2003 Invasion of Iraq: Encyclopedia II - 2003 Invasion of Iraq - Rationale

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Rationale

Prior to George W. Bush being elected president, several members of the Bush team, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz wrote urging an invasion of Iraq as part of a larger Middle East policy. One document, entitled "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century" [24], was written in September 2000, stating 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the seeming relative success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Bush administration felt that it had sufficient military justification and public support in the United States for further operations against perceived threats in the Middle East. The relations between some coalition members and Iraq had never improved since 1991, and the nations remained in a state of low-level conflict marked by American and British air-strikes, sanctions, and threats against Iraq. Iraqi radar had also locked onto and anti-aircraft guns and missiles were fired upon coalition airplanes enforcing the northern and southern no-fly zones, which had been implemented after the Gulf War in 1991.

Throughout 2002, the U.S. administration made it clear that removing Saddam Hussein from power was a major goal, although it offered to accept major changes in Iraqi military and foreign policy in lieu of this. Specifically, the stated justification for the invasion included Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction, links with terrorist organizations and human rights violations in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein government, issues that are detailed below.

To that end, the stated goals of the invasion, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were:

• Self-defense
  • find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, weapons programs, and terrorists
  • collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists
• Humanitarian
  • end sanctions and to deliver humanitarian support (According to Madeline Albright, half a million Iraqi children had died because of sanctions.)
• United Nations Security Council Resolution
  • Resolution 1205, made in 1999.
• Regime Change
  • end the Saddam Hussein government
  • help Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule
• Other
  • secure Iraq's oil fields and other resources

Many staff and supporters within the Bush administration had other, more ambitious goals for the war as well. Many claimed that the war could act as a catalyst for democracy and peace in the Middle East, and that once Iraq became democratic and prosperous other nations would quickly follow suit due to this demonstration effect, and thus the social environment that allowed terrorism to flourish would be eliminated. However, for diplomatic, bureaucratic reasons these goals were played down in favor of justifications that Iraq represented a specific threat to the United States and to international law. Little evidence was presented actually linking the government of Iraq to al-Qaeda (see below).

Opponents of the Iraq war disagreed with many of the arguments presented by the administration, attacking them variously as being untrue, inadequate to justify a preemptive war, or likely to have results different from the administration's intentions. Further, they asserted various alternate reasons for the invasion. Different groups asserted that the war was fought primarily for:

• Energy economics
  • to gain control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market (since 2000, Iraq had used the Euro as its oil export currency)
  • to ensure the US had military control over the region's hydrocarbon reserves as a lever to control other countries that depend on it
  • to assure that the revenue from Iraqi oil would go primarily to American interests
  • to lower the price of oil for American consumers
• Defense and construction special interests
  • to channel money to defense and construction interests
• Public perception
  • to maintain the wartime popularity that the President enjoyed due to his response to the 11 September attacks, and thus distract attention from other domestic political issues on which he was politically vulnerable (in contrast to his father whose wartime popularity quickly faded when the electorate began to focus on the economy)
• Ideological, emotional reasons
  • in pursuance of the PNAC's stated strategic goal of "unquestionable [American] geopolitical preeminence"
  • a chance for George W. Bush to get revenge against Saddam Hussein for attempting to have his father, President George H. W. Bush, assassinated during a visit to Kuwait in 1993.
  • to satisfy President George H.W. Bush, Cheney, and other members of the first Bush administration who had not removed Hussein during the first Gulf War and wanted an opportunity to remove Hussein from power, even though removing Hussein from power was not an objective of the first war.

For example, U.S. war planners were interested in U.S. military domination of the oil-rich Gulf region, the world's top supply of this most important resource, according to U.S. General Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction in Iraq, explaining that the U.S. occupation of Iraq was comparable to the Phillipine model: "Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East" (Interview on National Journal 2004, archived at: www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=5819&fcategory_desc=Under Reported, and at www.alternet.org/story/17923/; See alsoPhilippine-American War). "One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)", "I hope they're there a long time....And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade", Garner added (Interview on National Journal 2004, archived at: www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=5819&fcategory_desc=Under Reported).

