Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Iraq and the Bush Administration - In their own words. Can you say "Credibility Gap?"
The Bush Administration and thier allies have said alot about Iraq. This is just a little reminder:
Bush avoided the central question that had been raised in recent comments from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: How long might it take to establish a sufficient level of stability to allow U.S. troops to leave Iraq? On May 30, Cheney suggested the insurgency was in its "last throes" and that the military challenge was about to ease. Then, over the weekend, Rumsfeld pierced expectations by stating that "insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."
"If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period, the throes of a revolution," Cheney later clarified in an interview with CNN, June 2005.
The U.S. is currently spending 4 billion a month in Iraq.
The U.S. is currently spending 700 million a month in Afghanistan.
Gen. John Abizaid the top U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf, told the Congress: "I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago." As to the overall strength of the insurgency, Abizaid said it was "about the same" as six months ago. June 2005.
Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration official who serves on a Pentagon advisory board, said in a Washington Post column in February 2003 that the war would be "a cakewalk."
Richard Perle, who chaired that board until last week, predicted in July 2002 that support for Saddam, even within the Iraqi military, would "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder."
Feb. 7, 2003 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
March 4, 2003 Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters: "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. . . . Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," when its forces were routed from Kuwait.
March 11, 2003 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."
March 16, 2003 Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside."
September 2003 -- Having demanded full authority for overseeing the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, elbowing the State Department aside, Rumsfeld is being blamed by many in Congress and the military establishment for the problems facing the United States, which include mounting U.S. casualties and costs exceeding $1 billion a week.
"Every time Rumsfeld goes through one of these episodes, people think it's the end for him," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst and consultant at the Lexington Institute with ties to the Pentagon and defense contractors. "But he always ends up looking vindicated. What we're really facing in Iraq is a mop-up operation, and as the mop-up continues and as we gradually sharpen our intelligence and train Iraqi security forces, Rumsfeld is going to look better and better. In the end, it will look like he understood the occupation of Iraq better than most of his critics did." September 2003
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former head of the U.S. Central Command who also served the Bush administration as Middle East envoy, sharply criticized the Pentagon's handling of postwar Iraq in a speech before the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association 10 days ago. He received an enthusiastic response from hundreds of military officers present. September 2003
Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.), an Air Force veteran who later served on the staff of the National Security Council in George H.W. Bush's administration, said that "over the last 10 days, I've seen the administration make the changes and commitments they need to make in order to be successful in the long term." September 2003.
The new National Security Archive collection, helps fill in gaps in the record, documenting U.S. partnership with Iraq in its 1980-88 war against Iran and the acquiescence of U.S. officials, including some current Bush Administration figures, in Iraqi abuses.
The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would "probably" include "an eventual nuclear weapon capability," harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983).
The declassified documents posted last week include the briefing materials and diplomatic reporting on two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use concurrent with the Reagan administration's decision to support Iraq, and decision directives signed by President Reagan that reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region: preserving access to oil, expanding U.S. ability to project military power in the region, and protecting local allies from internal and external threats.
A U.S. cable recording the December 20, 1983 conversation between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. Although Rumsfeld said during a September 21, 2002 CNN interview, "In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter of fact, and discussed a host of other things," the recently released documents indicate there was no mention of chemical weapons.
The 1984 public U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons use in the Iran-Iraq war, which said, referring to the Ayatollah Khomeini's refusal to agree to end hostilities until Saddam Hussein was ejected from power, "The United States finds the present Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims."
Ari Fleischer Press Briefing April 10, 2003 “But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.”
Donald Rumsfeld ABC Interview March 30, 2003 “We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark Press Briefing March 22, 2003 “One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.”
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman Washington Post, p. A27 March 23, 2003 “I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.”
Gen. Tommy Franks press Conference March 22, 2003 “There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.”
28 April, 2003. Tony Blair: "There was a six-month campaign of concealment of those weapons ... Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a little bit."
Ari Fleisher Press Briefing March 21, 2003 “Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.”
George W. Bush Remarks to Reporters May 3, 2003 “We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.”
George W. Bush Radio Address February 8, 2003 “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
Colin Powell Remarks to UN Security Council February 5, 2003 “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.”
Colin Powell Interview with Radio France International February 28, 2003 “If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.”
George W. Bush Address to the Nation March 17, 2003 “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
Ari Fleischer Press Briefing December 2, 2002 “If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.”
Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention August 26, 2002 “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Ari Fleischer Press Briefing January 9, 2003 “We know for a fact that there are weapons there.”
Colin Powell, February 2001: "[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq."
