A number of critiques have been written about
US President George W Bush's responses to Tim Russert's
questions in the February 8 edition of NBC's Meet the
Press, primarily regarding his shifting rationale
for the invasion of Iraq. More problematic, however, was
the fact that Bush made a number of assertions that were
patently false or - at the very least - misleading.
Russert's failure to challenge these statements and the
ongoing repetition of such rationales by the
administration and its supporters make it all the more
imperative that such assertions not be allowed to go
unquestioned. The implications of Bush's statements are
quite disturbing, since they involve such fundamental
issues as international terrorism, the United Nations,
weapons of mass destruction, and the policy of
preemption.
International terrorism A
major Bush administration rationale for the 2003 Iraq
war was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged links to
the terrorist al-Qaeda network and other active Iraqi
involvement in international terrorism. Regarding the
failure to find any evidence for such involvement, Bush
stated in his Meet the Press interview: "We knew the
fact that he was paying for suicide bombers. We knew the
fact that he was funding terrorist groups." This statement
is a stretch. Saddam Hussein's support for Abu Nidal
(a secular nationalist group composed primarily of Palestinian
exiles) and other terrorists peaked during the
1980s - the very time period when the United States dropped
Iraq from its list of countries backing terrorism in
order to provide the Iraqi dictator with technical and
military support. According to the US State Department,
the last direct involvement by the Iraqi government in
an act of international terrorism was the alleged 1993
assassination attempt in Kuwait against former president
George H W Bush.
More recently, Iraq has
provided money to a tiny pro-Iraqi Palestinian faction,
the Arab Liberation Front, which has passed it on to
some Palestinian families of "martyrs" killed in the
struggle against the Israeli occupation. Recipients have
included families of suicide bombers who murdered
Israeli civilians, but most of those helped have been
families of militiamen killed in battles with Israeli
occupation forces or families of civilians shot by the
Israelis. And the amount given to families of terrorists
was far less than the value of the families' homes,
which are usually destroyed right after a terrorist
attack as part of Israel's policy of collective
punishment in the occupied territories. Thus, this
minimal Iraqi assistance probably did not result in any
additional terrorist attacks. Hamas, the Palestinian
group responsible for the majority of suicide bombings
against Israeli civilians, receives most of its funding
from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries.
Meanwhile, the US occupation of Iraq is being
justified in the name of the "war on terrorism". Bush
claimed that Iraqis are fighting US occupation forces
not because they resent being invaded and occupied by a
foreign power, but because they "are people who
desperately want to stop the advance of freedom and
democracy". In the Meet the Press interview,
Bush reiterated the widely accepted belief that "freedom
and democracy will be a powerful long-term deterrent
to terrorist activities". Though this is undoubtedly
true, the Bush administration continues to provide
military, economic, and diplomatic support to Middle
Eastern dictatorships and occupation armies that deny Arab
and Muslim people their freedom and democratic rights. It
is not surprising that the majority of the
leadership, financial support, and membership in the
mega-terrorist al-Qaeda network stems from countries with
US-backed dictatorships, such as Saudi Arabia.
UN Security
Council resolutions
Another unchallenged statement in Bush's interview was his
assertion that the invasion of Iraq was fought in part
to uphold UN Security Council resolutions violated
by Iraq. Alluding to Resolution 1441, Bush stated that
Saddam Hussein "defied the world once again".
Though Baghdad had defied several UN Security
Council resolutions prior to unanimous passage of
Resolution 1441 in November 2002, Iraq appears to have
been largely in compliance at the time of the US
invasion. Sadda,'s regime unconditionally allowed
inspectors from the United Nations Monitoring and
Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) unfettered access
within Iraq shortly after the resolution was passed;
released what evidence it had of its proscribed weapons,
delivery systems, and weapons programs and their
disassembly (which was initially greeted with skepticism
but now appears to have been accurate); and arranged
with UNMOVIC the modalities regarding interviews with
Iraqi scientists, overflights of Iraqi airspace, and
other UN activities. Remaining disputes were largely
technical in nature and could not reasonably be
considered cases of "material breach" of the UN
resolution.
