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archived: 18 - 24 Apr, 2004 Back Next APRIL 22, 2004 UPDATE
STEVEN JONAS,
MD, MPH, MS, Introduction This column was written on April 7, 2004, the day before National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was to testify before the 9/11 Commission. I want to thank the Center for American Progress (Washington DC, http://www.centerforamericanprogress.org) who’s web-based “Progress Report” of April 7 provided much of the factual material that I use below. As you will see as you read it, most of this testimony is fictional. Not only that, it highly unlikely that Dr. Rice would ever say any of the words that I have put into her mouth, much less believe any of them. However, both how the tragedy of 9/11 came to pass and what are the true root causes of the subsequent events, primarily the US invasion of Iraq, remain largely a mystery. The “testimony” below attempts to explain what happened and why with a unitary hypothesis of cause. I thought that it would be fun to put it into Dr. Rice’s mouth. And so, this is what she might have said (but surely didn’t). _______________ It is my pleasure to appear before you today. Since I am appearing under oath, I have decided indeed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God (and yes, my father was a pastor). You should know that I have submitted to the President my resignation as National Security Advisor, effective at the end of this session with you. Press speculation that I have functioned as a staff person to the President rather than as a policy-maker are totally true. Like my good friend Colin Powell, with whom I have much in common as you can plainly see, I have often been ‘out-of-the-loop.’ At this juncture, I can no longer function as a front-person for this Administration. Further, since they have, it is quite obvious; set me up to take the fall for them, I have decided this one time to beat them to the punch. As I said, I have been out-of-the-loop and have had little access to real intelligence. I am not even privy to what went on in that famous meeting between the Vice-President and top leaders of the oil industry. As to our sources in the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and elsewhere, much of what was used by the Administration to justify its actions has been shown either to be totally false or twisted. I am basing my remarks, therefore, on two kinds of intelligence: raw data accumulated by the various intelligence agencies that has been shown to be correct, e.g., that there was no known link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and, I have to say speculations of various kinds that have been wide-spread on the web. Some of it has occasionally made it into one or more respected sources in the print media. However, since what has been put out, certainly from my office I must admit, as the justification for completely missing the boat on 9/11 and then as the reasons for invading Iraq, has been almost totally without foundation, I find myself coming to believe that to some extent, at least, that speculation is correct. As you know, the White House opposed the formation of this Commission and then when it was finally established, put limits on its investigation. You may recall that the President originally appointed Henry Kissinger to head the Commission, in my view at the time a politically- as well as functionally incorrect move. The White House resisted full funding of the Commission, opposed a time extension for it (even though now they want to “vet” the Final Report, which sounds as if they are looking for a way to put off its publication until after the November election). They have been very chary of providing access to important White House documents and even to notes that Commissioners had taken during their limited access to them. They did not want me to talk with you in public, under oath, perhaps fearing the very thing that is happening today: I am finally telling the truth as I know it, knowing full well that many people, both friends and enemies, will from now on refer to me as ‘Bush’s John Dean.’ They have attempted to limit their own testimony, and have taken the extraordinary step of demanding that the President and the Vice-President testify together. Since one of their strategies has been to try to blame the whole 9/11-intelligence-failure mess on Pres. Clinton, they have held back much of the documentation that Pres. Clinton wanted to turn over. One can only assume that that documentation has much in it that would vitiate the charges the present White house has been making. And so, if one is going to dismiss all the explanations and excuses that the White house has been making up to now, both for 9/11 and for its aftermath, the invasion of Iraq, where does one turn? I must repeat that I do not know any of what I am about to say as fact that can be presently substantiated and documented. Remember, functioning primarily as staff to the president, with a principal task of trying to educate a man to whom, shall we say charitably, education doesn’t come easily, I was out of much of the loop on what was really going on. However, given my background in higher education and my Ph.D. level training, I have been trying to put together a unifying hypothesis that would make sense of this whole business. And in the end it has come down to business, that is, as so much of the world, especially the Arab world, has been postulating for quite some time now, the oil business. Again, let me make it clear that what I am about to tell you now is based primarily on speculation. But it is speculation that has obtained wide currency, here and especially abroad. What might be called the ‘oil hypothesis’ does at least offer an explanation that is internally consistent. I will present it briefly, and then you are welcome to ask me questions on it. [Editor’s note: Since there is no way