Iraq War Rationale: A Giant Fraud?

Claiming that the Iraq War was based on a fraudulent rationale has become a true believer's mantra for the war's opponents. Sure, some have said it all along, but there's just something about my most recent encounter with this political tenet of faith that's finally moved me to apply fingers to keyboard. It's the Independent's Washington correspondent Rupert Cornwell who just so matter-of-factly described the war justification as "a giant fraud" in a recent piece. To Cornwell and his like-minded allies the case is closed on this issue; it's long since graduated from theory to fact. Heck, it's now gospel.

A charge of fraud, of course, means that the Bush administration engaged in deliberate deception, trickery. The critics' self-assuredness notwithstanding, does this accusation by Cornwell, et al withstand scrutiny? I say no. The war's critics are the guilty ones, guilty of giant distortion, an attempt to rewrite history right under our noses. Here's my small contribution toward setting the record straight.

The Iraq Survey Group's final report, aka the Duelfer Report, confirms rather than contradicts the Bush Administration's integrity. If the government were intent on trickery and deceit, then the conclusive findings on Iraqi WMD would have conformed to the official position. Well, they don't. The report has all the look and feel of a process that really had discovery of fact as its intent. And the critics tacitly acknowledge this with their unquestioning respect for Mr. Duelfer and his team's report. David Kay, Mr. Duelfer's predecessor, directly nails this point down. As reported in the NY Times, Jan. 26, 2004, "Dr. Kay said he was convinced that the analysts were not pressed by the Bush administration to make certain their prewar intelligence reports conformed to a White House agenda on Iraq. 'All the analysts I have talked to said they never felt pressured on W.M.D.,' he said. 'Everyone believed that they had W.M.D.''The only comment I ever had from the president was to find the truth,' Dr. Kay said. 'I never got any pressure to find a certain outcome.'"

For the critics, the inability to locate large stockpiles of WMD and their full-scale production following the invasion amounts to an utter repudiation of the reasons given by the Bush Administration for going to war. Aside from the obvious problem of finding contraband when the criminals involved are given a six-month advanced notice of the raid, it should not surprise anyone to learn that the Hussein crime family did what any criminal operation does when the heat is applied: You lay low, you hide the goods, you keep your operation going as much as you can, positioning yourself for the day when you can hit the accelerator again. You don't risk full-scale production under such circumstances, but you get yourself situated so that you can rev it up when the time comes.

The Duelfer Report bears this out:
• Saddam believed weapons of mass destruction were essential to the preservation of his power, especially during the Iran-Iraq and 1991 Gulf wars.
• He engaged in strategic deception intended to suggest that he retained WMD.
• He fully intended to resume real WMD production after the expected lifting of U.N. sanctions, and he maintained weapons programs that put him in "material breach" of U.N. resolutions including 1441.
• And he instituted an epic bribery scheme aimed primarily at three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, with the intent of having them help lift those sanctions. (WSJ)

Richard Spertzel, a former U.N. biological weapons specialist, and member of Duelfer's team further confirms that the Hussein WMD operation was merely in "covert mode" and hadn't magically disappeared as the critics imagine: "While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi
Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale production of chemical nerve agents, sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, ricin, aflatoxin, and other unspecified biological agents." Regarding the Duelfer Report's disclosure of plans to produce and weaponize nitrogen mustard in rifle grenades and to bottle sarin and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine bottles for shipment to the U.S. and Europe, Spertzel commented: "Are we to believe this plan existed because they liked us? Or did they wish to do us harm? The major threat posed by Iraq, in my opinion, was the support it gave to terrorists in general, and its own terrorist activity."

David Kay's findings in Iraq provide additional substantiation:
• A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing chemical and biological weapons research.
• A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of biological weapons agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
• Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which could be used to produce biological weapons.
• New research on biological weapons-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin which were not declared to the UN.
• Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation.

David Kay also commented: "In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence--hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use--are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts."

