US-Iraq/war/invasion

the President he's got his war folks don't know just what it's for no one gives us rhyme or reason you have one doubt they call it treason - Roberta Flack, 1969 "Compared to What"

Overview

This page is about the United States invasion of Iraq, which took place during George W. Bush's presidential administration.

The invasion got rid of Saddam (which very much needed to happen) but has resulted in a very expensive quagmire and greatly harmed the United States:

• US military readiness has plummeted to dangerous levels
• the US economy has been dangerously weakened
• global opinion of America has suffered greatly

There should probably be a separate article about the US occupation of Iraq.

Nicknames: Messopotamia, The Iraqi Horror Picture Show (although this latter might better describe the Abu Ghraib abuses or the use of torture during GWB administration in general)

Reference

• Wikipedia:
  • 2003 invasion of Iraq
  • Legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq
  • Events:
    • 2002-10-16 Iraq Resolution: the official "declaration of war" required before military force can be used
    • 2006-12-06 report released by the Iraq Study Group
• Iraq editorials at Salon.com
• AfterDowningStreet.org: "nonpartisan coalition ...[working]... to pressure both Congress and the media to investigate whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war"
• Fatalities & Wounded
  • Iraq Body Count: civilian fatalities
  • Iraq Coalition Casualties: military fatalities & injuries

Related Pages

• Balkans vs. Iraq: a comparison of the two interventions
• The US invasion of Iraq is part of the Bush administration's War on Terror
• US justifications for invading Iraq (included below)
• The current occupation of Iraq, with no timetable (much less a plan) for exit, is an example of an endless crisis

Justification

The US-Iraq War justifications invasion occupation exit strategy

Official Justifications

In justifying the US invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush claimed:

• (a) that there was strong evidence of WMDs, when it seems clear that there was none and that this was well known to Bush and his closest advisors at the time the claims were made ¹¹
• (a1) Circumstantial evidence: Bush was apparently determined to invade Iraq whether or not evidence was found, but although this indicates dishonesty it does not prove that he actually knew there was no evidence; it just proves that he didn't care whether the invasion was truly justified.
  • "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief... My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it... If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it." – George W. Bush²
  • 2007-09-06 Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction "Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq." by Sidney Blumenthal
• (b) that Iraq had refused to allow UN inspectors (see ³, final paragraph) to confirm their claimed lack of WMDs, when in fact Iraq did allow the inspectors in and the inspectors had found nothing. ("In 2002, the commission began searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, ultimately finding none." [W] and "The Iraqi government did what it was required in the 1441 resolution and presented a report of its weapons. The US government claimed that the report was false for not recognizing having the WMDs. It announced the invasion in the Spring of 2003." [W])
• (c) that Iraq was connected to the 9/11 attacks (for which there is no evidence):
  • 2003-03-21 Letter to Congress: "The use of armed forces against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."
  • 2006-03-20 President Discusses War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom: "First, just if I might correct a misperception, I don't think we ever said – at least I know I didn't say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein."
  • 2001-09-12: Richard Clarke says that on September 12, 2001, President Bush "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected to the terrorist attacks. After an initial denial, the White House has since conceded that the meeting took place. In response he wrote a report stating there was absolutely no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the FBI, and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit," apparently unshown to the President. [W]
  • 2007-03-04 The Seven War Memo: General Wesley Clark says he was told "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." on or about 2001-09-20. This was soon followed by plans to invade Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finally, Iran.

Sources below have additional points.

Many people ^{2 4} believe this list constitutes an impeachable offense.

Comments

• The Architects of War: Where Are They Now?: telling quotes from various Bush administration officials on the need to invade Iraq, likely costs and benefits of same, etc., as well as updates on their status

WMDs as justification?! WTF??

The claimed presence of WMDs in Iraq always seemed to me like an extremely good reason not to invade.

Picture the situation in 2002: you have a crazy dictator who has demonstrated that his only interest is power and that he is willing to sacrifice anything, including his own people, to keep it. Add to this an invasion by an incomparably strong foreign power, pushing that dictator back up against the wall: all of his genuine strategic options are used up, he knows he will either be killed or captured by an extremely unsympathetic enemy. If he had actually been in possession of WMDs, what are the odds that he would have taken the humane route and declined to use them?

So I have to ask the question: why did anyone buy the WMDs lie as a reason in favor of invasion in the first place? Oh, certainly, if Saddam had really had WMDs, or been in the process of making them, we couldn't have just stood around doing nothing about it – but bashing the hornets' nest has to be the worst possible way to go about dealing with that situation (unless you know that he hasn't actually got any of them ready yet; Bush did his best to convince us of the opposite, that Saddam was ready to use his WMDs at any time). When a mad bomber terrorist takes hostages, you tread delicately; going in with guns blazing is a recipe for disaster.

