President George W Bush and the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (2003)

excerpted from the book

Lying for Empire

How to Commit War Crimes With A Straight Face

by David Model

Common Courage Press, 2005, paper

 

p280
The mighty American war machine destroyed the infrastructure, industry, agriculture and war-making capability of Iraq in 1991. Then, for the next 12 years, the United States and Britain were responsible for denying the Iraqi people access to food, clean water, medicine and for a continual bombing campaign on a smaller scale. Finally, the Herculean American war machine unleashed another round of bombs on Iraq just in case it was still breathing. As Karl von Clausewitz (Prussian General and military strategist) once said, "The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."

Myths abounded during America's obsession with the destruction of Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein. Millions of dollars were spent on the largest public relations firms and advertising agencies whose objective was to "manufacture consent" in the United States for the atrocities perpetrated against Iraq. Some of the major myths include:

* Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003 when George W. Bush bombed Iraq. o The aim of U.S. military planners was to bomb military targets. o Sanctions were designed to force Iraq to destroy its WMD.

* Iraq expelled the UNSCOM arms inspectors. o Iraq posed a threat to the security of the United States. o Iraq posed a threat to its neighbours.

* Iraq had ties with al Qaeda.

* Iraq was sponsoring terrorist groups.

* The U.S. had the right to bomb Iraq without the support of the United Nations.

* The "Coalition of the Willing" was a legitimate international coalition.

* The world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein.

* The purpose of the United States bombing Iraq was to either destroy WMD or democratize Iraq.

* The Iraqi government diverted revenues from oil to benefit themselves and not the people of Iraq.

* The government of Iraq did not distribute all the food available from humanitarian groups.

p281
The Sanctions

The first bombing of Iraq ended on February 27, 1991. During the bombing, 88,500 tons of explosives were dropped on Iraq but only 6,500 tons were so-called "smart bombs." The country's infrastructure, including '/ power utilities, water treatment plants, and transportation centres was destroyed along with the agricultural and industrial base. By the end of the bombing, Iraq was incapable of producing sufficient food for its citizens and most people lacked access to clean water. Estimates of the number of casualties range from 100,000 to 200,000 people.

p286
Dan Plesch, in a report titled "US Claim Dismissed by Blix", in the Guardian International (February 5, 2003) proved that to be a lie when he claimed that:

Hans Blix said there was no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories or of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams arrived. Dr. Blix said he has already inspected two alleged mobile labs and found nothing.

Colin Powell claimed in his remarks to the Security Council and President Bush stated in his address to Congress that Iraq was acquiring materials to build nuclear weapons. Powell claimed that:

Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb .... he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from eleven different countries, even after inspections resumed... they can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium... Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The executive director of the IAEA had reported to the Council that "From our analysis to date it appears that the aluminum tubes would be consistent with the purpose stated by Iraq." An IAEA report concluded that the size of the tubes made them unsuitable for Uranium enrichment but were identical to tubes used for conventional artillery rockets. The claim that Saddam Hussein had purchased nuclear material was based on forged documents handed to the U.S. from Britain whose source was the Italian intelligence service. Italian intelligence bought the forged documents from a corrupt Niger embassy official in Rome. Forged documents are not an excuse for being deceived by bad intelligence when a very competent inspection team had already reported that Iraq did not pose a nuclear threat. It is incumbent on the U.S. to carefully verify the credibility of a source before making important decisions based on that intelligence.

In Bush's State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, he claimed that "the British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In fact, this claim had already been invalidated when Joseph Wilson, former American Ambassador, was assigned by the CIA to investigate this claim. He filed a report with the CIA and State Department repudiating any Niger uranium claims. In a Washington Post article, Wilson claims that "it really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war."

Colin Powell's remarks to the Security Council were crammed with lies. Ignoring all the Blix inspection team's data, he chose to base his report on sources which were highly inferior to the competent on-site work of the inspectors. The tail was clearly wagging the dog. Washington decided to bomb \Iraq and to produce information in order to "manufacture consent" for war.

p289
... the Bush administration linked al Qaeda to Iraq. According to Washington, the attack on Iraq was part of the war on terrorism. The propaganda was so effective that at one point a majority of Americans believed that Iraq was behind 9/11. The linkage was as spurious as was the claim about WMD.

