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• Pt. 4 of 4

16. The Inspectors Speak and Are Not Heard

The Bush administration lied, and lied boldly. The deception was not in presenting erroneous intelligence, but in pretending to a certitude that they knew did not exist. They twisted facts to their assumptions, and would not allow the latter to yield before any new facts. Hans Blix captured this attitude best when he told the Guardian a year later that there was a lack of critical thinking. As the inspectors examined sites chosen by British and US intelligence, they found no WMD. Gradually [the British and US governments] ought to have realised there was nothing. Gradually they would have found that the defectors' information was not reliable. (Guardian, 6 March 2004)

After the war, the administration would change its lies, and maintain that no one could have known that there were no Iraqi WMDs. This position is belied by members of the intelligence community and by the weapons inspectors. Greg Thielmann, who had been in charge of analyzing evidence for Powell, told CBS in February 2004 that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S., according to the evidence then known. I think it didn’t even constitute an imminent threat to its neighbors at the time we went to war. French President Jacques Chirac believed that there were no Iraqi WMDs, and that the Western intelligence agencies, including his own, had contaminated each other with their assumptions.

On 14 February, Dr. Blix reported to the Security Council, painting a much more positive assessment of the progress of inspections then did Powell a week earlier.

Through the inspections conducted so far, we have obtained a good knowledge of the industrial and scientific landscape of Iraq, as well as of its missile capability but, as before, we do not know every cave and corner. Inspections are effectively helping to bridge the gap in knowledge that arose due to the absence of inspections between December 1998 and November 2002.

Blix further observed that no WMDs whatsoever had been discovered. Further, he cautioned against the American tendency to assume that any unaccounted materials must still exist.

How much, if any, is left of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programmes? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed. Another matter—and one of great significance—is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which Iraq provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent were unaccounted for. One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.

To resolve the remaining discrepancies, Blix demanded that Iraq take a more proactive role in producing evidence. He warns the Iraqi regime against repeating its mistake of the early nineties.

If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991, the phase of disarmament—under resolution 687 (1991)—could have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided. Today, three months after the adoption of resolution 1441 (2002), the period of disarmament through inspection could still be short, if immediate, active and unconditional cooperation with UNMOVIC and the IAEA were to be forthcoming.

Blix was hopeful that disarmament through inspection could be swift if Iraq took more active steps to produce evidence resolving remaining questions. He gave further assessment of progress in this regard in his final quarterly report before the war, on 28 February.

From 27 November 2002 through the end of February 2003, UNMOVIC conducted over 550 inspections at 350 sites, including 44 new sites. By Dr. Blix’s account, All inspections were performed without notice, and access was in virtually all cases provided promptly. In no case have the inspectors seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance of their impending arrival. The inspected sites included industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centres, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private house, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites. Previously inspected sites were re-evaluated. In some places, ground-penetrating radar was used.

During this period, more than 200 chemical and 100 biological samples were collected at inspection sites. Three-quarters of these were screened by UNMOVIC. Blix reported at the end of February: The results to date have been consistent with Iraq’s declarations. Iraq was so far fully cooperative with UNMOVIC, and its declaration had not been falsified.

For all the British and American fearmongering, the only weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq after extensive inspections was fifty liters of mustard, which had already been declared by Iraq and put under UNSCOM supervision in 1998. UNSCOM’s tamper-proof seal was still on the chemical. Additionally, one liter of thiodiglycol, a mustard precursor, was found and destroyed.

By the end of February 2003, UNMOVIC had over 200 staff from 60 countries in Iraq, including 84 inspectors. Their Baghdad base of operations (BOMVIC) was also staffed with UN translators, logistics personnel and security officers. Air operations were conducted by 8 helicopters and an L-100 airplane. In February, the Iraqi government agreed to allow UNMOVIC to use a U-2 spy plane. A French Mirage IV aircraft flew its first UNMOVIC mission on 26 February. An additional field office was opened in Mosul in early January, and there were plans to open a third office in Basra in March. The Iraqi government was fully compliant when it came to permitting inspections and surveillance.

As mentioned, there was some difficulty in getting individual Iraqis to agree to interviews. 28 Iraqi officials and other individuals refused to be interviewed by UNMOVIC without an Iraqi observer present. After discussion in January, the Iraqi government agreed to encourage these people to accept interviews in private. Three of the candidates then agreed to be interviewed without observers.

The sole material breach of weapons sanctions did not involve WMDs, but missiles and missile engines that could exceed the range of 150 kilometers. These items were all declared by Iraq on 7 December. The Al-Samoud II was a surface-to-air missile under development since 2001, and was not ready for deployment. The lightest version of it would have had a range of 193 kilometers, and the heaviest would have a range of 162 kilometers. These missiles were only barely in violation of the strict 150-kilometer limit, which was imposed on Iraq with doubtful legality, as there was no non-proliferation agreement against such weapons. Nonetheless, Iraq agreed to dismantle these missiles, and UNMOVIC had destroyed 72 of about 130 missiles until the Iraq war. Ironically, by cutting short the inspections, the U.S.-U.K. invasion made it possible for the Iraqis to fire Al-Samoud IIs at coalition aircraft. Only five were fired before they were recalled due to failures. So much for the dreaded Iraqi missile threat.

In his assessment of Iraqi compliance, Dr. Blix again distinguished between process and substance. On matters of process, the Iraqis were fully compliant, even helpful, as they allowed inspections at any place and time, as well as aerial surveillance. They established a commission to search for and present proscribed items, such as empty chemical munitions and components for aerial bombs. The government encouraged scientists to accept private interviews, but in practice, interviewees demanded a tape recorder or Iraqi witness present.

On matters of substance, Dr. Blix lamented that little new materials were identified in Iraq’s declaration. This, it turns out, was not because Iraq was non-compliant, but because there was nothing further to declare. Blix also said that the Iraqis could have initiated the destruction of the Al-Samoud II’s in December, but Iraq at the time did not consider these weapons to exceed the 150 km range. Such a determination was made only later by UN inspectors. If Iraq had taken more initiative, all the missiles would have been destroyed by now. In summary:

Under resolution 1284 (1999), Iraq is to provide cooperation in all respects to UNMOVIC and the IAEA. While the objective of the cooperation under this resolution, as under resolution 1441 (2002), is evidently the attainment, without delay, of verified disarmament, it is the cooperation that must be immediate, unconditional and active. Without the required cooperation, disarmament and its verification will be problematic. However, even with the requisite cooperation it will inevitably require some time.

During the period of time covered by the present report [1 Dec 2002–28 Feb 2003], Iraq could have made greater efforts to find any remaining proscribed items or provide credible evidence showing the absence of such items. The results in terms of disarmament have been very limited so far. The destruction of missiles, which is an important operation, has not yet begun. Iraq could have made full use of the declaration, which was submitted on 7 December. It is hard to understand why a number of the measures, which are now being taken, could not have been initiated earlier. If they had been taken earlier, they might have borne fruit by now. It is only by the middle of January and thereafter that Iraq has taken a number of steps, which have the potential of resulting either in the presentation for destruction of stocks or items that are proscribed or the presentation of relevant evidence solving long-standing unresolved disarmament issues.

Apart from his lament that the Iraqis did not implement in early December their initiatives of mid-January, Blix does not mention any substantive failure to comply on the part of Iraq. He seems frustrated that not as much disarmament has happened as he expected, but this is because there was not much to disarm. Still, Iraq had submitted to an unprecedented scale of surveillance, giving inspectors free rein over any site in the country, and offering logistic, administrative, and legislative support for their activities. As Blix noted, even with full cooperation the inspections would require time, in order for Iraq to produce unaccounted materials or to account for their absence. There is no indication in his report that Iraq is in material violation of Resolution 1441, though he does hint that Iraq has not always been as actively cooperative as it could be.

While Dr. Blix scrupulously avoided drawing any definitive conclusions, the work of UNMOVIC during this period indicates that there were at best trace remnants of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, hardly the threat to the world that the U.S. and Britain sought to depict. The nuclear threat was similarly elusive. On 24 February 2003, Mohamed El Baradei told Der Spiegel:

Let me state clearly that we can determine within a few months whether or not Saddam has reactivated his nuclear weapons programme—a crucial issue, since nuclear weapons are still the worst danger worldwide. Verification in this area is comparatively easy, since we destroyed all his facilities during the last inspections from 1991 to 1998.