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Weapons of mass destruction

Ultimately, the Iraq war was presented as largely being a case of overthrowing a regime which did not fully cooperate with international inspectors' task of passively observing the destruction of weapons identified by Iraq, fulling terms of the treaty ending the first Gulf War. Administration officials, especially with the United States Department of State led by a traditional dove (with outstanding military background) Colin Powell agressively made the case for war as universally acceptable to as many nations as possible. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense stated in an interview on 28 May 2003 in Vanity Fair that 'For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction'. [25] The United States and its European allies had provided the regime of Saddam Hussein with its chemical and biological weapons (Sunday Herald (Scotland) September 8, 2002 ( [26] ; Washington Post December 30, 2002; Newsday November 27, 1996) The reports of the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, which oversees American export policy, reveal that the U.S., under the successive administrations of Reagan and Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992 (Sunday Herald (Scotland) September 8, 2002 ( [27] ; Sunday Herald (Scotland) 13 June 2004, [28] ). The American Type Culture Collection, a nonprofit Rockville, Md, made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing pathogens to Iraq between 1985 and 1989, according to congressional records (Newsday November 27, 1996). The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: “The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think it’s a devastating record” (Sunday Herald (Scotland) 13 June 2004, [29] ). Between 1993 and 1999, the United Nations Security Council tasked UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission), composed of several international teams of weapons inspectors headed by Rolf Ekéus and Richard Butler, with finding and destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction UNSCOM.

Before the attack, the head UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, clearly stated that his teams had been unable to find any evidence of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons in Iraq. However, the discovery of illegal missiles discovered by United Nations weapons inspectors which were ultimately deemed in violation of United Nations Resolution 687 (1991), called the Al-Samoud IIs, raised serious questions: these rockets could possibly narrowly pass the allowed range of 150 km (93 miles), though without carrying any load. Ultimately though, they were determined to be in violation of the terms to which Saddam Hussein agreed in order to cease the hostilities of the Persian Gulf War and thus, deemed prohibited and ordered destroyed by the United Nations Security Council. Retrospectively, some time after the attack, Hans Blix expressed doubts that the nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons had existed [30], [31], but never speculated whether the discovery of the illegal Al-Samoud IIs could be a trigger for justifying war or not. Former top American weapons inspector to Iraq, Scott Ritter, a longtime advocate of more thorough weapons inspections previously and considered an anti-Iraq hardliner, said that he was now absolutely convinced Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction [32] which contradicts earlier 1998 statements by Scott Ritter regarding this issue.

On August 26, 1998, approximately two months prior to United Nations inspectors' ejection from Iraq, Scott Ritter resigned from his position rather than participate in what he called the "illusion of arms control." In his resignation letter to Ambassador Butler, [33] Ritter wrote: "The Special Commission was created for the purpose of disarming Iraq. As part of the Special Commission team, I have worked to achieve a simple end: the removal, destruction or rendering harmless of Iraq's proscribed weapons. The sad truth is that Iraq today is not disarmed ... UNSCOM has good reason to believe that there are significant numbers of proscribed weapons and related components and the means to manufacture such weapons unaccounted for in Iraq today ... Iraq has lied to the Special Commission and the world since day one concerning the true scope and nature of its proscribed programs and weapons systems. This lie has been perpetuated over the years through systematic acts of concealment. It was for the purpose of uncovering Iraq's mechanism of concealment, and in doing so gaining access to hidden weapons components and weapons programs, that you created a dedicated capability to investigate Iraq's concealment activities, which I have had the privilege to head."