Any claims about a connection between a! Qaeda and Iraq ignore the fact that al Qaeda is an extremely rigid religious organization that condemns the "infidel" Ba'ath Party of Saddam Hussein as an aggressively secular organization.

p290
The theory of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda was to a large extent based on a British government public dossier on Iraq. In his February 5 presentation to the Security Council, Powell referred to "the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed... which describes in exquisite detail deception activities." It was described as a fine example of the analytical work of M16, the British spy agency.

... The British intelligence agency had, in fact, produced a report, which was ignored by Tony Blair because it contradicted his and President Bush's position. According to the M16 document there was no evidence of any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a non-partisan Washington research centre, released a report on January 10, 2004, which destroyed both justifications for the "war" on Iraq, WMD and links to al Qaeda. According to an article in The Globe and Mail:

there is no firm evidence that the former Iraqi leader was cooperating with the al-Qaeda network and that Iraq presented an immediate threat to the United States, to the Middle East or to global security... Iraq's nuclear program has been suspended for many years and the country's chemical-weapons production capabilities have been "effectively destroyed It is very likely that intelligence officials were pressured by senior administration officials to conform their threat assessments to pre-existing policies . ... "We had over 1000 people a day search for months, and we found nothing." ("U.S. exaggerated Iraq threat, report says", January 10, 2004, p. All)

All the evidence supporting the position of the Bush administration in its campaign against Iraq was either grossly distorted or defective. The most reliable sources of information were overlooked because their conclusions interfered with the grand schemes of the Bush administration. According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq:

Graham [Bob Graham, U.S. Senator] who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, was so baffled by the contradictory assessments of Iraq coming from different agencies that in July 2002 he asked the CIA to come up with a report on the likelihood that Saddam Hussein would use weapons of mass destruction. When asked this question directly, a senior CIA intelligence witness responded that the likelihood was "low" for the "foreseeable future." Like many of the analyses that conflicted with the drive for war, this statement j from the CIA went largely unreported.

p292
On Thursday March 20, 2003, President Bush announced his intention use force against Iraq.

... The United States launched the war with its "shock and awe" strategy which meant a massive high-tech, air strike against Baghdad. When originally coined by Harlan K. Uliman, a defence strategist, it meant a strategy "aimed at influencing the will, perception, and understanding of an adversary rather than simply deploying military capability." Ullman told CBS reporter David Martin that:

You take the city down, you get rid of their power, water. In 2, 3, 4, 5, days they are physically, emotionally, and psychologically exhausted.

A Pentagon official remarked that "there will not be a safe place in Baghdad." It is clear that the real purpose of "shock and awe" was to destroy as much of the Iraqi leadership and army as possible as well as defence installations which would interfere with "coalition" ground troops taking over the country. The strategy was to launch 300 to 400 cruise missiles on the first day of the operation then another 300 to 400 on the second day. That is more than all the cruise missiles launched in the 1991 bombing of Iraq. Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday has accused the U.S. "...of proceeding with plans to annihilate Iraqi society."

Following the "shock and awe" operation, a massive force of American, British, and Australian forces marched through Iraq relatively unimpeded and took control of most of the country. On May 1, 2003, President Bush announced that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Bush also boasted that the war was "one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history." Well, for once at least, he was half right. The war was anything but humane. Body counts are important in order to understand the extent of the atrocities. An organization called "Iraq Body Count" maintains an up-to-date count of Iraqi deaths based solely on credible news sources and on November 3, 2003, they reported that there had been a minimum of 7,960 deaths and a maximum of 9,792 deaths.

p293
Numerous non-military objects were deliberately targeted including electrical distribution facilities, three media facilities, civilian telecommunication facilities, government buildings, roads, and bridges.