El Baradei knew that Iraq’s facilities pertaining to nuclear weapons research were all destroyed, so that any reconstituted program would be quite crude. Since nuclear facilities have a large footprint, it would not take long to verify that no new facility had been built. The Bush administration’s warnings of mushroom clouds were pure fantasy, as was the notion that a terrorist could obtain and deploy an atomic bomb.

The inspections clearly had not gone the way the U.S. had wanted, as Iraq was generally compliant, and extensive inspections had not revealed Iraq to be much of a threat. It must be emphasized that this was all publicly available information before the invasion, so revisionist excuses about the intelligence being wrong do not hold water. In fact, even after the postbellum facts on the ground came in, the Bush administration continued to insist on its false accusations. The British government also tried to deflect attention away from Iraqi cooperation with inspections. In December, they sought to change the subject by releasing a second dossier detailing Saddam’s human rights violations. Resolution 1441, which was supposed to provide the excuse for war, instead was producing embarrassment for the British and Americans, who were hard pressed to prove Iraq was an immediate threat to the world, even as nuclear-armed North Korea was dealt with diplomatically.

On 7 March, El Baradei summarized the IAEA’s work as follows:

In the past three months they have conducted over 200 inspections at more than 140 locations, entering without prior notice into Iraqi industrial facilities, munitions factories, military establishments, private residences, and presidential palaces…

The IAEA’s inspectors have systematically examined the contents and operations of all Iraqi buildings and facilities that were identified, through satellite surveillance, as having been modified or newly constructed since December 1998, when inspections were brought to a halt.

Like Blix, El Baradei emphasized Iraq’s extraordinary cooperativeness with the inspectors.

A key facet of these inspections has been the degree of co-operation on the part of Iraq. Throughout the past three months, Iraqi authorities have provided access to all facilities, without conditions and without delay, and have made documents available in response to inspectors’ requests.

It is unsurprising that Iraq should be so cooperative, as Saddam was taking every possible step to avoid war with the U.S. and Britain, having no desire to repeat the Gulf War. Iraq sought to avoid war at all cost, while the U.S. and Britain actively sought pretexts for war.

El Baradei also noted that Iraq cooperation was at first passive, not proactive, but this had changed recently.

In recent weeks, Iraq has: agreed to the use of overhead surveillance flights by American, French, Russian, and German aircraft in support of the inspecting organizations; committed to encouraging its citizens to accept interviews in private in Iraq, as requested; and provided lists of additional Iraqi personnel who might be relevant to verification issues.

These are hardly the actions of a nation that is looking to flout Resolution 1441 and drive the world to war. Much less are they the actions of a nation that poses an immediate threat to its neighbors, much less to the mighty United States. On the contrary, El Baradei found:

Nuclear weapons inspections in Iraq are making marked progress. To date, we have found no substantiated evidence of the revival in Iraq of a nuclear weapons programme—the most lethal of the weapons of mass destruction.

These reports by Blix and El Baradei were all a matter of public record, so it is inexcusable for war apologists to pretend that no one could have known that the WMD threat was insubstantial, or at least highly dubious. The primary means of garnering support for the war was to regard the inspectors as dupes and insist that prior Anglo-American intelligence was correct, regardless of what facts in the last three months would indicate.

Blix harshly criticized the Anglo-American propensity to deform facts to their assumptions in his book Disarming Iraq, published in early 2004. In the book, he makes clear that he did not find Iraq to be non-cooperative:

I felt the armed action taken was not in line with what the Security Council had decided five months earlier. Had there been any denials of access, any cat-and-mouse play? No. Had the inspections been going well? Yes. True, they had not resolved any of the open disarmament issues, but in my view, they had gone much too well to be abandoned to justify war.

Discussing his book on 21 March 2004 with CNN, Dr. Blix said that the case for war was falling apart.

Well, I think it’s clear that in March when the invasion took place the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart. And we had called attention to a number of the points.

One was that there was a tendency on the U.S. administration to say that anything that was unaccounted for existed, whether it was sarin, or mustard gas or anthrax.

Another one related to the case that Colin Powell presented to the Security Council about a site in which they held that there had been chemical weapons and that they had seen decontamination trucks. Our inspectors had been there and they had taken a lot of samples, and there was no trace of any chemicals or biological things. And the trucks that we had seen were water trucks.

And, of course, the more spectacular of all was what my friend Mohamed revealed in the Security Council, namely that the alleged contract by Iraq with Niger to import yellow cake, that is uranium oxide, that this was a forgery, and the document had been sitting with the CIA and their U.K. counterparts for a long while, and they had not discovered it. And I think it took the IAEA a day to discover that it was a forgery.

In sum, Blix said, the evidence was rapidly falling apart for them in March. Rather than accept that they were wrong about Iraqi WMD, the U.S. and the U.K. pressed for immediate invasion, before inspectors could thoroughly discredit their case. The behavior of the British and American governments was that of people who wanted war far more than they cared to learn the truth. We can hardly avoid the conclusion that the WMD threat was more of an excuse for war than a real reason. Otherwise, it would be absurd to press for war more urgently precisely when the WMD threat is turning out to be much weaker than envisioned.

In his book, Blix writes that Colin Powell had been charged with the thankless task of hauling out the smoking guns that in January were said to be irrelevant, and that after March turned out to be non-existent. By this he means that in January the U.S. was claiming that failure to find weapons meant only that Iraq was hiding them, yet in February they deemed it necessary that they did in fact have positive evidence of Iraqi WMDs. The evidence for Powell’s presentation was dubious, and in some cases fabricated, so it is hardly surprising that their should be no WMD. In fact, the entire experience of the last three months strongly suggested it.

Blix told CNN in 2004 that the Bush administration was dismissive of the inspectors’ warnings that the WMD evidence was weak. I called attention to the fact that the evidence was shaky. We had—I told that to Condoleeza Rice, as well, so I think they were aware of it, but I think they chose to ignore us.

Blix admits that he did not say before the war that Iraq had no WMD, but this was only because there was not definitive evidence for or against this hypothesis.

But we could not say definitively that there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction. As Mohamed El Baradei said a moment ago, there were things unaccounted for. It meant they could either exist or not exist. So we could not affirm that they weren’t there, but we—at least we didn’t fall into the trap that the U.S. and the U.K. did in asserting that they existed.

Mohamed El Baradei, in the same CNN interview, said:

With regard to the nuclear file, we were pretty convinced that we haven’t seen really any evidence that Iraq resumed its nuclear weapon program, because we knew we dismantled that program in 1997, and our focus was to see whether anything has been resuscitated between ’98 and 2002.

We didn’t see that. As Hans has mentioned, there was a question of the uranium importation, there was a question of that tubes but these two stories we clearly realized that they did not support the conclusion that Iraq was restarting its nuclear weapon program.

For a war that supposedly was about WMDs and submitting to disarmament inspections, the advocates of war gave precious little credence to the actual inspectors who were most competent to judge whether Iraq possessed WMDs. By their own testimony, the inspectors were routinely disregarded by the Bush and Blair administrations whenever their findings did not comport with prior assumptions. The war must happen, no matter what.

17. Coalition of the Bribed: Last Gasp at Consensus

The last gasp at a pretext for war under Resolution 1441 was attempted by the U.S. and Britain in early March. The U.S., U.K., and Spain drafted a resolution on 7 March that would have found Iraq not yet in compliance with Resolution 1441, and further:

Decides that Iraq will have failed to take the final opportunity afforded by resolution 1441 (2002) unless, on or before 17 March 2003, the Council concludes that Iraq has demonstrated full, unconditional, immediate and active cooperation in accordance with its disarmament obligations under resolution 1441 (2002) and previous relevant resolutions, and is yielding possession to UNMOVIC and the IAEA of all weapons, weapon delivery and support systems and structures, prohibited by resolution 687 (1991) and all subsequent relevant resolutions, and all information regarding prior destruction of such items;

This would effectively give the U.S. and Britain license to wage war on Iraq after 17 March, unless a very high standard of cooperation was met. The language of the draft includes the apparent presumption that Iraq has prohibited weapons, so that failure to yield such weapons would be evidence of a material breach.

In their declaration (5 March) opposing the use of force, Russia, Germany and France agreed with the objective of the full and effective disarmament of Iraq, but insisted that progress was being made, so any disruption of the inspections by war would be unacceptable. They acknowledged that inspections cannot continue indefinitely, and demanded that the Iraqis co-operate more actively with the inspectors to fully disarm their country. To this end, they proposed accelerating the inspections, and that the inspectors present detailed timelines for all outstanding tasks.

