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WHY GEORGE BUSH WENT TO WAR

BEFORE WE BRIEFLY REVIEW in this chapter the reasons George Bush has given for going to war in Iraq, one fact, so easily lost amidst the rubble of the conflict and the trillions of words written about it, should not be forgotten. Although the first Bush administration as well as the Clinton administration viewed Iraq as a troublesome menace, no one was talking about actually going to war with Iraq before Bush started talking about it. Indeed, even if someone had come forward (like an Iraqi defector) and said Hussein had plans to attack America or help someone else do so, his words would have been met with immense skepticism and ultimately disregarded, since on their face they would make little sense. But not even one person told us this. It all started with Bush and his people creating something out of nothing. To repeat, before Bush, there was nothing. And yet we went to war.

Although Bush said he went to war because Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of this country, not everyone believes this was Bush’s motivation. Of those who don’t, none seem to be too confident about why Bush went to war. The reasons speculated range from oil and politics (getting congressional authorization to go to war to help his party win the 2002 midterm elections; certainly, once the war started, exploiting the war to keep the nation in a constant state of fear to his political advantage) all the way to Bush getting even with Hussein for having, he said, “Tried to kill my dad at one time [1993].” Regarding the latter, in the book Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, the authors write: “That Bush was citing the incident nine years later to explain his current policy made some members of Congress uncomfortable. House Majority Leader Dick Armey later said he had ‘just cringed’ when he read about the president’s comment. ‘Wow,’ he remarked to his wife, ‘I hope that’s [emphasis in original] not what this is all about.’” Some even say the motivation for war was part of a Bush family drama in which Bush was trying to one-up his father by completing the job Bush Sr. failed to do—remove Hussein from power in 1991—at the time of the Persian Gulf War. Whatever Bush’s reason was, it was not a good reason. This brief chapter only deals with the main reasons he and his supporters have given for the war.

And as noted, we all know that the principal reason George Bush gave for invading Iraq in 2003 was that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and this posed an imminent threat to the security of this country because he might use these weapons on us, or furnish them to terrorists who would. We also know that Iraq had no such weapons of mass destruction, having disposed of virtually all of them (the extremely small number not being destroyed, if any, being inadvertent) and terminated its effort to build a nuclear bomb in 1991 at the conclusion of the Gulf War. (Whether or not Bush and his people flat-out lied when they said many of the things they did about Hussein’s WMD, or simply stretched the truth, or cherry-picked by only furnishing Congress and the American people information that supported their position, not that which undermined it, will be discussed later in this book.)

Although the drumbeat for war because Hussein supposedly had WMD was so loud that it completely dominated the airwaves and the papers, Bush and his people, to gild the lily, did occasionally mention, in more of a parenthetical way, that apart from the issue of whether Hussein was a threat to the security of this country, we should free the Iraqi people from Hussein’s despotic rule. That would allow them to have free elections and determine their own destiny. But we all know that America would never have bought Bush’s war if that had been given as the main reason for invading Iraq. After all, if that was a sufficient reason for America going to war, during the past seventy-five years alone America would have been fighting in wars in all corners of the globe, every day of every year. We would have been fighting in, among many other places, Russia, China, and Cambodia. And at this very moment in time we’d be fighting in places like Darfur, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, etc. I mean, even Paul Wolfowitz, a chief architect of the Iraq war, acknowledged to Vanity Fair that helping the Iraqis achieve freedom from Hussein was “not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk, certainly not on the scale [that] we did it.”

To illustrate the virtual insanity of such a policy of our fighting other peoples’ wars and sacrificing thousands upon thousands of young American lives to give freedom to the people of other nations, let’s say we invaded Russia in 1950 (as we invaded Iraq in 2003) to free the Russian people from Stalin’s tyrannical rule. After losing hundreds of thousands of our soldiers in a terribly brutal war, we finally manage to topple Stalin from power, after which we track him down and put him on trial in Moscow for crimes he committed against the Soviet people. After Stalin is convicted and executed, we try to see to it that Russia has free elections, and then we come home (only to next invade China to free the Chinese people from Mao, and so on). If this sounds crazy to you, it’s because it is.

