Iraq: Land of Two Histories
By Donald Wood
Answering questions recently about pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, WMD’s, Senator John McCain defended the actions of the Bush administration, saying the administration had simply relied on the advice of "well-trained professionals." Coming from a senator known for his integrity, these words were disappointing. History shows that professional foreign policy analysts and advisors don’t always get things right. In fact at times they can be staggeringly wide of the mark, as they were for example prior to WW II, or more recently just before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, or, demonstrating overreaction, Viet Nam.
The problem is that during times of political upheaval, professional advisers tend to say what leaders want to hear, a fact which makes retrospective mea culpas unlikely. Also, having academic backgrounds these kinds of advisors tend not to understand the brutal, duplicitous Saddam Husseins of the world, and so are inclined to take them at their word. The question is why with limitless stretches of history to prove these points the administration accepted advice that should have been taken with a truck load of salt, while rejecting advice that made more sense: The point had been made years before 1993 that Iraq was unlikely to possess amounts of chemical and biological WMD large enough to cause concern because no scenario existed in which they could be used against Israel or its allies without bringing destruction upon itself. In rejecting this idea, the Administration also rejected the principle of "Mutually Assured Destruction," a principle that served the world well during the Cold War years.
So what gives? To understand why the Bush administration acted as it did one must understand that Iraq is a nation with two histories: one of course real, and the other a fabrication invented by the Iraqis themselves. No one suspected this double history existed until the early 1990's, when some (independent) observers noticed marked differences between what U.N. weapons inspectors were finding on the ground in Iraq, and what weapons experts had noted during the 1980's about Iraq’s nuclear activities. To say the two versions were in sharp contrast is an understatement. The pre-1990 take was that because the Iraqis at one time had a nuclear university with state-of-the-art research facilities, and had even researched the scaling down or miniaturizing of nuclear weapons, by 1989 it was thought they might be as close as six months from a nuclear capability. Post-1991 IAEA inspections maintained on the other hand that not only were the Iraqis years away from achieving that capability, their technical methodology was "antiquated," of the kind the United States had used in 1945. (Professional analysts claim these programs ended as a result of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Yet there is good reason to believe otherwise. The Iraqis apparently had enough resources to rebuild the old city of Babylon, not to mention to create an extensive system of tunnels just about anywhere tunnels can be built.)
Before much could be inferred from this, politics stepped in and thickened the plot. American conservatives preferred the U.N.’s version of Iraq’s history, and it’s not hard to figure out why. During the 1980's the Reagan and Bush administrations had granted Baghdad, despite its abysmal human rights record, a privileged status that to some was excessive. After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, a betrayed and embarrassed President Bush did not need news that the Iraqis had developed state-of-the-art weapons systems. Even rumors could compromise the Reagan legacy and set American conservatism back decades, centuries if that capability were used. Though this politicization of an extremely important issue was in some ways innocuous it acted to skew intelligence reports and to block bipartisan and multilateral discussions of what might possibly be happening in a region where worst-case scenarios were common.
But here the plot gets thicker: Sometime during the mid 1990's some conservatives and neo-
conservatives must have begun worrying more and more about how true the U.N. Iraq view really was. Observers with far less to lose noticed things weren’t adding up: Saddam Hussein
wasn’t acting like a defeated leader. He had yet to be deposed or even vilified by his own people. Also, virtually all the evidence on which the U.N. was still basing its findings had the curious
feature of either originating in Iraq as documents, or being provided through debriefings of Iraqi "defectors"- both sources of the view that the Iraqis possessed large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. In response to mounting concerns over Iraq’s true nuclear status, in 1998 conservatives wrote President Clinton, advising him to act. They of course did not bother to explain all their motives. If they had it would have made headlines around the world. Certainly it’s safe to say that by the 2000 presidential election, some conservatives would have been very worried. Indeed some would have seen the election as a do or die time.
Fast forwarding to April 2003, what we have is a conservative leadership still desperately trying to establish whether the Iraqis possessed nuclear WMD. To them the only course of action was to invade. And of course 9/11 provided the pretext. The crucially important point is that no matter how justified they thought themselves, in deciding to invade Iraq they ignored signs that warned against acting rashly: Though they saw the falsification of facts as disturbing, they dismissed entirely the question of what purpose this systematic and elaborate falsification served. The administration ignored a larger unseen picture in which it was not just possible but altogether probable that Iraq had indeed developed a nuclear capability, but had either moved the weapons elsewhere, after all trace of their development had been eradicated, or had simply manufactured them elsewhere. (During most of the 1980's they had the freedom to move around the United States virtually without constraint.)
But it is not just the falsification of documents and the planted defectors that point to a larger picture, pointing to it also is that pre-1990 take, the nuclear university, the effort to scale down nuclear weaponry, and the huge sums of money needed to effect these programs, programs which well-trained professionals still maintain were sacrificed because of what turned out to be relatively minor quarrels with first Iran and then in 1990 with Kuwait. Indeed a close look at events in the region that have occurred over the last thirty years reveals a picture in which
appear the faint outlines of a conspiracy between Iran, Iraq, and Syria-and possibly Lybia and the Sudan-the purpose of which can only be the limiting of American power in the Middle East and eventually the elimination of Israel as a state. And the addition of small nuclear weapons to the mix adds nightmarish possibilities.