Since Russia and France held veto power in the Security Council, they could obstruct the U.S.-U.K. resolution. However, the Anglo-American axis hoped to win a majority of Security Council votes so that, even if vetoed, they would have a more credible international mandate for their war. To this end, the U.S. actively campaigned to sway the votes of Security Council members, often resorting to completely amoral means.

Since the war was resoundingly unpopular in most countries on the Security Council, the U.S. had to bribe the governments of these countries to oppose their constituencies. Economic extortion has long been a staple of great power politics, but now the U.S. was much more overt in its demands of quid pro quo than it had been in previous decades. Some threats, like the proposal to impose trade penalties on French wine and water, or call French fries freedom fries, were comically innocuous, but in other cases, the well-being of impoverished nations was held in the balance over how they voted on Iraq.

The Middle Six fence-sitters on the Security Council were Mexico, Chile, Angola, Guinea, Cameroon, and Pakistan, all of which were economically vulnerable to the United States. Mexico, where 80% opposed the war (EFE News Services, 14 Feb 2003), was most dependent on the U.S., which constituted 80% of its export market. The U.S. Ambassador to Mexico warned that Congress might block legislation relating to Mexico if it voted no. Chile, where 76% opposed the war (El Mercurio, 25 Feb 2003), was counting on joining a free trade agreement with the NAFTA countries, so it was also pressured to at least abstain from voting. Guinea, which relied on U.S. military training to defend itself from Liberia, was offered $21.4 million dollars in aid in exchange for a yes vote. Cameroon stood to lose an Exxon/Chevron oil pipeline from Chad if it did not vote in favor. (Laura McClure, Coalition of the billing—or unwilling? Salon, 12 March 2003) The Bush administration apparently saw nothing wrong with linking the invasion of an oil-rich nation to a pipeline concession. Angola, another oil-rich country, was heavily dependent on U.S. investment, and knew that its vote could jeopardize this relationship. In Pakistan, the entire population (near 100%) opposed the war, yet the military government relied on the U.S. for economic aid.

Going beyond the usual strong-arm tactics, the U.S. resorted to espionage. The home and office telephones and e-mails of UN delegates in New York were intercepted, as part of a bugging operation against Security Council members ordered by Condoleeza Rice. An NSA memo (31 Jan 2003) was leaked to The Observer (published 2 March) and verified by experts as authentic. It reads in full:

To: [Recipients withheld]
From: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV/NSA
Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16
Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions
Importance: HIGH
Top Secret//COMINT//X1


All,

As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.

We've also asked ALL RT topi's to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognize that we can't afford to ignore this possible source.

We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState's presentation to the UNSC.

As the memo indicates, the purpose of the espionage was to determine where the undecided Security Council members stood, as well as those positions or issues that might sway them into the U.S. camp. The targets to be spied also included non-Security Council members. The operation was expected to peak shortly after Gen. Powell’s presentation to the UN.

The United States, the self-appointed enforcer of international law, committed a blatantly illegal act by spying on UN delegates, in violation of an agreement protecting the UN building and its personnel from espionage. A year later, it would emerge that Anglo-American espionage crimes were more extensive. British MP Clare Short declared in February 2004 that she had seen transcripts of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s telephone conversations. The Blair government denounced Short for her irresponsible statements that damage the interests of the United Kingdom, without denying the truth of her statements. Apparently, the responsible course of action would be to allow Britain to continue to act illegally.

The UN inspectors were also extensively bugged by the U.S. and its allies. An Australian journalist learned that Hans Blix’s phone conversations in Iraq were secretly recorded, and transcripts were provided to the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Blix had long suspected that he was bugged, and repeatedly had his headquarters swept for surveillance devices. He was well aware of U.S. efforts to undermine his activities, of which they evidently had a low opinion. When asked if the bugging was morally questionable, he said: Well, I don’t know what morals they have. Questionable, yes.

Blix’s predecessor Richard Butler, who had previously denied that the U.S. spied through UNSCOM, declared in 2004 that he had been spied upon by several countries, including the U.S.

Those who did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they’d made on others to try to help me do my job in disarming Iraq. They would say ‘we’re just here to help you’ and they7rsquo;d never show me any recordings that they'd made of me.

I knew it from other sources. I was utterly confident that I was bugged by at least four permanent members of the Security Council. I don’t know what the Chinese were doing.

I was utterly confident that in my attempts to have private diplomatic conversations trying to solve the problem of the disarmament of Iraq that I was being listened to by the Americans, the British, the French and the Russians.

They also had people on my staff who were reporting what I was trying to do privately. (Blix, Butler ‘bugged’ Australian Broadcasting Corp., 27 Feb 2004)

The advocates of war were not the only ones committing illegal espionage, and it is doubtful whether the U.S. gained much advantage from all its efforts. At the end of the day, its campaign to bribe and spy its way to a Security Council victory failed completely.

None of the undecided Middle Six countries was willing to commit to a vote in favor of the U.S.-U.K. resolution authorizing force. Realizing that they had no chance of obtaining a nine-vote majority, the Americans withdrew their resolution, so it was never subjected to a vote. Only four of the fifteen Security Council members—the U.S., the U.K., Spain, and Bulgaria—ever openly declared their support of the war. The Middle Six remained silent, for fear of invoking American economic retribution, with the exception of Mexico, which declared it would have voted no. This resistance to unusually overt coercion by the U.S. was a credit to the individual nations and the independence of the UN.

To make a show of international support, the leaders of the U.S., U.K., Spain, and Bulgaria met in the Azores on 15 March. Even among these stalwart four, support for unilateral action was highly limited. In Bulgaria, nearly 60% of the public opposed the war, and scarcely 5% favored unilateral action (Gallup poll), yet the government realized it depended on the U.S. for admission to NATO, which Bulgarians strongly supported. Spanish premier José Maria Aznar was at even greater odds with his constituency, as about 70% were opposed to the war even with UN sanction (El Pais, Gallup polls), and the U.S. had relatively little to offer in return. Aznar nevertheless tied his political fortunes to those of George W. Bush, which proved to be highly imprudent. His government was ousted from office a year later, not only because of the unpopular war, but because of the 11 March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid that were linked to Spain’s involvement in that war. As soon as the Spanish people had the opportunity to make their will known, Spanish forces were withdrawn from Iraq.

Among Security Council members, only the U.S. and U.K. had majorities in favor of the war, but support for unilateral action was limited. In the U.S., about 33% endorsed unilateral action, while in Britain, only 10% favored acting without UN authorization. For Blair to win over British opinion, it was especially important to give at least the appearance of broad international support. To this end, it was necessary to reveal the coalition of the willing.

The U.S. State Department named the members of the coalition of the willing as follows on 18 March:

Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan.

As was the case with the UN Security Council vote, the U.S. resorted to economically coercive measures to extract promises of at least nominal support from many of these nations. Since the purpose of the coalition was to give the appearance of broad support, it was not necessary for most of these countries to contribute troops or substantial resources to the war. The major military contributors were the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Poland, but some other members of the coalition are also worth mentioning.

Turkey was offered $6 billion in direct aid, and $20 billion more in loans, if it would vote to allow the U.S. to base soldiers there for a northern front. Despite this pressure, the Turkish parliament barely voted down this measure, in the face of a near-unanimous public opposition. Still, it was striking that a nominally democratic country where 95% of the population was opposed to the war would count itself among the coalition of the willing.

Indeed, for a war that would be later rationalized as spreading democracy in the Middle East, the Americans went to great lengths to attempt to bribe or otherwise subvert democracy. Many of the nations in the coalition had strong constituent opposition to the war. The coalition nations represented only about 10% of the world’s population, and well over 70% of their constituency opposed the war. A typical example was Italy, where 72.7% opposed the U.S.-led war, with only 18.8% supporting such action. (Swg poll, 29 January)

In what Rumsfeld liked to call new Europe, there was also widespread opposition to the invasion of Iraq. In Hungary, for example, 82% opposed military action under any circumstances. (Gallup, 27 January) In the Czech Republic 67% were opposed to war with only 24% in favor. Only 13% supported action without UN authorization. (CVVM poll, 30 January). Even stalwart Poland had 63% opposed to sending troops, though there at least was a majority for political support of the war. Poland sent troops anyway, after being promised $3.8 billion in loans for military aircraft. Further east, the Estonian government ignored its population, 65% of which opposed war under any circumstances, and less than 10% of which approved unilateral action. So did the government of Georgia, seduced by the prospect of NATO membership. Nearly 70% of Georgians opposed the war even with UN authorization. (Gallup) It would seem that Rumsfeld’s new Europe was motivated not by the people’s recognition of a threat in Saddam Hussein, but by U.S. support for entry into NATO, and in the case of countries such as Bulgaria, lucrative deals for hosting a U.S. military base.