Furthermore, on September 7, 1998, approximately one month prior to United Nations weapons inspectors' ejection from Iraq, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee, [34] Scott Ritter was asked by John McCain (R, AZ) whether UNSCOM had intelligence suggesting that Iraq had assembled the components for three nuclear weapons and all that it lacked was the fissile material. Ritter replied: "The Special Commission has intelligence information, which suggests that components necessary for three nuclear weapons exists, lacking the fissile material. Yes, sir." As Paul Leventhal, head of the Nuclear Control Institute remarked in response to Ritter's statement,[35] "Iraq could be only days or weeks away from having nuclear weapons if it acquires the needed plutonium or bomb-grade uranium on the black market or by other means." Ritter also said that, absent UNSCOM, Iraq could reconstruct its chemical and biological weapons programs in six months, as well as its missile program. He said that Iraq had a plan for achieving a missile breakout within six months of receiving the signal from Saddam Hussein.

It is unclear what Scott Ritter believes happened to that capability he said Saddam Hussein had in 1998 as compared to that capability he believes Saddam Hussein had after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, considering United Nations weapons inspectors were absent from Iraq from 1998 to 2002.

No weapons of mass destruction were found by the Iraq Survey Group, headed by inspector David Kay. Kay, who resigned as the Bush administration's top weapons inspector in Iraq, said U.S. intelligence services owed President Bush an explanation for having concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. [36] However, the team claims to have found evidence of low-level WMD programs — a claim hotly disputed by many, with the Biosecurity Journal referring to the Biological Warfare (BW) claims as a "worst case analysis" [37].

The Iraq Survey Group under Bush-appointed inspector David Kay reported in the 'Interim Progress Report' on 2003 October 3 the following key points: "We have not yet found stocks of weapons," difficulty in explaining why, clandestine laboratories suitable for "preserving BW expertise" which contained equipment subject to UN monitoring, a prison laboratory complex which Kay describes as "possibly used in human testing of BW agents," strains of bacteria kept in one scientist's home (including a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B), twelve-year-old documents and small parts concerning uranium enrichment found in a scientist's home [38], partially declared UAVs, capability to produce a type of fuel useful for Scud missiles, a scientist who had drawn plans for how to make longer-range missiles [39], and attempts to acquire missile technology from North Korea, and destroyed documents of unknown significance. [40]. The report categorized most biological agents as "BW-applicable" or "BW-capable"; the report mentions nothing that was being used in such a context. Chemical weapons are referred to in a similar fashion. The nuclear program, according to the report, had not done any work since 1991, but had attempted to retain scientists and documentation from it in case sanctions were ever dropped.

Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee during his oral report the following: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion — although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war." [41]

Dr. Kay's team concluded that Iraq had the production capacity and know-how to produce a great deal more chemical and biological weaponry when international economic sanctions were lifted, a policy change which was actively being sought by France, Germany and Russia. Kay also believes that a large but undetermined amount of the former Iraqi government's WMD program had been moved to Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion. [42]

Hundreds of tons of high explosive dual-use materials that could be used to detonate fissile material to start the chain reaction in a nuclear weapon were sealed by the IAEA in January 2003. In March 2003, UN Inspectors never checked the facility, but only the locked bunker doors. The Pentagon released satellite photographs on March 17, 2003 of large tractor trailers at the sealed site, appearing to remove materials, just prior the invasion. Ten days after U.S. forces first reached the site and after the US 101st Airborne Division secured the surrounding area, April 13, 2003, Major Austin Pearson's 25 memmber Task Force Bullet from the US 3rd Infantry Division started to remove 250 Tons of munitions. On April 18, 2003, embedded journalists from Minnesota US based television crew videotaped IAEA sealed barrels in Al-Qaqaa. Much material was eventually detonated or used to detonate other discovered munitions. [43] The Associated Press published a report available through Fox News on October 25, 2005 from experts indicating just 5 pounds of two types of these plastic explosives packs enough power to destroy a dozen airliners. [44]

The United Nations announced a report on March 2, 2004 from the weapons inspection teams stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction of any significance after 1994. [45]

