Recently in Iraq Category

Revelations in Ron Suskind's Book: "The Way of the World"

Pulitzer prize winning author Ron Suskind recently came out with a book called "The Way of the World". The book is a hodge podge of several stories with some connection to the "war on terror". There are several new revelations in the book which are very important and should be receiving more attention in the mainstream. The revelations are (in no particular order):

The British foreign intelligence agency MI-6 made contact with the head of Iraqi Intelligence Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti before the war and learned from him that Iraq had no WMDs. He also explained Saddam's motivation for wanting to trick Iran into thinking that he did. Given the importance of Iraq's chemical weapons in avoiding defeat in the Iran-Iraq war this is understandable.

This information was passed on to the Bush administration months before the start of the war. It also corroborates the information given to the CIA by the Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri saying the same thing. The Sabri case and many other facts relating to this are described on the previous post on this blog The Bush Administration's WMD Case for the Iraq War: Intelligence Sought to Justify a Decision Already Made. This further information from Suskind reinforces the conclusion of that post, that Weapons of Mass Destruction were not the primary motivation on the part of the Bush administration for wanting to invade Iraq.
Suskind goes on to recount how the letter revealed in 2003 (purported to have been written in 2001) from Habbush to Saddam describing Iraqi involvement with the 9/11 hijackers was a forgery ordered by either the White House or the Vice President's office.

This claim is most important for possible legal action against either Cheney or Bush because there is a law saying that the CIA cannot be used to propagandize the population of the US itself.
Iran contacted the United States in 2003 through the British offering to work against Al Qaeda working out of Iran. The US ended up snubbing these efforts. In an interview on Democracy Now, Ron Suskind describes the relevance of this and how it sheds light on the Iraq war for being a behavior modifying example for rogue states:
Here, we have an extraordinary moment in 2003. You know, you talk about why did we go into Iraq. Clearly, when you talk to neocons, what they do come up with is that it was a great experiment in behaviorism. The view was Saddam Hussein was actually an easy mark, that he was captive and toothless. That was the view. And we'll make an example of him to show other rogue dictators not to express similar temerity in challenging America. That was the concept, especially in terms of the fact that WMD are now carried on civil technology. You can't stop these dictators from getting weapons of mass destruction. There wasn't a way essentially to stop that from happening, so the word in the White House documents is, how do we dissuade them, other people? Saddam would have been--that's the idea--the example.

Now, interestingly, what happens at this point is, you know, as we are moving to war in this period, this snubbing of Saddam Hussein, rather, this making an example of Saddam, actually has a yield, Amy. The Iranians, once we have 150,000 troops in Iraq, are like, my goodness, well, their behavior is actually getting shaped. They say to the British, who they still have relationships with, they say, "You know, maybe it's time for us to meet with the Americans." And they all but crawl across broken glass to say, "Can we help, at this point? You know, we get it, alright?" Interestingly, they were ready to help with al-Qaeda, which had a group inside of Iran under house arrest. The Shura Council at that point was talking to a group of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia about buying Russian suitcase nukes. All of that, of course, got people very agitated. Iran also said, "We can help with Iraq. We can help with Afghanistan. We know these countries."

What happened is, at this point, a CIA chief flies over there. He's not used to doing these sorts of missions. He's late in the flight. He gets the wrong hotel...

...Ultimately, we end up snubbing the Iranians and all but creating--at this moment, remember, this is the "real men go to Tehran" moment for the administration. We've snubbed the Iranians and all but create the oppositional Iran that has caused such havoc in the years since.
This adds further evidence to the willingness to cooperate demonstrated by the pre-Ahmedinajad Khatami regime which was snubbed and ignored by the Bush administration. Another example is described in the following post outlining the grand bargain deal offered by the Iranians to the Americans through the Swiss.
Joe Wippl, who was the CIA chief of station in Germany advised the German intelligence agency not to allow the CIA to have access to the now infamous Iraqi informer Curveball. He was the former taxi driver who gave the bogus information about the mobile biological weapons labs. More is said about him in the HIPJ Iraq WMD post.

