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Gore's speech was based on Bush's proposed resolution: Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction... We also need to look at the relationship between our national goal of regime change in Iraq and our goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be more difficult for the United States to succeed alone, but still possible. By contrast, the war against terror manifestly requires broad and continuous international cooperation. Our ability to secure this kind of cooperation can be severely damaged by unilateral action against Iraq. Snip... Specifically, Congress should establish why the president believes that unilateral action will not severely damage the fight against terrorist networks, and that preparations are in place to deal with the effects of chemical and biological attacks against our allies, our forces in the field, and even the home-front. The resolution should also require commitments from the President that action in Iraq will not be permitted to distract from continuing and improving work to reconstruct Afghanistan, an that the United States will commit to stay the course for the reconstruction of Iraq.more... Kerry cited Bush's resolution, and clearly stated that the resolution was revised to specifically address Iraq (nothing to do with distractions or rebuilding as Gore suggested, but everthing to do with ensuring that war was a last resort): I want to underscore that this administration began this debate with a resolution that granted exceedingly broad authority to the President to use force. I regret that some in the Congress rushed so quickly to support it. I would have opposed it. It gave the President the authority to use force not only to enforce all of the U.N. resolutions as a cause of war, but also to produce regime change in Iraq , and to restore international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region. It made no mention of the President's efforts at the United Nations or the need to build multilateral support for whatever course of action we ultimately would take. I am pleased that our pressure, and the questions we have asked, and the criticisms that have been raised publicly, the debate in our democracy has pushed this administration to adopt important changes, both in language as well as in the promises that they make. The revised White House text, which we will vote on, limits the grant of authority to the President to the use of force only with respect to Iraq . It does not empower him to use force throughout the Persian Gulf region. It authorizes the President to use Armed Forces to defend the ``national security'' of the United States--a power most of us believe he already has under the Constitution as Commander in Chief. And it empowers him to enforce all ``relevant'' Security Council resolutions related to Iraq. None of those resolutions or, for that matter, any of the other Security Council resolutions demanding Iraqi compliance with its international obligations, calls for a regime change. Snip... As the President made clear earlier this week, ``Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.'' It means ``America speaks with one voice.'' Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies. Page: S10173 By JOHN W. DEAN ---- Friday, Jun. 06, 2003 Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration." Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq. But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion. Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decisionmaking process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "(t)he country swims on a sea of oil." more... By JOHN W. DEAN ---- Friday, Jul. 18, 2003 Purported Bush Fact 1: "The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax - enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it. "Source: Bush cites 1999 Report to the UN Security Council]. But most all the Report's numbers are estimates, in which UNSCOM had varying degrees of confidence.
Snip…
It short, in the State of the Union, the president transformed UNSCOM estimates, guesses, and approximations into a declaration of an exact amounts, which is a deception. He did the same with his statement about Botulinum toxin.
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Purported Bush Fact 2: "The Union Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin - enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hasn't accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it."
Source: Bush cited the same UNSCOM Report. Again, he transformed estimates, or best guesses - based on the work of the UNSCOM inspectors and informants of uncertain reliability - into solid fact.
Snip…
Purported Bush Fact 4: "U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them, despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them."
Source: Bush cites "U.S. intelligence" for this information, but it appears to have first come from UNSCOM. If so, he seems to have double the number of existing munitions that might be, as he argued "capable of delivering chemical agents."
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Purported Bush Fact 5: "From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them."
Source: The three informants have still not been identified - even though the Administration now has the opportunity to offer asylum to them and their families, and then to disclose their identities, or at least enough identifying information for the public to know that they actually exist, and see why the government was prone to believe them.
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Purported Bush Fact 6: "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."
Source: The IAEA did provide some information to this effect, but the IAEA's own source was Iraq itself. According to Garry B. Dillon, the 1997-99 head of IAEA's Iraq inspection team, Iraq was begrudgingly cooperating with UNSCOM and IAEA inspections until August 1998.
Moreover, a crucial qualifier was left out: Whatever the program looked like in the early or mid-1990s, by 1998, the IAEA was confident it was utterly ineffective.
Snip…
Purported Bush Fact 7: "The British government has learned Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Source: Media accounts have shown that the uranium story was untrue - and that at least some in the Bush Administration knew it. I will not reiterate all of the relevant news reports here, but I will highlight a few.
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Purported Bush Fact 8: "Our intelligence sources tell us that has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
Source: Bush is apparently referring to the CIA's October 2002 report - but again, qualifiers were left out, to transform a statement of belief into one of purported fact.
more... John Prados May 02, 2005 John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. He is author of Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (The New Press). It has been rumored that the brief, antiseptic legal opinion—citing that a legal basis for the Iraq war did exist—that British Prime Minister Tony Blair received from his attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, did not actually reflect the advice of the top British government lawyer. That turns out to be true. Last week, when portions of Lord Goldsmith’s original opinion began to leak, the prime minister’s office rushed to release the original document. Goldsmith’s advice, rendered in a baker’s dozen of pages of closely reasoned text on March 7, 2003, diverges significantly from his previously released single-page approval for war. But its greatest significance is that the Goldsmith opinion puts before the public legal reasoning that undermines the justification in international law Bush used to wage an aggressive war against Iraq. That, in turn, negates Bush’s Congressional authorization to use force. Lord Goldsmith’s opinion strips the legal arguments down to their core and shows how flawed they were. These can be addressed in five areas, and a few further points on legality this side of the Atlantic will complete the story. Foremost is the matter of the U.N. Security Council action (Resolution 1441) passed on Nov. 8, 2002. Debate has long raged over whether 1441—by itself or in combination with earlier Security Council resolutions enacted during and after the Gulf War—authorized a resort to force against Iraq. Lord Goldsmith supplies an exhaustive analysis of the operative paragraphs of Resolution 1441 that shows how it required further U.N. action to approve force. Snip... Finally, there is the broad principle of proportionality. Force used against Iraq in service of the U.N. resolutions “must have as its objective the enforcement of the terms of the cease-fire ,” needed to be limited to achieving that objective, and had to be proportional to “securing compliance with Iraq’s disarmament obligations.” In other words, Goldsmith explicitly noted, “regime change cannot be the objective of military action.”
George Bush sought a congressional resolution authorizing force and secured it on Oct. 10, 2002. That resolution explicitly restricted the use of force to compelling adherence with “relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions,” and continuing threats from Iraq. This was not a blanket declaration of war. The resolution’s contingent authority evaporates if its conditions are not met.
We now know that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and very little in the way of programs to develop them. That is why the weapons inspectors, quite rightly, were not going to report a material breach—the inspectors could find no evidence of weapons. Iraq was in compliance with the Gulf War resolutions and had not invaded anyone—hence no threat to international peace and security. Washington’s assertion otherwise remained crucial to cover an aggressive war with a fig leaf of legality. That fig leaf has now disappeared. |
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