In a May 26, 2004 US nationally syndicated talk show, Neil Boortz, engaged a US national audience with discussions of a Sarin gas warhead used against US soldiers in an IED. [[46]] The Boston Daily News published an article concerning this (poorly implemented) WMD attack against US troops by insurgents. [47] This failed chemical weapons attack was also noted by The Associated Press and reported by Fox News later that year. [48]

In a June 2004 interview with Time Magazine, former president Bill Clinton said, "I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over." He added that he supported the invasion because "there was a lot of stuff unaccounted for." [49]

In a July 2, 2004 article published by The Associated Press and reported by Fox News that more WMD not destroyed by the Iraqi Regime were discovered in South Central Iraq by Polish Allies. Sarin Gas warheads dating back to the last Iran-Iraq war were trying to be purchased by terrorists for $5000 a warhead. The Polish troops purchased items on June 23, 2004. The U.S. military acknowledged that "while two of the rockets tested positive for sarin, traces of the agent were so small and deteriorated as to be virtually harmless" and that "These rounds were determined to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces" [50] In May 2004, a similar sarin gas shell was unsuccessfully used in an IED against US forces in Iraq. [51]

On August 2, 2004 President Bush stated "Knowing what I know today we still would have gone on into Iraq. He had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction. He had terrorists ties … the decision I made is the right decision. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."[52]

On October 6, 2004 Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, appearing before the United States Senate Armed Services Committee announced that the group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had produced any weapons of mass destruction since 1991, when UN sanctions were imposed and furthermore, Iraq had been incapable of doing so. The report noted that Saddam had made it his primary goal to have sanctions lifted by whatever means necessary and that whether or not Saddam Hussein was, indeed, "contained" was questionable considering dozens of instances in which prohibited material had entered Iraq through several nefarious means such as front companies and other questionable means. From the report: "[Saddam] wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted."[53]

The report concluded in its Key Findings that: "The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them." [54] (PDF)

It also noted that "Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of [Iraq's WMD revival] policy. All senior level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary."

CNN reported on October 12, 2004 that satellite photographs revealed the disassembly of large buildings previously holding IAEA sealed dual-use materials. Also, previously non-destroyed nuclear materials from Iraq have been appearing in various foreign countries after the start of the war. [55]

On January 12, 2005, US military forces, having located no weapons of mass destruction, formally abandoned the search.

In March of 2005 there was an addition to Duelfer's Report titled Addendums to the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD [56] In it Charles Duelfer made the statement that "Whether Syria received military items from Iraq for safekeeping or other reasons has yet to be determined. There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to warrant further investigation. ... ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war. It should be noted that no information from debriefing of Iraqis in custody supports this possibility. ... Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials." [57]

In April of 2005, the Iraq Survey Group's final report "found no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD," and ruled out any government-sanctioned movement of banned weapons to Syria. [58]

The current consensus view of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction seems similar to that portrayed by Hussein Kamel in 1995 and that of Imad Khadduri [59]: that Iraq had almost completely destroyed its programs, but sought to retain as much knowledge and information as it could so that, should sanctions ever end, the programs could start over quickly.

As of May 2005, small quantities of chemically degraded mustard gas had been found in old munitions. These are generally regarded as left-overs from the pre-sanction era before the 1991 Gulf War were not destroyed by the Iraqi regime.

The general consensus is that the intelligence community, including the CIA and other foreign services, failed to provide an accurate picture of the WMD program in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The U.S. government and the Bush administration have not yet taken official stances on the intelligence failures, but Congressional investigations, primarily under Democratic leadership, were either underway or forming in the spring of 2005.

On June 8, 2005, retired 4-star general and former Secretary of State in the Bush administration Colin Powell, appeared on The Daily Show and stated regarding Weapons of Mass Destructions in Iraq: "Now where we got the intelligence wrong, dead wrong, is that we thought he also had existing stockpiles, and now we know that those are not there." [60] [61]

On August 14, 2005, The Washington Post published an article titled, Iraqi Chemical Stash Uncovered [62]. The presentation identifies a chemical weapons facility discovered in Iraq and chemical weapons uncovered were in the process of being classified. The time of instantiation was unknown. The article incorrectly indicated that Chemican Weapons was not used against allied forces in Iraq (ignoring the May 22, 2004 IED attack), ignores the July 2, 2004 discovery of Sarin Gas warheads and launchers by Polish Allies, and even contradicts the self-same article by indicating that chemical weapons were not found in Iraq.