The most savage executioners of innocent people were two types of "time bombs" dropped on Iraq by American forces. One time bomb was depleted uranium weapons. The effects of these weapons may not surface for up to ten years and will create radioactive hot spots in Baghdad and other cities and towns. Radiation levels in Baghdad have been measured at up to 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation. High radiation levels can cause cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, joint and muscle pain, neurological damage, mood disturbances, lung and kidney damage, autoimmune deficiencies, miscarriages, maternal mortality, and genetic birth defects. Iraq's National Ministry of Health organized two international conferences and offered detailed epidemiological studies which indicate a six-fold increase in breast cancer, a five-fold increase in lung cancer, and a 16-fold increase in ovarian cancer. According to the Seattle PostIntelligencer, August 4, 2003:

The Pentagon and the United Nations estimate that the U.S. and Britain used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium during attacks on Iraq in March and April-far more than the 375 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War.

The second type of "time bomb" was cluster bombs, which has a failure rate of up to 16%. This leaves unexploded small bomblets, which easily explode on contact. British and American forces used cluster bombs frequently, dropping some 13,000 bombs containing nearly two million bomblets, in populated areas.

p294
All the evidence leads to the conclusion that neither WMD nor Iraqi support for terrorist groups was the real motive for the American decision to wage "war" against Iraq. The most damning evidence that the above motives were irrelevant is the date when plans to attack Iraq were first formulated. A major initiative to toughen American policies towards Iraq sprang from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a private think-tank formed by a group of prominent neoconservatives in 1997 including:

* William Kristol-former Chief of Staff to Vice President Quayle;
* Elliot Abrams-former Reagan Assistant Secretary of State;
* Jeb Bush-Governor of Florida;
* Dick Cheney-Vice President under George Bush;
* Newt Gingrich-former House Speaker;
* Jeanne Kirkpatrick-White House advisor under Reagan and Bush;
* Lewis Libby-Cheney's Chief of Staff;
* Richard Perle-Defense Department in Reagan era;
* Donald Rumsfeld-Secretary of Defense under George Bush;
* Paul Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld's deputy.

PNAC is a non-profit educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. The aims of the organization are to increase defence spending significantly in order to carry out America's global responsibilities and to accept responsibility for America's "unique role for preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles." The aims are cleverly crafted to soften the real intent of PNAC which, according to Rahul Mahajan in Full Spectrum Dominance, is "maintaining and extending U.S. world dominance." Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, in Weapons of Mass Deception, remark that PNAC's aims were "criticized overseas as a blueprint for U.S. domination."

p296
PNAC members hold important positions in the Bush administration and have considerable influence in the shaping of foreign and defence policy. Their determination to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein became a priority for Washington. Not only did Bush's brain trust favor regime change but other influential organizations such as the CLI, the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy, the Middle East Forum, the Hudson Institute, and the Hoover Institute were also in favour of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Members of these groups frequently appeared on forums on ABC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox promoting the necessity to wage war against Iraq. They testified before Congressional committees and appeared at gatherings in Washington. It would not be possible for President Bush to be unaware of the agenda of his brain trust and all these other influential organizations. His subsequent statements and actions corroborate the hypothesis that President Bush was determined to change the leadership in Iraq. The issues of WMD and Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda were easier rationales to sell to the American public than regime change and had the added advantage of instilling fear in the American public for the purpose of winning support for military action. Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, confessed that "we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." (Vanity Fair, May 28, 2003)

p297
The strongest evidence that Bush lied about attempts to avoid war was his decision to sign a top-secret directive on September 17, 2001, ordering the Pentagon to begin planning "military options" for an attack on Iraq. (ZNET, Lies and More Lies, September 22, 2003) All his talk about inspections and WMD was completely fraudulent. In fact, serious planning for the "war" against Iraq began in August 2002, with preparations to deploy forces, construct staging areas, and stockpile weapons. According to Michael Klare, a strategic analyst, all "the administration's supposed diplomatic activities regarding Iraq in the fall of 2002 and early 2003 were merely a smokescreen." (Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance) To weaken any Iraqi defence capability, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld expanded the area that was covered by the no-fly-zones to include command-and-control centres and defence systems. The attack on Iraq was in the advanced planning stage in the summer of 2002. There is simply no doubt that President Bush was completely aware of these plans and would have approved them before members of his administration could proceed.

p298
The sanctions imposed on Iraq caused so many deaths and so much suffering that they constituted a crime against humanity despite the apparent authorization by the United Nations. The sanctions were not designed to starve the Iraqi people or deprive them of clean water and medical supplies. United Nations Resolution 687 specifies exemptions from the sanctions which include "materials and supplies for essential civilian needs and any further findings of humanitarian needs by the committee." These exemptions were perverted by the United States through the use of their veto on the Sanctions Committee. Over a million Iraqis died as a result of the sanctions. The only explanation for the use of the U.S. veto to deprive the Iraqis of the necessities of life was that the American administration was hoping to encourage the Iraqi people to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein without the need for direct American intervention. The United States wanted a friendly government in a weakened Iraq and control of Iraqi oil.

