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Weapons of Mass Destruction Timeline

Contents:

September 11

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Gingrich Attack on State Department

Pre-Emption & Israel

Iraq Invasion Plans

Rumsfeld

Gen. Shinseki

Why did we start the war in Iraq when we did?  Why did we start the war the way we did?  Where did the doctrine of "preemption" come from?  The issue is not whether Saddam Hussein should have been removed, but how he should have been removed.  If removing him peacefully -- or militarily with wide international cooperation -- would have taken another six months to a year, that would have been worse for the people of Iraq, but would that have been better for the rest of the world?  As the leader of the world, the U.S. should be concerned not only about what happens in Iraq, but what the long-term, wider consequences are for international law and international cooperation on nonproliferation and peace keeping issues.  I am worried that our concern for Israeli security has made us oblivious to these wider implications.   A recent article in The Economist, which is largely favorable to the "neo-con" foreign policy establishment, states that their position onIsrael is one issue that could create problems for America and most other countries in the world:

The one area where neo-conservative influence may really prove inimical to the interests of others is Israel. Neo-cons are among Ariel Sharon's staunchest defenders. Most [neo-cons] fear the “road map” will endanger Israel's security, and will do everything they can to stop it. 

This would explain Newt Gingrich's April 22 speech denouncing the State Department.  (See below.)

September 11, 2001, and Iraq

The United States Government tried to build a link between the 9/11 terrorists, but I am not convinced, and it appears that the majority of the world outside of the United States is not convinced.  Saddam Hussein was a horrible man, but for whatever reason, he did not seem form any link with the 9/11 terrorists before they attacked the U.S.  One argument why they did not is that the terrorists were religiously motivated, and that they therefore despised Saddam as a non-religious, secular leader for many of the same reasons that they despised the United States.  Colin Powell made the 9/11 argument in his moving speech before the UN in support of resolution 1441, but it was one of the weaker arguments he made.  My concern is that hard liners in the Administration -- mainly in the Pentagon and the White House -- had already made up their minds to invade Iraq, as outlined below, and that they jumped on the 9/11 attack to justify actions that they had been planning since at least 1997, during the Clinton Administration, whether there was a basis for such justification or not.  

Shortly before September 11, the U.S. threw down the gauntlet to the Muslims by absolutely siding with Israel against Arab governments at a UN conference on racism in South Africa.  Because of attempts to brand Israel as racist, the United States and Israel abandoned the conference before a compromise was reached by the remaining delegates on September 8, 2001, three days before 9/11.  The U.S. refused even to consider any criticism of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians.  A State Department official said, "We're confident that our withdrawal was the correct measure and hope the decision had some effect on a better but still flawed result."  

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Reuters reported on May 21 that barrels of nuclear material were definitely missing from the Tuwaitha nuclear site in Iraq.  Previous reports said that Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA had expressed concern several times about the failure of U.S. troops to prevent looting at Tuwaitha, this is one of the most unambiguous reports that the U.S. has failed to protect items that could be used in weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  

The Washington Post reported on May 11 that US WMD search teams were planning to leave Iraq, because they had been unable to find anything of significance.  On May 12, the White House announced that a new type of WMD search team would be sent to Iraq, apparently less based on the US military, which so far has failed.  The U.S. argument that it had to invade Iraq because Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is probably one of the weakest arguments for invading Iraq when we did, although it is one of the strongest arguments of taking some sort of action against Iraq.  Iraq definitely possessed WMD in the past, probably still had some when the war started, and would have liked to possess more.  The U.S. Government issued a white paper on Iraq's WMD in 1998, which includes a list of items that Iraq used to possess and might still possess.  

The Israelis took out Saddam's main potential source of nuclear materials when they destroyed the Osirak reactor.  After the 1991 Gulf War, the UN inspectors found significant amounts of WMD and precursors, but the good news is that they found them.  However, the inspectors had to be removed about five years ago because the U.S. attacked Iraq with bombs and cruise missiles at the end of 1998.   The attack was rather desultory and probably ineffective, but the main result was that the UN inspectors were out, and Saddam had a free hand to restart his WMD programs.  I think (contrary to the hard liners in the Administration) that the UN inspectors who returned to Iraq in 2002 in response to resolution 1141 would have found WMD if Saddam had had substantial quantities.  They would not have found smaller quantities or precursors unless they had had more time to search.  Of course, the U.S. position was that they were not supposed to search; they were just supposed to verify that Saddam had destroyed everything.  However, they were successfully beginning their survey of Iraq in a way that would have quickly identified large quantities of WMD and that would have eventually (probably months, not years) found small quantities.  