On August 21, 2005, CNN aired a special presentation titled, 'Dead Wrong:' Inside an Intelligence Meltdown[63]. The presentation featured clips of pre-war speeches, interviews with important people involved in this matter and received high ratings[64][65][66]. Former head of the Iraq Survey Group David Kay was also interviewed and stated: "We can't afford to be wrong a second time. How many people in the world are going to believe us when we say it's a "slam dunk," to use George Tenet's terms? Iran has nuclear weapons. The answer is going to be, you said that before."[67]

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Sanctions

However effective, UN sanctions fostered a growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq. International popular opinion seemed to shift in favour of lifting the sanctions and finding diplomatic alternatives such as targeted sanctions that might be as effective, but which would not inadvertently affect the Iraqi populace. Temporary solutions, such as the Oil for Food program, an easing of the sanctions on a controlled basis, had limited success in the face of corruption in the Iraqi government and UN officials involved in the program [68]. Essentially, harsh sanctions originally intended to be temporary could not be kept in place indefinitely.

During the UN Sanctions, France and Russia had been selling and transporting advanced electronic military equipment to Iraq, violating international law. The discoveries reported on August 6, 2003 of MIG's with advanced electronics sold during the 1990's illustrate the difficulty in recovering evidence of UN sanction violations.[69]

Allegations have been made that the Oil for Food program, designed to help poor Iraqi people with food and medical supplies diverted money to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups prior the invasion of Iraq. [70]

Other allegations include that money from the Oil for Food program was used to purchase anti-aircraft weapons from Russia, used to shoot down allied planes used to enforce the UN no-fly rules, violating conditions for cessation of agression between Iraq and the Allies. [71]

The Oil for Food program was riddled with scandle, showing high level contacts in countries leading the effort against the Allies (France [72], China and Russia [73]) all continually taking significant bribes from Sadaam's regime in order to get the leverage in the UN to cease the sanctions and keep encourage members of the security council militarily enforcing UN resolutions.

Saddam's persistent efforts to sway certain UN Security Council members with money diverted from the Oil for Food program meant that sanctions may have reached the limit of their usefulness.[74][75]

After the fall of Sadaam's regime, an Iraqi official in charge of leading the Oil for Food investigation was killed in a car bomb. [76]

The credibility of the United Nations was sufficiently undermined after the invasion with these revelations [77] as well as credibility of the non-allied governments receiving the graft and vocally campaigning against the allies.

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Human Rights

Another key rationale for the war was ending Saddam Hussein's nearly 40-year track record of abuse of human rights (see Human rights in Saddam's Iraq). Some critics called this justification self-serving, since the US government did not do much to prevent or to punish those crimes while they were happening.

With the Iran-Iraq War escalating in 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, at the time presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan, was dispatched to Iraq to meet with Hussein and discuss "topics of mutual interest". Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post reported that the United States “in a shift in policy, has informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with Iran would be ‘contrary to U.S. interests’ and has made several moves to prevent that result.” Rumsfeld met with Hussein and then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz several times in late 1983 and early 1984 amidst rumors of suspected chemical and biological weapons use against Iranian troops. The UN released a number of reports in 1984 citing the following:

On March 5th, the US State Department issued a statement saying “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.” Rumsfeld resigned in May of 1984 and US diplomatic relations were fully restored by November of that year.

From 1986 to 1989, Hussein embarked upon a policy of ethnic cleansing that cost the lives of an estimated 182,000 Kurds (see Al-Anfal Campaign). In 1988, the last year of the Iran-Iraq War, chemical weapons were used in the Halabja poison gas attack in which an estimated 5,000 Kurds were killed.

