This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Now, with an even more jittery president, a hawkish Secretary of State, General David they-injure-their-own-children-to-make-us-look-bad Petraeus, and various Republican presidential hopefuls -- all jockeying for political position as the 2012 election draws near -- the country is in even deeper trouble today.
No one on this political merry-go-round can afford to appear weak on terrorism. So, they all have covered their bets. And we all know who pays the price for these political calculations.
This time, I would NOT do nothing.
My colleagues in Veterans for Peace and I have known far too many comrades-in-arms and families whose lives have been shattered or ended as a result of such crass political maneuvering. Many of us know far more than we wish to know about war and killing. But -- try as we may with letters and other appeals -- we cannot get through to President Obama. And Secretary Clinton turns her own deaf ear to our entreaties and those of others who oppose unnecessary warfare. It is a pattern that she also followed in her days as a U.S. senator from New York.
See No Evil
In the summer of 2002, as the Senate was preparing to conduct hearings about alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and the possibility of war, former Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq and U.S. Marine Major Scott Ritter came down to Washington from his home in upstate New York to share his first-hand knowledge with as many senators as possible.
To those who let him in the door, he showed that the "intelligence" adduced to support U.S. claims that Iraq still had WMD was fatally flawed. This was the same "intelligence" that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller later branded "unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent."
Sen. Hillary Clinton would not let Ritter in her door. Despite his unique insights as a U.N. inspector and his status as a constituent, Sen. Clinton gave him the royal run-around. Her message was clear: "Don't bother me with the facts." She had already made up her mind. I had a direct line into her inner circle at the time, and was assured that several of my op-eds and other commentaries skeptical of George W. Bush's planned invasion were given personally to Clinton, but no matter.
Sen. Clinton reportedly was not among the handful of legislators who took the trouble to read the National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq that was issued on Oct. 1, 2002, just 10 days before the she voted to authorize war. In short, she chose not to perform the due diligence required prior to making a decision having life-or-death consequences for thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. She knew whom she needed to cater to, and what she felt she had to do.
But, bright as she is, Hillary Clinton is prone to willful mistakes -- political, as well as strategic. In dissing those of us who were trying to warn her that an attack on Iraq would have catastrophic consequences, she simply willed us to be wrong. Clearly, her calculation was that she had to appear super-strong on defense in order to win the Democratic nomination and then the presidency in 2008.
Just as clearly, courting Israel and the Likud Lobby was also important to her political ambitions.
Tony Blair Admits Israeli Role
Any lingering doubt that Israel played a major role in the U.S.-U.K. decision to attack Iraq was dispelled a year ago when former Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke publicly about the Israeli input into the all-important Bush-Blair deliberations on Iraq in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. Inexplicably, Blair forgot his usual discretion when it comes to disclosing important facts to the public and blurted out some truth at the Chilcot hearings in London regarding the origins of the Iraq War:
"As I recall that [April 2002] discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us [Bush and Blair], whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."
According to Philip Zelikow -- a former member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and later counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- the "real threat" from Iraq was not to the United States. Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002, the "unstated threat" from Iraq was the "threat against Israel." He added, "The American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."
But it wasn't as though leading Israelis were disguising their hopes or an attack on Iraq. The current Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu published a pre-invasion piece titled "The case for Toppling Saddam" in the Wall Street Journal, in which he wrote: "Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do " I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam's regime."
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported in February 2003, "the military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq." And, as a retired Israeli general later put it, "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional [WMD] capabilities." In the United States, neoconservatives also pushed for war, thinking that taking out Saddam Hussein would make Israel more secure. Those Israeli leaders and their neocon allies got their wish on March 19, 2003, with the U.S.-U.K. invasion.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
5
5
4
