Peace Talk — Summer 2006
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action MaineWhen you listen to the discussion about Iraq, there’s an emphasis on where we’re going, not on how we got there. Asking where we’re going implies that we’re focused on a solution. But you don’t solve a problem until you define it. To look for a solution void of a definition of the problem means you’re going through a useless exercise, and, unfortunately, that’s about the most apt description of our national policy on Iraq today.
It’s a tragic exercise that manifests itself in the death and sacrifice of the men and women who honor us by wearing the uniform of the Unites States armed forces. We call on them to give their lives, to sacrifice for our defense. We have a responsibility, therefore, to ensure that before we send them off to fight and die, we make sure it’s a conflict worthy of that sacrifice. No one has been able to articulate any reason for the continued involvement of U.S. forces in Iraq that justifies the life of a single American citizen.
Is there some way that Iraq threatens the security of the United States of America? If there is, then can we come up with the military, economic and political solution to that problem? No one has been able to say that Iraq represents a threat. They tried to do it with weapons of mass destruction, but WMD was never believed to be a threat, even by those who were selling the case for war. Iraq represents not so much a national security problem as a domestic political problem. The sole reason for our involvement in Iraq derives from domestic American politics.
Saddam was a brutal dictator, listed as a state sponsor of terror, who, in 1980, didn’t have diplomatic relations with the U.S. Suddenly, by 1984, we not only had a U.S. Embassy installed in Baghdad, we were his close ally. So close, in fact, that the President sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to meet with the dictator to give him advice; to facilitate the provision of intelligence information; to clear the way so the United States could pay for Iraq’s acquisition of technology useful in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, by giving Iraq agricultural funds that we know were being diverted for purposes other than agriculture.
Iraq was fighting a war against Iran, a nation which, in 1978, was a close ally of the United States when Reza Shah Pahlevi was governing. But by 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists, headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini, took over, Iran was spouting anti-Americanism, and, suddenly, Iraq became an ally of convenience, a secular bulwark against the expansion of Islamic fundamentalism.
By 1988 that war was over. Iraq had prevailed. Saddam had emerged victorious with an army that was larger than anything else in the middle east and with a weapons capability that was truly frightening. It was not just a conventional military machine. It was chemical weapons that Saddam’s military had incorporated and used on the field of battle. It was long-range ballistic missiles that had been used to break the political will of the Iranian government. It was a nuclear weapons program that was very real. It was a biological weapons program, a strategic deterrent against Israel’s thermonuclear weapons capability. Iraq’s attention shifted from Iran to Israel. Saddam Hussein said, we can lead the Arab world to stand up against Israel. In the spring of 1990 Israel said it would preemptively attack Iraq to terminate its nuclear weapons manufacturing capability. Iraq responded by saying, if Israel attacks us, we will burn half of Israel with a binary chemical weapon. How did the United States respond? It sent Bob Dole, Republican Senator, to Iraq in March of 1990, where he embraced Saddam, and called him a true friend of the American people.
Fast forward to October 1990. President George Herbert Walker Bush is explaining to the American people why he’s about to dispatch 700,000 American service members to the Middle East to engage in combat with a “true friend of the American people.” In the interim, Saddam had invaded Kuwait, suddenly putting the entire delicate oil economic balance at risk.
So how do you go to war with a true friend? With the power of rhetoric. You turn him from your true friend into the personification of evil, and, in accordance with the speech given by George H.W. Bush, the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler!
While we were preparing for a war in Iraq over Kuwait in 1990 , in accordance with international law, the war was sold to the American people as a crusade of good versus evil. We liberated Kuwait, and the troops came home. The American people applauded the tremendous performance of their troops, but why was Saddam Hussein, the personification of evil, still in power? We had to get rid of him, not because he was a threat to our national security, but because his continued existence was a threat to the legacy of George H.W. Bush. A political issue, plain and simple.