Observers who persistently take events at face value say this is unlikely. Yet the probability of a conspiracy after a thirty-year long succession of losses by these states to Israel is so high that it is to be wondered at why the CIA and other intelligence entities never made more of the scores of otherwise inexplicable events that have occurred over the last twenty years in the Middle East, as well as in America, that point to, rather than away from a conspiracy-the abrupt betrayal of the President’s father, for instance.
But the carelessness and the rashness of this Administration does not end here. While ignoring these warning signs, the Bush team dismissed entirely the implications arising from the term "asymmetrical warfare," which is what the world is now witnessing in Iraq and of course saw in the events of 9/11. This term is not new. It’s been around for years. But it’s not a term the Bush administration, being a scion of America’s military/industrial complex, likes to use because it means that fixed, deterrent missile-based weapons systems and uniformed armies in the field, are becoming dinosaurs. Now, because weapons are smaller, more mobile, yet more lethal, there exist new strategies that any anonymous, cyber-based entity can employ. Uniformed armies in the field are becoming a liability because when they interact with civilian populations, they encourage rather than discourage resistence. Nor does the capture of Saddam Hussein make much difference to the picture. The fact is, as a prisoner of war, he is in the safest possible place. He’s not on the run, doesn’t have to worry over bounty hunters, and the U.S. is paying the bill.
The duty of disciplined observers is to present facts, not interpret them. But some situations are so imbued with circumstantial evidence that their implications virtually become facts in themselves. This is one of those situations, and it presents two pictures, one of how and why the Bush Administration has acted as it has, and the other, the larger of the two, of an effort by Iraq
and others to defeat Israel. As disturbing as the first picture is, the second is far more so, for it
suggests that the Iraqis did develop nuclear weapons, and that since these weapons are not in Iraq, they must have either been moved or manufactured elsewhere, possibly in engineering factories which we know were set up in the U.S. by Iraqis during the 1980's.
To say that all this is improbable, when in fact it is highly probable, is to ignore the lessons of the history of warfare. Given that the elimination of American power in the Middle East must necessarily precede military action against Israel, and given the inevitability of worst-case scenarios during times such as these, it is highly probable that at least some of the nuclear WMD sought by the Bush administration are in fact on American soil.
END
By Donald Wood
Answering questions recently about pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, WMD’s, Senator John McCain defended the actions of the Bush administration, saying the administration had simply relied on the advice of "well-trained professionals." Coming from a senator known for his integrity, these words were disappointing. History shows that professional foreign policy analysts and advisors don’t always get things right. In fact at times they can be staggeringly wide of the mark, as they were for example prior to WW II, or more recently just before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, or, demonstrating overreaction, Viet Nam.
The problem is that during times of political upheaval, professional advisers tend to say what leaders want to hear, a fact which makes retrospective mea culpas unlikely. Also, having academic backgrounds these kinds of advisors tend not to understand the brutal, duplicitous Saddam Husseins of the world, and so are inclined to take them at their word. The question is why with limitless stretches of history to prove these points the administration accepted advice that should have been taken with a truck load of salt, while rejecting advice that made more sense: The point had been made years before 1993 that Iraq was unlikely to possess amounts of chemical and biological WMD large enough to cause concern because no scenario existed in which they could be used against Israel or its allies without bringing destruction upon itself. In rejecting this idea, the Administration also rejected the principle of "Mutually Assured Destruction," a principle that served the world well during the Cold War years.
So what gives? To understand why the Bush administration acted as it did one must understand that Iraq is a nation with two histories: one of course real, and the other a fabrication invented by the Iraqis themselves. No one suspected this double history existed until the early 1990's, when some (independent) observers noticed marked differences between what U.N. weapons inspectors were finding on the ground in Iraq, and what weapons experts had noted during the 1980's about Iraq’s nuclear activities. To say the two versions were in sharp contrast is an understatement. The pre-1990 take was that because the Iraqis at one time had a nuclear university with state-of-the-art research facilities, and had even researched the scaling down or miniaturizing of nuclear weapons, by 1989 it was thought they might be as close as six months from a nuclear capability. Post-1991 IAEA inspections maintained on the other hand that not only were the Iraqis years away from achieving that capability, their technical methodology was "antiquated," of the kind the United States had used in 1945. (Professional analysts claim these programs ended as a result of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Yet there is good reason to believe otherwise. The Iraqis apparently had enough resources to rebuild the old city of Babylon, not to mention to create an extensive system of tunnels just about anywhere tunnels can be built.)
