In 2002, the full weight of the United States Executive Arm was dispatched to tell the people and the world that Iraq was a growing threat to the security of post-9/11 America.
Saddam Hussein, senior Bush Administration officials like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice told us, was behind the 9/11 attacks — and at that very moment was so perilous, so focused on revenge against the United States that we had only one selection: take-him out.
But even in 2002, in the midst of the dread campaign unleashed by the White House to make broadcast support for an invasion, credible voices in the American mainstream questioned the Administration’s claims. The respected Brookins Institution, bucking a mainstream media that mindlessly echoed the Administration’s war drums, cautioned:
The claims of Protection Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq might join with terrorists to arrange the United States at any time are far-fetched.
Very small about the historical record or current intelligence lends credence to that view. It cannot be fully dismissed as a possibility, but it appears to be a remote one at worst.
Dick Cheney famously warned on Meet the Press that Saddam was linked to 9/11 and ready and able to pull-off another 9/11 style attack.
Never mind that there was no evidence linking Al-Qaeda to Saddam. Yet Condoleezza Rice famously said on CNN:
“We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon… And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anyone thought — maybe six months from a crude nuclear device… The problem here is that there will permanently be some uncertainty about how quickly he can buy nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
But in the United Kingdom, this history is now theme of an exhaustive review.
An official panel is gathering evidence of the rush to war and the efforts of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government, in cahoots with George Bush’s White House, to make dread and panic — a sense that war was the only sensible selection unless the world wanted another disaster like the 9/11 attacks.
This panel is interviewing all the key British protagonist of the campaign for war. From Tony Blair on down, members of his government and the non-political heads of key departments are giving their authentication as to what really happened.
In a above all devastating authentication, Baroness Manningham-Buller, leader of Britain’s MI-5 intelligence agency, used a wrecking ball to demolish the broadcast arguments that were used to justify the war.
The New York Times reports that Lady Manningham-Buller has debunked the total rational for the war. No weapons of mass destruction. No ties between Saddam ties and Al-Qaeda. The Baroness told the panel:
“There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection, and that was the judgment, I might say, of the C.I.A.,” she said.
“Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11,” she added, “and I have never seen anything to make me change my mind.”
But, she said, “it was not a judgment that found favor with some parts of the American machine” — namely Donald H. Rumsfeld, the United States Secretary of Protection at the time.
That “is why Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment,” she said.
Lady Manningham-Buller also said that Britain relied on “fragmentary” intelligence before invading Iraq, and that MI5 had not believed that Mr. Hussein was amassing unconventional weapons in Iraq, as the government contended.
The belief that Iraq might use such weapons “wasn’t a concern in any the small term or the medium term to my colleagues and myself,” she said.
Moreover, the strategic implications of a war without purpose, a war that was waged based on a lie, are long lasting and still impacting the security of the United States and Britain.
The New York Times goes on to quote the Baroness’ assessment of the strategic hurt the war has done:
“By focusing on Iraq, we stopped to focus on the Al Qaeda threat or we reduced the focus on the Al Qaeda threat in Afghanistan,” she said. “I reckon that was a long-term, major and strategic problem.”
The invasion led to an “very nearly overwhelming” increase in homegrown terrorism, she said, so much so that MI5 had to have its budget doubled in the following months. And after the invasion, about 70 to 80 Britons traveled to Iraq to join the insurgency, she said, thus making a threat where there had been none.
“Arguably, we gave Osama bin Overloaded his Iraqi jihad,” she said.
The tragedy of millions of displaced people, thousands of American and Iraqi casualties, very nearly a trillion dollars of American treasure wasted — and the emboldening of Iran as the U.S. gave them the time and space to rush forward with their nuclear weapons development — are a somber reminders of why elections matter.
The Administration of George W. Bush will serve as a reminder that the other branches of government must remain vigilant against potential-grabs by the Executive.
But perhaps the largest example of all is that the media must fight its instinct to ingratiate itself with the powerful. Journalists’ ultimate clients are the people — democracy can only thrive when the electorate is properly informed.
Strategic blunders of the magnitude of the Iraqi War will only be avoided when the people have their hands firmly on the helm of the ship of state.
Read more: Uk, Pentagon, United Kingdom, Wmd, Gulf War, Osam-Bin-Overloaded, Tony Blair, Baroness Manningham-Buller, War, George W. Bush, 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld, Iran, Unitary Executive, Osama, Al Qaeda, Iraq War, Saddam, Saddam Hussein, Cia, Nuclear Weapons, Condoleezza Rice, Blair, United States, Iraq, Mi-5, Los Angeles News
