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The Bush/Cheney Holocaust in Iraq: Criminality, Immorality, Incompetence and Desperation

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II. Immorality

In order to support their BIG LIE about the grave and growing threat to the U.S. posed by Iraq, the Bush/Cheney regime not only pressured the intelligence community to produce conclusions that supported its own preconceptions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda, it also embellished and lied about that intelligence. Moreover, it fabricated damning intelligence where the intelligence community found none.

Thus, to say "the intelligence community got it wrong" or "intelligence agencies in other countries also concluded that Iraq possessed WMD" still doesn't explain Cheney's deceptive half-truth, asserted at the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention on August 26, 2002. Cheney told his audience, "The Iraq regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents." Worse, he claimed, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

To support that claim, Cheney cited evidence provided by Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel Hassan, who claimed that Iraq possessed WMD. What Cheney failed to mention, however, was that Kamel also said: "All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons-biological, chemical, missile, nuclear-were destroyed." Only after the illegal, immoral invasion would we learn that Kamel had told the truth - and that Cheney had deceived us.

Neither do the glib assertions, "the intelligence community got it wrong" and "intelligence agencies in other countries also concluded that Iraq possessed WMD" explain why the then National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, would assert that the high-strength aluminum tubes that Iraq was allegedly attempting to purchase could "only" be used in a nuclear weapons program. In fact, when she told her lie, Ms. Rice already knew that disagreement existed within the intelligence community about how such tubes might be used.

Building upon that lie, Ms. Rice then fear mongered by asserting: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

When, in September 2002, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said, "American intelligence had "bulletproof" evidence of links between Al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq," he deceived Americans about the nature of that intelligence. First, America's intelligence community already had dismissed such "links" as insignificant. Second, because the intelligence community already had discounted such "links", a rogue intelligence unit headed by neocon ideologue Douglas Feith was set up inside the Pentagon and specifically tasked with finding such links.

Feith's "Gestapo Office" proceeded to fabricate "intelligence" from shards of evidence already dismissed by the intelligence community. Such shards were then passed to neocon Paul Wolfowitz, then Rumsfeld and Cheney for public dissemination. Former Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, has commented on such intelligence in his recent book, At the Center of the Storm. [W]e weren't too impressed with their work…especially their willingness to blindly accept information that confirmed preconceived notions." [p. 348] Calling such work, "Feith-based analysis," [Ibid] Tenet adds, "The best source of information was our January 2003 paper, which said that there was no Iraqi authority, direction, or control over al-Qa'ida." [Ibid, p. 358]

President Bush, not only conflated Iraq and 9/11 and reiterated the canards about Iraq's WMD and ties to al-Qaeda, he also repeated Ms. Rice's scare mongering about a mushroom cloud and added a few unique lies of his own. For example, while speaking to reporters in mid-July 2003, our immoral President answered a question about Iraq by asserting: "The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."

In fact, Saddam had permitted the UN weapons inspectors to return. But our lying President preempted their work, lest they prove that Iraq had no WMD. As USA Today, reported on March 17, 2003: "In the clearest sign yet that war with Iraq is imminent, the United States has advised U.N. weapons inspectors to begin pulling out of Baghdad." Although such lies failed to persuade most of the world, they did persuade the dumbest or most frightened of Americans. And, armed with their support, the Bush/Cheney regime was able to exert political pressure on incumbents in Congress during the months before mid-term Congressional elections of November 2002, by questioning the patriotism of any congressman (congresswoman)), who didn't support the regime's rush to war.

To get a better idea of the effectiveness of such immoral political hardball, simply compare the votes in favor of authorizing the Bush/Cheney regime's war of choice with the actual number of congressmen who actually read the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate - the document that supposedly proved (while actually raising doubts about) the existence of Iraq's threatening WMD, and thus justified war.

On the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002," the House of Representatives adopted the resolution on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133 and the Senate adopted the resolution on October 11, 2002, by a vote of 77-23. Yet, "no more than six senators and a handful of House members who did not serve on the house and senate Intelligence Committess read beyond the five-page National Intelligence Estimate executive summary." [Tenet, quoting from the Washington Post , p. 337] Such gross negligence on the part of our congressional representatives constitutes a distinct type of immorality.

But nothing captures the immorality of the Bush/Cheney regime as the contrast separating the President's very gestures on the eve of initiating his war of choice and the devasting impact it made - and continues to make - in Iraq. Recall that during the moments before Bush "gave his national address announcing that the war had begun, a camera cought Bush pumping his fist as though instead of intiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. 'Feels good,' he said." [Paul Waldman, Fraud, p. 8]

Some two weeks later, at eleven A.M on March 30, fourteen-year-old Arkan Daif was killed by an explosion that lacerated his body with white-hot shrapnel. One piece tore off the back of his skull. You see, Arkan and two cousins were digging a trench in front of his house; a feeble attempt to protect it from the bombs that Bush unleashed two weeks earlier with such inhuman insouciance. [Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near, pp. 73-74]

To date, Bush's immoral insouciance has claimed the lives of more than 3,500 American sokdiers, wounded another 29,000 plus - many having their brains shattered or becoming double or triple amputees -- killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and caused some five million Iraqis to flee their homes for other parts of Iraq or for safety outside the country.

 

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Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San (more...)
 
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