Unfortunately, I think that the failure to find any WMD in Iraq by a week or so after the occupation of Baghdad (April 19) indicates that the U.S. claims that Iraq had massive quantities of WMD were false.  I am sad that we invaded another country under false pretenses and that American leaders lied to the citizens of the United States and the world about the reasons for invading Iraq.  It may be enough morally that we deposed Saddam Hussein, who was a bad man, but we did not offer regime change as the sole reason for the invasion.  So far, it appears that we lied to the world.  The U.S. heaped contempt bordering on hatred on Hans Blix, but Blix is looking better and better every day, while the United States is looking worse and worse on the issue of WMD.  

The Los Angeles Times reported on April 11 that the U.S. did not have Iraq's declared uranium supplies -- some unprocessed uranium ore, some sligghtly enriched uranium, and some, small highly radioactive medical radioisotope devices -- under guard until the last day or so, despite the fact that everyone knew where they were.  The military is hoping that nothing was looted before they installed a guard.  The article adds that so far no WMD have been found.  An AP report in the Rocky Mountain News for April 11 reports that Marines broke open the IAEA container seals intended assure that none of the materials could be diverted.  The New York Times reported that a site still being contested near the Syrian border might hold WMD.  The Los Angeles Times reported on April 27 that concern in the U.S. government was growing over the failure to find WMD.  The New York Times reported on the same day that about 1,000 personnel would be added to the U.S. teams looking for WMD.    

Timeline

Vicious Neo-Conservative Attack on the State Department

Newt Gingrich opened a vicious attack on the U.S. Department of State in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on April 22.  Gingrich said, "America cannot lead the world with a broken instrument of diplomacy."  He added, "The collapse of the State Department as an effective instrument puts all this [gained by the military] at risk."  The Washington Post reported: "Gingrich, who since resigning as speaker in 1999 has tried to forge a prominent role for himself in the Republican Party on defense and national security issues, said he plans to fault the State Department for advocating a 'road map' for peace in the Middle East. The plan was crafted with the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. Working with those entities, he said, is 'intellectually a formula for denial of anything we've learned over the past six months.'"  It appears to me that in making this statement, Gingrich is acting as an agent of the Israeli government, which is bitterly opposed to the "road map."  Not all the neo-conservatives are Jewish, but many of the them are, and they all strongly support Israel.  Frankly, I don't know why Israel has come to dominate the Republican party, but President Bush is clearly afraid of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, deferring to him on almost every major decision involving the Middle East, including the war in Iraq.  On April 23, the Los Angeles Times explicitly linked Gingrich's speech to support for Israel, along with a March 12 speech by Tom Delay to the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.   The LAT article suggests that Gingrich's attack may have been motivated by an April 14 meeting White House between senior Bush administration officials and Dov Weisglas, an Israeli envoy from Ariel Sharon, at which the U.S. told Israel that it would have to make some concessions.  

Preemption, Israel, and the New-Conservatives

As an American, I am concerned that Israel has been too strong an influence in driving the war with Iraq.  Many of those promoting war with Iraq in this Administration are or have been members of the American Enterprise Institute, which according to the Asia Times, is closely linked to the Areil Sharon's Likud party in Israel.  Two other neo-conservative groups with overlapping memberships of former senior officials, the Project for the New American Century (created in 1997) and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (created in 2002), strongly promoted war with Iraq.  Anti-war groups were upset by the creation of the Committee for Liberation of Iraq.  AIPAC, the American-Israeli lobby has made a point of not taking a position on the war, which is itself strange, indicating Israel's sensitivity to being identified as a main reason for the war.  

An op-ed by a French writer in the New York Times on May 13, said that the underlying reason for the US attack on Iraq was the Israel-Palestine conflict.  According to the article by Olivier Roy, "There had always been a not-so-hidden [American] agenda, one explicitly expressed by many professional thinkers at the American Enterprise Institute, for example.  The idea is that the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate is America's most worrisome foreign entanglement, and can be broken only if the overall existing order in the Middle East is shaken up first."

Although it disagreed, The Economist reported on April 26 along the same lines, that in Europe American foreign policy is widely perceived as being controlled by Jews.  It wrote: 

Robert Kagan, a neo-conservative writer living in Brussels, says “One finds Britain's finest minds propounding...conspiracy theories concerning the ‘neo-conservative' (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy. In Paris, all the talk is of oil and ‘imperialism’—and Jews.” A member of the French parliament quoted his country's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, saying “the hawks in the US administration [are] in the hands of [Ariel] Sharon”—a comment seen in some circles as a coded message about undue pro-Israeli influence exercised by neo-cons, most of whom are Jewish, at the heart of the administration.