The U.S. was remarkably unsuccessful in extracting support from Latin American countries. Only El Salvador, Nicaragua and Colombia—perennial CIA stomping-grounds, agreed to be named, as the war faced strong opposition throughout Latin America. Only Ethiopia and Eritrea, both of whom sought U.S. support in their border dispute, represented Africa in the coalition.

Eventually, other nations would be added to the coalitions, including the likes of Tonga, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. These would only amplify the already farcical nature of the coalition, as it was clear that, militarily, this was essentially a U.S.-U.K. operation. The others were present only to give a veneer of legitimacy, for which they would be rewarded.

Some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, did have majority support for military action, but here only small minorities advocated war without UN sanction. The U.S. understood how important it was for its allies to have the sanction of international law. Having failed to obtain such sanction through legitimate channels, the U.S. tried to create a surrogate international consensus in its coalition of the willing. This, like much else about the U.S. case for war, was a sham.

18. Bush’s Ultimatum

Bush had already secured Congressional authorization to use military force back in October 2002. The authorization, which passed the House by a vote of 296-133 (10 October) and the Senate by a 77-23 margin (11 October), used the following operative language:

(a) Authorization.--The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to--

1. defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
2. enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.

(b) Presidential Determination.--In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon thereafter as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that--

1. reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and
2. acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

This authorization was not exactly a blank check, for the President was required to submit his determination that reliance on diplomacy would not adequately protect U.S. national security or was not likely to lead to enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions. Bush could not credibly make the latter claim, as most of the Security Council still believed its resolutions could be enforced by peaceful means. However, he needed no appeal to international authority to determine that the national security of the U.S. was in danger.

In his public address on 18 March, which was effectively a declaration of war, Bush emphasized the danger that the Iraqi regime posed to the United States. He began his speech by outlining Iraq’s history of non-compliance with weapons inspections: Over the years, U.N. weapons inspectors have been threatened by Iraqi officials, electronically bugged and systematically deceived. Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraq regime have failed again and again because we are not dealing with peaceful men. Bush left the impression that this sort of non-compliance was still characteristic of Iraq’s behavior, when in fact the inspectors had been permitted to make extraordinary progress in the last four months. Poignantly ironic is Bush’s accusation that the Iraqis bugged the inspectors.

To support his argument that inspections could not work because the Iraqis were still acting in bad faith, Bush cited secret intelligence on Iraqi WMD.

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. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.

The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends and it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of Al Qaeda. The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other.

As discussed previously at length, the Bush administration uncritically accepted any intelligence, however faulty, that suggested the existence of Iraqi WMDs, and was not above massaging the data to yield the desired result. It was well known in the intelligence community that much of this testimony was dubious, yet Bush continued to insist there was no doubt, perhaps failing to distinguish between his personal certitude and the objective disposition of the facts.

The WMD threat is clearly central to Bush’s case for war, although he also throws in the long-debunked Al-Qaeda connection for good measure. He even includes the preposterous possibility that Iraq would develop nuclear weapons and hand them to terrorists for deployment. Still, the heart of the threat is the WMD that he assumes must exist.

Bush, in his typical simplistic fashion, refers to Iraq’s deep hatred for America, apparently neglecting Saddam’s long history of cooperation with the U.S. That cozy relationship occurred precisely when Saddam committed the war crimes Bush now condemns. Even long after the Gulf War and the sanctions regime devastated Iraq’s economy, Saddam entertained hopes of normalizing relations with the United States. This complex Saddam did not suit Bush’s purpose, which was to paint the picture of a monstrous and implacable threat.

Bush’s justification for the use of force, in the absence of international authorization, is as simple as it is ancient: The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security. While there is certainly little question that such authority exists, it is hardly credible that a nation as weak as Iraq could threaten the security of the United States. At most it might threaten the Americans’ self-declared right to hegemony over the Persian Gulf via the Carter Doctrine, but the United States likes to pretend it is not an empire. Therefore, it will not suffice to say that Iraq threatens some corner of the American imperium, but we must pretend it threatens the American homeland itself.

Despite his failure in the Security Council, Bush pretends to act on its behalf to force Iraq to disarm.

Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power.

For the last four and a half months, the United States and our allies have worked within the Security Council to enforce that council’s longstanding demands. Yet some permanent members of the Security Council have publicly announced that they will veto any resolution that compels the disarmament of Iraq. These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it.

Many nations, however, do have the resolve and fortitude to act against this threat to peace, and a broad coalition is now gathering to enforce the just demands of the world.

The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours.

It is true that no one could definitively claim that Iraq had disarmed, but that was only because, as Hans Blix repeatedly stated, it was unclear whether or not Iraq still possessed WMD, and this was a doubt the U.S. would not admit. Bush posits a necessary link between disarmament and regime change, saying Iraq will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power. This canard, carried over from the Clinton administration, renders inspections worthless. Regime change, not inspections, is the only way to effect disarmament.

Bush deceptively insinuates that the Security Council vote would have failed only because of the vetos of France and Russia. He knows this is not true, and that a strong majority of the Security Council opposed the authorization of force, even after some strong-arm tactics by the U.S. Bush also mischaracterizes his opponents (France and Russia) by saying they opposed compelling Iraq to disarm. On the contrary, France, Germany, and Russia explicitly demanded in their declaration (previously discussed) that Iraq fully account for its disarmament in a timely fashion. Those opposing the use of force believed that disarmament could be achieved by inspections. American threats to topple Saddam no matter what only served to destroy any incentive for the Iraqis to cooperate, undermining the inspection process.

A declaration of war, in classical just war theory, must state the reasons why war is the only way to obtain satisfaction of grievances. Historically, this has often come in the form of an ultimatum that states what remedies remain available. In Bush’s declaration, the only remedy offered has nothing to do with WMD.

Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing.

This is regime change, pure and simple. Normally, a warring sovereign will demand of the opposing sovereign that a certain grievance should be satisfied. In this vein, Bush might have demanded complete proof of disarmament or relinquishing of WMDs within a specified time frame. Instead, his sole demand is that Saddam and his sons leave Iraq. Basically, he tells the Iraqi sovereign that the only way to avert war is to surrender. This is only a parody of a just declaration of grievance, as the only alternative to war is to surrender without a fight. Still, this choice of ultimatum is very telling, for the real grievance of the United States is the mere presence of Saddam Hussein. This obsession with the person of Saddam now shines forth, to the exclusion of the WMD issue. As if to emphasize his strange fixation on Saddam, Bush even made overtures to the brutal Iraqi military:

It is not too late for the Iraq military to act with honor and protect your country, by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed.

Apparently, Bush was willing to allow the Iraqi military to remain intact if they would only surrender Saddam. In his view, Saddam himself was an insuperable obstacle to disarmament. With his removal, disarmament would become possible, even with the Iraqi military apparatus remaining in power.

Bush warned the Iraqi military: In any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. One may be forgiven for thinking that Bush was more concerned with the oil wells than with civilian casualties, as reflected in the bizarre ordering of this statement. In fact, upon invading Baghdad, American forces took care to protect the Oil Ministry, while permitting many basic public services and government functions to lapse into anarchy.

Having raised the possibility that Iraqis might use WMDs during the invasion, Bush decided to scare Americans further with the possibility that they might somehow collaborate with terrorists to orchestrate attacks abroad.

If Saddam Hussein attempts to cling to power, he will remain a deadly foe until the end.

In desperation, he and terrorist groups might try to conduct terrorist operations against the American people and our friends. These attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible.

And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail. The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed.

Of course, Iraq in fact never attacked nor threatened to attack the U.S. It never used nor threatened to use WMD against the U.S., even when it was invaded twice. The United States, by contrast, bombed much of Iraq into pre-industrial conditions, and now threatened to do so again. The United States imposed no-fly zones and tried to incite insurrection in northern and southern Iraq. The United States callously ignored the humanitarian crisis caused by the sanctions, in the face of widespread international opposition. The United States constantly rattled its saber, even as Iraq was finally cooperative with weapons inspectors, and pushed for invading Iraq, against the international consensus. Yet somehow Iraq was blackmailing the United States, and even the world, on the basis of some dubious speculation connecting the Iraqi regime with terrorists. Cicero spoke truly when he said it is human nature to despise whom you have wronged.