Well, we've managed to get our disaster even in spite of the lack of WMDs; we were just damn lucky that the WMDs were a figment of neoconservative ambition, because apparently we happily bash the hornet's nest when The Decider tells us to. The results could have been much, much worse if the WMDs had been anything more real than scrap tubing and twisted words. --Woozle 14:34, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia: rationale for the Iraq War
• The vote on HJ res 114 "To Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq"
  • 2002-10-10 15:05 FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 455
  • 2002-10-11 12:50 U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 107th Congress - 2nd Session

Related

• 2009/04/02 [L..T] Fake Faith and Epic Crimes «Spain's celebrated Judge Baltasar Garzon, who indicted Pinochet and the leaders of the Argentinian military junta, has called for George W. Bush, Blair and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar to be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq – "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history: a devastating attack on the rule of law" that had left the UN "in tatters." He said, "There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation to start without delay."»

to file

• 2006-12-20 Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war: The UK had no reasons to believe Iraq possessed significant chemical, bio, or nuclear warfare weapons. Also, "British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed."
• 2006-12-09 Smith's war critique cracks wall of support: Republican Senator Gordon Smith's switch from passive support for the war may signal the beginning of a fall-off in GOP support
• 2006-11-18 Spy says al-Qaeda tricked US into war (please make a note here if you get redirected when trying to access this site)
• 2006-09-15 The Rest of the Story: Iraq's Links to Al Qaeda: may cast new light on some of the accusations above
• 2005-12-01 Lying about the War
• 2003-04-01 Prewar predictions coming back to bite by Susan Page, USA TODAY
• 2003-01-19 Saddam will not be deposed by sweet reason or sanctions: pre-invasion opinions from a number of prominent Britons
• 2003-01-12 U.S. Decision On Iraq Has Puzzling Past: "Opponents of War Wonder When, How Policy Was Set"
• 2002-08-26 MoveOn petition against invading Iraq

Commentary

• 2005-12-01 Lying about the War: "truth became the first casualty in their campaign to whip up support."
• 2003-03-18 Why I Oppose An Iraq War by Russ Daggatt: exposes several blatant misstatements by the administration which do not seem like they could possibly be innocent errors
• 2003-01-21 One of the More Nauseating Images by Harold Pinter [W]

Video

• 2007-08-02 video Rep. Kucinich: V.P. Dick Cheney "Fabricated" the Intel (see also Dennis Kucinich, Dick Cheney)

Quotes

• "I thought they were out of their minds, once I realised that they weren't kidding. The most inappropriate, the most counterproductive thing we could've done would've been to invade Iraq and I rather thought that was self-evident." – Richard A. Clarke, former US Counter-Terrorism Advisor [1]

Related Information

• "In 2003, Republicans refused to allow a vote on a bill introduced by Waxman that would have established an independent commission to review the false claims Bush made in asking Congress to declare war on Iraq. That same year, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss, refused to hold hearings on whether the administration had forged evidence of the nuclear threat allegedly posed by Iraq. A year later the chair of the Government Reform Committee, Tom Davis, refused to hold hearings on new evidence casting doubt on the "nuclear tubes" cited by the Bush administration before the war. Sen. Pat Roberts, who pledged to issue a Senate Intelligence Committee report after the 2004 election on whether the Bush administration had misled the public before the invasion, changed his mind after the president won re-election. 'I think it would be a monumental waste of time to re-plow this ground any further,' Roberts said." [2]

Footnotes

1. 2004-10-03 $Disputed Intelligence on Iraq ($ for full article) abstract reads: "The Bush administration was made aware as early as 2001 that the aluminum tubes used as critical evidence against Iraq were most likely not for nuclear weapons, but White House officials continued to embrace the theory as they led the nation to war."

Another source ² cites the article as stating that "The CIA inform[ed] the Bush administration that the "aluminum tubes," later to be used as evidence of a nuclear WMD program, were probably not intended for that purpose. In the article, CIA officials and a senior administration official say that Rice's staff had been told in 2001 that Energy Department experts believed the tubes were most likely intended for small artillery rockets, and not a nuclear program."

2. Bush's Impeachable Offenses, Part 1

3. 2003-07-14 President Reaffirms Strong Position on Liberia

• final paragraph: "The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region."