In his 2006 Memorial Day column, New York Times writer Bob Herbert asked his readers (obviously, mostly those who had always been in favor of the war), “Before you gather up the hot dogs and head out to the barbecue this afternoon, look in a mirror and ask yourself honestly if Iraq [or any other country living under despotic rule] is something you would be willing to die for.” The honest answer, of course, is no. And this has to be particularly true where, as with Iraq, most Iraqis quickly came to view us not as liberators but occupiers, and indeed, a January 2006 World Opinion poll showed that close to half of all Iraqis actually approved of deadly attacks on American soldiers.

To remind the reader, after it was determined that Iraq had no WMD, the Bush administration immediately tried to shift this very incidental reason for going to war (liberating the Iraqi people so they could have free elections) into the main justification for the war, and it’s surprising how many supposedly very bright Americans, in fine Pavlovian form, went along with this. When the Iraqis had their first national election on January 30, 2005, and long after it was confirmed Iraq had no WMD, political satirist Jon Stewart, although, to his credit, not forgetting at all about the “whole weapons [of mass destruction] thing,” said, in reference to the elections as being justification for the invasion, that “Bush [may have] been right about this all along.” And looking back, liberal columnist Michael Kinsley wrote that Bush’s invasion of Iraq “was worthy in theory: to liberate a country from a dictator, perhaps² to find and destroy some dangerous weapons.” Perhaps? Michael, where were you living in the lead-up to the Iraq war? A bank vault? A Himalayan monastery?

In fact, because it was virtually the sole reason given by Bush in his march to war, the only reason given by Congress in its October 11, 2002, joint resolution authorizing war was national security, nothing else. The resolution read: “The president is authorized to use the armed forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq . . .” And in Bush’s report to Congress on March 19, 2003, the day the war began, he spoke of nothing else but Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and our national security. There wasn’t even a hint or mention of any other motive for war.

While all this was going on, it became the conventional wisdom among conservatives everywhere that finding no WMD in Iraq was immaterial because the real, unstated reason the Bush administration had for invading Iraq was not just to overthrow Hussein and establish democracy in Iraq—but a democracy that would spread like April flowers throughout the Arab world, thereby eliminating the threat of terrorism on our shores by Islamic extremists like those who attacked us on 9/11. And, indeed, this may very well have been the intent of Bush and his batch of neoconservative zanies like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. There are those who believe that Wolfowitz was suggesting this very thing when he indicated to Vanity Fair, in an article published in its May 2003 edition, that WMD, which Wolfowitz said he believed Hussein had and were a real concern, were not (repeat, not) the main, overriding reason for invading Iraq. Remarkably, he said, “The truth [the truth? You mean, the American people weren’t told the truth?] is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on [settled on?] the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason [for the invasion].” Wow!!

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the main, though unstated reason Bush invaded Iraq was to spread democracy throughout the anti-American Arab world (a reason, as indicated, for going to war in Iraq that was never given by the Bush administration at the time of its buildup to war), there is a monumentally serious problem with this that I haven’t seen mentioned, one that the many Republicans who spout this theory don’t seem to be in the least troubled by.

Apart from the wholly unrealistic and fanciful notion of changing the political culture of the Arab world to our liking, if Bush’s real purpose for invading Iraq was to ignite a restructuring of the Middle East by giving birth to democracy in Iraq, he obviously would have no right to keep this motivation for such a war a secret from the American people. It would seem, in a hypothetical situation, that a president might be justified in taking the country to war without the informed consent of the people only if the immediate security of this country were at stake (which it wasn’t here) and, for whatever reason, it was to the country’s benefit that the president not tell the country’s citizens his true reason for going to war. But although this justification for war is entertainable in theory, I can’t even imagine what that situation would be.

Granted, once a war commences, the necessities and exigencies of war dictate that many secrets be kept from the people for purposes of national security. As Churchill, taking it a step further, observed, “During war, the truth has to be protected by a bodyguard of lies.” But before the decision is made to go to war, the American people deserve to know and have to be informed why their sons are being asked to shed their blood on foreign soil, and asked if they agree that such a venture is necessary to this nation’s security. One shouldn’t go so far as to assert that in all cases a majority of Americans have to voice their approval for war, but with the exception of the hypothetical situation noted above, in all cases the nation’s citizens have to be informed of the reasons for war. Particularly in a nation like America whose roots were at the town hall meeting level, where everyday citizens gave their input on the important decisions of government.

So if, indeed, the reason for the war in Iraq was to spread democracy throughout the Mideast, how is it possible that Bush and his people had the tremendous audacity not to tell the American people this?