So, how do you get rid of Saddam? The CIA estimated in March of 1991 that Saddam Hussein had less than six months to survive because we had destroyed his military. Because of economic sanctions imposed in August 1990, his economy was ruined. If we can contain him for six months, he will fall from within. A lot of people said the United States wanted regime change as early as 1991. I say no. If we had wanted regime change, we would have supported the Shia when President Bush told them to rise up in the spring of 1991 and take Iraqi matters into their own hands. The Shia rose up, took matters into their own hands, and the U.S. stood by and did nothing while the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein went in and brutally suppressed the Shia revolt. We told the Kurds to rise up. They did rise up. We did nothing as Saddam Hussein’s forces came in and brutally crushed the Kurds. Why? Because we didn’t want regime change. We were happy to have the Baathists in power because they continued to serve, not only as a secular bulwark against the expansion of Islamic fundamentalism out of Iran, but the Baath party, for 30 years, had proven to be the glue that held the complicated nation state of Iraq together. If you remove the Baathist government without an idea of what’s going to replace them, Iraq will devolve into chaos and anarchy.
What was needed? A new justification for the continuation of sanctions. Enter weapons of mass destruction. What comes first is regime change through the maintenance of economic sanctions. What comes second is disarmament. Disarmament is only useful as an American foreign policy objective insofar as it facilitates regime change by maintaining economic sanctions. The UN passed a resolution, #687, April 1991, calling for Iraq to disarm. It said Iraq must declare the totality of its weapons of mass destruction. UN weapons inspectors were mandated to go into Iraq and carry out sweeping inspections and verify Iraqi compliance. If Iraq complied, economic sanctions would be lifted. That’s the quid pro quo. But the United States had no intention of complying with international law as set forth by this resolution. That’s clear from the testimony of Secretary of State James Baker to Congress in May, 1991, one month after this vote. He said, economic sanctions will be maintained against Iraq regardless of Iraq’s disarmament compliance, until such time as Saddam Hussein is removed from power.
Genuine disarmament is actually the antithesis of U.S. policy. What happens if UN inspectors report that Iraq has complied and there are no weapons of mass destruction? Sanctions must be lifted. Lifting the sanctions takes you in the opposite direction from where the United States wants to go. We don’t want to get rid of the sanctions. We don’t want to disarm Iraq. We want to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
It’s easy to talk about continuing economic sanctions when Iraq is non-compliant, which it was in the early months of 1991. Iraq submitted a false declaration, under-declared its chemical weapons, under-declared its ballistic missile capabilities, and failed to declare a biological weapons capability and a nuclear weapons program. June 1991, less than one month after weapons inspectors entered Iraq, they found a convoy of 100 vehicles on the backs of which was production equipment related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
There was wide support for inspectors to be withdrawn and military action to be brought to bear to remove Saddam Hussein and the Baathists from power. But we didn’t want regime change; we just wanted name change. We were not really serious about enforcing this disarmament provision because we were not serious about disarmament. This is just a game we were playing to contain Saddam through the maintenance of economic sanctions. We had a victory because the perception of a non-compliant Iraq has just been enforced. We needed to do no more. The U.S. said no to holding Iraq accountable. We passed a new resolution — #707,that says Iraq must provide a new declaration. We now assumed, up front, that Iraq was hiding weapons. We created the conditions whereby the inspectors would have to prove a negative, regardless of what the Iraqis said. We created the conditions whereby Iraq would never be found in compliance. No matter what the inspectors did, there wiould always be the shadow of doubt.
In October of 1992, I briefed the CIA on our findings. We have accounted for all of Iraq’s ballistic missile capability. There are no ballistic missiles left in Iraq. We could close the door. Disarmament was working. If disarmament was truly the American policy objective, I should have been greeted by a top gun moment when hats are thrown in the air. Instead I was greeted by icy silence. I had delivered the message they didn’t want to hear. They rejected our findings, saying, these are Iraqi statements; we don’t believe any of it. They ignored about 90% of our report, which was based on our forensic investigation.