4. Charges and Evidence: Impeachment of George W. Bush

Alternatives

...as opposed to "staying the course" without clear goals, much less a plan.

• 2007-01-17 The Bring Our Troops Home and Sovereignty of Iraq Restoration Act of 2007 by Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey

Effects

• The absurd overcommitment of United States resources to the Iraq war has resulted in both plummeting US military readiness and increasingly poor US veteran medical care.

news of effects

• 2006-10-12 'Huge rise' in Iraqi death tolls: "An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion, according to a survey by a US university."
• 2006-03-20 Top Ten Catastrophes of the Third Year of American Iraq
• 2005-07-18 Invasion was boost for Al Qaeda

The Republicans largely continue to stand behind the war effort, a position which is now in stark disagreement with their 2000 Party Platform:

The 2000 Republican Party Platform says:

When presidents fail to make hard choices, those who serve must make them instead. Soldiers must choose whether to stay with their families or to stay in the armed forces at all. Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness.

from The New Yorker:

Ron Suskind, in his book The One Percent Doctrine, claims that analysts at the C.I.A. watched a similar video, released in 2004, and concluded that "bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reëlection." Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance.

News Articles

• 2007-04-06 US Defense Secretary evaluates Iraq and the political climate
• 2007-02-21 UK and Denmark announce troop withdrawals from Iraq
• 2007-02-19 Leaving Iraq: Apocalypse Not by Robert Dreyfuss: "Much of Washington assumes that withdrawing from Iraq will lead to a bigger bloodbath. We need to question that assumption."
• 2007-01-15 Today's Must Read: Bush officials are finally, maybe, easing gently out of denial regarding the ghastly mistakes made in Iraq in 2003.
• 2007-01-14 Shock and oil: Iraq's billions & the White House connection
• 2007-01-13 'The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans' "As 20,000 more US troops head for Iraq, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines, reveals how the Sunni insurgency has changed."
• 2006-12-07 ISG Report: Bush Administration ‘Significantly Underreporting The Violence In Iraq’: the Bush administration has actually been filtering out the bad news in Iraq by underreporting violence "in order to suit the Bush administration’s policy goals."
• 2006-12-06 Iraq Study Group Report: Iraq could be on a slide towards chaos
• 2006-12-04 Kofi Annan: Iraq situation much worse than civil war
• 2006-12-03 Rumsfeld memo recognizes need for 'major adjustment' in Iraq
• 2006-11-04 War simulation in 1999 pointed out Iraq invasion problems
  • Hawker Hurricane [3] said:

    Quoting Stefan Jones:

    "Oh . . . I get it. 1999. That was a Clinton era war game, yielding lessons only of use by an administration mired in old-fashioned reality-based thinking."

    That is pretty close to the truth. Politically, they couldn't afford to send 400,000 troops to Iraq for the 2-5 years it would take to do the mission... So, they decided that it wouldn't take that many troops or that long. The decision wasn't based on new facts or better stratergy, it was based on what was politically feasible. "The Truimph of the Will" covers it as a concept. And now the NeoCons who said it could be done that way are blaming BushCo for failing...

• 2006-11-03 Congress Tells Auditor in Iraq to Close Office: Stuart Bowen has apparently done his job too well.
• 2006-10-18 Baker: No 'magic bullet' for Iraq
• 2006-10-17 Iraq reality check: The cost in lives lost
• 2006-09-28 Heralded Iraq police academy a 'disaster' by Amit R. Paley, The Washington Post
• 2006-09-17 Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post Staff Writer
• 2006-06-07 Officer says he won’t fight in ‘unlawful’ Iraq war
• 2005-11-17 Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania calls for a change of direction
• 2005-09-19 $1 billion missing from Iraq's defence ministry
• 2003-10-02 Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War: Study Finds Widespread Misperceptions on Iraq Highly Related to Support for War

Reports

• 2004-09-29 Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi reports from Baghdad