Feeling perhaps that it was not enough for Saddam to be a threat to the U.S., Bush depicted him as a threat to the whole world, and obliquely compared him to Hitler.

In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war.

In this century, 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. Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations.

And 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.

This argument is premised on a reading of history where Hitler’s military success was made possible by the policy of appeasement. This old canard, a perennial favorite among warmongers, is ill-considered. Hitler could have taken the Sudetenland even without diplomatic sanction, as proved by the fact that when war finally was declared over Poland, the allies were still powerless to do anything about the eastern front, resulting in the months-long Phony War stalemate. The occupation of these eastern territories did not improve Germany’s military position with respect to the western allies. If anything, the commitment of forces in the east made the campaign against France and Britain more difficult.

Apart from his simplistic reading of history, Bush is correct in stating that certain types of dangers necessitate a preemptive strike rather than waiting for the other to strike first. However, Saddam Hussein was a long way from being that kind of threat. His nuclear program was completely dismantled, and even if he managed to hide some small cache of chemical and biological weapons, he never threatened to use them against the U.S. Indeed, the only foreign power he ever used chemical weapons against was Iran, fifteen years ago. This is hardly characteristic of an imminent threat, much less the apocalyptic danger that Bush depicted. If he were correct, most of the world was too cowardly or foolish to defend itself from the coming cataclysm. In reality, the threat of Saddam Hussein was that he might possess a power that was beyond the influence of the United States. For an empire with designs of global hegemony, this was unacceptable.

19. The Conquest of Iraq

On 19 March, Bush announced that the war against Iraq had begun.

My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger…

Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure. 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.

Even now, WMD remained the centerpiece of Bush’s rationale for the war, which he euphemistically calls military operations to disarm Iraq. He also mentions freeing the Iraqi people as a secondary objective, one enshrined in the name Operation Iraqi Freedom, in keeping with the Pentagon’s propensity for Orwellian naming of its military campaigns.

As should be abundantly evident by now, Bush’s claim that the U.S. enters this conflict reluctantly was a brazen lie. The Bush administration had constantly pushed for war since it began its provocative bombing campaign in 2002. They disregarded any negative evidence that resulted from actual inspections, preferring their shaky intelligence. They even went as far as to distort or falsify evidence to make their case. Their goal had always been regime change, regardless of Iraq’s level of cooperation with inspections. They may deceive themselves that they did not seek war, but they did not deceive the inspectors. As Blix would document at length a year later in his book, the U.S. and Britain put extensive pressure on the inspectors to find secret stockpiles of WMD, without seriously considering the possibility their intelligence was wrong. Having failed to manipulate the inspectors, they instead manipulated reality as they made their case for war.

The invasion of Iraq was not a defensive war, as neither the U.S. nor any ally was immediately threatened by Iraq. The mere prospect of Iraq some day waging war does not suffice to constitute an immediate threat. Otherwise, any country could preemptively attack any country it did not like. Of course, the history of U.S. foreign policy, replete with orchestrated coups, assassinations, and acts designed to provoke war, suggests that American governments do in fact claim such a right. In the past, however, the U.S. would take care to provoke the enemy to attack first. The Bush administration did not bother with this fig leaf, but launched an overtly pre-emptive war. An offensive war may be justified if it is to inflict retribution for some wrong or to prevent some wrong that would certainly follow. Iraq had not injured the United States, nor was it likely to do so. The U.S. waged war on Iraq on the basis that Iraq might possibly some day threaten it. By this standard, any nation the U.S. does not like may be attacked.

When a just war is declared, a country must declare the grievance to be satisfied in order to avert war. In this case, Bush effectively declared himself master of Iraq, presuming to have the authority to demand that Iraq should remove its head of state. Things came to this impasse in part because the U.S. insisted that Iraq was hiding WMD from the inspectors. It is a weak defense to appeal to the faulty intelligence. For months, hundreds of UN inspections indicated with increasing certitude that the intelligence was at least partially mistaken, but the Bush administration denied this evidence, and portrayed the inspectors as dupes. There was no moral necessity for the Bush government to insist on this version of reality. Their demand for Iraq to disclose weapons it did not have was impossible to satisfy, and therefore unjust. The behavior of the administration throughout the pre-war period makes clear that this was a war of choice, which did not exhaust peaceful means of remedy, and indeed sought to forestall these. The war was manifestly not "just" in the classical sense.

As the conduct of the war itself would demonstrate, Iraq posed no more threat to the U.S. than an ant to an elephant. The comparisons to Nazi Germany were ridiculous. Iraq had only a modest air force, no navy, no long range missiles, and no nuclear capability. Even when it possessed chemical weapons, it did not dare use them against the U.S. in the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq in 2003 was far weaker militarily and economically than it was in 1990, so it was hardly credible that it was now a greater threat. On the contrary, if Iraq really was a danger to the U.S., the casualty-averse Americans would not have dared to attack. Since the debacle of Vietnam, the U.S. has only dared to engage armies that it could easily overwhelm, leaving nothing to chance. This is why we will not see a war with North Korea or Iran, much less a nuclear power. Aggressors are bold only when the enemy is weak.

The conquest of Iraq was swift, being completed in only three weeks. When Baghdad was taken, some U.S. soldiers apparently forgot the script about liberating Iraq, and tied a U.S. flag around a statue of Saddam Hussein. They quickly corrected their mistake, but the U.S. would effectively be running Iraq for months to come, at least to the extent that anyone was running Iraq. The toppling of the statue was carefully stage managed, as the Marines sealed off the plaza and allowed members of Ahmed Chalabi’s pro-American militia, flown in by the U.S. military, to act as jubilant Iraqis greeting their liberators. This propaganda piece would not be repeated when real Iraqis had the opportunity to express themselves.

Notwithstanding Bush’s previous offer of clemency to the Iraqi military, the Americans ordered the dissolution of the Iraqi army and the Baathist government. This ill-considered political move had a devastating impact on Iraq’s socialistic economy and its internal security. Riots and looting ensued throughout the country, which would remain on the brink of civil war for years afterward. Between the bombing campaign and ensuing acts of anarchic violence, at least 100,000 Iraqis would die violent deaths over the next five years.

20. Stuff Happens: The Plunder of Iraq

As American forces entered Baghdad in early April, businesses and public buildings were trashed and looted. U.S. forces swiftly occupied Saddam’s main palace, the Oil Ministry building, and the Defense Ministry. Meanwhile, museums, banks, hotels, and libraries were burned and vandalized, often within mere blocks of U.S. soldiers. City hall, the agriculture ministry, the transportation ministry, and the agriculture ministry buildings were all ravaged. Iraq would lack basic services provided by these ministries for months, even years.

The Americans made no effort to stop the early looting except at the Oil Ministry, which was occupied in the early afternoon of 9 April. The vast complex was soon fortified with a heavy military presence, including a fleet of tanks, by 12 April. At that point only the main palace and the Oil Ministry were guarded by Americans, who stood idly as the irrigation ministry next door was torched.

The worst losses from looting and arson were to Iraq’s cultural patrimony. On 10 April, the Americans found time for another propaganda set piece, destroying a Saddam statue in front of the National Library and Archives building, and then leaving the building unguarded. Minutes later it was in flames. Still, the Americans did not post a guard. Two days later, another fire did further damage. The National Library of Iraq, which contained 500,000 books and serials, including 5,000 rare books, lost 60% of its archival collections, 95% of its rare books, and 25% of all books. Though the custodians beseeched the Americans for a guard, the troops responded that they were only authorized to offer such protection for factories. Between the National Library and the National Archives (which contained documents from the Ottoman period), hundreds of thousands of archival documents were lost forever.

American troops also stood by as the Al-Awqaf Library, a semi-private institution housing a collection of Islamic manuscripts, was looted and burned. On 13 or 14 April, arsonists destroyed the library with some 45,000 books, some dating to the Ottoman period. 5,250 of the Islamic manuscripts were saved beforehand. Another 1,744 manuscripts had also been removed before the fire, and placed under armed guard at the Qadiryya Mosque complex. Unfortunately, U.S. rules of engagement at that time demanded that armed Iraqis be shot on sight, so U.S. soldiers killed the guard on 13 April. The manuscripts were now unguarded and returned to the library, where they were looted or burned.

Some U.S. soldiers later explained their indifference to looting, saying they were still in war mode the first few days, expecting Republican Guards to pop out of basements or have snipers shoot at them. Only after the rules of engagement changed did they concern themselves with restoring civic order.

