|
Let
history judge
By Scott Ritter
02/27/06 "AlterNet"
-- -- Stung by growing criticism of his Iraq policy which has
manifested itself in all-time low public opinion ratings, President
Bush last month embarked on a tour in which he delivered five
speeches outlining his "Plan for Victory" in Iraq, as well as
offering a defense of his decision to invade Iraq. "It is true that
much of the intelligence [used to justify the invasion] turned out
to be wrong", Mr. Bush said in the fourth of these speeches. "As
President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq."
While taking responsibility for his actions, Mr. Bush has not taken
well to any criticism of his role in over-selling the case for war,
and in his speech was quick to attack those who dared hold him to
account. "Some of the most irresponsible comments about manipulating
intelligence", he said, "have come from politicians who saw the same
intelligence we saw, and then voted to authorize the use of force
against Saddam Hussein. These charges are pure politics."
But it is the President, through his speeches, who is engaged in
politics of the most puerile sort. Mr. Bush failed to address his
role in the Niger yellowcake forgery, the aluminum tube
exaggeration, the rush to embrace "Curveball", or any of the myriad
of politicized intelligence pushed by the White House in the lead up
to war with Iraq. The President continued to exploit in the basest
fashion the death of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. As
has been his style since that horrible day, Mr. Bush hid behind the
memory of so many fallen to mask his administration's shortcomings
and disguise its true intent.
"Given Saddam's history", the President said (conveniently omitting
that the CIA today states that Iraq had destroyed all of its WMD by
the summer of 1991), "and the lessons of September the 11th, my
decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was
a threat -- and the American people and the world is better off
because he is no longer in power." But even the CIA's National
Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, used by the Bush
administration to sell its Iraq war to the US Congress, failed to
identify Saddam Hussein as a threat.
The White House pushed hard to find intelligence information that
backed the assertions made by President Bush in the fall of 2002
that Hussein's regime was an "ally of al-Qaeda" and posed a direct
terrorist threat to America. "This is a man that we know has had
connections with al-Qaeda," he said, referring to Saddam Hussein.
"This is a man who would like to use al-Qaeda as a forward army. And
this is a man that we must deal with for the sake of peace."
But neither the FBI nor the CIA were able to produce any
intelligence to back up the President's rhetoric. Indeed, both
agencies provided assessments that directly contradicted the claims
of Mr. Bush, noting that any alliance between Saddam Hussein and
Osama Bin Laden was highly unlikely. These findings were included in
the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified
document kept secret from the American public and most members of
Congress. However, in a declassified version of the NIE made public,
all mention of the de-linking of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were
excised, freeing up the President and his administration to sell the
Iraqi war on the basis of not only the existence of WMD in Iraq, but
also the probability that Saddam Hussein would transfer these
weapons to his ally, Osama Bin Laden, who "on any given day" could
unleash hell on American soil.
"And when the history of these days is written", the President said,
concluding the fourth and last of his Iraqi policy speeches, "it
will tell how America once again defended its own freedom by using
liberty to transform nations from bitter foes to strong allies. And
history will say that this generation, like generations before, laid
the foundation of peace for generations to come."
History will tell another tale. Far from the revisionist and heavily
redacted version of events offered up by President Bush, historians
will write of an America which squandered the good will of the world
in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, to instead push aggressively
for a policy of pre-emption and hegemony. In a speech made before
the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West
Point in 2002, the President told the future officers of the US Army
(many of whom have gone on to fight and, tragically for some, die in
Iraq) that, "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." He went on
to say that "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths
beyond challenge."
These twin policies of hegemony and pre-emption went on to be
codified in the National Security Strategy of the United States,
published by the White House in September 2002. The 33-page document
outlined a new and muscular American posture in the world -- a
posture that relied on preemption to deal with rogue states and
terrorists harboring weapons of mass destruction. It stated that the
United States would never allow its military supremacy to be
challenged as it was during the Cold War, noting that when America's
vital interests are at stake, it will act alone, if necessary.
President Bush has tried to justify his embrace of hegemony and
pre-emption as a tragic necessity in the aftermath of the attacks of
September 11, 2001. But the facts do not add up. The triple-threat
outlined by the Bush administration as the justification for this
new policy -- Saddam Hussein's WMD, the Hussein-Osama Bin Laden
alliance, and the transfer of WMD technology from Iraq to Al Qaeda
for the purpose of attacking America -- could not be backed up
either in the form of intelligence data or intelligence analysis.
The fact that the Bush administration pushed so aggressively for
pre-emptive war in the face of no viable threat speaks volumes about
the nature and intent of the President and those who advise him.
In 1946, the Nuremburg Tribunal rejected the German defense of
pre-emption when it came to the invasion of Denmark and Norway in
1940. The Germans had cited the imminent occupation of these two
nations by the armed forces of France and Great Britain, which would
have threatened the German northern front, as just cause. This
defense was rebuked by the tribunal, led by US Supreme Court Justice
Robert H. Jackson, who instead identified the German action as
constituting a "war of aggression." Judge Jackson went on to say
that "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an
international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole."
Judge Jackson's words, and my steadfast allegiance to the
Constitution of the United States of America,
motivated me to give testimony [mp3] this past Saturday at
the
International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity
Committed by the Bush Administration, in particular in
support of the first count put forward by the commission: that the
Bush administration authorized a war of aggression against Iraq.
