Who got us into this mess, and why?
Saul Landau
Progreso Weekly, 2 October 2003
Have some heavyweight members of the old wealthy
families reached a consensus that George W. Bush constitutes a clear and
present danger to their fortunes’ future? Have the CPAs of the truly
well-born advised the families that the current occupant of the White
House may have misplaced his mittens?
Sporadic editorials from establishment house organs
like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times should alert the
newly enlivened Democrats that they could receive substantial support from
some of the upper crust. The message also arrived at the office of White
House Adviser Karl Rove – a man as sensitive to potential power shifts as
he is insensitive to human suffering.
But how does Rove go about repairing the damage done
to the confidence of the well born – and the others who voted Republican
because they thought W would bring stability and economic prudence –
without having the president admit that he made serious errors of
judgments about war and peace (life and death) and economic priorities?
President Bush has asked for $87 billion more to "deal with Iraq and
Afghanistan" while he has little to show for it: 300-plus servicemen and
women dead, thousands wounded, thousands more sick with strange
infirmities. And Saddam remains missing along with Osama bin Laden and the
Anthrax scoundrel.
Bush has bullied his tax cut through Congress while
spending about $200 billion he has not figured out how to compensate with
income. He has wrecked the foreign policy alliances and partnerships that
the liberal establishment considered vital pillars of stability. The UN
has never felt shakier and serious bickering undermines the common
interests that the old guard has with its counterparts in France and
Germany. Repair all this? A formidable task!
The Bushies got warnings from the upper crusties
before they bruised and bungled their way into Iraq. In August 2002,
Daddy Bush’s consigliari Brent Scowcroft and James Baker placed op-eds in
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times respectively, warning that the
UN kosher stamp would prove essential before sending US troops into the
sticky mire of Middle Eastern battlegrounds. Indeed, Daddy Bush himself
offered such advice in a Tufts University lecture on February 26, 2003,
shortly before Junior’s impatience overrode all prudence.
To the old elite, Bush’s neo-con advisers, some of
whom are promoting new wars with Syria and Iran and repeating the
discredited homilies of Saddam’s WMDs and Al-Qaeda links, take on the aura
of dangerous loony birds.
A few Democrats have also finally begun to blow the
critical trumpet. Liberal Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy called the
Iraq War a "fraud" and even the hawkish Pennsylvania Representative John
Murtha charged Bush with misleading the country. As Bush’s poll numbers
drop so too does the robustness of the flag façade with which he has
covered his less than prudent bellicosity since 9/11. House Minority
leader Nancy Pelosi has chimed in as well and demanded that the President
do a bit more than play "dress up" on large ships (referring to his May 1
appearance in a flight suit on the USS Abraham Lincoln) and begin to level
with the Congress about how bad a mire we’re really stuck in.
But how far will the Democrats push their critique?
Will they figure out a way to leave Iraq? Will they have leverage in
forcing concessions before they agree to Bush’s $87 billion occupation of
Iraq and Afghanistan request?
More importantly, will they ask: who got us into this
mess and why?
Start with a slight modification of the classical
questions. What didn’t they (Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld) know and when
didn’t they (Wolfowitz, Powell and Rice) know it? These questions arise in
response to the Administration’s use of link-speak.
They start with a big fib and then go on to create a
structure of lies on top of it. In the fall of 2002, American and British
leaders could not wait for the conclusion of UN weapons inspections team,
whose forensic experts had begun a thorough search and destroy operation
for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. Bush had warned
repeatedly that the United Nations would condemn itself to irrelevance if
it failed to take on Iraq.
So, Bush employed Secretary of State Colin Powell to
present the United Nations with "overwhelming" evidence of Iraqi
accumulation of WMDs and links to Al Qaeda. Powell told the UN Security
Council on February 5, 2003, about "the potentially much more sinister
nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that
combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder.
Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda
lieutenants".
By March most of the world concluded that the United
States and England had not made a case for a UN war in Iraq. Indeed,
France and Russia decided not to allow the Security Council to become a
rubber stamp for a US-led war.
Consequently, using the urgency – according to Prime
Minister Tony Blair’s September 24, 2002 Dossier, "the Iraqi military may
be able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an
order to do so" – of stopping Saddam, the war commenced and quickly ended.
In May 2003, Bush claimed military victory, the Iraqi
people were about to greet us with roses as liberators and the loss of
US and British soldiers had been minimal. Bush gloated, strutted and
cavorted in his triumph.
Instead of retarding the anti-Americanism that had
become the base of the culture for Al Qaeda recruiting, Bush’s policies
have provided nutriments for the fundamentalist zealots’ intent on using
violence to apparently infiltrate Iraq and fight against the American way
of life and especially its Middle East policies.
But the Bush Administration, now faced with its first
serious opposition from Congress, and editorial writers from leading
newspapers, no longer speaks with one clear, albeit simplistic voice.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on
September 8, 2003:
"...Do we know that he [Saddam] had a role in 9/11. No.
We do not know that he had a role in 9/11. I think that this is a test
that sets the bar far too high. I don’t think that we want to try and make
the case that he directed somehow the 9/11 events".
Or listen to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s
haiku on the issue.
In a mid September Pentagon news conference, the
quixotic Rummy responded to a reporter who asked about a Washington Post
poll in which some 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam was involved in
the 9/11 attacks. "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to
believe that I could say that".
In Washington, the Bushies have also changed their
line. On September 6, John Bolton, US Under-Secretary of State for Arms
Control, said that Saddam’s WMD "isn't really the issue". According to
Bolton, "As long as that regime was in power, it was determined to get
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons one way or another. Until that
regime was removed from power, that threat remained – that was the purpose
of the military action".
His shift of position may link to the David Kay
forthcoming report. His 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group began a Sherlock
Holmes like search for Saddam’s infamous weapons in May. As of September
20, Kay, a Bush buddy, and his team, had not found WMDs or signs that WMD
programs were underway.
On September 21, the US Army further conceded that
what had been reported as its only significant WMD find two mobile
chemical labs and a dozen 55-gallon drums of chemicals "showed no positive
hits at all" for chemical weapons. The Iraqi government did have
scientists on payroll who could have restarted a weapons program, but
that’s a far cry from having one.
The liberal establishment appears ready to take the
issue of dumping W beyond the gossip stage. With the emergence of General
Wesley Clark as a candidate, a Democratic Eisenhower type with Bill
Clinton’s backing, the stubborn W, who insists that lies are truth and
that God directs his most banal political moves, face a formidable
opponent.
Just as in 1973, when they lost confidence in Richard
Nixon and the prestigious newspapers and TV network news shows seemed to
open their pages and screens to those eager to explore the holes in his
Watergate argument, so too has the liberal elite now seem to have gathered
enough energy to expose the lies and weaknesses in Bush and company’s Iraq
story. It’s not just that the Bushies deliberately lied to the people and
Congress. That’s traditional. But playing around with language about
imminent threats to our security at a very high dollar price and the
alienation of our traditional allies, now that’s serious.
Ideally,
Clark can develop the Ike appeal and win the nomination. If he only
succeeds in splitting the Democrats, then a dark horse can emerge –
perhaps a member of a family that served liberal establishment interests
well for the last eight years of the 20th Century.
Copyright 2003 Progreso Weekly
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