In the wake of the U.S. victory in Iraq, Israel said on April 10, 2003, that the Iraq war was really about Israel and the Arabs.  "I hope that in the era after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Palestinians will understand that the world has changed," Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told reporters.  

Iraq was not a direct threat to the United States, although it could have been an indirect threat by selling or giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, if it had any.  (So far, the Coalition of the Willing has not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.)  However, Iraq is a threat to Israel under any circumstances, as was clearly evidenced by the Israeli preemptive strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.  This preemptive strike is citied by proponents of the war on Iraq as an example the reason for the U.S. strike against Iraq.  On February 13, 2003, American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Richard Perle spoke before a large gathering in New York about U.S. policy toward Iraq.  His comments on how the doctrine of preemption was implemented by Israel, and how that should serve as an example for Iraq, follow: 

"Let me say a word about what you call the new strategy of preemption. There's nothing new about preemption. If you know that you are about to be attacked, it is certainly sensible if you can act first and avoid that attack to do so. I don't think anybody would dispute that. So then the question is how imminent must the attack be to justify the preemptive response. Here, we need to think more carefully about the concept of imminence. In 1981, the Israelis, after a long and, I gather, a heated cabinet debate, decided to destroy the reactor that Chirac had sent to Osirak, not because it was about to produce nuclear weapons. It wasn't. It was about to produce plutonium and it was under IAEA safeguards so the Iraqis would have had to siphon off small, undetectable quantities of plutonium and it would have taken them time to build a nuclear weapon based on what they would get from the Osirak reactor. But, nevertheless, the Israelis decided to strike some years in advance of the production of the nuclear weapon that they were concerned about.

"Now, why did they do that? They did it because the Iraqis were about to load fuel into the reactor and once they did so, they would not have had an opportunity to use an air strike without doing a lot of unintended damage around the facility, because radioactive material would have been released into the atmosphere. So from an Israeli point of view, what was imminent and what had to be acted against in a preemptive manner was not the ultimate emergence of the threat but an event that would lead inexorably to the ultimate emergence of the threat. They had to deal with a threshold that once crossed, they would no longer have the military option that could be effective at that moment. If we think of imminence in that sense, if we think of it as the thresholds that once crossed will so worsen our situation that we can't allow those thresholds to be crossed, then you start looking at how far are they from achieving the means to do the thing that everyone would recognize we were justified in stopping at the moment that action was taken. In the case of Iraq, we're talking about stopping the further development of nuclear weapons, we're talking about new systems of delivery for the chemical and biological weapons Saddam already has, including systems with much longer range. What is imminent about Iraq and what may be imminent in some other situations requires you to look back and decide when a threat becomes unmanageable."

Neo-Conservatives Planned to Invade Iraq for Many Years

Secondly, it appears that attacking Iraq has been an objective of a number of senior American policy makers long before the 9/11 attacks.  On May 29, 1998, in a letter to then House and Senate leaders Gingrich and Lott, a number of people who were become members of the Bush administration wrote, "U.S. policy should have as its explicit goal removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place."  This letter was signed by Elliott Abrams, currently in charge of Middle East policy on the White House National Security Council (and convicted for participating in Iran-Contra); John Bolton, currently Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security; Paula Dobriansky, currently Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs;  Zalmay Khalilzad, currently in charge of Gulf and Southwest Asia policy at the National Security Council; Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board until March 26, 2003, when he resigned under pressure; Peter Rodman, currently Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Donald Rumsfeld, currently Secretary of Defense; Paul Wolfowitz, currently Deputy Secretary of Defense; and Robert Zoellick, currently U.S. Trade Representative.  In addition, the letter was signed by a number of other well-known individuals, including William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education; William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard; William Schnieder, Jr., AEI scholar and  CNN political commentator; and James Woolsey, former director of the CIA.  Others who signed the letter included Jeffrey Bergner, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, and Vin Weber.

Since this letter, which appears on the website of the Project for a New American Century, was written more than three years before 9/11/2001, those who signed it were clearly committed to regime change in Iraq before the attacks on New York and Washington.  They also seem to think that further inspections, sanctions, etc., are worthless.  The only worthwhile course of action is a military attack on Iraq.  One has to wonder whether CIA intelligence, State Department diplomacy, or recommendations from generals and other career military people at the Pentagon could have had any effect on them. 