Much of the arson was done by Iraqis loyal to Saddam. Most of these acts were spontaneous, except for the destruction of Republican Archive, which was planned well in advance, undoubtedly to remove damaging Ba’athist documents. The looters were a politically diverse lot. Many were evidently not Saddam loyalists, but seemed jubilant that his government had ended.

The custodians of the Baghdad Museum, which held thousands of priceless archaeological artifacts, were fortunately able to move most of the exhibits to vaults before the war. Contrary to early reports that the museum had been looted clean, only about 3% of its artifacts had been stolen or destroyed, including some of the pieces too large to be moved to the vaults. The local U.S. tank commander had been specifically instructed not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Before the war, museum personnel had warned the Pentagon of the likelihood of looting, yet no action was taken to protect some of the most valuable artifacts in the world. As some journalists wryly noted, even the Nazis had protected the Louvre.

The callousness and philistinism of the Bush administration was on full display in Rumsfeld’s dismissive comments about the looting.

The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty times, and you think, My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?
...
Stuff happens! But in terms of what’s going on in that country, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over, and over, and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, Oh, my goodness, you didn’t have a plan. That’s nonsense. They know what they’re doing, and they’re doing a terrific job. And it’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

The Pentagon later argued that demands of combat made it impossible to defend the museum and other cultural buildings. This excuse was undoubtedly calculated to guard against accusations of violating international law. The relevant norm may be found in the 1954 Hague Convention, which demands of those occupying other countries to undertake to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property. (Art. 4[3])

Even without the sanction of international law, anyone but a complete vulgarian would have made every effort to preserve the museum and libraries, realizing that they preserve the heritage of the world’s earliest civilizations. In fact, Iraqi scholars had petitioned the Americans in advance of the war to protect these institutions. The Americans saw far more value in protecting documentation of oil wealth. A more scathing indictment of the worthlessness and crassness of the American imperial project can scarcely be imagined.

Fittingly, under the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority that governed Iraq for a year, cultural matters were given the lowest priority. Four years later, there was still looting at Iraq’s archaeological sites. Ancient castles, ziggurats, cities, minarets and mosques were stripped of their bricks, sometimes damaged beyond recognition. All foreign archaeologists were kept out of the country, leaving no means to preserve these sites.

While the Bush administration was content to leave the heritage of the world’s oldest civilizations to chance, extensive planning was made in advance to distribute Iraq’s oil contracts among American companies. The U.S. State Department’s Future of Iraq Project had an Oil and Energy Working Group that met four times between December 2002 and April 2003. The group found that Iraq should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war and this should be done through Production Sharing Agreements. No other Middle East nation uses these agreements, as they excessively favor foreign companies, effectively allowing them to profit share. In a similar vein, the U.S. Agency for International Development and Treasury Department drafted a plan in February that called for mass privatization, liquidation of some industries, and a year-long propaganda campaign to make Iraqis amenable to the plan. (Wall Street Journal, 1 May 2003)

In order to clear the way for new oil contracts, the U.S. announced in May 2003 that most of Iraq’s contracts with foreign governments (e.g., France, Russia) made during the Ba’athist regime would not be honored. Regime change was quite profitable for the U.S. and its allies, as it enabled them to assume the lion’s share of a market that had been closed to them.

Prior to the war, the Iraqi oil industry was completely nationalized, and non-Arab foreigners could not own businesses in Iraq. Immediately after the invasion, one of the first directives issued by the Bush administration was to allow privatization of all state-owned businesses, and to admit up to 100% foreign ownership. No sovereign country in the world allows full foreign ownership of all its businesses, and the Americans took care to leave an exception for the extraction and early processing of oil. This was not much of a concession, as all other Arab countries enjoyed their own extraction rights as well. Now, however, U.S. companies could have lucrative development deals with the Iraqis. As anyone paying attention should know by now, when the U.S. fights for democracy, it often means capitalism.

Naturally, most reconstruction contracts were awarded to major American companies, including KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that received a $2.4 billion no-bid Army contract. This was scandalous because of Vice President Cheney’s past connections with the company, as well as later evidence that KBR grossly overcharged the government for fuel. Halliburton, Bechtel, and other companies would get no-bid contracts to rebuild utilities and schools, do a sub-standard or even non-existent job, and pocket the money. $20 billion was spent in this way with no accountability or transparency, while the Iraqis floundered without basic utilities and public buildings. The money came from oil revenues, which the U.S. repeatedly insisted belonged to the Iraqi people, though the Bush administration acted as the banker.

In the first year of occupation, Iraq was run by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer. Having effective legislative authority over Iraq, Bremer’s priorities were to protect property rights, lower trade barriers, and basically turn a socialist economy into a neoliberal paradise. In typical economic imperialist fashion, he insisted that Iraq must compete in a free market, which effectively meant that rich multinational companies must be allowed to rape the country. Duty-free products flooded into Iraq, overwhelming domestic businesses, already at a disadvantage because of the war-ravaged infrastructure. Free-market fundamentalists fail to note that there is nothing free about competition between an ant and an elephant.

Perhaps even more devastating than his laissez faire economic policies was Bremer’s decision, backed by the Bush administration, to ban 30,000 Ba’athist civil servants from their positions, making government almost completely non-functional. Since Iraq was a one-party state, this had the effect of eliminating the entire class of qualified administrators from government. In a quasi-socialist economy, this was a disastrous measure. Eventually, the foolish de-Ba’athification policy would be partially reversed, but the damage was already done in the first year of occupation.

Another foolish policy was the dissolution of the Iraqi army, which added 400,000 men to the ranks of the unemployed, many of whom formed an insurgency to fight against the occupation. In the absence of a professional domestic army, Iraq fell into violent chaos, and teetered on the brink of civil war for more than two years, while thousands were killed in acts of terrorism and sectarian strife.

The CPA also pushed for the privatization of public services, such as telecommunications and sanitation. Again, laissez faire ideology took precedent over the will of the Iraqi people, enabling foreign companies to profit from public necessity. The idea that a private company should reap profits from a necessary utility, having a captive clientele, was a foreign concept to Iraqis. In the U.S., such extortion regularly receives the sanction of the state, which awards de facto regional monopolies to private companies for public services. These companies are allowed to reap a profit without any risk or real competition. In classical political philosophy, the definition of corrupt government was the use of public resources for private benefit. In the U.S. this is considered by many to be a principal objective of government. This state-sanctioned theft, accepted as a matter of course in the U.S., was now exported to Iraq.

The U.S. did not forget its partners in the coalition of the willing. On 9 December 2003, a Pentagon memo dated 5 December was released to the public. In the memo, Paul Wolfowitz determined that $18.6 billion in U.S.-funded contracts to rebuild Iraq’s utilities and hospitals would be made available only to companies from the U.S., Iraq, and coalition partners. Wolfowitz wrote that this was necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States, in order to give himself legal cover with the World Trade Organization. The security rationale was a laughable falsehood, necessary only as a legal fiction. The rank pettiness of this measure was unbelievable, as even longtime ally Canada was excluded, to punish its refusal to join the coalition, while coalition members Turkey and Saudi Arabia were allowed to participate, though they made no military contributions. The memo put on full display the crassness of the administration, with its tit-for-tat compensation for endorsement of its Iraq adventure, and further discredited the voluntary nature of the coalition of the willing.

The United States had fought wars for money previously, but the Bush administration was exceptionally brazen in displaying its intent to dominate Iraq economically. Postwar reconstruction contracts went to American businessmen, not Iraqis. No-bid contracts were awarded to Halliburton and several major oil companies, and little attempt was made to disguise the rampant profiteering. Finally, in 2008, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, Chevron and other companies received no-bid contracts from Iraq. No auction was held, even though the demand for oil was exceptionally high at the time. The companies effectively received contracts at bargain prices, and though the Iraqi government, once in power, decided to limit these contracts to one year, these companies will be in a position of advantage over competitors when it is time for renegotiation. The Bush administration repeatedly insisted that the Iraq war was not about oil, and that the oil belonged to the Iraqi people, but their actions suggest that these words are as empty as all the others they have spoken regarding Iraq.

21. The Inspectors’ Final Verdict

As we have seen from examining the pre-war propaganda, the central rationale for invading Iraq was the threat of WMD. Without this threat, the U.S. and U.K. would not have been able to muster what support they did have for their campaign. It is only germane, then, that we should examine what was the reality regarding this threat.

Having full access to all of Iraq’s archives and former officials, the weapons inspectors were able to determine the extent of Iraq’s WMD programs. Their conclusions, detailed in the UNMOVIC compendium on Iraq, laid waste to the American case for war.

