May 22, 2003
PALM BEACH - What a tangled web we weave when we seek to deceive. President George Bush justified his invasion of Iraq by claiming Baghdad was behind 9/11 and threatened America with weapons of mass destruction.
To Washington's profound embarrassment, US forces in Iraq have so far failed to find any unconventional weapons or any links between Iraq and al-Qaida. Most Americans don't seem to care their government launched a war of unprovoked aggression based on fabricated `evidence' and untruths, or that the president and secretary of state repeatedly misinformed and misled the nation.
But now Democrats are accusing Bush of trumping up a war against a nasty but unthreatening Iraq while failing to combat terrorism, evidenced by last week's bloody suicide bombings in Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
The White House is trying to deflect rising criticism of its Iraq policy by blaming CIA for supplying erroneous information, a ploy originated by President John F. Kennedy after his Bay Pigs fiasco. But CIA was not wrong. The agency repeatedly warned the Bush Administration, both privately, through leaks, and openly, that Iraq was not a threat, did not possess significant offensive weapons systems, and was unlikely to greet American and British invaders as `liberators.'
Where CIA went wrong was predicting heavy urban fighting in Iraq. In fact, most pre-war military estimates were mistaken. Many defense analysts, this writer included, foresaw heavy urban combat. But there was only limited city fighting. What happened to Iraq's Republican Guards divisions around Baghdad remains a mystery: they simply vanished or were blown to bits by B-52's. Guard commanders may have been bought off or gave up when Saddam went into hiding or was allowed to flee the country - thanks, it is rumored, to a Saudi-brokered deal.
But CIA was correct in warning the White House and Pentagon that Iraq would turn into a version of Uncle Remus' fabled tar-baby for the US, a stocky mess impossible to drop. This is precisely what is now happening. Iraq is in chaos and near-anarchy, scourged by banditry, revenge and ethnic killings, and looting. US occupation forces have so far been unable to form even a puppet regime, as was done in Afghanistan.
So far, the US political role in Iraq has been borderline comic. The initial Administration-appointed ruler of Iraq, Jay Garner, a retired general who looked more like a grumpy building contractor than an imperial viceroy, has been fired, along with a State Department lady who was bizarrely named mayor of Baghdad. A neo-conservative diplomat has been brought in to run Iraq. Meanwhile, US firms, led by Texas oil giant Halliburton, VP Cheney's old firm, are fighting like hungry vultures to get a slice of Iraq's petro-wealth. But America now risks a potential colonial conflict in Iraq that may cost even more than the profits it may make from `liberating' Iraq's oil.
Most ominously, Iraq's Shia majority, long repressed by Saddam Hussein's regime, is flexing its political muscles, and calling for an Iranian-style Islamic state. Mass graves of Shias executed by Saddam's regime in 1991 are now being cited by the Bush Administration as an after-the-fact justification for invading Iraq.
But remember it was Bush's father in 1991 who called on Iraq's Shia's and Kurds to revolt, then sat back, watching impassively, as Saddam's forces slaughtered the rebels. Why? Because Bush senior and his advisors feared, with much reason, that if Saddam's minority Sunni Muslim regime fell, Iraq's Shias would take over and align with Iran. Ironically, this may now be happening.
Back to CIA. Before the war, the hawks and neo-conservative supporters of Israel's hard right who are running US foreign policy became enraged at CIA for failing to back their claims that Iraq was a deadly threat to mankind that required urgent military action. So they created a special intelligence unit that cherry-picked reports suiting their views, and sent the biased info to the White House and Pentagon. Protests by CIA professionals that the national intelligence function was being politicized and corrupted were ignored.
The special intelligence unit relied on bogus reports from Iraqi exiles and carefully crafted disinformation from Kuwait and Israeli intelligence to provide ammunition for the pro-war party. Much of the data delivered to the White House by this intelligence unit was erroneous. Unconventional weapons were not found, and Iraqi's failed to welcome invading US and British forces, as a well-known lady neo-conservative columnist had gushingly predicted, `like French in 1944, greeting their liberators with flowers.'
Contrary to Bush's assurances that invading Iraq would end terrorism and make the Mideast a safer, quieter, more democratic place, last week's terror attacks in Casablanca, Riyadh, and Israel showed the invasion had sparked more, not less, terrorism and counteractive repression, and that anti-American militant groups were gaining, not losing, strength. Palestinian bombings and Israeli intransigence left Bush's `road map' for Arab-Israeli peace looking more like a dead end.
Early on, Bush vowed to avoid `nation building' and avoid Mideast entanglements. But thanks to Bush's clumsy war on terrorism, his unnecessary invasion of Iraq, and his relentless belligerency towards the Muslim world, the Mideast may come to be the nemesis of his administration, just as Iran undid that of President Jimmy Carter.
Foreign Correspondent