to predict what the questions might be should Dr. Rice have made such an extraordinary opening statement as just presented, I am going to leave it with this very brief overview of her (fictional to be sure) ‘oil hypothesis.’] “Back in the mid-1990s, Richard Perle, among others, was publishing articles such as one in which he openly advocated invading Iraq and putting in place a government headed by the now well-known Mr. Chalabi (to whom he referred by name). Among the reasons given was access to a secure major source of crude oil, outside of Saudi Arabia. Iraq happens to have reserves that possibly exceed in size those of Saudi Arabia. That is not speculation. It has been speculated that at that famous meeting of Vice-President Cheney and his former colleagues among the top executives of the oil industry, one topic under discussion was a proposed invasion of Iraq to secure those reserves for the US oil industry. If that discussion had occurred, surely the VP and his oil-industry colleagues wouldn’t want the public to know about it. And if the discussions were only about global warming and environmental policy, the position of the industry is well-known. So why would the VP go to such lengths (the matter is, as you know, now before the Supreme Court) to hide the record of the proceedings, unless there were something truly shocking in them. Now, if Iraq were to be invaded for oil, there had to be a pretext. And this is where Osama bin Laden came in, either actively or passively. It is now apparent that this Administration knew all about Osama bin Laden. After all, Richard Clarke and the former FBI top “bin Laden guy,” Mr. O’Neill, who became head of security at the Twin Towers in August, 2001, and was tragically killed in the attack, had been screaming about him ever since we took office. The problem, I now have now come to believe, about doing something about bin Laden, ensconced as he was in Afghanistan, was that from before the time the President took office, the Vice-President’s former company, Halliburton, and others, had been negotiating with the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan to build a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline from Central Asia across their country to an open-water port. Thus they certainly didn’t want to go after bin Laden in his Afghani lair, thus possibly upsetting the Taliban. At the same time, the Taliban were giving assurances that they would keep bin Laden under control, for doing so was in their interest also. But they failed to uphold their part of the bargain, and we all know what happened. Now, one question on everyone’s minds is ‘did the Administration know that the attack was coming?’ The evidence that they either might have or should have has been retailed by Mr. Clarke here, and many others elsewhere. Some have even speculated that the Administration was party to the plot, but even for a born-again opponent of current White house policy, that is too far-fetched. But as to prior knowledge, one can say that if they didn’t have, why are they being so overwhelmingly secretive, if they have nothing to hide? How indeed are they going to explain why the Attorney General stopped flying on commercial aircraft during the summer of 2001, and so on and so forth? And speaking of the Attorney General, if indeed the attack did come as a complete surprise, how come the DOJ was ready with the 341-page “USAPatriot Act,” something that most Congresspeople didn’t even have time to read before they were asked to vote on it, within two weeks (!) after the attack? How could it possibly have been written and reviewed at the highest levels in that short a period of time? The implications are obvious and frightening for anyone who believes in the US Constitution. And now on to Iraq, very briefly before I stop to take questions. We know now that there were neither WMD nor any operational connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. We also know now, sadly, that this operation, although it has gotten rid of one of the world’s vilest dictators, is highly unlikely to bring ‘freedom and democracy’ to Iraq any time soon. (And in any case, it is highly unlikely that the President could have sold the invasion to the Congress and the American people on that pretext.) One thing that the Administration has accomplished in recent days has been to bring together the leaderships of the militant Sunnis and the militant Shiites in violent opposition to our occupation, an alliance that has occurred in no country for hundreds of years, if ever. (One must also ask, ‘why if the Administration is intent on establishing freedom and democracy in Iraq is it so intent on destroying it here? But that discussion is outside of the purview of the Commission and must be saved for another time.) And so, if it’s not WMD, not destroying supports of bin Laden, not freedom and democracy, then what is it? Some say ‘hegemony,’ words used by the likes of Perle and Bill Kristol. But that is a vague concept, and American business has been doing very well around the world (by exporting its capital, thus taking well-paying jobs away from American workers and giving them to low-paid workers overseas) for some years now. The hard reason, it seems to me, comes down to that soft, black stuff, called crude oil. And, with a tanker named after me, believe me, I do know quite a bit about it. Now, the potentially largest unexplored fields are in the North, in Kurdish country. Have you noticed that American paratroopers very early in the war secured that area? (We wanted to invade with a large land force from Turkey, but that country wouldn’t let us. The paratroopers did the job on their own, however.) Have you noticed that there is no significant Kurdish opposition to the American occupation? Have you noticed that the UK, which would like to have some secure future source of crude itself, has been restricted to the South, the region of the Basra field, in a Shiite area that just happens to be hardly peaceful? Well, poor Brits. This series of speculative and real events is what I think needs to be explored in depth if a true understanding of just what happened is to be reveled. And while you are at it, if you do come to be at it, you might want to consider the following questions, raised by the Center for American Progress on April 7, 2004: · Why was it in our national interests for the Administration to facilitate the evacuation of Bin Laden family members and other prominent Saudis from the United States in the days immediately following 9/11? · Knowing that Afghanistan was a hotbed of terrorism, why didn't the Administration do more prior to 9/11 to increase security or plan to remove the Taliban · Knowing Afghanistan is a hotbed for terrorism, why hasn't the Administration done more since 9/11 to increase security and promote stability in Afghanistan? · Despite its obsession with Iraq before 9/11, immediately after 9/11 and since 9/11, why did the Administration fail to plan for the post-conflict transition in Iraq? At this point, I am going to stop and make it clear that I will stay as long as you want me to, to answer your questions. It was noted that when Dr. Rice did finally leave the Commission’s chambers many hours later, she was surrounded by three private security guards and, quite publicly, had donned a bullet-proof vest. ________________
Dr. Steven Jonas
is a TPJ contributing author. He is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at
Stony Brook University (NY) and author of some twenty books. Dr. Jonas is
one of America's most perceptive Democratic political analysts. The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022 is available from Amazon under the name "Johnathan Westminster" (just click on the title). _____________________________________________ April 20, 2004 UPDATE KALEIDOSCOPE OF LIES In essence and in fact it was all a charade. It was a kaleidoscope of ever changing public sale pitches of the big lie. Bush’s intimation that Saddam and al Qaeda were linked, indirectly suggesting that Saddam had taken part in the 9/11 terrorist attack; Bush claiming Saddam had nuclear capability and could strike at any time; the revelation that Saddam was attempting to buy uranium; Bush’s public plea that Saddam disarm in order to avoid war; Colin Powell’s dramatic presentation to the UN – all were puzzle pieces of a kaleidoscope of lies to achieve war. TPJ has contended for over two years that Bush decided to attack Iraq immediately following the 9-11 terrorist attack, a plan that Bush and his neoconservative minions were willing to sell with any lie that played to the fear of the American people and the world. Woodward’s new book puts the final pieces together. What follows is a time line of events. On October 7, 2001, TPJ published (no longer available online) this now compelling interview with Paul Wolfowitz, one of Bush’s chief neoconservatives: But, the decision to go to war was not made two years later. It was made in the days immediately following 9/11. Wolfowitz made these statements during an interview: – Defense Link, “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair” Q: So now there is the much-reported, I just want to make sure I get it right, famous meeting at -- It's been reported in a couple of different ways, and I'd like to get it in your words if I can, the famous meetings that first weekend [after 9/11] in Camp David where the question of Iraq came up. I believe the President heard you discussing Iraq and asked you to elaborate on it or speak more about it. Can you give us a little sense of what that was like? Wolfowitz: Yeah. There was a long discussion during the day about what place if any Iraq should have in a counterterrorist strategy. On the surface of the debate it at least appeared to be about not whether but when. There seemed to be a kind of agreement that yes it should be, but the disagreement was whether it should be in the immediate response or whether you should concentrate simply on Afghanistan first. There was a sort of undertow in that discussion I think that was, the real issue was whether Iraq should be part of the strategy at all and whether we should have this large strategic objective which is getting governments out of the business of supporting terrorism, or whether we should simply go after bin Laden and al Qaeda. To the extent it was a debate about tactics and timing, the President clearly came down on the side of Afghanistan first. To the extent it was a debate about strategy and what the larger goal was, it is at least clear with 20/20 hindsight that the President came down on the side of the larger goal. Clearly, Wolfowitz establishes that Bush was going to attack Iraq, but after Afghanistan. Obviously, a decision to go to war requires planning; a great deal of it. Bush and Cheney logically turned to Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld. On February 3, 2004, TPJ published the revelation that a Secret Intelligence Unit (SIU) within the Pentagon: -- TPJ, DOWN TO WURMSER Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest have just published an article in Mother Jones entitled, “The Lie Factory.” They reveal that:
Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war. – Mother Jones (subscription required for the entire article) The SIU was not designed to weigh the evidence for and against war. The SIU had but one objective, make the case for war. TPJ published the following inside account of the SIU: Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence—it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials—including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February—that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.
. . . It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion. – Mother Jones (emphasis added).