Look at the U.S. Intelligence community’s estimate of Iraqi missile capability in March of 2003, the month we dispatched American Special Operations Forces into western Iraq, at great risk to their lives. We sent hundreds of our finest fighting men into harm’s way in western Iraq, for what purpose? We were told there were 12-20 missiles that could be fired at Israel and there were not 12-20 missiles. It was a fabricated number. We put our service members’ lives at risk for politics.
In October 1992, the CIA knew that Iraq’s ballistic missile capability had been fundamentally disarmed. There was no more threat. In 1993, the CIA knew the same thing about Iraq’s nuclear capability. We were in possession of the entirety of Iraq’s nuclear archives, we had investigated every single site worthy of inspecting and we knew that there was no nuclear program in Iraq.
1994 we had the same certainty about Iraq’s chemical weapons capability and by 1995, 1996 at the latest, we had the same level of certainly about Iraq’s biological weapons program.
The CIA knew for certain that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. The CIA knew that Iraq was in compliance with its obligation to disarm. But because the policy was never disarmament, because the policy was always regime change, using disarmament as the vehicle to facilitate it, the CIA didn’t want to deal with the facts. The CIA was tasked since 1992 to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That was their job. That meant they had an inherent responsibility to maintain the public perception of a non-compliant Iraq.
A lot of people say the international community also believed there were WMDs in Iraq. No. I can say absolutely not. My job as a weapons inspector was to coordinate the intelligence between the United Nations and the international community. This meant that I interfaced at the highest levels with the CIA, with British intelligence, French intelligence, Israeli intelligence, German intelligence etc. Every intelligence organization I just mentioned felt that we were unable to account for Iraq’s WMD capabilities to a 100% level of certainty, that we had achieved a 90-98% level of certainty.
George W. Bush was elected in 2000 on a platform of, “if you vote for me I WILL get rid of Saddam Hussein. We got rid of him in 2003 not because he posed a threat to anybody other than the people of Iraq. We went to war because the American people, for over a decade, had been pre-programmed to accept at face value anything negative that was said about Iraq. So a politician could say, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, and we said, OK, I believe you, without asking how you know that. Where are you getting your information? In selling this war in 2002, George W. Bush said: “I know Iraq has chemical weapons!” When someone says that, it implies that he/she is in possession of certain hard facts that he/she has a duty and responsibility to share with us before we support his/her war. But no one ever demanded that the President share these facts.
Now we’re in Iraq, and we say, where do we go? How do we get out of here? If you’re searching for a solution to the Iraq problem within the framework of national security, you’ll go insane.
I acknowledge that if we withdraw from Iraq today, the Iraqi people will continue killing themselves. Right now, because of the presence of American troops in Iraq, the death of Iraqis is front page news. If we withdraw American forces from Iraq, the death of Iraqis will rapidly become page 2 news, page 3 news, page 4 news, and will disappear from the psyche of the American public because, despite all the rhetoric about how much we care about the people of Iraq, we don’t care about the people of Iraq.
We’re dying because American politicians don’t have the courage to say, “we made a mistake.” We’re dying to save the careers of American politicians, whether they be Democrat or Republican. It’s going to get worse. The situation in Iraq is so bad that there is now a consensus in Washington, DC that the only way to achieve a solution to Baghdad is to go through Tehran. There is an increasing drive for military action against Tehran, against the regime of the Mullahs, the mad Mullahs. Once again we have embarked on a policy of regime change using disarmament as a vehicle to promote it. We talk about an Iranian nuclear weapons capability when all the facts show that it’s rhetoric. Iran has not been found guilty of any violation of the non-proliferation treaty. Iran has not been shown to be doing anything other than that which it has declared, a civilian nuclear energy program. I have concerns; everybody should have concerns about the ultimate intent of Iran. But these concerns must manifest themselves in terms of sound diplomacy not knee-jerk military reaction. Yet that’s the direction in which we’re heading.