I'm not a big fan of un-mandated tribunals, but given the absolute
lack of attention on the part of Congress regarding the decision to
invade Iraq (a lethargy encouraged somewhat by Congress' own
culpability in abrogating its responsibilities under the
Constitution when it comes to war powers and holding the Executive
Branch in check), I felt that my participation in the Commission's
work would help create a record that might someday in the future
motivate the representatives of the American people who occupy the
Legislative Branch of government to carry work that not only serves
the interests of their respective constituencies, but also defends
both the letter and intent of the Constitution they are sworn to
uphold and defend. America should not be looking to any
international commission or tribunal to hold President Bush and his
administration to account; that is the job of the American people.
When historians look back on the policies enacted by the Bush
administration in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, starting off
with the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, they will be passing
judgment on a United States that has violated international law as
egregiously as any power in modern history. The final chapters have
yet to be written on the Presidency of George W. Bush, but even if
time stopped still at the present, the crimes of America and its
leader are many, and terrible.
Iraq today is very much a nation under foreign occupation, which
makes the very processes of democracy the United States seeks to
impose on the Iraqi people questionable from a legal basis, as it is
a violation of international law for occupying forces to impose
their will on the processes of law and self-governance of an
occupied people. It would be tragic comedy of the blackest sort for
anyone to try and make a case that the Bush administration has not
imposed itself in a significant and meaningful fashion regarding the
drafting of the new Iraqi Constitution, the conduct of Iraqi
elections, and the formulation and implementation of the Iraqi court
system (especially as it concerns the ongoing trial of Saddam
Hussein).
The end result of all of this illegitimate intervention on the part
of the United States in Iraq is the creation of a failed nation
state in Iraq today. Legal niceties aside, the end result of the
American invasion and occupation of Iraq are a human and social
disaster of enormous scale, where unified central governmental
authority is not only non-existent, but unachievable under current
conditions.
Civil war is ongoing, and threatens to explode to levels of violence
several orders of magnitude greater than the horror already
unfolding in Iraq on a daily basis. Those who postulate the "what
ifs" of American policy ("What if democracy takes root, the Iraqi
economy turns around, the insurgency fades away, and Iraq emerges as
a symbol of freedom for the Middle East") have just had the nails
hammered into the coffin of their false hopes. The Bush
administration's refusal to continue funding of Iraqi reconstruction
programs has thrown into the trash bin any hope of building an Iraq
that could withstand the stresses of occupation and insurgency by
winning over the hearts and minds of a deeply traumatized Iraqi
populace.
This action by the United States not only seals the ultimate defeat
of America in Iraq by guaranteeing the increase in chaos and anarchy
upon which the insurgency thrives, but also certifies yet again the
status of the Bush administration as a violator of international
law, in this case Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions to ensure
the well-being of the occupied population by respecting their rights
to life, health, food, education, and employment. Having invaded and
destroyed Iraq, the United States now adds insult to injury by
walking away from its responsibilities to rebuild Iraq at least to
the standard that existed under Saddam Hussein's rule before March
2003.
While emotionally one can state that getting rid of Saddam Hussein
bettered the lot of the average Iraqi citizen, intellectually this
is a case that is unsustainable by fact. On every benchmark used to
judge the effectiveness of a nation state, Iraq under American
occupation fails to meet even the mediocre standards of Iraq as
governed by Saddam Hussein, both before and during the time of
sanctions. Iraq's education, health, transportation, security,
infrastructure (especially water and electricity) and economy have
all digressed since the US-led invasion.
Finally, I would be remiss not to comment here on the Bush
administration's record of suppressing freedom of speech and
expression, especially when it comes to the issue of Iraq. Within
the United States we have the ongoing saga surrounding the
President's decision to authorize unwarranted wiretaps, enabling the
secretive National Security Agency to monitor and record the
conversations and communications of American citizens without first
going through special courts established for this purpose.
The President has justified his actions by noting that the courts in
question imposed a dangerous time impediment, which impacts
America's ability to rapidly respond to any emerging terrorist
threat. He also emphasized that such intercepts only involved
communications between US citizens and known Al Qaeda connections.
The legality of the President's actions are questionable, and under
current review by members of Congress.
However, given the Bush administration's proclivity to use the Al
Qaeda label freely and often without cause (witness the repeated
efforts to link Saddam Hussein's regime to Al Qaeda, and the ongoing
description of Arab media outlets critical of US policy in the
Middle East, such as Al Jazeera, as being propaganda organs of Al
Qaeda), the scope of justification of these wiretaps could go far
beyond any real threat that might exist from Al Qaeda, and include
any anti-war movement in America that has communicated with citizens
inside Iraq, or any journalist or columnist who communicates with or
writes for Al Jazeera, or anyone who questions or opposes the
policies of the Bush administration when it comes to the war in Iraq
or the Global War on Terror.
Far from protecting America, the President Bush's frontal assault on
the freedoms and protections afforded by the US Constitution have
placed the United States, and indeed the world, in greater peril
than any terrorist plot could ever aspire to.
If, by writing a book exposing the lies about Iraqi WMD or
submitting an essay to Al Jazeera (or for that matter, to AlterNet
or any other outlet that publishes a dissenting view), the Bush
administration construes my actions as representing a threat to the
United States and as such worthy of covert monitoring, so be it, for
it is their actions that are seditious to the ideals and values set
forth by the Constitution, not mine. When faced with the scale of
the criminal activity undertaken by the Bush administration in the
name of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people or defending America,
the only real sedition I could commit would be to remain silent.
Scott Ritter served as a Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq from
1991 until his resignation in 1998. He is the author of, most
recently,
Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy
to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Nation Books,
2005).
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