The sanctions violated the following international laws and protocols:

* Geneva Conventions, Protocol I, Part IV, Section I, Chapter III, Article 54-Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited;

* International Conference on Nutrition, World Declaration on Nutrition, FAO/WHO, 1992-We recognize that access to nutritionally adequate and safe food is a right of each individual. We affirm... that food must not be used as a tool for political pressure;

* UN General Assembly Resolution 44/215 (Dec. 22, 1989)- Calls upon the developed countries to refrain from exercising political coercion through the application of economic instruments with the purpose of inducing changes in the economic or social systems of other countries;

* Constitution of the World Health Organization, 1946-The enjoyment of the highest standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic, or social condition.

There is no justification in international law for the American declaration of "war" against Iraq. As demonstrated earlier, Security Council resolutions pertaining to Iraq did not authorize the use of force and required that noncompliance with UN Resolutions by Iraq be discussed in the Security Council. In the original drafts of Resolution 1441, the United States proposed a clause that would extend no-fly zones over sites to be inspected and apply the use of force in these zones if necessary but the proposal was defeated. The United Nations Charter's provision in Chapter VII, Article 51, that a nation may use force to defend itself "if an armed attack occurs" clearly does not apply. There was no armed attack against the United States and the Charter does not authorize the use of force for preemptive or preventive strikes. Therefore, the "war" against Iraq was illegal and led to the violations of the following international laws:

United Nations Charter

Article 2
3. All members shall resolve their disputes peacefully.
4. All members shall refrain from the threat or use of force.

Article 33
1. The parties to a dispute shall seek a solution through negotiation, mediation, or arbitration.

Article 37
1. Should the parties fail to resolve the dispute as described in Article 33, they shall refer it to the Security Council.
2. The Security Council shall decide what action to take.

Article 42

Should all measures to maintain peace fail, the Security Council shall decide what action to take. Geneva Conventions

Article 51
1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy protection from military operations.

4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited such as:

(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which do not discriminate between military and non-military targets.

 

p309
One possible explanation for the behaviour of presidents is that they have psychopathic tendencies. Characteristics that lead to a positive diagnosis include a remarkable disregard for the truth, the inability to accept blame, lack of remorse, shame, or guilt, lack of empathy, lack of conscience, and socially predatory behaviour.

p307
Dr. Robert D. Hare, one of the foremost specialists in psychopaths ... explains that

"...psychopaths show a stunning lack of concern for the devastating effects their actions have on others. Often they are completely forthright about the matter, calmly stating that they have no sense of guilt, are not sorry for the pain and destruction they have caused, and that there is no reason for them to be concerned."

p309
Psychopaths seem to completely lack the ability to empathize wit others often resulting in very callous behaviour. Unable to empathize with the pain and suffering of others, they are able to exercise power without regard for the anguish of others and them rationalize their behaviour.

p310
According to George W., in a rare yet accurate self-assessment, ".. you know I could run for governor but I am basically a media creation. I've never done anything ... I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business."

p315
The psychopath cannot accept responsibility for his self-destructive behaviour or for the harm he inflicts on others. He will usually deny categorically responsibility for his actions and will transfer the blame elsewhere.

p318
... any president engaged in lying and empire-building must have some of the traits of a psychopath ... To murder innocent people in order to aggrandize the American Empire would be extremely difficult if not impossible for someone who feels empathy, remorse and guilt and who is incapable of lying. It might even be suggested that having at least some psychopathic traits is a qualification for the job. What this means is that no person in either the Democratic or Republican Party could be a serious contender for their party's nomination if they were not prepared to maintain and expand the American Empire. The imperatives of empire have become larger than any one person, even the President. His job is to lie and serve the empire.


Lying for Empire

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