

 ·         December 7, 2002 – Iraq makes its declaration of the state of its weapons programs to the UN.  The report consists of more than 2,00 pages of evidence of the state of Iraq’s programs.  Materials related to the statement are on-line (http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/Iraq/For-Ministry/Iraqi-declaration-1202--TOC.html).  The US consistently and emphatically denies the report is complete and accurate.

 ·         January 2003 – Judicial Watch learns of maps and charts of Iraqi oil fields as part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force meetings.  They show locations of Iraqi oil and list potential foreign suitors of this oil.  During this month, according to Greg Palast, Robert Ebel, former CIA oil analyst, is sent, BBC learns, to London to meet with Fadhil Chalabi to plan terms for taking over Iraq's oil.  Greg Palast reports that Falah Aljibury, an “Iraqi-born oil industry consultant” took part in secret meetings that discussed plans to force a coup d’etat and to find a replacement leader for Saddam Hussein.  Aljibury says that the original plan to sell off Iraq’s oil, which was backed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped bring on the insurgency in Iraq: “Insurgents used this, saying, ‘Look, you’re losing your county, you’re losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable … We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming.”

 ·         2003- April 2004 – details about horrors at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq come to light, mostly after the publication of an essay by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.  His essay is on-line (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact).

 ·         According to Wikipedia:

 Photos and videos revealed by the Pentagon to lawmakers in a private viewing on the 12th of May, 2004, showed attack dogs snarling at cowing prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other, the lawmakers revealed.  Members of the Senate reviewed photographs supplied by the Defense Department which have not been released to the public.  They note that in addition to the abuses mentioned, some of the U.S. military guards have sex in front of the prisoners.

 Hersh has made other claims about the abuses at Abu Ghraib, in his speaking appearances, where he has admitted he will change facts and events for audience consumption.  At the July 2004 conference of the ACLU, he stated there are tapes of American soldiers sodomizing Iraqi boys, and that these tapes are being held by the Bush administration: "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking," Notably, Hersh would revise this claim in his book Chain of Command, stating, "An attorney involved in the case told me in July 2004 that one of the witness statements he had read described the rape of a boy by a foreign contract employee who served as an interpreter at Abu Ghraib,” Hersh wrote. “In the statement, which had not been made public, the lawyer told me, a prisoner stated that he was a witness to the rape, and that a woman was taking pictures."

 The New York Times, in a report on January 12, 2005, reported testimony suggesting that the following events had taken place at Abu Ghraib:

• Urinating on detainees
• Jumping on detainee's leg (a limb already wounded by gunfire) with such force that it could not thereafter heal properly
• Continuing by pounding detainee's wounded leg with collapsible metal baton

Sergeant Samuel Provance from Alpha Company 302nd Military Intelligence battalion, in interviews with several news agencies, reported the sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl by two interrogators, as well as a 16-year-old son of an Iraqi general who was driven through the cold after he had been showered and who was then besmeared with mud in order to get his father to talk. He also pointed out several techniques used by interrogators that have been identified as being in violation of the Geneva Convention. He spoke to the media, even against direct orders, about what he knew about at the prison (largely from conversations and interactions with the interrogators). He explained that he did so because there was "definitely a cover-up" underway by the Army. He was administratively flagged and had his top secret clearance suspended in retaliation by the Army.

In her video diary, a prison guard said that prisoners were shot for minor misbehavior, and claimed to have had venomous snakes bite prisoners, sometimes resulting in their deaths. By her own admission, that guard was "in trouble" for having thrown rocks at the detainees.

Hashem Muhsen, one of the naked men in the human pyramid photo, said they were also made to crawl around the floor naked and that U.S. soldiers rode them like donkeys. After being released in January 2004, Muhsen became an Iraqi police officer.

It was discovered that one prisoner, Manebl al-Jamadi, died as a result of abuse, a death that was ruled a homicide by the military. One detainee has also made charges of rape under supervision of the soldiers.