Much of the U.S. intelligence on Iraq relied on the testimony of defectors, such as General Hussein Kamel. UNMOVIC found that Gen. Kamel’s testimony was limited in its quality.

General Hussein Kamel had enormous influence on MIC’s activities and weapons programmes. In a political system where individuals can be very powerful, General Hussein Kamel quickly realized the wide range of opportunities available in the area of military industrialization. He actively engaged in absorbing and expanding industries under his control and promoted Iraq’s weapons capabilities. However, he had few technical qualifications and was ill-placed often to accurately judge the progress of a particular project. As an illustration, he conveyed to the President that some specific programmes, such as production of the CW agent VX, were well advanced, when actually the work was far from being finalized. He was probably influenced by reports from project managers who were afraid to admit that their programmes had not yet achieved expected results. It seems likely that General Hussein Kamel had often exaggerated achievements of military industrialization to gain more influence and power.

UNMOVIC made the following findings of fact regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons.

Tabun production on an industrial scale was cancelled in 1986, and in 1987 it was halted even on an experimental scale, due to poor quality. However, in 1994, some tabun was identified with 44% purity, contradicting declared data on degradation rates.

Sarin, used in the Iran-Iraq war was of a low quality, and did not have a long shelf life. Its production was stopped in January 1988.

In the late eighties, the Iraqis did lab tests on VX, but never reached the field test stage. There is a lack of evidence on the production levels and purities of Iraqi VX.

The Iraqis had good knowledge of CS, normally used for riot-control. The Iraqis weaponized CS in mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and aerial bombs in the Iran-Iraq war. CS was not a banned weapon.

The raw materials for mustard are all locally available in Iraq. Iraqi mustard was mostly good quality. As late as 2003, confiscated shells still had 90% purity, even after twelve years of storage. Production of mustard was stopped after 1990.

Iraq possessed the raw materials necessary for phosphor, yet was never able to produce it domestically.

Iraqi chemical weapon production up to 1988 was pragmatic, based on the need to produce large quantities for use in the Iran-Iraq war, even if it was of low quality. After the war (1988-1990), Iraq looked into more sophisticated chemical weapons. All of Iraq’s chemical weapons were produced at a time when it was an ally of the U.S. They were intended for use against regional enemies such as Iran, not the U.S. In late 1989 and early 1990, production was resumed in response to threats of preemptive strikes against Iraq.

Artillery and bombs using chemical warheads were produced between 1982 and 1986. All chemical munitions were produced during the time of Reagan. Iraqis destroyed these weapons under UNSCOM supervision, using Iraqi personnel and equipment.

The only other chemical weapons ever found in Iraq were 14 mustard shells found in 1997. In January 2003, a little more than a half-liter of thiodiglycol, a mustard precursor, was found. This is a dual-use chemical, admitting of legitimate civilian use.

As of January 1991, 127,941 filled and unfilled chemical munitions existed in Iraq. 56,281 munitions (22,263 filled) remained after the Gulf War. Of these 40,048 (21,825 filled) were destroyed under UNSCOM. 15,616 unfilled munitions were converted to conventional weapons use in 1993-94. Another 438 filled munitions were destroyed in a fire accident.

41,998 munitions (5,498 filled) were destroyed during the Gulf War. UNSCOM confirmed destruction of about 34,000 of these from physical evidence. However, the destruction of the facilities makes an exact count impossible. The final disposition of 2,000 unfilled munitions and 550 filled munitions remain uncertain.

29,662 munitions (854 filled) were destroyed unilaterally by Iraq. UNSCOM verified the destruction of 13,660 destroyed. They could not account for 15,900 unfilled munitions.

In the end, it was mainly unfilled munitions that Iraq could not fully account. These were probably converted to conventional use or abandoned. Even with free rein over the country, the inspectors were not able to resolve some questions. They found for themselves that there simply was not any evidence for the Iraqis to provide.

Gen. Hussein Kamel claimed ebola was produced at Al Dora, but subsequent investigation turned up empty. UNMOVIC determined that ebola was an unlikely candidate for Iraqi development, as it requires maximum containment.

In July 1991, all Iraqi biological agents were destroyed by order of Hussein Kamel. UN inspectors confirmed that 25 biological weapons warheads had been destroyed. In the final days before the 2003 war, inspectors were digging up R-400 warhead fragments to determine how many had been destroyed. They accounted for 151 (not counting hundreds of fragments), but it was not clear whether the original total was 157 or closer to 200. UNMOVIC reported, Iraq appeared to be making genuine efforts to recover and account for the 157 R-400 bombs that it claims were filled with biological agent and unilaterally destroyed in 1991.

The Al Hakam factory was used in the late eighties for biological weapons development, with single cell protein production as its cover story. It continued to be used for civilian purposes after 1991, but Iraq kept secret its former use until 1995, for fear that it would be destroyed if its past use were known.

In sum, all Iraqi WMD production had halted by January 1991. All biological weapons were destroyed at that time, and Iraq began unilaterally destroying its chemical arsenal. This disarmament was completed under UNSCOM in the early nineties. The remaining disarmament tasks did not involve disarmament at all, but verifying that Iraq had indeed fully disarmed. Iraq at first was uncooperative, because it wished to hide the former use of some of its factories, and probably had designs of someday restoring its programs. Cooperation was further inhibited by the UNSCOM spying scandal. Ultimately, the Iraqi regime realized that the renunciation of these weapons was necessary to its survival, which is why it granted full access to the inspectors in late 2002, and was extraordinarily proactive in helping to find evidence in the months before the war.

Iraq had no WMD for over a decade. Even at the peak of its WMD program, its chief weapon had been mustard, a World War I-era munition. Iraq never threatened to use WMD against the U.S. or any other Western power. Bush arrogantly demanded that Iraq must disarm, but it had already disarmed. As of February 2003, Iraq was complying as best as it could to avoid war, yet Bush insisted on war anyway. To command the impossible is intrinsically unjust, so the war was objectively unjust, however we may regard the subjective disposition of the Bush administration, be they ignorant or malicious.

The U.S. is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons to kill people. President Truman ordered the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 200,000 people, after Japan had already offered surrender, its air force and navy having been destroyed, along with 40% of its industrial centers. The sole reason for this heinous act, which deliberately targeted non-industrial civilian population centers, was the Allies’ insistence on unconditional surrender, contrary to all established norms of warfare. The U.S. has never renounced the right to first use of a nuclear weapon, nor has it depleted its nuclear arsenal in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it has actually built new warheads as recently as 2007. In 1999, it rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The U.S. signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. The treaty calls for complete destruction of all chemical weapons by 2012, but the U.S. does not expect to accomplish this until 2023. About 15,000 of 31,000 metric tons were destroyed by 2007. Most U.S. chemical weapons are the highly lethal VX and sarin.

In 2001, the Bush administration scuttled negotiations to establish a legally binding verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention. The U.S. claims it no longer produces biological weapons, but refuses to submit to a verification process, such as it would impose on other countries. In 2001, five people were killed by anthrax attacks. The anthrax was of the Ames strain, studied by the U.S. military.

Given the less than stellar performance of the U.S. regarding compliance with international law and ethical norms on WMD, the campaign against Iraq seems especially hypocritical. The U.S. does not have a principled position against WMD, but only objects to those who would threaten its hegemony with these weapons. By contrast, those neighboring nations that would be most threatened by potential Iraqi WMDs generally opposed the invasion, realizing that it would result in an American power grab in the region.

Though Iraq had never committed any aggression against the United States, the Americans had a long history of crimes against Iraq. In the 1970s, they supported the Iranians and the Kurds against Iraq. They played both sides of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. They baited Hussein into taking Kuwait, rejected his peace offer, and delivered a punishing bombing campaign in the 1991 Gulf War. They followed this with a decade of sanctions, inspections tainted by espionage, and controlling much of Iraqi air space with illegal no-fly zones. They even attempted to provoke insurrection in Iraq, only to abandon the would-be revolutionaries. Finally, they insisted on war with Iraq in the face of widespread international opposition, conducting a provocative bombing campaign in 2002. The U.S., not Iraq, had behaved like an aggressor and threatened the security of the other nation.

Iraq’s crime was being a potentially powerful nation that was not in alignment with the U.S. The U.S. insists, as all empires do, that all its enemies must be weak. In the case of Iraq, this principle was carried to a paranoid extreme, as the mere possibility of Iraq becoming powerful, rather than actually being powerful, sufficed as a casus belli. In this deed, the U.S. acted in a nakedly imperialistic manner. Fortunately, the aftermath was such a disaster that Americans are likely to be discouraged from any empire-building projects in the near future.

