Rumsfeld: 'Iraq - we have no EXIT policy'

What I Heard About Iraq
by Eliot Weinberger


I heard... a year after the first Gulf war, I heard Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad, since it would have meant getting "bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq." I heard him say: "The question in my mind is: How many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: Not very damned many."

In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

That same month, I heard that a CIA report stated: "We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programs."

Two months later, I heard Condoleezza Rice say: "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

On September 11, 2001, six hours after the attacks, I heard that Donald Rumsfeld said that it might be an opportunity to "hit" Iraq. I heard that he said: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

I heard that Condoleezza Rice asked: "How do you capitalize on these opportunities?"

I heard that on September 17 the President signed a document marked "TOP SECRET" that directed the Pentagon to begin planning for the invasion and that, some months later, he secretly and illegally diverted $700 million approved by Congress for operations in Afghanistan into preparing for the new battle front.

In February 2002, I heard that an unnamed "senior military commander" said: "We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq."

I heard the President say that Iraq is "a threat of unique urgency," and that there is "no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised."

I heard the Vice President say: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

I heard the President tell Congress, "The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material, could build one within a year."

And that same day, I heard him say: "The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX-nerve gas-or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally."

I heard the President, in the State of the Union Address, say that Iraq was hiding 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and nerve gas. I heard the President say that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium-later specified as "yellowcake" uranium oxide from Niger-and thousands of aluminum tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons production."

I heard the Vice President say: "We know that he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." I heard the President say: "Imagine those nineteen hijackers with other weapons and other plans-this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."


http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0416-20.htm

" ... The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX-nerve gas-or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally. ... "


Good enough for me -

Low standards of veracity and the judgment of proximate threats, eh, Boss?

My strategy would be to have united religion day where all our armed forces gravitate towards other aspectsod worshipping god and go to the mosque and pray along side your brothers and sisiters.

An ounce of prevention, Set. Stoppin' Hitler in the early '30's woulda saved a buncha hassle. I note a similarity between the arguments of the time against such, and the contemporary arguments decryin' action to stop Saddam.

Hitler was not stopped, nor contained. That is not a valid analogy with Hussein post-1991.

Yeah, we learn from our mistakes - that's not one we made again.

according to the news yeasterday, with the approval of the latest supplemental, 81 billion, we have now exceded 400 billion dollars. that doesn't include, i believe, $ for afghanistan and what ever portion of the +/- 400 billion yearly defense budget has gone east. that's a hell of a lot more than the 1.7 billion we were told it would cost.

by my little hand calculator, it appears the cost is something like $1,384,083 for each person in the country (based on a population of 289m people).

but let's say just for the heck of it that i'm completely wrong and the cost per person is only 10% of that figure, $138,000.

using the national average income of +/- $40,000, that means that each person, man woman and child would have to work for 3 years with each and every paycheck made payable to the government to cover it at this point.

What I dont understand,and find totally fascinating,is that all of you are sitting here criticizing the war,Bush,and everything else you can think of about whats going on in Iraq.

I WAS THERE!!!
I know what is happening there,but all of you are so determined to bash Bush and the war that you refuse to listen to anyone that says anything different.

I have tried to explain what the troops are seeing and hearing,what they are thinking and experiencing,but none of you want to see.

As the old saying goes..."there is none so blind as those who WILL NOT see."

That defines many of you on here,unfortunately.

mysteryman
Yes you were there and know what is going on. However, the question still remains. Should we have been there to begin with? Was our manpower adequate to control the occupation? If not who than is to blame if not Rumsfeld and if I want to be absurd Bush.
I do not advocate leaving with the job incomplete. Yes, we broke it and must put back together. However the question still remains. Why the hell did we break it?
I would add in order to make a good omelet one has to have a recipe and the right ingredients. Did we have them?

mysteryman, i think most of us have a beef with bush and how the war was engaged, not with you or the military or the iraqis. but, it makes a difference to me/us (?) that the war was entered into under false premise. the statements above are so contradictory that it's clear that something was going on. that is a problem with, at this point, over half of the country, not just some liberals on a forum site.

i mean, haven't you noticed that hardly any of us, if any, that are questioning this stuff have been down on the war in afghanistan ? i know i haven't. and i supported gulf I as well. but this time around, what was said, then contradicted and what was found to be the truth of things doesn't add up.

and that is the problem for me.

A group of policemen lay waste to a neighbourhood that had a drug problem. Innocent citizens, men, women and children lie dead and maimed on the ground, their houses are ablaze, some collpased from the "smart" bombs necessary to capture the miscreant drug dealers.