·         January 2003 – The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance is created in the Pentagon to direct post-war administration of Iraq.  The office is later named the Coalition Provisional Authority.

 ·         January 2003 – According to Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, President Bush says to Condoleezza Rice, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas: “We’re not winning.  Time is not on our side here.  Probably going to have to, we’re going to have to go to war.”  Rice denies that this means the decision to go to war was already made.

 ·         January 2003 – According to Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, President Bush tells Secretary of State Colin Powell: “The inspections are not getting us thee … I really think I’m going to have to do this.”  Powell responds, “You’re sure  You understand the consequences?  You know that you’re going to be owning this place?”  Bush ask Powell, “Are you with me on this?  I think I have to do this.  I want you with me.”  Powell then says: “I’ll do the best I can.  Yes, sir, I will support you.  I’m with you, Mr. President.”  Woodward also says Bush never asked Powell for his advice on Iraq.

 ·         January 27, 2003 -- United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) Chief Weapons Inspector Hands Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) Chief Weapons Inspector Mohamed ElBaradei present their reports to the UN Security Council.  Whereas there is enough evidence in the Blix report to suggest Saddam Hussein is still not fully cooperating with weapons inspectors, the ElBaradei report finds no evidence of prohibited nuclear weapons activity.  Neither Blix not ElBaradei supports war on Iraq.  In fact, Blix asks the United States why, if it knows where WMDs are located, it does not share the information with the weapons inspectors so that they can locate and destroy them.  On February 14, 2003, the two men update the UN Security Council on the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq, and they conclude there is no evidence to substantiate claims that Iraq poses a threat to the US or Europe.  The men believe that inspections are working.

 ·         February 2003 – The Bush administration completes a 100-page blueprint for post-Saddam Iraq.

 ·         In February 2003, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton says to Israeli officials that he has no doubt the US will attack Iraq and that later it will be necessary to take on Syria, Iran, and North Korea too.

 ·         February 5, 2003 – Colin Powell testifies to the United Nations that Saddam Hussein possesses WMDs that are a threat to the US and our allies.  His testimony focuses on supposed recorded conversations of Iraqi Republican Guard, satellite images of “active chemical munitions bunkers,” the fact that scientists had been banned from interviews with UN inspectors, the presence of mobile biological weapons labs, unaccounted for nerve gas, continuing nuclear efforts, aluminum tubes supposedly to enrich uranium, hidden desert weapons, anthrax, unmanned aircraft that could be used to spray chemical or biological agents, and links to terrorism.  Much of the speech has been ridiculed and even disproven since.  Powell himself has acknowledged that the information on the supposed mobile weapons labs was “not solid.”  He also calls his speech a “blot” on his record that was painful then and that remains painful now.  Powell’s speech is on-line (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html).

 ·         Further, Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, now says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life.  Wilkerson was one of several insiders interviewed for the CNN Presents documentary "Dead Wrong -- Inside an Intelligence Meltdown" that pieced together the events leading up to the mistaken WMD intelligence that was presented to the public.  A presidential commission that investigated the pre-war WMD intelligence found much of it to be "dead wrong."  The report, released in March 2005, is online (http://www.wmd.gov/report/).

 ·         Further, Charles J. Hanley, a special correspondent for the Associated Press and winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 2000, also wrote in October 2003 a critique of claims made by Secretary of State Colin Powell.  It refutes Powell’s claims one by one, showing them to be inaccurate and/or highly questionable.  Details of the critique are on-line (http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1971092).

 ·         February 18, 2003 – White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says: “Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealth country.  Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people.  And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to should much of the burden for [its] own reconstruction.”

 ·         March-September 2003 -- Bush claims Hussein is linked with al-Qaeda type organizations and al-Qaeda types and says you cannot distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam … “There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaeda ties.”  Cheney says: “There’s overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government.  I am very confident that there was an established relationship” … there are “long established ties with al-Qaeda”.  Yet, in September 2005, Colin Powell said “I have never seen a connection.  I can’t think otherwise, because I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest there was one.”