The truth is, the case for war didn't ride on finding mass quantities of WMD. To substantiate this, let's go to the source, the resolution that our elected representatives voted on to authorize the Iraq War: The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. (Recall that this resolution passed by overwhelming majorities in both Senate, 77-23, and House, 296-133, substantially wider margins than the 1991 resolution to expel Iraq from Kuwait.) This resolution contains 23 "whereas" statements to justify the use of force against Iraq. Combined, they lay out the definitive rationale behind this decision. In all, 8 distinct reasons for the war emerge, five "negative" and three "positive." The negative reasons in order of frequency are:

WMD: 10 mentions
TERRORISM: 10
CEASE-FIRE VIOLATIONS: 7
AGGRESSION: 4
REPRESSION: 3

The positive reasons:

RESTORE SECURITY: 6
PROMOTE DEMOCRACY: 1
ENFORCE RESOLUTIONS: 1

Even a casual reading of the resolution leaves no doubt that the prime mover behind the war was concern over the deadly mix of three potent ingredients: An aggressive outlaw regime that is developing WMD and sponsoring international terror must be stopped. But concern for Saddam's repressed people, their need for liberation and democracy, his history of aggression toward his neighbors, and the need to enforce the UN's fistful of sanctions regarding Iraq were also clearly in view. Did our failure to discover large quantities of WMD after invasion mean that he was no longer a sponsor of international terrorism or in defiant violation of every term of the 1991 ceasefire agreement? Of course not. Does this failure lead to the conclusion that Saddam had sworn off the development and use of WMD? Clearly not. Just the opposite was discovered to be true. Did it mean that the danger posed by a mix of outlaw regime, WMD and terrorism was chimeric? Ridiculous.

If anything the danger had increased because Saddam had learned from his earlier mistakes and was now a more cunning opponent, more adept at subterfuge and stealth development techniques. We now know that Saddam's generals were angry at him for jumping the gun with the invasion of Kuwait before they had their nuclear arsenal ready. Obviously if they'd had their nukes in place, it would have been nearly impossible to stop Saddam's mad designs to take over the region, with all its oil and the wealth and power that conveys--a truly nightmarish scenario. Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclear program chief, has recently released a book, "The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind." He states: "Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait." Without Gulf War I, we'd be living that nightmare right now. And, we'd be on the verge of entering that nightmare if the current Bush administration had not taken military action. Whether under Saddam or his sons, inaction would have led to the removal of sanctions, the resumption of WMD programs, including production, and at the time of their choosing having learned from their 1991 mistake, the re-launch of their power play for the Middle East. Mahdi Obeidi again: "Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the [nuclear] program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980's, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts."

Ok, so even if one grants that the war was justified, the WMD intelligence was flawed and therefore the Bush Administration is still guilty of a giant fraud--right? Wrong, that's called amnesia. Every legitimate intelligence agency in the world, including the French, thought Iraq had WMD's and that, in the hands of a madman, they posed a threat to the peace and security of the region and world. The United Nations, the intelligence services of our allies, democratic senators on the Intelligence Committee, members of the Clinton administration were all in agreement. Certainly there was a presumption of guilt at work here, but that was clearly justified given Saddam's megalomaniacal history of aggression, deceit and defiance.

For those still suffering from selective Iraqi amnesia, a brief trip down memory lane:

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." -- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"The hard fact is that so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government, a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people. . . . Heavy as they are, the costs of inaction must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them." -- President Clinton, December 16, 1998

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- Sen. John F. Kerry, Oct. 9, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -- John Edwards October 10, 2002

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

"The security of America is under threat from people like Saddam Hussein who are capable of using chemical and biological weapons." -- French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, November 12, 2002

"There is a problem: the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq. The international community is right to be disturbed by this situation, and it's right in having decided Iraq should be disarmed." -- Jacques Chirac, February 16, 2003

"Everyone believed that they had W.M.D." -- Head of Iraqi Survey Group, Dr. David Kay, January, 2004

Perhaps the critics of the war want to believe that this whole Iraqi WMD thing was a giant fraud perpetrated by a giant, worldwide conspiracy.

No, to say that the Iraq War was based on a giant fraud is a giant distortion. It was the right war, the right place, the...and long overdue.