After the Persian Gulf War, the US government encouraged rebellions by the Shiites but did not intervene when Saddam crushed the rebels. [78] [79]

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch has argued that the justification of "human rights" for the war in Iraq does not meet appropriate standards for the level of suffering that it causes.[80]

Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson discussed the US human rights situation in post-invasion Iraq and Afghanistan, stating in an interview with Amy Goodman on Nov 22 2005 that:

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Libyan disarmament

Also included in the list of postwar justifications is Libya's agreement to abandon its WMD programs in December of 2003. Those who argue that this action was directly inspired by the invasion of Iraq point to a phone call Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says he had with Libya's leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi in April of 2003, in which he quotes Qadaffi as saying "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid." [81] Negotiations between Libya and the United States and Britain on disarmament began almost immediately thereafter. [82] On the other hand, Flynt Leverett (former senior director for Middle Eastern Affairs at the NSC) and Martin S. Indyk (former Clinton administration official) argue that the agreement was instead a result of good-faith negotiations. Libya had in principle agreed to surrender its programs in 1999.

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Purported Iraqi intelligence plots

David Harrison claims in the Telegraph to have found secret documents that purport to show Russian President Putin offering the use of assassins to Saddam's Iraqi regime to kill Western targets on November 27, 2000. [83] This story has disappeared from the media since it was first reported in April 2003; the documents themselves have never materialized.

U.S. government officials have claimed that after the invasion, Yemen and Jordan stopped Iraqi terroristic attacks against Western targets in those nations. U.S. intelligence also warned 10 other countries that small groups of Iraqi intelligence agents may be readying similar attacks. [84]

After the Beslan school hostage crisis, public school layouts and crisis plans were retrieved on a disk recovered during an Iraqi raid and had raised concerns in the United States. The information on the disks was "all publicly available on the Internet" and U.S. officials "said it was unclear who downloaded the information and stressed there is no evidence of any specific threats involving the schools."[85]

2003 Invasion of Iraq - Purported links between the government of Iraq and terrorist organizations

Several days prior to the 9-11 Attacks on the United States, Russian President Putin claims to have delivered a personal warning to President Bush concerning an imminent attack on the US by Sadaam's Iraqi regime. [86] Putin claims to have warned Washington, on several occasions that Saddam Hussein was planning terrorist attacks against the United States between September 11 and the allied invasion of Iraq. [87] Putin indicated, "the information was given to U.S. intelligence officers and that U.S. President George W. Bush expressed his gratitude to a top Russian intelligence official." According to the CNN article reporting this, "The United States... never mentioned the Russian intelligence in its arguments for going to war."

Saddam Hussein's regime had some contacts with terrorist organizations in the past. The Bush Administration mentioned these contacts frequently in the run-up to the war, even suggesting direct ties to al-Qaeda. Some even alleged that Saddam supported the attacks of 9/11, but this view that has not been confirmed by the evidence. And, according to the U.S. Intelligence Community's Kerr Group report of July 29, 2004, despite "a 'purposely aggressive approach' in conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links... [the U.S.] Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed."[88] Some newspapers in 1998 reported an "alliance" or "pact" between Saddam and al-Qaeda [89]. In January 1999, Newsweek magazine also reported statements by a Saudi intelligence officer that Saddam and al-Qaeda had formed an alliance. Network news organizations also picked up the story.[90] But by 2003 most news organizations were extremely skeptical of such claims; certainly no evidence of any "alliance" or "pact" ever emerged in the mainstream press. One January 2003 article in the San Jose Mercury News said the claim "stretches the analysis of U.S. intelligence agencies to, and perhaps beyond, the limit." [91]

After the invasion, in January of 2004, Secretary Powell stated "I have not seen [a] smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did." But by September 2005 Secretary Powell, when asked if there was any connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of 9/11, said "I have never seen a connection. I can't think otherwise, because I've never seen any evidence to suggest there was one."[20/20 Interview (9 September 2005)]. Various independent investigations into the question of an al-Qaeda connection by U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, FBI, and NSA concluded that there was no evidence of cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

Some unspecified information once perceived as "evidence" for a connection between the two turns out to have been disinformation coming from several sources, most notably an associate of Ahmed Chalabi who was given the code name "Curveball", and from captured al Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The Chalabi source has been thoroughly discredited, and the al Qaeda source has since recanted his story. Other al Qaeda leaders have claimed that there was no operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and indeed that Osama bin Laden had forbidden such a relationship with the Iraqi leader, whom he considered an infidel.