 ·         In early 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz reached two conclusions: 1) That the US would be greeted as liberators; and 2) The Iraqis would turn on the oil to pay for the occupation and rebuilding of their country.  Both of these were based on false intelligence validated by Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans.  Graham calls this “incestuous amplification” where they reached a conclusion first and then the conclusion was endorsed and amplified with faulty intelligence.

 ·         March 20, 2003 – the US invades Iraq, and takes Baghdad just three weeks later (April 9).  Yet, almost three years later and a rebellion (or insurgency) flairs daily.  Far more US military personnel have been killed since the war “ended” that prior to “Mission Accomplished” (see figure here: http://www.ac.wwu.edu/%7Estephan/USfatalities.html).
 
·         The war only started after President Bush issued warnings to Saddam Hussein (to leave Iraq within 48 hours) and after violations of UN Security Council resolutions.

 ·         In March 2003, the Defense Department is told by US Energy Information Administrator Guy Caruso that Iraq's fields are incapable of a massive increase in output.  According to Greg Palast Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz still testifies to Congress that invasion will be a free ride.  He says: "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. …We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.”

 ·         March 27, 2003 – Paul Wolfowitz reports to the House of representatives Appropriations Committee that Iraq’s oil wealth will held pay for post-war reconstruction: “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people … ON a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years.”

 ·         March 27, 2003 – Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage then testifies: “This is not Afghanistan … When we approach the question of Iraq, we realize here is a country which has a resource.  And it’s obvious, it’s oil.  And it can bring in and does bring in a certain amount of revenue each year … $10, $15, even $18 billion … this is not a broke country.”

 ·         March 27, 2003 – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says to the Senate: “When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community.”

 ·         The first codename for the Iraq war was Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) but was changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

 ·         Once the mission was accomplished, the occupation of Iraq began.  According to Richard Clarke, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored military advice regarding the occupation, ignoring Army Chief of Staff Eric Shineski who claimed we needed at least 200,000 troops to secure Iraq and then forcing him to retire after he went public ... Further, Paul Wolfowtiz testified to Congress that he could not imagine it would take as many troops to occupy Iraq as it did to conquer it ... Four-star General Anthony Zinni, formerly responsible for all troops in the Middle East, charged the Pentagon leadership with dereliction of duty.  American troops have insufficient body armor, HUMVEES, and not even enough troops.  We also dismissed all of Saddam Hussein’s former military from duty, as well as mid-level and high-level Baathist government officials, thereby making Iraq a less secure country.  Further, National Guard and reserve units are being overused overseas, leaving the US less protected and families broken up.

 ·         Clarke goes as far to say that US occupation of Iraq is exactly what al Qaeda wants ... Clarke claims: “The ingredients al Qaeda dreamed of for propagating its movement were a Christian government attacking a weaker Muslim region, allowing the new terrorist group to rally jihadists from many countries to come to the air of the religious brethren” (p. 136).

 ·         April 2003 -- Former CIA Director James Woolsey says the US is engaged in WW-IV (WW-III was the cold war) and lays out grand strategy to take on Iran, Iraq, Syria, and extremists like al-Qaeda.  He also says he wants the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt nervous.  … the July 2002 presentation to the Defense Policy Board says “Grand strategy for the Middle East: Iraq is the tactical pivot.  Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot.  Egypt the prize.”

 ·         May 2003 -- General Jay Garner, who had been appointed by President Bush as viceroy over Iraq, is fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  According to an interview with the BCC, Garner said he was fired because he resisted White House plans to sell off Iraq's oil and national assets.  "That's just one fight you don't want to take on," Garner told reporter Greg Palast.  Garner also disclosed that the Bush plan to invade Iraq and take its oil were developed the US asserted that Saddam was a threat due to WMDs: "All I can tell you is the plans were pretty elaborate; they didn't start them in 2002, they were started in 2001."

 ·         May 2003 – In a Vanity Fair article, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said: “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on” as justification for the Iraq war.  He also said another reason for the war was to eliminate the need to have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.