Other Opinions

• 2007-03-07 Beyond Quagmire: A panel of experts convened by Rolling Stone agree that the war in Iraq is lost. The only question now is: How bad will the coming explosion be? (Experts: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Clarke, Nir Rosen, Gen. Tony McPeak (retired), Bob Graham, Chas Freeman, Paul Pillar, Michael Scheuer, Juan Cole)
• 2007-02-16 The Single Darkest Day in the History of the US: strongly anti-withdrawal blog entry. Seems to make some strange equivalences, but perhaps this could be useful in understanding the pro-Bush mindset?
• 2007-01-22 "The Iraq War and the Sicilian Campaign" by Brent T. Ranalli, Part I and Part II: a history lesson from 415 BC, in which Athens, a "superpower" of the day, was ultimately destroyed by over-investment in an ill-considered war
• 2006-12-03 How Our Civilization Can Fall by Orson Scott Card: offers a reasonable-sounding argument for the US to remain in Iraq, based on historical civilization-wide crashes. The difference between this and other arguments against leaving Iraq is that it suggests a possible model for what the US should be doing there, with historical data to back it up.
• 2006-11-23 Roads, good intentions, etcetera by Charlie Stross (blog entry, with comments)
• 2006-11-16 Iraq: The War of the Imagination by Mark Danner
• 2006-10-30 The Only Issue This Election Day by Orson Scott Card explains why we are nation building in Iraq, and why it is the only worthy path.
• 2006-08-13 Lies and Catastrophes by Orson Scott Card in defense of the Iraq war and Bush; synopsis:
  • A Democratic congressman recently used the word "catastrophic" in reference to Iraq, "but catastrophe is a word that requires there be widespread sudden damage" so the congressman must mean something else (first 12 paragraphs)
  • This is because "he was selling something", i.e. "He was trying to persuade the American people that the Iraq War was a dire mistake, a disaster" which can only (and must) be ended "by withdrawing our troops by the end of the year." (2 short paragraphs)
  • Withdrawing our troops in that manner, however, would be a catastrophe because:
    • "all the people who have taken bold action for democracy in Iraq would be left high and dry in the tribal and religious war that would certainly ensue. The citizens of Iraq would be slaughtered by local enemies who think nothing of blowing up each other's mosques, weddings, and funerals."
    • "all our enemies would be greatly emboldened by such a proof of our irresolution." Our enemies would learn that "If you kill American citizens and soldiers long enough, they give you everything you want. Since they were killing Americans before we liberated Iraq, it is hard to imagine that they would stop."
  • People who favor withdrawal from Iraq only do so because "they think we are somehow the cause of the war. We were bad, and so they hate us; if we become good, then they will be nice to us." (straw man argument –Woozle) This is not at all true; they hate us because we are prosperous.
  • The rest seems to be devoted to exploring the meaning of "lying" with regard to Bill Clinton vs. George W. Bush; further fisking needed.
• 2006-08-10 The Guns Of August by Richard Holbrooke
• 2006-07-23 In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam: also makes some comparisons with the Balkans
• 2006-07-17 Iraq's Reconstruction a Boondoggle by Design by Joshua Holland, AlterNet
• 2006-07-12 Exchanges with Mr. Bailey, a high school student (who may or may not have been actually a meme spammer)
• 2005-12-01 Lying about the War: "truth became the first casualty in their campaign to whip up support."
• 2005-08-30 Just one question for opponents of the war by Dennis Prager
• 2003-01-21 One of the More Nauseating Images by Harold Pinter
• 2003-01-19 Saddam will not be deposed by sweet reason or sanctions: pre-invasion opinions from a number of prominent Britons
• 2002-08-26 MoveOn petition against invading Iraq

David Brin

From http://www.davidbrin.com/neocons.html :

• Over a thousand Americans lost, with more dying almost daily and no end in sight.
• Uncounted (and secret) numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths.
• Scandals; poorly supervised thugs ruining our reputation for decent behavior.
• A Western Alliance in shambles.
• Relentless lies; intervention justified by fabricated evidence reminiscent of Tonkin Gulf.
• Plummeting readiness levels — our military is being used-up.
• Utterly divisive of American public (possibly a desired goal), repeating the social effects of Vietnam (Editor's note: further enhancing Bush's existing divisiveness)
• Clever incarceration tricks overused as bludgeons, wrecking credibility and undermining due process.
• Incompetent preparation and handling of the aftermath, featuring rapid deterioration of political, economic and social life in Iraq
• Worldwide acceptance of US moral leadership plummeting.
• And the fundamental strategic outcome — provoking a radicalized Islam, further stirred by Saudi-funded Al Jazeera Network and Saudi-funded religious schools, from Morocco to Mindanao, threatening a pan-Islamic coalescence into Jihad mentality for the first time in a thousand years.

Humor

• Apple Presents the iRack from MadTV
• We Want Iraq (originally written for the 1992 Gulf War)

Quotes

• "I thought they were out of their minds, once I realised that they weren't kidding. The most inappropriate, the most counterproductive thing we could've done would've been to invade Iraq and I rather thought that was self-evident." – Richard A. Clarke, former US Counter-Terrorism Advisor [4]

Trivia

• "Drat Saddam, a mad dastard!" is a palindrome.