Citing the resolution's warning of
"serious consequences" to Iraqi noncompliance, Bush
argued: "If there isn't serious consequences, it creates
adverse consequences. People look at us and say, 'They
don't mean what they say, they are not willing to follow
through.'" Even if one were to accept the assertion that
Iraq was in material breach of 1441, the resolution
states that the Security Council "remains seized of the
matter", essentially reiterating the UN Charter's
stipulation that only the Security Council as a whole -
not any single member - has the right to authorize the
use of military action to enforce the resolution.
In any case, at the time Iraq was attacked,
there were more than 100 UN Security Council resolutions
being violated by governments other than Iraq. The Bush
administration has opposed enforcing these resolutions
by military or any other means, however, since the
majority of violating governments are considered US
allies. As a result, the administration's claim that
invading Iraq was somehow an effort to uphold the
integrity of the United Nations and its resolutions is
disingenuous at best.
In the interview, Bush
rejected the idea that he rushed into war by claiming
that he acted militarily only after he went "to the
international community ~{!-~} [to] see if we could not
disarm Saddam Hussein peacefully through international
pressure". However, as is now apparent, the
international community did disarm Saddam Hussein
peacefully through international pressure. So why did
the United States have to invade?
Weapons of
mass destruction In response to
Russert's questions regarding the failure to find Iraq's
purported weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Bush defended
the decision to invade the oil-rich country by
observing: "We remembered the fact that he had used weapons,
which meant he had had weapons." No one disputes that
Saddam Hussein had possessed and used chemical weapons,
both against Iranian soldiers and Kurdish civilians.
These war crimes took place more than 15 years ago, however, at a
time when the US - supportive of the Baghdad regime -
was playing down and covering up Iraq's use of such
weapons. The Bush administration has failed to provide
evidence that Iraq still had chemical weapons or any
other WMD during the five years prior to the 2003 US
invasion.
Bush's claim that, in the months
leading up to the invasion, "the international community
thought he had weapons", is patently false. The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had determined
back in 1998, after years of inspections, that Iraq no
longer had a nuclear program, and after four months of
rigorous inspections just prior to the invasion, the
agency gave no indication that anything had changed.
UNMOVIC - though frustrated at Iraq's failure to account
fully for all the proscribed materials - similarly
determined that there was no evidence of Iraqi chemical
or biological weapons. Rolf Ekeus, former head of
UNMOVIC's predecessor agency, the UN Special Commission
on Iraq (UNSCOM), declared that Iraq was "fundamentally
disarmed" as early as 1996. At the United Nations and
other forums, representatives of many of the world's
governments questioned US and British accusations that
Iraq still had WMD.
Bush told Russert: "I
don't think America can stand by and hope for the best from
a madman, and I believe it is essential ... that when
we see a threat, we deal with those threats before
they become imminent." And top administration
officials claimed on several occasions prior to the war
that Iraq's threat was already "imminent". Now that we
know this was not the case, Bush is claiming: "It's too
late if they become imminent." He also argued that
although Saddam may not actually have possessed weapons of
mass destruction, "he could have developed a nuclear
weapon over time - I'm not saying immediately, but over
time." But given the IAEA's findings that Iraq's nuclear
program had been completely dismantled and with a strict
embargo against military and dual-use technology and raw
materials, it is doubtful that Baghdad could ever have
produced a nuclear weapon.
Of greater concern to
world peace is that, through this interview and related
comments, Bush's doctrine of preemption has been
expanded to include the right to invade a country if a
US president determines that the government of that
country poses even a hypothetical threat some time in
the future. As Bush put it: "There was no doubt in my
mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America," not
because he actually had weapons of mass destruction at
the time of the US invasion, but because "he had the
capacity to make a weapon". He went on to claim that
Washington's chief post-invasion weapons inspector,
David Kay, reported that "Saddam Hussein was dangerous
with the ability to make weapons".