 ·         June 2003 – The Office of Special Plans reverts to its previous name, the Northern Gulf Affairs Office.

 ·         September 17, 2003 -- Donald Rumsfeld says he sees no Iraq-9/11 link.  Bush also admits this on March 20, 2003.  Yet, Dick Cheney, on September 14, 2003, says: “I think it’s not surprising that people make the connection” between Iraq and 9/11 … “If we’re successful in Iraq … then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorist who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”

 ·         September 20, 2003 – the White House launches a web site titled “Tales of Saddam’s Brutality” which outlines the numerous crimes and atrocities committed by the Iraqi leader.  Critics speculate the website was created to divert attention away from the Abu Ghraib scandal and the fact that no WMDs have been found in Iraq.  The page is on-line (http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/tales.html).

 ·         October 2003 – The David Kay report on WMDs (Iraq Survey Group) is released.  It says that it has not yet found WMDs in Iraq and speculates that they may have been moved to Syria.  Kay said: “We were almost all wrong – and I certainly include myself here.”  Kay also said: “I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there.”

 ·         November 2003 -- The oil industry objects to the State Department plans for Iraq's oil fields.  So it writes a 323-page plan, "Options for [the] Iraqi Oil Industry."  Greg Palast says that Iraq is “forced to create an OPEC-friendly state oil company that supports the OPEC cartel's extortionate price for petroleum.”  That the oil industry appears to have defeated the neoconservatives when it comes to this one issue might explain why Paul Wolfowitz went to the World Bank???

 ·         January 2004 – Former US Secretary of Treasury Paul O-Neill says in interviews with the media: "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein is a bad person and that he needed to go." … "From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime."  O’Neill also says: "In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction.  There were allegations and assertions by people … But I’ve been around a hell of a long time, and I know the difference between evidence and assertions and illusions or allusions and conclusions that one could draw from a set of assumptions.  To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else.  And I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence."

 ·         January 2004 – Under guidance of the James Baker Institute in Texas, a new plan to create a state-owned oil company in Iraq is created.  Former US Secretary of State James Baker, now an attorney, represents ExxonMobil and the Saudi government.

 ·         May 2004 -- Retired Marine General Joseph Hoar, a former commander of US forces in the Middle East, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 2004: “I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure ... We are looking into the abyss.”  Larry Diamond, a former advisor to the US occupation authority in Iraq said: “If the current situation persists, we will continue fighting one form of Iraqi insurgency after another – with too little legitimacy, to little will and too few resources ... There is only one word for a situation in which you cannot win and you cannot withdrawal: Quagmire.” [also consider Bush’s own admission during an interview on the campaign trail that the war on terrorism is not really something you can win ... and Rumsfeld’s acknowledgment that our military was not going to defeat the insurgency in Iraq, that Iraq was going to have to do that politically ... and that the insurgency could go on for up to 12 years!].

 ·         In its July 2004 report on Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee found that there was no Iraq and al-Qaeda link.  Yet, President Bush implied links between Iraq and al-Qaeda time and time again, and in many different ways.

 ·         January 11, 2004 – Bush Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill appears on 60 Minutes and charges the Bush Administration began planning for a war on Iraq within days of Bush’s inauguration.  His claims are based on 19,000 government documents, including transcripts of high-level National Security Council meetings.

 ·         July 2004 – Former CIA intelligence officers stated publicly that the White House ignored a CIA assessment warning of major chaos in Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein, that the White House paid little or no attention to the prewar CIA assessment.  The review was led by Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, and was disputed by White House spokesman Frederick Jones, who told the daily: "we did plan adequately for the postwar period."

 ·         The July 2004 National Intelligence Council (NIC) assessment of post-war Iraq, laid out three likely possibilities with the insurgency in Iraq.  In the best-case scenario, Iraq could be expected to achieve a "tenuous stability" over the next 18 months.  In the worst case, it could dissolve into civil war.

