It's hard for either party to look back at the beginning of the Iraq invasion. The most blame lies with the Republicans because they had one house of Congress and the White House. They had media for their bully pulpit, and they used it loudly and well.
I do think though that our party was too easily led into the fray. They were being counseled by advisors of our former Democratic president, and that was a huge influence.
I think many were actually eager for the conflict, some were conflicted. But enough had the nerve to stand up and say no. They figured it out. We online figured it out, and the others could have figured it out as well if they so desired.
I remember a certain Larry King show in September 2002 on which former president Bill Clinton appeared. This was over a month before the actual vote to invade Iraq, yet he spoke casually of regime change. That was when we were hearing terror terror, fear fear all over the airwaves. I found the transcript of that show.
CNN transcript of Larry King and Bill ClintonKING: Senator Dole, I only have a little over a minute left. Do you think we should go into Iraq?
DOLE: I tried to outline that recently. I think he should not only consult with Congress, but have a vote, and I think I would try the arms inspection one more time, but not let Iraq delay and dither and all those things, trying to...
KING: But congressional approval?
DOLE: Congress approval, not just consultation.
KING: Mr. President?
CLINTON: I think that our policy to change regimes is a good one. We should support a new regime in Iraq. And I think we should try the arms inspection one more time, because I think we also have big long-term benefits in cooperation with our allies through the United Nations.
I don't think it will be a great military problem if we do it. You know, our guys did great there the last time, in the Gulf War. We're stronger, and he's weaker than he was then. The security challenge will be, you can't surprise him. You've got to move a lot of people in. And if he has chemical and biological agents, and I believe he does, he would have no incentive not to use them then, if he knew he was going to be killed anyway and deposed. He's got a lot of incentive not to use them now because he knows he'll be toast if he does. So I think the question is not whether he should go, but how, and under what circumstances.
Yes, Saddam was weaker. We have been bombing the hell out of his country for 12 years. Of course he was weaker. And our party leaders had to know it.
But as I say, it is hard to look back.
The lies about Iraq were starting from Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, as far back as 1997. Big ones, big lies.
Iraq: A legacy of lies told and lie believedIn a November 1997 Sunday morning appearance on ABC, Defense Secretary William Cohen held up a five-pound bag of sugar for the cameras to dramatize the threat of Iraqi anthrax: "This amount of anthrax could be spread over a city -- let's say the size of Washington. It would destroy at least half the population of that city. One breath and you are likely to face death within five days."
"It could wipe out populations of whole countries!" Cokie Roberts gasped as Cohen described the Iraqi arsenal. "Millions, millions," Cohen responded, "if it were properly dispersed."
A year later Madeleine Albright was pushing the fear as well.
A year later, at a nationally televised town hall meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought home the dangers: "Iraq is a long way from Ohio, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face. The evidence is strong that Iraq continues to hide prohibited weapons and materials."
In the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Editor Jay Bookman published an article that laid the whole regime change, WMD situation to rest.
This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.
Look at our Baghdad embassy, look at the one we are building in Pakistan. Bookman had it right.
And a belated thank you to the Democrats who got it right on that Senate vote on October 11, 2002. 23 of them voted no, we should not invade Iraq. Bob Geiger covered this thoroughly at Democrats.com.
Voices From 2002: Senators Who Voted Against WarHe lists them, then he posts statements by them...important statements. Be sure to read them.
Here are the brave ones:
•Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
•Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
•Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
•Robert Byrd (D-WV)
•Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
•Kent Conrad (D-ND)
•Jon Corzine (D-NJ)
•Mark Dayton (D-MN)
•Richard Durbin (D-IL)
•Russell Feingold (D-WI)
•Robert Graham (D-FL)
•Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
•James Jeffords (I-VT)
•Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
•Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
•Carl Levin (D-MI)
•Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
•Patty Murray (D-WA)
•Jack Reed (D-RI)
•Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)
•Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
•Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
•Ron Wyden (D-OR)
I am getting older, but I look back at the pride I had in my country as a moral leader in the world. And yes, usually we were. It's a disturbing feeling I have now, and one I can not shake off.
We knew Iraq was no immediate threat to us, yet we invaded and occupied anyway. Our behavior there has not been the behavior of a moral world leader.
It angers me that we went along just enough that the other side can blame us. That's infuriating.
John Pilger's version of Iraq in the year 2000 should have been enough to catch our attention. He wrote
of the situation there.We had bombed them for 12 years, we had sanctions which prevented them from getting needed medicine and doctor's equipment. The contamination left over from the previous attack was still there and making people ill.
The change in 10 years is unparalleled, in my experience," Anupama Rao Singh, Unicef's senior representative in Iraq, told me. "In 1989, the literacy rate was 95%; and 93% of the population had free access to modern health facilities. Parents were fined for failing to send their children to school. The phenomenon of street children or children begging was unheard of. Iraq had reached a stage where the basic indicators we use to measure the overall well-being of human beings, including children, were some of the best in the world. Now it is among the bottom 20%. In 10 years, child mortality has gone from one of the lowest in the world, to the highest."
Pilger compares the situation in Iraq to Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring.
Baghdad is an urban version of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The birds have gone as avenues of palms have died, and this was the land of dates. The splashes of colour, on fruit stalls, are surreal. A bunch of Dole bananas and a bag of apples from Beirut cost a teacher's salary for a month; only foreigners and the rich eat fruit. A currency that once was worth two dollars to the dinar is now worthless. The rich, the black marketeers, the regime's cronies and favourites, are not visible, except for an occasional tinted-glass late-model Mercedes navigating its way through the rustbuckets. Having been ordered to keep their heads down, they keep to their network of clubs and restaurants and well-stocked clinics, which make nonsense of the propaganda that the sanctions are hurting them, not ordinary Iraqis.
It's hard to look back and take responsibility. It's hard to be accountable.