Even this assertion is
questionable. Kay had actually stated that Iraq's entire
infrastructure for nuclear and chemical weapons was
virtually destroyed. Though Kay did believe that Iraq
might have been able to produce dangerous biological agents,
he felt they were far more difficult to weaponize
"in a usable way". In a February 17 story, the Boston
Globe quoted former Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism
chief and former National Security Council intelligence
director Vincent Cannistraro as saying that the Iraqis
had the "capability" of developing WMD only in the
sense that they had the knowledge of how to do so, but
they did not have many of the basic components to
actually produce such weapons. Only by importing
technology and raw materials in the 1980s from Russia,
Germany, France, Britain and the US was Iraq able to
develop its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons
programs in the first place. Thus, the administration
has never been able to make a credible case for Iraq
reconstituting such programs, as long as sanctions
curtailed the necessary inputs.
In addition to
the eight or nine nations that currently have nuclear
weapons, there are more than 40 other countries that are
theoretically capable of developing such weapons. At
least twice that many could develop chemical and
biological weapons, and a couple of dozen already have.
The Bush administration has failed to make a compelling
case as to why Iraq - which, unlike the other nations,
allowed inspectors unfettered access to the entire
country to look for such weapons, weapon components, and
delivery systems - was a greater threat than all the
others.
The doctrine of preemption A
cornerstone of Bush's doctrine of preemptive military
intervention is the notion that deterrence cannot work.
In response to those who stressed containment of Iraq as
an alternative to offensive war, Bush replied: "We can't
say, 'Let's don't deal with Saddam Hussein. Let's hope
he changes his stripes, or let's trust in the goodwill
of Saddam Hussein. Let's let us, kind of, try to contain
him.'"
Despite assertions to the contrary, the
doctrine of containment has never assumed goodwill on
the part of the other party. If there was an assumption
of goodwill from the Iraqi regime, intrusive inspections
and strictly enforced sanctions would not have been
necessary. Besides, who was suggesting that the world
not "deal with" Saddam? For a dozen years prior to the
US invasion, the United Nations put more time, money,
and effort into successfully ensuring that Saddam could
no longer threaten its neighbors or its Kurdish minority
than it expended on any other issue.
Secretary
of State Colin Powell, appearing before Meet the
Press in 2001, confidently stated that "we
have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq" and
that the sanctions on military and dual-use items had
been "quite a success for 10 years". In a meeting with
the German foreign minister in February 2001, Powell spoke
of how the UN, the US, and its allies
"have succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and
his ambitions" with the result that "they don't
really possess the capability to attack their neighbors the
way they did 10 years ago". Iraq, continued Powell, was
"not threatening America. Containment has been a
successful policy, and I think we should make sure that
we continue it." Given that a dictator in possession of
WMD and an offensive delivery system during the 1980s
was defanged by a UN-led disarmament program in the
1990s, it appears that containment did work.
One argument
that Bush and his supporters have put forward is
that if Saddam had developed nuclear weapons, "we would
have been in a position of blackmail". Such reasoning
makes no sense. During the Cold War, the Soviet
Union had thousands of nuclear weapons on intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and other delivery
systems pointed at the United States, and Washington had
no defense against them, yet there were no attempts at
blackmail. This was because the US could have
blackmailed the Soviets as well. Such a stalemate is
known as deterrence and was the backbone of US defense
policy for decades. If it could work against a powerful
totalitarian state like the Soviet Union, why wouldn't
it work against a weak Third World country like Iraq?
The only response the administration has
been able to offer is that Saddam was a "madman". This
label was used by Bush a half-dozen times in his Meet the
Press interview alone: "You can't rely upon a
madman, and he was a madman. You can't rely upon him
making rational decisions when it comes to war and
peace, and it's too late, in my judgment, when a madman
who has got terrorist connections is able to act ~{!-~}
Containment doesn't work with a man who is a madman."
Although Saddam certainly has a record of making
poor political and strategic judgments, that does not
make him a "madman". Other heads of government have made
poor decisions on issues of war and peace, including
Bush. Such behavior does not imply that the Iraqi
dictator would have launched a suicidal first strike
against the US with a nuclear weapon.