The policemen who went there to LEGALLY enforce the warrant and arrest the drug dealers weren't so lucky this time. They got caught in the cross fire and they too lie dead on the ground; collateral damage.

The rambo policemen trumpet, "We have saved the neighborhood." They have captured the ring leader, have taken into custody many of the underlings {"we can torture them later"}, swept up a good number of innocent citizens who will be deposed in prison over the next three or so years.

The rambo policemen were in cahoots with the drug dealers for years and the drugs used to justify this final raid were planted.

Conservatives everywhere applaud the saviors.

And that's what's so damn sad, Timberlandko. That's the whole point; there's no critical thinking. It's just ignore the facts, embrace the lies and let people die.

There were inspectors in Iraq, doing a job defined by international law, following a process that the USA had a large hand in defining.

Even with Afghanistan, the truth was twisted. The Taliban were allowed the opportunity to stay in power as long as they gave up Osama. It would have been business as usual for the Taliban as long as the USA got its pound of flesh.

Lucky they didn't turn over Osama. Can you imagine the public relations nightmare that would have presented, the amount of spin that would have been required to defend this selective march to freedom.

JTT, fortunately for the world, thinkin' of the sort reflected in your latest post in response to me has a smaller voice than when it enabled the Holocaust.

That makes no sense at all. Is there a point to that statement or is it just rhetoric?

You asked me for proof a while back, Timber and by letting you play long enough with the rope you've manged to prove it yourself. It's just ignore the facts, embrace the lies and let people die.

Can't you see the illogic in your argument? A country, based on lies, can then invade any country it likes.

I think a man doesn't like me so, I figure I should kill him before that dislike can grow and potentially, he could kill me. Give your head a shake, Timber.

You've given terrorists/freedom fighters the world over a perfect set of conditions for attacking the USA, or anyplace of their choosing. Actually even more so than the present Iraq situation because unlike Iraq, the USA has copious WMDs.

Regarding the Holocaust, you're distorting the facts again with another feeble tangent. The USA [though they were certainly not the only country] studiously ignored the threat to the Jews until it was too late.

The USA aided and abetted Saddam in his use of WMDs, aided and abetted him in butchering his own people, ... . If Saddam had complied fully with the UN provisions, he would still be butchering people and the US {certainly not the only offending country} would probably be back trading with him, and not caring a damn about his internal policies.

How can people be so naive, and that's putting it mildly?

Yours is the naivete. The point is there is no sense makin' excuses and accommodations for the likes of Saddam, as was shown by the progression of events that culminated in the horror of WWII. Those mistakes will not be made again.

And yes, The US is at war with global terrorism, most particularly Islamofacism. The enemy needs no "excuse" to attack, and to attack civilians. That is the enemy's avowed intention and sole purpose, and the cowards attack civilians, seekin' to intimidate populaces, knowin' themselves incapable of effective miltary action. They are thugs and murderers. Thats the deal with enemies in war; they fight That is the way of war, and they're the ones that declared war.

96.5% of Iraq's Pre-Gulf War WMD-related acquisitions were from nations other than The US. The participation of "Old Europe" in that trade amounted to nearly 75% of the total, with Germany alone accountin' for fully half. Iraq's armed forces were equipped primarily with Soviet equipment, with some German and French weapons systems. The Iraqi military was built on the Soviet model. Soviet, then, more recently Russian, personnel comprised the bulk of foreign "Advisors" to the Iraqi military, with significant contribution and support commin' also from Germany and France. German and French firms provided most of Iraq's advanced technical infrastructure, from telephones to televisions. Russian, German, and French entities figure far more prominently in the current Oil For Food scandal than do any other demograhic. The US is no more responsible for Saddam's depradations and the threat posed by his Ba'athist government than is the manufacturer of a hood ornament responsible for the overall performance of an automobile.

Certainly there were blunders and corruption. The US almost alone has taken action to bring an end to such. I understand the complaints against the US; it is perfectly understandable those whose golden geese have been slaughtered, and those whose feet are bein' held to the fire should be expected to howl.

But feel free to voice your opinion; Americans stand ready to preserve, with their own blood and treasure, your right to do so. Not because Americans seek your approval but because Americans, unlike some others, understand it is necessary to keep up the lease payments on liberty.

I had to stop putting things in bold. It should all be in bold.

==================================

A Time to Break Silence:
U.S. complicity in Saddam's crimes
against humanity


by Paul Rockwell
Oakland, California


We now know who supplied Saddam Hussein with materials of mass destruction; where his military regime, notorious for atrocities against Iraqis, Iranians and Kurds, acquired helicopters, germs and lethal chemicals -- an arsenal of terror. Iraq acquired its weapons of mass destruction from the United States, from Germany, France and Britain as well -- the very countries leading a weapons inspection of Iraq.