Some support for claims of collaboration between al Qaeda and the now deposed Iraqi government have come from weapons smuggler Mohamed Mansour Shahab, who said in an interview in the New Yorker magazine that he had been directed by the Iraqi intelligence community to organize, plan, and carry out up to nine terrorist attacks against American targets in the Middle East, including an attack similar to the one carried out on the USS Cole. [92]. Reporter Guy Dinmore questions his credibility however, writing in the London Financial Times: "it is apparent that the man is deranged. He claims to have killed 422 people, including two of his wives, and says he would drink the blood of his victims. He also has no explanation for why, although he was arrested two years ago, he only revealed his alleged links to al-Qaeda and Baghdad after the September 11 attacks." (22 May 2002 p. 13) Al Qaeda expert Jason Burke wrote after interviewing Shahab, "Shahab is a liar. He may well be a smuggler, and probably a murderer too, but substantial chunks of his story simply are not true."[93].

The only member of the original plot to destroy the World Trade Center to escape US law enforcement officials, the Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad shortly after the attacks in 1993. Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only alleged member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large after the investigation into the bombing where he fled to Iraq. After major fighting ceased U.S. forces discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, that allegedly show that the Iraqi government gave Yasin a house and monthly salary. [94]

FBI and CIA investigations in 1995 and 1996 concluded "that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack"; then-U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has since testified, "the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was Al Qaeda; not Iraq.... [T]he allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation." (911 Commission Hearing, 24 March 2004)[95]

Abbas al-Janabi, who served for fifteen years as personal assistant to Uday Hussein before defecting to United Kingdom, has often claimed that he knew of collaboration between the former Iraqi government and al Qaeda. Al-Janabi said that he had learned that Iraqi officials had visited Afghanistan and Sudan to strengthen ties with Al-Qaeda and he also claimed he knew of a facility near Baghdad where foreign fighters were trained and instructed by members of the Republican Guard and Mukhabarat. [96]. Salman Pak, a facility matching al-Janabi’s description, was captured by US Marines in Mid April of 2003 [97], but no evidence of al Qaeda presence at the camp has been found. Some claim that the camp was actually a counterterrorism facility built by the British in the mid 1980's but UN weapons inspectors, including Charles Duelfer believed it had been converted from its original purpose and was being used to train militants. [98] Inconsistencies in the stories of the Iraqi defectors have led U.S. officials, journalists, and investigators to conclude that the Salman Pak story was inaccurate. Al-Janabi and other Iraqi defectors who tell this story are associated with the Iraqi National Congress, an organization that has been accused of deliberately supplying false information to the US government in order to build support for regime change ([99]). "The INC’s agenda was to get us into a war," said Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News. "The really damaging stories all came from those guys, not the CIA. They did a really sophisticated job of getting it out there."[100] One senior U.S. official said that they had found "nothing to substantiate" the claim that al-Qaeda trained at Salman Pak.[101]

In April of 2001, the Czech Security Information Service reported a meeting between Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, an Iraqi Intelligence Service officer operating out of the Iraqi embassy in Prague, and a man they believed to be Mohamed Atta. The Czech report was based on a single eyewitness from Prague who is now generally considered unreliable. Nevertheless, this Prague connection was seen as a crucial link between Iraq and al Qaeda by proponents of collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission examined this evidence, saying that circumstantial evidence appeared to place Atta in Florida at the time, and that "The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting." The report concluded, "Based on the evidence available including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting we do not believe that such a meeting occurred." It also says that Czech intelligence indicates that al-Ani "was about 70 miles away from Prague" at the time that the meeting supposedly took place. [102], [103]

The Senate Report concludes that, while representatives of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had indeed met, an operational relationship was never realized and there was a deep sense of mistrust and dislike of one another. Osama Bin Laden was shown to view Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an "apostate regime." A British intelligence report [104] went so far as to say of Bin Laden "His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq."