The Statement of Principles for the Project for a New American Century was signed on June 3, 1997, by more current and former senior government officials, including current Vice President Dick Cheney, former Vice President Dan Quayle, Florida Governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush, former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and former mid-level Pentagon officials Frank Gaffney and Fred Ikle.  Presumably they shared the ideas contained in the letter written a few months later, calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. 

A description of the history of the development of this Iraq policy is contained in an article in the Asia Times.  Interestingly, this same Asia Times writer warned from Afghanistan about the danger from Osama bin Laden on August 30, 2001, before the attack on the World Trade Center.  The article on Iraq points out how close Jay Garner, the retired general chosen to oversee Iraq after the war, is to conservative Israelis, a claim supported by an item in the Orlando Sentinel, stating that Gen. Garner has close ties to a conservative Jewish organization, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.  According to an op-ed by Bob Herbert in the New York Times, Garner moved effortlessly from his military career to the presidency of SYColeman, a defense contractor that helped Israel develop its Arrow missile-defense system.  

I find it disturbing there are such close ties between Israel's conservative Likud party, the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for a New American Century, and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and that the overlapping memberships of the American groups during the Clinton Administration included so many people who have now become members of the Bush Administration.  I do not think that we should assume that Israel's and America's foreign policy objectives should necessarily be identical.  I believe that America should put its own foreign policy interests first.  I was disappointed that the last United States veto in the UN Security Council before the controversial vote on war with Iraq, was a veto of a proposed resolution condemning Israel for killing a UN employee. 

Rumsfeld as a Historical Strongman

The "Statement of Principles" of the Project for a New American Century, signed by Donald Rumsfeld in 1997, before he was Secretary of Defense, states:

Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next. [My italics]

On its face, this document is not objectionable, but it could be interpreted in an objectionable way, and I believe that it already has been.  Take the first italics, "meet threats before they become dire."  Ideally the best way to meet threats at an early stage would be through peaceful means, only resorting to war when other methods have failed.  In Iraq, the U.S. decided that peaceful methods had failed long before many other countries had.  A number of other countries have joined our coalition, but aside from the Brits, the Australians, the Poles, and some others, they do not have the international experience of many of those countries who oppose us, e.g., the French and Germans.  

The document calls for strengthening our ties for democratic allies, but by pursuing the Iraq War without UN support, we have alienated ourselves from many of those countries with the strongest democratic traditions and the longest alliances with the U.S.  What is "an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles"?  If the UN is not part of this international order, then what is?  Is it an order imposed by U.S. military might?  If so, there will be strong international resistance.   Finally, what does "Reaganite ... moral clarity" mean?  Reagan did a lot of good things, but he created a huge budget deficit that penalized many ordinary citizens, and his Administration committed Iran-Contra, which undercut the U.S. Constitution.  Who knows why he did this, but one explanation is that Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini significantly helped Ronald Reagan's election by opposing incumbent President Carter and promising to release the U.S. hostages in Iran only after Reagan was elected, which in fact he did.  The Ayatollah Khomeini may have been responsible for Jimmy Carter's defeat and Ronald Reagan's election, which might explain why we invaded Iraq, rather than Iran.  

General Shinseki versus Defense Secretary Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld wants to downplay the Army's traditional role in combat, which has put him a loggerheads with Army Chief of Staff Shinseki.  Having served in the Army in Vietnam, I tended to side with General Shinseki.  Recently, while surfing the Net, I discovered that General Shinseki and I were serving in the same part of Vietnam at the same time, although I never met him.  I was assigned to "A" Battery of the 2/94th Artillery which was at Firebase Barbara in April 1970.  Firebase Barbara was west of Quang Tri, not far from the Special Forces base at Mai Loc.  I remember it, because it was marked as a friendly no-fire zone on our artillery charts.  When Mai Loc was overrun, we never got a call to fire for them, but according to the web page describing the event, the Special Forces did not handle the attack well.  The report says that then Captain Shinseki did handle his relief effort well. 

Shinseki and Rumsfeld have been at odds on at least two issues: the modernization of the Army, and the number of troops necessary to occupy Iraq until Iraq operate on its own.  The debate about modernization of the Army has been more or less put on hold following 9/11.  When pressed by Congress during his testimony, Shinseki said that he though it might require 200,000 or more troops for years to straighten out Iraq.  Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz crucified him for saying that.  So far, however, it looks as if Shinseki may have been correct about the larger number of troops needed.  The sacking of the Iraqi national museum and the national library are indications that the Pentagon could not handle the occupation, although they had enough troops for the invasion.  

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