Ron Suskind conjectures, albeit without conclusive evidence, that Wippl told the Germans this at the behest of Vice President's office and the Defense Intelligence Agency who wanted to cover up how shoddy of a source curveball was. The Vice President's office later recommended Wippl for congressional liaison from the CIA, a "plum job". Unnamed sources in Suskind's book speculate that this was a reward for telling the Germans not to hand over curveball to the CIA.

There are two long interviews with Suskind about the book on Democracy Now.

Posted on September 07, 2008 | Comments? (0)

The Bush Administration's WMD Case for the Iraq War: Intelligence Sought to Justify a Decision Already Made

Current US strategy in Iraq is dependent on why the war was waged in the first place. If it was for neutralizing weapons of mass destruction programs, and removing a potential base and allies for terrorists then the strategy today will be substantially different than if the goal was to promote a regime pliable to western access to the region's resources.

The goal of this post is to analyze the evidence that was available before the war demonstrating that there was a credible threat of weapons of mass destruction development by the government of Iraq. The conclusion reached is that the evidence was so shoddy that it is next to impossible to believe that this was what motivated those who most ardently pushed for war, ie Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. Instead the Bush administration used whatever evidence it could find to justify a decision to invade Iraq that they had already made.

In the years since 2003 many reports and good books, most notably "Hubris" by David Corn and Michael Isikoff, have emerged painting a clearer picture of whether this really could have been the casus belli for war in the minds of the instigators. In the extended entry a summary of this material is given. If this evidence convinces us that WMD couldn't have really been the driving force for war, we can go on to analyze what was.

Continue reading The Bush Administration's WMD Case for the Iraq War: Intelligence Sought to Justify a Decision Already Made .

Posted on July 08, 2008 | Comments? (0)

KSG Article: "Playing Favorites on Dictators Robs U.S. of High Ground"

There was a good article written last year by Robert Rotberg, professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and president of the World Peace Foundation in a Chicago Tribune op-ed in 2007 called "Playing Favorites on Dictators Robs U.S. of High Ground".

Should we behave cynically, as so many nations do, and simply befriend those countries that can supply oil or gas, or can help us battle terrorism?

Washington backs Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf -- who was favored going into national elections this weekend -- despite his military origins and, at best, quasi-democratic tendencies. U.S. officials figure that without Musharraf, the battle against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan would be lost, and Al Qaeda, now based in northwestern Pakistan, would become even stronger.

The U.S. lavishly supports President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt despite the fact that ordinary Egyptians have few human rights, fundamental freedoms are ignored and democracy is honored more in the breach than in reality. The U.S. State Department occasionally clucks disapproval of Mubarak's excesses but keeps on showering aid. Without him, the U.S. fears, Muslim fundamentalists would govern Egypt and join hands with Osama bin Laden and his ilk.

Earlier we befriended President Islam Karimov, another strong-minded non-democratic ruler, in Uzbekistan. We needed his help in the war in neighboring Afghanistan. However, when he brutalized his own people, massacring hundreds at Andijan in 2005, we were critical. Karimov retaliated by denying the U.S. continued use of a convenient Uzbek air base.

In late September, Bush welcomed President Kurbanguli Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan to the White House with a great show of bonhomie. But Turkmenistan is as depraved a country as Myanmar, and Berdymukhamedov, who assumed office earlier this year, seems to be continuing his predecessor's tight control of the long-deprived Turkmen citizenry. Admittedly, Turkmenistan has oodles of natural gas in its corner of the Caspian Sea, and Washington seeks to have that gas exported through Turkey, not Russia (which now buys trillions of cubic feet at special rates).

The US support for such regimes is especially pertinent when analyzing wars, such as in Iraq or Kosovo, that some try to justify on humanitarian grounds.

Posted on June 07, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Imperial Life in the Emerald City

One of the best books written on the occupation is "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Washington post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, first released in 2006. It focuses on policy mistakes, the failure of reconstruction, economic policies and privatization pursued by the American occupation in the first year following the invasion. There are a number of good talks by Chandrasekaran discussing the book available on the web. This one, given in Connecticut in 2007, is from Fora.tv:

Focused on three topics:

First - The primacy the occupation placed on loyalty rather qualifications in its personel. Getting people in their early twenties with no experience to open the Baghdad stock market and vet the ministries for militia members.