Further, if we assume that the many conservative Republicans who say the real reason behind the Iraqi invasion was to spread democracy in the Middle East are correct, aren’t they thereby admitting that Bush lied to the country when he told Americans the principal reason we were invading Iraq was because it had weapons of mass destruction and hence was an imminent threat to the security of this country?

Returning to the main reason (for virtually all intents and purposes the only reason) Bush and his people gave the American people for going to war in Iraq—that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which he might unleash or give to someone else to unleash on America any day—let’s look at just some of the many statements from Bush and his people assuring Americans that Hussein did, in fact, have WMD, and if we didn’t attack right now, Hussein might attack us first. As you are reading these statements, keep the following things uppermost in your mind:

1. These are statements by the Bush administration that were directly responsible for the majority of Americans finally becoming convinced that invading Iraq was the right thing for America to do.

2. Without the approval of this majority of Americans, there is a decent chance that Bush would not have gone to war. Indeed, that was the very reason why Bush and his people made the statements—to get the support of the American people.

3. Because of the war induced by these statements, over 100,000 American soldiers and Iraqi civilians lost their lives, and many thousands of others have been physically or mentally disabled for life.

4. All of these statements, without exception, have been proven to be completely false.

PRESIDENT BUSH

September 12, 2002 (Address to United Nations): “Saddam Hussein continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. The first time we may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons is when, God forbid, he uses one . . . [Iraq presents] a grave and gathering danger.”

 

October 7, 2002 (from Cincinnati, Ohio, Bush’s first address to the nation on the Iraqi threat. Bush piled it on so heavy that the devil himself, much less an American family sitting in front of the TV set in their living room in Dubuque, Iowa, would have had a hard time fighting back fear): “Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm. The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gasses and atomic weapons . . . Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and to the world. The danger is already significant . . . If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today—and we do—does it make sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons? . . . Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We’re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States . . . Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group . . . [This] could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints . . . Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and . . . the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network . . . 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 . . . Saddam Hussein . . . has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon . . . Saddam Hussein must disarm himself, or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him . . . [Hussein is] a great danger to our nation . . . We refuse to live in fear . . . We will secure our nation, protect our freedom.”

 

January 28, 2003 (State of the Union address): “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production . . . Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction . . . Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. [Alone, this suggests Bush is saying the threat is not imminent, nothing that has to be dealt with now. But his very next words quickly dispel this inference.] Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? . . .”

March 6, 2003 (National press conference): “Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents to avoid detection by inspectors. In some cases these materials have been moved to different locations every 12 to 24 hours . . . Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people . . . I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons . . . I see a gathering threat. I mean, this is a true, real threat to America.”

 

March 17, 2003 (Bush’s address to the nation two days before he invaded Iraq): “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised . . . Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed . . . When evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth . . . Responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.”

 

March 19, 2003 (speech to nation announcing that the invasion of Iraq had begun): “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder . . . We will meet that threat now . . . so we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.”

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY

August 26, 2002 (speech to Veterans of Foreign Wars): “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us . . . We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons . . . Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.”

 

September 8, 2002 (Meet the Press): “We do know, with absolute certainty, that Hussein is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.”³

NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER CONDOLEEZZA RICE

September 8, 2002 (CNN): “We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon . . . We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL

February 5, 2003 (address to UN Security Council): “The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world . . . There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more . . . Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons . . . We have more than a decade of proof that Saddam Hussein remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons . . . Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort, no effort, to disarm . . . [and] are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.”

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD

September 18, 2002 (House Armed Services Committee): “We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons.”

 

September 19, 2002 (Senate Armed Services Committee): “No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.”

 

At the time that all of the above false statements were made, there was no credible evidence that Saddam had any more weapons of mass destruction than you or I had in our backyard. What we do know is that at the time, Hussein, pen in hand, was consumed not by the thought of attacking America (after all, he was a hell of a lot more sane than President Bush), but by completing his fourth novel, Get Out, You Damned One, a third-rate piece of pulp fiction about “a greedy schemer who plots to overthrow the sheik of a tribe with the help of a powerful enemy aiming to conquer and annihilate all Arabs but is ultimately defeated by the sheik’s daughter with the help of an Arab warrior.” The first page of the manuscript (later published in book form) was signed by Hussein and dated March 18, 2003, the day before Bush invaded Iraq.

Whether the Iraq war was the second-biggest blunder in American history (behind Vietnam) or the biggest crime ever committed by an American president will be discussed in a succeeding chapter.