Condoleeza Rice, July 2001: "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
The Downing Street Memo, July 2002: There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
Ministers were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war ... By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war. ... This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." -- George W Bush, May 24, 2005
****
Bush avoided the central question that had been raised in recent comments from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: How long might it take to establish a sufficient level of stability to allow U.S. troops to leave Iraq? On May 30, Cheney suggested the insurgency was in its "last throes" and that the military challenge was about to ease. Then, over the weekend, Rumsfeld pierced expectations by stating that "insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."
"If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period, the throes of a revolution," Cheney later clarified in an interview with CNN, June 2005.
The U.S. is currently spending 4 billion a month in Iraq.
The U.S. is currently spending 700 million a month in Afghanistan.
Gen. John Abizaid the top U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf, told the Congress: "I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago." As to the overall strength of the insurgency, Abizaid said it was "about the same" as six months ago. June 2005.
Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan administration official who serves on a Pentagon advisory board, said in a Washington Post column in February 2003 that the war would be "a cakewalk."
Richard Perle, who chaired that board until last week, predicted in July 2002 that support for Saddam, even within the Iraqi military, would "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder."
Feb. 7, 2003 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
March 4, 2003 Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a breakfast with reporters: "What you'd like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. . . . Iraq is much weaker than they were back in the '90s," when its forces were routed from Kuwait.
March 11, 2003 Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."
March 16, 2003 Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside."
September 2003 -- Having demanded full authority for overseeing the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, elbowing the State Department aside, Rumsfeld is being blamed by many in Congress and the military establishment for the problems facing the United States, which include mounting U.S. casualties and costs exceeding $1 billion a week.
"Every time Rumsfeld goes through one of these episodes, people think it's the end for him," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst and consultant at the Lexington Institute with ties to the Pentagon and defense contractors. "But he always ends up looking vindicated. What we're really facing in Iraq is a mop-up operation, and as the mop-up continues and as we gradually sharpen our intelligence and train Iraqi security forces, Rumsfeld is going to look better and better. In the end, it will look like he understood the occupation of Iraq better than most of his critics did." September 2003
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former head of the U.S. Central Command who also served the Bush administration as Middle East envoy, sharply criticized the Pentagon's handling of postwar Iraq in a speech before the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association 10 days ago. He received an enthusiastic response from hundreds of military officers present. September 2003
Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.), an Air Force veteran who later served on the staff of the National Security Council in George H.W. Bush's administration, said that "over the last 10 days, I've seen the administration make the changes and commitments they need to make in order to be successful in the long term." September 2003.
The new National Security Archive collection, helps fill in gaps in the record, documenting U.S. partnership with Iraq in its 1980-88 war against Iran and the acquiescence of U.S. officials, including some current Bush Administration figures, in Iraqi abuses.
The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would "probably" include "an eventual nuclear weapon capability," harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983).
The declassified documents posted last week include the briefing materials and diplomatic reporting on two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use concurrent with the Reagan administration's decision to support Iraq, and decision directives signed by President Reagan that reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region: preserving access to oil, expanding U.S. ability to project military power in the region, and protecting local allies from internal and external threats.
A U.S. cable recording the December 20, 1983 conversation between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. Although Rumsfeld said during a September 21, 2002 CNN interview, "In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter of fact, and discussed a host of other things," the recently released documents indicate there was no mention of chemical weapons.
The 1984 public U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons use in the Iran-Iraq war, which said, referring to the Ayatollah Khomeini's refusal to agree to end hostilities until Saddam Hussein was ejected from power, "The United States finds the present Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims."
Ari Fleischer Press Briefing April 10, 2003 “But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.”
Donald Rumsfeld ABC Interview March 30, 2003 “We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark Press Briefing March 22, 2003 “One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.”
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman Washington Post, p. A27 March 23, 2003 “I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.”
Gen. Tommy Franks press Conference March 22, 2003 “There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.”
28 April, 2003. Tony Blair: "There was a six-month campaign of concealment of those weapons ... Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a little bit."
Ari Fleisher Press Briefing March 21, 2003 “Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.”
George W. Bush Remarks to Reporters May 3, 2003 “We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.”
George W. Bush Radio Address February 8, 2003 “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
Colin Powell Remarks to UN Security Council February 5, 2003 “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.”
Colin Powell Interview with Radio France International February 28, 2003 “If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.”
George W. Bush Address to the Nation March 17, 2003 “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
Ari Fleischer Press Briefing December 2, 2002 “If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.”
Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention August 26, 2002 “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Ari Fleischer Press Briefing January 9, 2003 “We know for a fact that there are weapons there.”
Colin Powell, February 2001: "[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq."
Condoleeza Rice, July 2001: "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
The Downing Street Memo, July 2002: There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
Ministers were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war ... By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war. ... This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." -- George W Bush, May 24, 2005
****
# posted by The Punisher @ Wednesday, June 29, 2005 