Saddam
demonstrated repeatedly while in power that he cared
first and foremost about his own survival. He apparently
recognized that any attempt to use WMD against the US
or any of its allies would inevitably have led to his
own destruction. This is why he did not use them during
the 1991 Gulf War, even when attacked by the largest
coalition of international forces ever amassed against a
single nation and even though he still had chemical
weapons and long-range missiles. (In contrast, prior to
the Gulf War, Saddam was quite willing to utilize his
arsenal of chemical weapons against Iranian forces
because he knew that the revolutionary Islamist regime
was isolated internationally. He was similarly willing
to use them against Kurdish civilians, because he knew
that they could not fight back.)
Bush
still raises the idea that if Saddam had one day
developed a nuclear weapon or other weapon of mass
destruction, he would have "then let that weapon fall
into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network". There is
no evidence that the Iraqi government ever considered
such a dangerous move, even when its contacts with
terrorist groups and its WMD programs were at their
peaks during the 1980s. Saddam's leadership style has
always been that of direct control; his distrust of
subordinates (bordering on paranoia) was one of the ways
he was able to hold on to power for so long. He would
never have gone to the risk and expense of developing
weapons of mass destruction only to pass them on to some
group of terrorists, particularly radical Islamists who
could easily turn on him. When he had such weapons at
his disposal, their use was clearly at his discretion
alone.
At the time of the US invasion last year,
Iraq's armed forces were barely one-third of their
pre-Gulf War size. Iraq's navy was virtually
non-existent, and its air force was unable even to get
off the ground to challenge US forces. Pre-invasion
military spending by Iraq has been estimated at barely
one-tenth of 1980 levels. The Bush administration has
been unable to explain why in 2003, when Saddam enjoyed
only a tiny percentage of his once-formidable military
capability, Iraq was considered so massive a threat that
it was necessary to invade the country and replace its
leader - the same leader Washington had quietly
supported during the peak of Iraq's military capability.
In his interview, Bush claimed that his
policy of preemption - demonstrated in Iraq - has had
positive repercussions elsewhere, citing Libya's decision to
end its nascent WMD programs and open up to
international inspections. However, Libyan dictator Muammar
Gadaffi surely must have observed that Iraq was invaded
only after it had given up its WMD programs, while
North Korea, choosing to reconstitute its nuclear-weapons
program, was not invaded. The Libyan decision, the
result of a year-long series of diplomatic initiatives,
seems to have come in spite of the US invasion of Iraq,
not because of it.
Ironically, Bush told Russert
that "we had run the diplomatic string in Iraq" at the
time of the invasion but that "we're making good
progress in North Korea". The reality, of course, is
that UN-led diplomatic efforts had successfully
eliminated Iraq's WMD threat prior to the US invasion
but that North Korea has broken its treaty commitments
and is apparently now developing nuclear weapons.
Furthermore, the Bush administration refused to engage
in any direct negotiations with Iraq prior to war,
raising questions as to how the US could have "run the
diplomatic string".
As his trump card in the NBC interview,
Bush tried to claim that the United States, through its
invasion and occupation of Iraq, was bringing democracy
to that country and would thereby make the world safer,
since "free societies are societies that don't develop
weapons of mass terror". This, unfortunately, is not
true. The US was the first society to develop nuclear
weapons and is the only country to have actually used
them. Great Britain, France, Israel and India are also
considered free societies, yet they have developed
nuclear weapons as well.
These last claims
simply reflect a broader pattern in the interview as a
whole. The interview was an opportunity for Bush to
present an honest and clear exposition of US policy in
Iraq to the American people. Instead, his presentation
was a defensive effort littered with untruthful
assertions and misleading statements to justify a policy
that is losing support among Americans as a whole. The
American people deserved better.
A transcript
of Bush's interview with Tim Russert on Meet the
Press (Feb 8, 2004) can be found here. Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of politics and
chair of the peace and justice studies program at the
University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East
editor for the Foreign Policy in
Focus
project and is the author of
Tinderbox: US Middle East
Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage
Press, 2003).