22. Damage Control

As the inspectors found no evidence of WMD after the war, the apostles of war found themselves shifting ground. At first, they insisted that more time was needed to find the weapons. Then they suggested that the weapons might have been smuggled to Syria or other countries. Failing that, they supposed the dastardly Baathists had destroyed the weapons during the war, just to make the Americans look bad. As months passed, all of these excuses evaporated, so the WMD rationale was replaced with the cause of democracy.

The democracy rationale was not new. Years earlier, the neoconservatives signing onto the Project for the New American Century had explicitly called for a democratization of the Middle East, triggered by regime change in Iraq. Bush had mentioned freeing the Iraqi people as one of the reasons for the war, which was accordingly named Operation Iraqi Freedom. Nonetheless, the current emphasis on democratization was disingenuous. There are plenty of non-democratic nations in the world, yet the U.S. does not wage war on them, much less preemptively. The entire reason for the preemptive war was the imminent threat that Iraq’s WMD presented. This was why inspections could wait no longer, and this was the basis upon which domestic and international support was marshalled. Rightly or wrongly, few would have fought a war simply to make Iraq democratic.

Consequently, the U.S. promoted every similitude of Western-style democracy in Iraq, with propaganda photos of women voting, and ceremonial transitions of power to Iraqis, while Washington still called the shots and American businesses reaped the profits. American troops and private mercenaries lorded over the Iraqis, breaking into houses at will, and all too often shooting first and asking questions later. Soldiers make terrible policemen, but this situation was made a practical necessity by the foolish policy of de-Ba’athification. The Iraqis knew they were not free, but under occupation, and their fledgling government was in a state of vassalage. This subordinate state was made vividly clear by the Abu Ghraib scandal, where Saddam’s former prison was used by Americans to subject Iraqis to gross indignities. The liberation of Iraq increasingly smelled like conquest.

The Bush administration was not altogether successful in redirecting everyone’s attention. Officials found themselves having to defend their pre-war assessment of the intelligence. Their most common defense was that supposedly everyone else thought Iraq had WMD. As late as 2004, Condoleeza Rice said, It’s not as if anybody believes that Saddam Hussein was without weapons of mass destruction. (18 March) As we have seen, many people before the war questioned or even positively disbelieved in the existence of WMD stockpiles in Iraq. Most importantly, the inspectors most qualified to make this assessment found only negative evidence regarding Iraqi WMD before the war.

After the war, an inspection team headed by David Kay was instructed by the Bush administration to survey Iraq for WMD. Rice and other officials cited Kay’s work as proving that Iraq had been hiding weapons from the inspectors. In fact, Kay believed nothing of the sort, and said as much after he resigned in January 2004. In his view, there were no WMD stockpiles before the invasion, and he said the administration should come clean about misleading the nation about the threat.

The democracy rationale and what was left of the WMD argument ultimately merged into the demonization of Saddam Hussein. After all, the real reason for the invasion was regime change, so it is only fitting that all other rationales should be subordinated to the person of Saddam Hussein. In this line of thinking, Saddam was the weapon of mass destruction, for as long as he was in power, Iraq would always pursue such weapons and ultimately threaten to use them. This was a strange rationale coming from Reaganites who supported Saddam when he was actually gassing people as opposed to merely hypothetically or potentially redeveloping WMD. Further, if this were a valid argument, it would be justifiable to pre-emptively attack any country that is ruled by a bad man, since all countries have the potential for technological development.

Personalizing the enemy meshed nicely with the democratization rationale. Saddam Hussein was indeed a primary obstacle to democracy in Iraq. The U.S. changed the measure of its success from disarming Iraq—as there was nothing to disarm—to whether Iraq was better off without Saddam Hussein. The truism that Iraq was indeed better off would justify the war, following the ends-justify-the-means mentality that pervaded neoconservative thinking about war. It is probably lost on the neoconservatives that this same ruthless pragmatism is what creates men like Saddam Hussein in the first place.

Rogues’ Gallery

A cynical aphorism holds that only small criminals get punished, while the big criminals wield power in government. We might alternatively say that big criminals are only punished by even bigger ones, as the outcome of war is determined by strength or power. Nonetheless, let us suppose we could summon even the biggest criminals to court, and give an overview of their crimes.

Saddam Hussein, being a weaker power, is the only one among the major criminals to have been prosecuted for his crimes, since only the law of force prevails among scoundrels. His crimes include the purge of the Ba’ath party, use of chemical weapons against Iranians and Kurds, as well as the execution and torture of thousands of political dissidents.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger provided arms to the Shah of Iran and to the Kurds to wage war against Iraq. Ultimately, they cut off supply lines to the Kurds, creating a humanitarian crisis involving 250,000 refugees.

Jimmy Carter protected the brutal Shah of Iran from prosecution, and established the doctrine that the U.S. reserves the right to use force to protect its interests in the Persian Gulf. By some accounts, he green-lighted the invasion of Iran by Iraq.

Ronald Reagan approved the sale of arms to Iran after the fact. The direct sale of arms to Iran was also approved by George H.W. Bush, Ed Meese, Don Regan, and John Poindexter, among others. Illicit deals with Iran were discussed by Bud McFarlane, Caspar Weinberger and Colin Powell. Al Haig had also allowed arms to be shipped to Iran from Israel.

Reagan’s CIA Director Bill Casey had probably negotiated with the Iranians illicitly over the hostages. He also supplied Iraq with intelligence for use in its war with Iran.

Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz knew of Iraq’s near daily use of chemical weapons in 1983, yet he permitted the sale of dual use trucks to Iraq. He prevented the shipment of phosphorus fluoride to Iraq, yet opposed the condemnation of Iraq for chemical weapons use at the UN.

Donald Rumsfeld acted as a special emissary to re-establish cordial business relations with Saddam's regime.

George H.W. Bush reversed his Iraq policy to a hostile stance, baiting Saddam to take Kuwait and deliberately sabotaging any effort to make peace. His bombardment of Iraq was designed purely to weaken the nation, and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands. He established a harsh sanctions regime and enforced illegal no-fly zones.

Bill Clinton established the policy of regime change, and launched air strikes against Iraq to deflect attention from his domestic problems. Under his government, the U.S. used UNSCOM for espionage. His Secretary of State Madeleine Albright openly stated that the human cost of the sanctions was a price the U.S. willing to pay. This effectively meant it was legitimate to create a humanitarian crisis, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, in order to pursue a strategic policy of regime change.

George W. Bush was fixated on Saddam Hussein, and ignored all evidence that contradicted his assumption that Saddam was connected to terrorism and still possessed WMD. In his public speeches, he deliberately distorted evidence and falsely claimed to pursue war only as a last resort. By pursuing war as a first and only resort, he waged war unjustly.

Donald Rumsfeld shared the Saddam fixation, and ordered unprovoked attacks in the no-fly zone. He misrepresented evidence and stoked groundless fears about WMD. After the war, he demonstrated a callous disregard for the cultural and human toll of the occupation of Iraq. He is responsible for the loss of thousands cultural artifacts, as well as much of the chaos that ensued after the war.

Paul Wolfowitz had long pushed for war, and insisted on an Al-Qaeda connection long after the evidence had evaporated. He tried to have reconstruction contracts restricted to those who supported the war.

Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell released the final draft of the infamous dossier on Iraq that was full of distortions and misrepresentations.

Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was one of the most ardent hawks in the administration. She did not wish to even bother with the charade of going to the UN. She repeatedly lied about the state of the evidence and shamelessly fear-mongered.

Vice President Dick Cheney also repeatedly lied and fear-mongered, insisting on the existence of Iraqi WMDs and an Al-Qaeda connection long after other war supporters had abandoned these positions.

Colin Powell gave the infamous presentation to the UN that was full of false information. He acted not out of ignorance, but willfully misrepresented the evidence that was presented to him.

L. Paul Bremer, acting on orders from the Bush administration, put Iraq up for sale, exposing its entire economy to foreign ownership.

Whether they are maligned or praised, most of these offenders will be spared any real penalty, since they have the good fortune of being in countries with superior military force. For imperialists, might truly does make right. It is our lowly task to point out how the propaganda of these imperialists has constantly shifted, so that we may not mistake their acts of nationalist aggrandizement for principled behavior.

© 2009 Daniel J. Castellano. All rights reserved. http://www.arcaneknowledge.org