Three pieces of the puzzle are now in place. Bush decides to go to war and sets up the Pentagon’s Secret Intelligence Unit within weeks of the 9/11 terrorist attack to make the case for war and directs Gen. Franks to draw the actual plans for war on November 21, 2001. “On Jan. 2, 2002, CIA Director George J. Tenet met with Vice President Cheney -- at Cheney's request -- to brief him on what the agency could do in Iraq.” – Washington Cheney was told and apparently conveyed immediately to Bush that the CIA could not overthrow Saddam:
The president had hoped
Saddam could be removed in some way short of war. But early in 2002,
Woodward reports, the CIA concluded they could not overthrow Saddam. That
word came from the CIA's head of Iraq operations, a man known simply as
“Saul.” The plans for war and Bush’s recommitment to that objective come in March 2002. TPJ featured this article in March 2003 from: Time magazine [that] has Bush confirming his decision to “take out” Saddam again in March 2002: "F—k Saddam. We’re taking him out," said President George W. Bush in March 2002, after poking his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, TIME reports. TPJ, “TIBERIUS OR CALIGULA” Within six months of 9/11, Bush has made the commitment and reaffirmed that commitment to war in Iraq. War in Iraq will not be cheap. Bush needs funds to lay the groundwork for war, but cannot approach Congress. Woodward fills in some of the details: Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. – CBS Within ten months, Bush has the money on which to begin serious preparations for war in Iraq. Bush is now faced with the task of “selling” the war to the American public and the world. Recall that the UN had weapons inspectors in Iraq by January 2002 and no WMD had been found. TPJ published this piece on January 18, 2002 (no longer available online): “As a massive US military buildup continued in the Gulf, UN weapons inspectors in their second month in Iraq conceded they had found no evidence of the weapons of mass destruction Washington and Britain claim exist. A spokesman for the inspectors said Baghdad, in keeping with a UN mandate, had turned over the names of some 500 scientists who had worked on military projects.” – SMH.com.au The latest reports from the inspectors indicate that they have found NO WMDs. – AP Why war? The rest is “history.” Bush spent nearly a year to make the case for war. Woodward adds several interesting details to the story. On December 21, 2002, Woodward says CIA Director George Tenet brought his deputy, John McLaughlin, to the oval office to show the president and the vice president their best evidence that Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction. – CBS Even Bush saw weaknesses in the presentation, but Tenet saw the case as a “slam dunk.” Bush then informs Saudi Arabia that the US will attack Saddam:
”Saturday, Jan. 11, with
the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's
West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is
there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No
foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says
Woodward. On a fascinating note, it appears that Bush has not informed Sec. of State Powell that it will be war:
And they realized they
haven’t told Colin Powell, the Secretary of State.” Bush addresses America in late January 2003 telling Americans that he is going to war. TPJ carried (no longer available online) this editorial comment from the Peoria Star Journal. In hindsight, the editorialist’s comments are a haunting reminder of what happened: President Nixon’s staff, in assessing policy initiatives, always asked “How would it play in Peoria.” Well, here is how Bush played in Peoria: -- Peoria Journal Star [This editorial is Junkie’s favorite.]
“Most of this litany is not new, and Bush offered no proof to back it up, though he promised some would be forthcoming in a report to the United Nations on Feb. 5. Still, put together, it makes for a powerful case that the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein.
Less compelling is the case that he is such a direct threat to the United States that we must invade his country to oust him. Nor did Bush make an effective argument against containment, given the risks of attack. The entire Arab Middle East, much of Europe, and China and Russia contend those risks (instability in the Middle East, increased terrorism, setting the first-strike precedent) exceed the risks of waiting him out. Why are they wrong? He didn’t say.
In fact, President Bush gave little indication that he has weighed those risks or given long consideration to unintended consequences. He said Americans could trust in "the ways of Providence" and that freedom was "God’s gift to humanity." He said the nation’s purpose is no less than "the end of terrible threats to the civilized world." He compared the struggle against terrorism to the 20th-century struggles against "Hitlerism, militarism and communism," though he did not put the war against Iraq quite in that category.
Some extent of hubris is to be expected when preparing for war, but believing that Providence will favor one set of warriors over another, or suggesting that war is a nation’s manifest destiny, is dangerous. Self-doubt and appreciation for complexities can be useful, too, but these are not among this president’s attributes.
And so in the midst of a stock market implosion; with no economic recovery in sight; with Americans fearing for their jobs, their health care and their retirement; with record deficits forecast; with the war on terrorism unwon and the nation unprotected, President Bush is preparing to go to war.
And Americans who are frightened of those prospects can only hope now that the president has scared Saddam Hussein, too. This man who murders indiscriminately, and who cannot be trusted to disarm himself, is the last best hope to prevent war. Unfortunately. Bush simply fashioned a kaleidoscope of lies to accomplish his ends. Woodward makes one startling revelation: Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? “I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, ‘Well, no,’ and then he got defensive about it,” says Woodward. “Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There's a higher Father that I appeal to.’"– CBS
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