Last month the Iraq Weapons Inventory included a long list of Western and U.S. companies (Union Carbide, Honeywell, Dupont, SpectraPhysics, Bechtel are some mentioned in "The Nation", 1/13/2003) that supplied Saddam with deadly and dual-use material. Hoping to disguise its own culpability in Iraq's past war crimes, the U.S. suppressed the list, but the dossier was leaked to a German newspaper, "Die Tageszeitung".

More information trickled onto the back pages of "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post". The main facts are no longer in dispute. In violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 (which outlaws chemical warfare), the Reagan-Bush administration authorized the sale of poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, from anthrax to bubonic plague, throughout the '80s. In 1982, while Saddam Hussein constructed his machinery of war, Reagan and Bush removed Iraq from the State Department list of terrorist states.

According to newly declassified documents mentioned in "The Washington Post Weekly Edition" (1/6-12/2003), Iraq was already using chemical weapons on an "almost daily basis" when Donald Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein in 1983, consolidating the U.S.-Iraq military alliance.

Subsequently, the Pentagon supplied logistical and military support; U.S. banks provided billions of dollars in credits; and the C.I.A., using a Chilean conduit, increased Saddam's supply of cluster bombs. U.S. companies also supplied steel tubes and chemical substances, the types of material for which the Security Council is now searching.

As late as 1989 and 1990, according to a report from U.S. representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio), U.S. companies, under permits from the first Bush administration, sent mustard gas materials, live cultures for bacteriological research, to Iraq. U.S. companies helped Iraq build a chemical weapons factory, and then shipped Hussein a West Nile virus, hydrogen cyanide precursors, and parts for a new nuclear plant.

The infamous massacre at Halabja -- the gassing of the Kurds -- took place in March 1988. On September 19, sixth months later, U.S. companies sent eleven strains of germs, four types of anthrax to Iraq, including a microbe strain, called 11966, developed for germ warfare at Fort Detrick in the '50s. (Judith Miller provides a partial account of the sordid traffic in U.S. chemicals and germs in her book, "Germs: Biological Weapons And America's Secret War".)

Dow Chemical (infamous for its napalm in the Vietnam War) sold large amounts of pesticides, toxins that cause death by asphyxiation. Twenty-four U.S. firms exported arms and materials to Baghdad. France also sent Hussein 200 AMX medium tanks, Mirage bombers, and Gazelle helicopter gunships. As Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage testified in 1987: "We cannot stand to see Iraq defeated."

The vast, lucrative arms trade in the Middle East laid the groundwork for Saddam's aggression against Kuwait. Without high-tech weapons from Europe and the U.S.--from the very countries now conducting an arms proliferation investigation -- Iraq's wars against Iran and Kuwait would never have taken place.

Media pundits and TV commentators treat the arms-trade story with indifference. Most representatives in Congress have avoided comment. To her credit, at a committee hearing January 29th (recorded by KPFA radio in Berkeley), Senator Barbara Boxer called attention to U.S. shipments of anthrax and bubonic plague to Iraq, expressing her shock and outrage at the immorality and folly of U.S. arms sales policy. Revelations of the U.S. role in Iraq's arms buildup spawn a host of questions: Why aren't U.S. and European scientists, who invented and produced lethal materials for Saddam, subject to interrogations, like their counterparts in Iraq? Are U.S. companies sending their deadly material to other dictators? Why are there no Congressional hearings on the companies that profit from war and suffering, the traffic in arms? And where are the headlines, the front-page stories in the mainstream media? Will U.S. weapons of mass destruction be turned on U.S. troops and American personnel? Is it not said that those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind?

Defending the Indefensible

http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/time.html

That your buddy Rockewll agrees with you in no way alters the fact The US had a very minor role in Iraq's military machine, bio-chemical or otherwise. Your argument in such respect is built on false premises.

Research strains of biologics were provided by the US Center for Disease Control to the Iraqi medical establishment, as part of an ongoin' international program of education, research and development, but that's the extent of US involvement with Iraq's bio-chem capabilities.

A bit of American-origin technical hardware of broad multiple application - primarilly along the lines of industrial electronics, also was provided, the bulk of which Iraq obtained through foreign branches or subsidiaries of US-owned firms.

Now, of course, none of that absolves the US from marginal complicity, but it certainly in no way equates US complicity with that of Germany, France, or Russia/The Former Soviet Union. The US might have supplied the hood ornament, but the engine, drive train, interior appointments, body work, and runnin' gear bore the "Made in Europe" label.

It is hard, though, Big Bird, to get past that image of Rummy with a big poop-eatin' grin on his face, shakin' Hussein's hand . . .