 ·         According to the Washington Post, the July assessment was similar to one produced before the war and another in late 2003 that also were more pessimistic in tone than the administration's portrayal of the resistance to the U.S. occupation.  One official involved in evaluating the July document said the NIC, which advises the director of central intelligence, decided not to include a more rosy scenario "because it looked so unreal."  White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the intelligence assessment the work of "pessimists and naysayers" and President Bush called the assessment a guess.  "The CIA laid out several scenarios," Bush said.  "It said that life could by lousy. Life could be okay. Life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."

 ·         More recently (October 2005), Lawrence Wilkerson, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005, said: “There was simply no plan, other than humanitarian assistance and a few other things like protection of oil and so forth, with regard to post-war Iraq.  There was no plan.”  Wilkerson also wrote:  “In President Bush’s first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.”  In describing how vital information was handled in the Bush White House, Wilkerson said: “”The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security-decision process … What I saw was a cabal between the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.”  Dictionary.com defines a cabal as “A conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers.”

 ·         Senator Bob Graham also asserts that President Bush failed to prepare for the war on Iraq and its consequences.  Graham says Bush failed to prepare us to judge whether Saddam Hussein or international terrorists pose a greater threat “by refusing to release the information he had in his possession as to the relative number of international terrorists and Iraqi operatives present in the United States” (p. 231).  Graham asked Richard Clarke and Bob Woodward (who wrote two books on President Bush) whether President Bush compared the threats of al-Qaeda and Iraq and both said no.  The decision started and ended with how evil Saddam Hussein was.  According to Graham, al-Qaeda poses a greater evil: It is more capable, willing, and present to hurt us.  Graham says there are hundreds of al Qaeda here.  Graham alleges that there are between fifteen and twenty thousand al-Qaeda recruits who went through training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

 ·         September 2004 -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says: “From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view, [the war on Iraq] was illegal.”

 ·         September 30, 2004 – the Charles Duelfer report (Comprehensive Report of the
Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD) is released.  When Duelfer testifies to Congress, on October 6, 2004, he says the group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had produced any WMDs since 1991 and that Iraq was incapable of doing so under UN sanctions.  Yet, it did say Saddam Hussein wanted to restart his weapons programs once the inspections were over, but that he did not have a plan in place to do so.  The report is on-line (http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/).

 ·         October 2004, a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies suggests that the Iraqi war will mean more terrorism against Westerners in Arab countries, not less.

 ·         January 12, 2005 – US military officially abandons its search for WMDs in Iraq.

 ·         March 2005, Donald Rumsfeld says that the US military will not defeat the Iraqi insurgency / rebellion, but rather it has to be defeated politically by the Iraqis.

 ·         May 1, 2005 – The London Sunday Times publishes the secret “Downing Street Memo,” which contains the minutes from a July 23, 2002.  According to the Center for Cooperative Research, the meeting indicates that several of Britain's top officials believed the Bush administration had already decided to go to war with Iraq by the summer of 2002 and that the head of the British intelligence service believed at the time that US intelligence was being “fixed” around Washington's plan to topple the Iraqi government.  The minutes are from “the official classified record of a meeting attended by the security cabinet of America's closest ally.”

 The Downing Street Memo is marked: "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents."  The most controversial paragraph is a report of a recent visit to Washington by head of the Secret Intelligence Service Sir Richard Dearlove (known in official terminology as 'C'):

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. 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. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

·         Other parts of the document read: The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

 ·         The Downing Street Memo can be read online (http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/)

 ·         As of this writing, the US war on Iraq has killed between 27,000 and 31,000 civilians, and a total of 100,000 total people in Iraq.  Further, according to US military study, “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” insurgents have killed or injured 26,000 people between January 1, 2004 and September 16, 2005.  More than 2,000 US service personnel have been killed and more than 15,000 injured.

 ·         June 2005 – Donald Rumsfeld says “Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, ten, twelve years.”  This is in response to the question of how long the Iraqi insurgency might last.

 ·         June 2005 – Vice President Dick Cheney says: “"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

 ·         August 2005 -- British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says the US and British presence in Iraq is fueling the insurgency/rebellion.

