As he states in his book Iraq Confidential, “The U.S. intelligence community, when it came to Iraq, seemed interested only in maintaining the perception that the Iraqis were not telling the truth, regardless of what the facts showed.”
But Ritter’s arguments, not fitting into the dominant narrative of those heady days of late 2002 and early 2003, were largely ignored. As war hysteria gripped the nation, there was little tolerance for people like Scott Ritter who questioned the Bush administration’s motives or poked holes in the conclusions of the George Tenet's CIA.
The Washington establishment had decided that invading Iraq was both inevitable and desirable, regardless of what the facts told, or what the likely costs of war would be.
Weekend Warriors
Today, it may be difficult for some to remember how much courage it took to stand up and speak out in those days, but one who has likely not forgotten is presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who as a state senator from Illinois, was speaking at peace rallies and vocally questioning the administration’s motivation and rationale for going to war.
At a demonstration on Oct. 26, 2002, Obama lashed out against “weekend warriors in this administration [who] shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
Unlike Clinton or McCain, Obama understood that “even a successful war against Iraq [would] require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” This approach, he warned, would “only fan the flames of the Middle East … and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”
He also spoke out against “the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.”
It is hard to deny now that Obama’s analysis was far closer to the mark than either Clinton’s or McCain’s.
The “facts” that the two pro-war senators claimed at the time were “undisputed,” particularly Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMD program and his government’s supposed ties to terrorists, have turned out to be bogus, while Obama’s warnings of an indefinite occupation and strengthened al-Qaeda recruiting have turned out to be right on target.
But still, five years on, false narratives of the build-up to war persist, largely thanks to respected journalists like John Burns who continue to claim that “only the most prescient” could have foreseen what a tragedy the war would turn out to be.
These claims, of course, have a largely self-serving function. By falsely claiming that no one in 2003 could have foreseen the costs of war, the journalists and politicians who cheered the war on hope to absolve themselves from any responsibility for the tragic consequences – including now the lives of 4,000 American soldiers.
The real tragedy though is that the “prescient” warnings offered by international organizations like the UN, NGOs like the International Study Team, critics like Scott Ritter, Barack Obama and countless ordinary people taking to the streets of cities all over the world, were so thoroughly ignored then, and continue to be forgotten to this day.
Equally tragic may be the reality that those who ignored the warnings continue to be rewarded with prizes like lucrative book deals, promotions, and maybe even the ultimate prize of winning the presidency of the United States.
Nat Parry is co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.