Second - The weird surreal conditions within the green zone compared to the rest of Iraq.

Third - The agenda of privatization rather than a new deal economic program they undertook in a country with 50%+ unemployment.

There is another fora talk and a very good talk at the Miller center for public affairs.

Posted on May 14, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Kissinger's New Domino Theory

Former secretary of state, national security adviser and (!) nobel peace prize winner Henry Kissinger recently gave an interview to the Hoover Institute where he basically spelled out a new domino theory, although he does not use that exact term, justifying continued American involvement in Iraq.

The exchange starting at 20 seconds is:

Interviewer: America is exhausted by the war, every poll indicates that, but a political solution in Iraq remains elusive, at best. What is to be done?

Kissinger: I can only give the answer in terms of reality... this is not a war over Iraq, it is a war over radical Jihad and its assault on the secular order as we understand it. They won't stop. So if we withdraw from exhaustion the crisis will move to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, maybe India. Any place there is a substantial Islamic population that become more radicalised.

Kissinger has endorsed McCain, and they seem to be in step in justifying continued involvement in Iraq based on the presence of groups like Al Qaeda, using the actions of these terrorist groups to bolster their agenda in the region.

Jon Stewart touched on the flipside of this equation in an interview with McCain on last night's "the daily show": Bin Laden using the Bush administration policies as a recruiting tool:

Starting around 4:30:

Jon Stewart: Don't you think that these past few years, in terms of a recruiting tool for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda...

Let's say Al Qaeda is trying to fire up their base, isn't President Bush kind of, and our policies there their "reverend Wright" that they throw out there to rally their troops? Isn't he the guy they throw out there and inflame their base and get support? Don't you actually think he's been ok for Al Qaeda?

Stewart is only pointing out the obvious, echoing experts like Michael Scheuer who have said that the Iraq war was the christmas gift Bin Laden never would have expected and that the war has validated everything bin Laden said.

There is a sinister symmetry here, each group using the threat of the other to rally their base and bolster their agendas. Will the world keep letting them?

Posted on May 08, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Three Estimates on Civilian Casualties on Iraq

There have been a number of studies attempting to estimate the number of Iraqi casualties since the U.S. invasion of 2003. Three such studies, supposedly using accepted practices of gathering casualty figures, come up with very different numbers.

The first study published is by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in British medical Journal "The Lancet" in 2006.

http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf

This study put the figure (its best estimate) at 650,000 excess deaths - with 600,000 being due to violence.

The second study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in January 2008 claims that the number of excess violent deaths from the invasion until sometime in 2006 was around 150,000.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMsa0707782

Both this and the Lancet study relied on household surveys. I don't understand how it is that they can vary by a factor of four, each claiming that the other's result is extremely unlikely.

The third study was conducted by the British polling agency "Opinion Research Business" also made a survey of households in Summer 2007 and came up with a figure of 1.2 million.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,1207545.story

http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78

So here we have three studies (albeit with the third including one more year than the previous two) which vary in their estimates by almost an order of magnitude. How do we properly discern which are the proper figures? Any of the three is a tragedy.

Posted on March 25, 2008 | Comments? (0)

Micheal Berg Interview about Zarqawi

Here is an excerpt from a rather remarkable interview with Micheal Berg, the father of Nicholas Berg, a contractor beheaded in Iraq by a man believed to be Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

O'BRIEN: I have to say, sir, I'm surprised. I know how devastated you and your family were, frankly, when Nick was killed in such a horrible, and brutal and public way.

BERG: Well, you shouldn't be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.

O'BRIEN: No, no. And we have spoken before, and I'm well aware of that. But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, 'I'm glad he's dead, the man who killed my son'?

BERG: No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?

O'BRIEN: There have been family members who have weighed in, victims, who've said that they don't think he's a martyr in heaven, that they think, frankly, he went straight to hell ...

