Twelve years ago last week, the US launched its invasion of Iraq, an act the
late General William Odom predicted would turn out to be "the greatest strategic
disaster in US history."
Before the attack I was accused of exaggerating the potential costs of the
war when I warned that it could end up costing as much as $100 billion. One
trillion dollars later, with not one but two "mission accomplished" moments,
we are still not done intervening in Iraq.
President Obama last year ordered the US military back into Iraq for the third
time. It seems the Iraq "surge" and the Sunni "Awakening," for which General
David Petraeus had been given much credit, were not as successful as was claimed
at the time. From the sectarian violence unleashed by the US invasion of Iraq
emerged al-Qaeda and then its more radical spin-off, ISIS. So Obama sent the
US military back.
We recently gained even more
evidence that the initial war was sold on lies and fabrications. The
CIA finally declassified much of its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate
on Iraq, which was the chief document used by the Bush Administration to
justify the US attack. According to the Estimate, the US Intelligence Community
concluded that:
'[W]e are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research
has resumed...' And: 'the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel
does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear
weapons program.'
But even as the US Intelligence Community had reached this conclusion, President
Bush told the American people that Iraq, "possesses and produces chemical and
biological weapons" and "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting
its nuclear weapons program."
Likewise, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "bulletproof" evidence that
Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaeda was contradicted by the National Intelligence
Estimate, which concluded that there was no operational tie between Hussein's
government and al-Qaeda.
Even National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice's famous statement that the
aluminum tubes that Iraq was purchasing "are only really suited for nuclear
weapons programs, centrifuge programs," and "we don't want the smoking gun
to be a mushroom cloud," was based on evidence she must have known at the time
was false. According to the NIE, the Energy Department had already concluded
that the tubes were "consistent with applications to rocket motors" and "this
is the more likely end use."
It is hard to believe that in a society supposedly governed by the rule of
law, US leaders can escape any penalty for using blatantly false information
- that they had to know at the time was false - to launch a pre-emptive attack
on a country that posed no threat to the United States. The fact that they
got away with it simply makes it all the easier for Washington's interventionists
to try the same tricks again. They already did with Libya and Syria. It is
likely they are also doing the same with claims of a Russian "invasion" of
Ukraine.
Last week President Obama correctly blamed the current chaos in Iraq on the
Bush Administration's decision to invade. He said, "... ISIL is a direct outgrowth
of al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended
consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot."
However, if the US intervention in Iraq created the "unintended consequences" of
ISIS and al-Qaeda, how is it that more US intervention can solve the problem?
A war based on lies cannot be fixed by launching another war. We must just
march home. And stay home.