Before much could be inferred from this, politics stepped in and thickened the plot. American conservatives preferred the U.N.’s version of Iraq’s history, and it’s not hard to figure out why. During the 1980's the Reagan and Bush administrations had granted Baghdad, despite its abysmal human rights record, a privileged status that to some was excessive. After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, a betrayed and embarrassed President Bush did not need news that the Iraqis had developed state-of-the-art weapons systems. Even rumors could compromise the Reagan legacy and set American conservatism back decades, centuries if that capability were used. Though this politicization of an extremely important issue was in some ways innocuous it acted to skew intelligence reports and to block bipartisan and multilateral discussions of what might possibly be happening in a region where worst-case scenarios were common.
But here the plot gets thicker: Sometime during the mid 1990's some conservatives and neo-
conservatives must have begun worrying more and more about how true the U.N. Iraq view really was. Observers with far less to lose noticed things weren’t adding up: Saddam Hussein
wasn’t acting like a defeated leader. He had yet to be deposed or even vilified by his own people. Also, virtually all the evidence on which the U.N. was still basing its findings had the curious
feature of either originating in Iraq as documents, or being provided through debriefings of Iraqi "defectors"- both sources of the view that the Iraqis possessed large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. In response to mounting concerns over Iraq’s true nuclear status, in 1998 conservatives wrote President Clinton, advising him to act. They of course did not bother to explain all their motives. If they had it would have made headlines around the world. Certainly it’s safe to say that by the 2000 presidential election, some conservatives would have been very worried. Indeed some would have seen the election as a do or die time.
Fast forwarding to April 2003, what we have is a conservative leadership still desperately trying to establish whether the Iraqis possessed nuclear WMD. To them the only course of action was to invade. And of course 9/11 provided the pretext. The crucially important point is that no matter how justified they thought themselves, in deciding to invade Iraq they ignored signs that warned against acting rashly: Though they saw the falsification of facts as disturbing, they dismissed entirely the question of what purpose this systematic and elaborate falsification served. The administration ignored a larger unseen picture in which it was not just possible but altogether probable that Iraq had indeed developed a nuclear capability, but had either moved the weapons elsewhere, after all trace of their development had been eradicated, or had simply manufactured them elsewhere. (During most of the 1980's they had the freedom to move around the United States virtually without constraint.)
But it is not just the falsification of documents and the planted defectors that point to a larger picture, pointing to it also is that pre-1990 take, the nuclear university, the effort to scale down nuclear weaponry, and the huge sums of money needed to effect these programs, programs which well-trained professionals still maintain were sacrificed because of what turned out to be relatively minor quarrels with first Iran and then in 1990 with Kuwait. Indeed a close look at events in the region that have occurred over the last thirty years reveals a picture in which
appear the faint outlines of a conspiracy between Iran, Iraq, and Syria-and possibly Lybia and the Sudan-the purpose of which can only be the limiting of American power in the Middle East and eventually the elimination of Israel as a state. And the addition of small nuclear weapons to the mix adds nightmarish possibilities.
Observers who persistently take events at face value say this is unlikely. Yet the probability of a conspiracy after a thirty-year long succession of losses by these states to Israel is so high that it is to be wondered at why the CIA and other intelligence entities never made more of the scores of otherwise inexplicable events that have occurred over the last twenty years in the Middle East, as well as in America, that point to, rather than away from a conspiracy-the abrupt betrayal of the President’s father, for instance.
But the carelessness and the rashness of this Administration does not end here. While ignoring these warning signs, the Bush team dismissed entirely the implications arising from the term "asymmetrical warfare," which is what the world is now witnessing in Iraq and of course saw in the events of 9/11. This term is not new. It’s been around for years. But it’s not a term the Bush administration, being a scion of America’s military/industrial complex, likes to use because it means that fixed, deterrent missile-based weapons systems and uniformed armies in the field, are becoming dinosaurs. Now, because weapons are smaller, more mobile, yet more lethal, there exist new strategies that any anonymous, cyber-based entity can employ. Uniformed armies in the field are becoming a liability because when they interact with civilian populations, they encourage rather than discourage resistence. Nor does the capture of Saddam Hussein make much difference to the picture. The fact is, as a prisoner of war, he is in the safest possible place. He’s not on the run, doesn’t have to worry over bounty hunters, and the U.S. is paying the bill.
The duty of disciplined observers is to present facts, not interpret them. But some situations are so imbued with circumstantial evidence that their implications virtually become facts in themselves. This is one of those situations, and it presents two pictures, one of how and why the Bush Administration has acted as it has, and the other, the larger of the two, of an effort by Iraq
and others to defeat Israel. As disturbing as the first picture is, the second is far more so, for it
suggests that the Iraqis did develop nuclear weapons, and that since these weapons are not in Iraq, they must have either been moved or manufactured elsewhere, possibly in engineering factories which we know were set up in the U.S. by Iraqis during the 1980's.
To say that all this is improbable, when in fact it is highly probable, is to ignore the lessons of the history of warfare. Given that the elimination of American power in the Middle East must necessarily precede military action against Israel, and given the inevitability of worst-case scenarios during times such as these, it is highly probable that at least some of the nuclear WMD sought by the Bush administration are in fact on American soil.
END
posted by Donald Shea-Wood at 7:35 AM
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