You know, you talked about the fact that he's become a political figure. Are you concerned that he becomes a martyr and a hero and, in fact, invigorates the insurgency in Iraq?

BERG: Of course. When Nick was killed, I felt that I had nothing left to lose. I'm a pacifist, so I wasn't going out murdering people. But I am -- was not a risk-taking person, and yet now I've done things that have endangered me tremendously.

I've been shot at. I've been showed horrible pictures. I've been called all kinds of names and threatened by all kinds of people, and yet I feel that I have nothing left to lose, so I do those things.

Now, take someone who in 1991, who maybe had their family killed by an American bomb, their support system whisked away from them, someone who, instead of being 59, as I was when Nick died, was 5-years-old or 10-years-old. And then if I were that person, might I not learn how to fly a plane into a building or strap a bag of bombs to my back?

That's what is happening every time we kill an Iraqi, every time we kill anyone, we are creating a large number of people who are going to want vengeance. And, you know, when are we ever going to learn that that doesn't work?

The article is currently at this cnn site and a complete transcript is included in the extended entry page.

Continue reading Micheal Berg Interview about Zarqawi.

Posted on June 08, 2006 | Comments? (0)

Carlyle Group, Iraq Reparations and Conflicts of Interests

Naomi Klein has an article in The Nation describing how James Baker, the man placed in charge of convincing the world to forgive Iraq's debts by the Bush administration, is also part of the Carlyle group which has basically made a deal with Kuwait to make sure that Iraq pays its debts.

When President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq's debt on December 5, 2003, he called Baker's job "a noble mission." At the time, there was widespread concern about whether Baker's extensive business dealings in the Middle East would compromise that mission, which is to meet with heads of state and persuade them to forgive the debts owed to them by Iraq. Of particular concern was his relationship with merchant bank and defense contractor the Carlyle Group, where Baker is senior counselor and an equity partner with an estimated $180 million stake.

Until now, there has been no concrete evidence that Baker's loyalties are split, or that his power as Special Presidential Envoy--an unpaid position--has been used to benefit any of his corporate clients or employers. But according to documents obtained by The Nation, that is precisely what has happened. Carlyle has sought to secure an extraordinary $1 billion investment from the Kuwaiti government, with Baker's influence as debt envoy being used as a crucial lever.

The full article is available by clicking on comments.

Continue reading Carlyle Group, Iraq Reparations and Conflicts of Interests.

Posted on October 13, 2004 | Comments? (0)

How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence

The NYTimes ran a long story describing the Administration's handling of the intelligence regarding Aluminium Tubes in Iraq. Condoleeza Rice said on CNN: "We do know that there have been shipments...into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited...for nuclear weapons programs." There, in fact, were differing assessments of what the Tubes were for, and this article catalogs them:

Far from "group think," American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A "holy war" is how one Congressional investigator described it. But if the opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions.

Precisely how knowledge of the intelligence dispute traveled through the upper reaches of the administration is unclear. Ms. Rice knew about the debate before her Sept. 2002 CNN appearance, but only learned of the alternative rocket theory of the tubes soon afterward, according to two senior administration officials. President Bush learned of the debate at roughly the same time, a senior administration official said...

The tubes episode is a case study of the intersection between the politics of pre-emption and the inherent ambiguity of intelligence. The tubes represented a scientific puzzle and rival camps of experts clashed over the tiniest technical details in secure rooms in Washington, London and Vienna. The stakes were high, and they knew it.

The complete text of the article is available here for the time being, and is also copied in the extended entry of this post, which can be accessed by clicking on comments. Definitely worth the (rather long) read.

Continue reading How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence.

Posted on October 05, 2004 | Comments? (0)

Baghdad Year Zero

Naomi Klein has a good article in the September Harper's discussing the "reconstruction" efforts and ideology in Iraq.

Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.

The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based.

The full article is also included in the extended section if you click on comments.

Continue reading Baghdad Year Zero.

Posted on September 29, 2004 | Comments? (0)