 ·         September 2005 -- Top U.S. generals admitted in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that only a single Iraqi battalion (out of 119) was prepared to operate on its own without U.S. military support. This was a decrease from the three battalions that U.S. generals had assured Congress in previous testimony were ready to operate independently.  They also said that the war in Iraq is going worse than ever. After two and a half years of U.S. efforts, only 750 men out of 200,000 can be relied upon to operate and obey orders independently in combat situations.  This directly contradicts comments made by the same US generals, and President Bush, to reporters and to American citizens, about the war effort and the ability of Iraqis to defense their own country.

 ·         September 2005 -- retired Lt. General William Odom, the ex-head of the National Security Agency (NSA) expressed support for bi-partisan legislation to withdraw from Iraq.  He also called the invasion of Iraq "the greatest strategic disaster in United States history … We need a broad coalition of Europeans and our allies in Asia to put things in order.... We cannot do that as long as we are in Iraq. The precondition for a serious and effective strategic engagement to stabilize this region requires withdrawal and admittance to others that we may have made an error."  In an October 3 article he wrote: "If I were a journalist, I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren't they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better."  For example: Leaving would "risk civil war," and would "encourage terrorists."  But, Odom says, there already is a civil war. "Iraqis are already fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That's civil war. We created the civil war when we invaded; we can't prevent a civil war by staying.  "For those who really worry about destabilizing the region," he writes, "the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, reestablishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed … Those who fear leaving a mess are actually helping make things worse..."

 ·         October 2005 – Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who served and was a close friend to President George H.W. Bush (the first), criticized the foreign policy of President George W. Bush (the second), saying the only thing he agreed with was the war on Afghanistan.  Scowcroft also said that although he had once considered Vice President Dick Cheney a friend that now he does not know him anymore.  A top State Department official, former Ambassador Robin Raphel, also said that the Bush administration was not prepared when it invaded Iraq, and that it entered the country anyway because of “clear political pressure, election driven and calendar driven.”  She described controversial decisions being made due to “neoconservative ideology”: “They were not based on an analytical, historical understanding.  They were based on ideology.  You don’t counter ideology with logic or experience or analysis very effectively.”

 Having read all this evidence makes me wonder: Did President Bush as candidate for office lie about his views of foreign policy?  Candidate Bush spoke in the 2000 debates about never engaging in nation building, about walking softly but carrying a big stick, about not going around the world and telling countries that they have to do it our way our else .  Compare these kinds of statements with the people he put into office on his cabinet.  Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, and on and on, all pushed for regime change in Iraq throughout the 1990s while Bill Clinton was President.  Cheney himself said on the campaign trail that the US should not act as though “we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.”  Yet, the evidence suggests they believe we should do just this.

Dictionary.com defines a lie as: “A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood … Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.”  The act of lying is defined as: “To present false information with the intention of deceiving … To convey a false image or impression.”  Given the above information, is there another explanation?

Before you make up your mind, consider the following information from the Center for Cooperative Research.  They report:

Presidential candidate George W. Bush tells prominent Texas author and Bush family friend Mickey Herskowitz, who is helping Bush write an autobiography, that as president he would invade Iraq if given the opportunity. “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief,” Herskowitz remembers Bush saying. “My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of [Kuwait] and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.” Herskowitz later says he believes Bush's comments were intended to distinguish himself from his father, rather than express a desire to invade Iraq …

 
AND

 
Speaking in Manchester, New Hampshire, presidential candidate George Bush says as president he would not lift the sanctions on Iraq nor attempt to negotiate with Saddam Hussein. “I'd make darn sure that he lived up to the agreements that he signed back in the early '90s. I'd be helping the opposition groups. And if I found, in any way shape or form, that he was developing weapons of mass destruction, I'd take them out. I'm surprised he's still there. I think a lot of other people are as well.”

This is clearly NOT what Presidential candidate George Bush said to the American people when he debated candidate Al Gore.