The state-run Iraqi local paper Al-Nasiriya published an opinion piece praising Osama bin Laden that Senator Ernest Hollings interpreted as foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Senator Hollings read the opinion piece into the Congressional Record. [105] Nobody has offered any evidence that such "foreknowledge," if it existed at all on the part of the article's author, extended to Saddam's regime. Neither the 9/11 Commission Report nor the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq found this article worth mention.

In 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, concluded that there was no evidence of a "collaborative operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. [106] [107] This conclusion was consistent with the conclusions of all agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, according to documents released in 2005. Senator Carl Levin wrote that the documents "are additional compelling evidence that the Intelligence Community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary."[108]

Aside from the contentious allegations of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, the former government did have relationships with other militant organizations in the Middle East including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is known that some $10–15M total was paid to the families of suicide bombers, presented as compensation for the demolition of their homes in Israeli collective punishment operations. Abu Abbas (associate with the PLO and the Achille Lauro hijacking) was found in Iraq, and had been wanted for quite some time. In August 2002, Abu Nidal (attacks in Italy and elsewhere) died in Baghdad from gunshot wounds while facing treason charges under Saddam's government.

In 1998, Iraq plotted to blow up Radio Free Europe in Prague, for broadcasting opposition communications into Iraq. According to Jabir Salim, the consul and second secretary at the Iraq embassy in Prague, Saddam Hussein had allocated $150,000 to recruit and train individuals who would not be traceable back to Iraq. This plot was aborted in December 1998 when Salim defected in Prague, revealing details of the plot to the CIA, British MI-6 and Czech intelligence.

The now deposed Iraqi regime has also been accused of an assassination plot on former President George Bush. On April 14, 1993, it is charged that Iraq plotted to assassinate former President George Bush while he was visiting Kuwait. The assassins were Ra'ad al-Asadi and Wali al-Ghazali, two Iraqi nationals, who had been supplied with a car bomb. The plot was foiled when the two were captured in Kuwait City. The FBI learned that the two had been recruited by the Iraqi intelligence Service in Basra, Iraq, who also gave them the explosive devices shortly before Bush arrived in Kuwait.

Some documents indicate that the leadership was attempting to distance itself from Islamist militants instead of working with them [109], and that any connection between al Qaeda and Iraq is new. This was in relation to the rising insurgency in Iraq: Saddam was fearful that the foreign fighters might use this as an opportunity for themselves, rather than fight for Saddam to take control again. Many international jihadists have in fact begun operating in Iraq since the U.S. occupation began. (See Iraqi insurgency for further details).

The Bush Administration also has claimed that there are links between Saddam Hussein's government and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose organization Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War) has taken credit for kidnappings and beheadings directed against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Zarqawi is rumored to have been treated in an Iraqi hospital after being wounded in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi had settled in Kurdish northern Iraq (an area not controlled by Saddam Hussein's government) where he joined the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam, which was an enemy of the Ba'athist government. Nevertheless, U.S. officials continued to assert that Zarqawi constitutes an important link between Saddam's government and al Qaeda. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harbouring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." [110] Also, Zarqawi does not seem to have ever been, as some have asserted, an al Qaeda leader, and only pledged his allegiance to the al Qaeda organization in October 2004.[111] This pledge came two days after his insurgent organization in Iraq was officially declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

On October 19, 2004, the International Institute for Strategic Studies published its annual report stating that the war in Iraq had actually increased the risk of terrorism against westerners in Arab countries[112].

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Rationale", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki