Failures Of Intelligence

James O'Neill

02/22/04: "ICH" -- The reaction of President Bush and Prime Ministers Blair and Howard to David Kay's report that Iraq does not have and in all probability did not have weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion has been to blame "intelligence failures". It would be an error to allow the debate to be sidetracked down that particular blind alley.

The second response to Mr Kay's report has been that even if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq's possession the war was variously justified because it removed a terrible tyrant from power, or that the world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein in power. Neither of these arguments is persuasive.

It is useful to briefly put the issue of Iraq in a recent historical context. The genesis of the invasion is not to be found in the illusory weapons of mass destruction. The evidence is overwhelming that Iraq's capabilities in that area had been compromised long before the invasion by sanctions and weapons inspections (1). Rather it is to be found in the writings of a group known as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) founded in 1997 (www.newamericancentury.org). Its membership includes Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Armitage, John Bolton and Dick Cheney. 

PNAC argued in a series of publications that it was a mistake of the first Bush administration not to have proceeded to Baghdad during the first (1991) Gulf War. They further argued that it was America's role to reshape the geopolitical structure of the Middle East by the installation of regimes friendly to the USA. That would have the effect of also securing oil and gas supplies to the American economy that was already dangerously reliant upon imported energy. (2)

The September 2000 report of PNAC entitled "Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies Forces and Resources for a New Century" was itself an update of a 1992 paper written by Dick Cheney, Secretary for Defence in the first Bush administration. The intellectual antecedents of the argument in the September 2000 report are also set out in frank detail in the 1997 book The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security advisor in the Carter administration.

The PNAC report called for unprecedented increases in US military spending, establishing military bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, toppling non-compliant regimes, abrogation of international treaties, control of the world's energy resources, militarization of outer space, total control of cyberspace, and a willingness to use nuclear weapons to achieve American goals.

The PNAC members recognised that in order to persuade the American people of such a radical shift in government policy required a "cataclysmic event of the magnitude of Pearl Harbour." Such an event duly arrived on September 11 2001, eight months after George Bush's appointment as President by the US Supreme Court (4).

On September 20 2001, only nine days after the cataclysmic events in New York and Washington, Bush released a policy statement entitled "National Security Strategy of the USA." It was essentially a restatement of the PNAC document of the previous year, even to the extent of using exactly the same language to describe America's future world role.

It has now been confirmed that the Iraq component of that policy, as Paul O'Neill reveals in a recent book (5), was being discussed in the very first days of the Bush administration. The focus according to O'Neill, and supported by the extensive documentation cited in the book, was on removing Saddam Hussein and securing Iraq's extensive oil and gas resources. In February 2003 the Wall Street Journal published details of a pre-war plan that had been drawn up by the Bush administration to privatize Iraq's assets by selling them to western corporations and to establish miliary bases. None of this had anything to do with weapons of mass destruction.

The personnel of PNAC listed above were all appointed to prominent positions in the Bush administration. Cheney is vice-president, Rumsfeld secretary of defence, Wolfowitz deputy secretary of defence, Feith undersecretary of defence for policy, Perle chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Bolton is in charge of the State Department's weapons of mass destruction office and so on throughout the entire PNAC establishment.

The plan to attack Afghanistan had also been formulated prior to September 11 2001, although the attacks were publicly justified as a response to Al Queda's alleged involvement in the events of September 11. In fact the decision to attack Afghanistan had been made at least as early as July 2001 when the Americans threatened a "carpet of bombs" against the Taliban government (6). This arose in the context of a breakdown of negotiations with the Taliban government over the trans Afghan oil pipeline that was to bring oil and gas from the Central Asian republics (the so-called "stans") to Pakistan.

The main players in the pipeline deal were US oil companies whose senior executives included Dick Cheney (Halliburton) Condoleeza Rice (Chevron) and current national security adviser to the Bush administration, and Hamid Kharzi (Socal) now the Afghan President appointed by the Americans.

The other essential policies necessary to prepare the American people for the invasion of Iraq were a deliberate campaign to link Saddam Hussein with Al Queda, thereby further demonising him in the wake of September 11, and the bypassing of conventional intelligence channels. The first aspect was so successful that at the time of the invasion of Iraq two-thirds of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the events of September 11.

The second aspect was more insidious and has lead directly to the position the US, UK and Australian governments now find themselves in. One of the first acts of the new administration, and Cheney in particular, was to set up within the Pentagon and State departments' alternative intelligence gathering groups. The Pentagon group was known as the Office of Special Plans. It was directed by Abram Shulsky under the oversight of William Luti the deputy undersecretary of defence for special plans. Luti reported to Cheney's office as well as to Feith.

The evidence is now compelling that the OSP group and others similarly set up within the intelligence framework "cherrypicked" titbits of intelligence to reinforce the policy that had already been determined. The British equivalent of OSP was Operation Rockingham. The purpose of these groups was to deprecate the caveats that normally accompany intelligence assessments, to selectively use unreliable sources such as Ahmed Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles, and not to put too fine a point on it, simply lie when it suited their purposes (7).

Opposing viewpoints were ignored or sidelined. It would be an error to describe the information obtained by these groups as "intelligence". It is more accurately described as propaganda, and like most propaganda contained elements of truth, but generally relied upon half-truths, misstatements, omissions of crucial qualifying phrases, and downright lies. Fifty prominent examples were recently published in the Independent (UK) of 25 January 2004 (8).

Perhaps one of the best known examples is the claim in Bush's State of the Union speech in January 2003 when he referred to the "evidence" that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain yellowcake (necessary for nuclear weapons) from "Africa" (sic). Both the British and American governments (and presumably Australia) had been earlier advised that the documents on which this claim was based were forgeries and not very good ones at that (9).

Other lies repeated ad nauseum prior to the March 2003 invasion included the centrifuge tubes described as being used in nuclear weapons programs; the ability to launch a missile attack on the UK in 45 minutes; the unmanned drones delivering biological agents to the US and so on. The latter claim among other flaws overlooked the fact that the alleged drones had a range of 400 miles which made crossing the Atlantic rather difficult.

The US Secretary of State Colin Powell made a dramatic presentation to the UN Security Council on the eve of war outlining all of the nuclear, biological and chemical programs Saddam Hussein supposedly had. Not one of those claims was founded in fact as he himself now tacitly acknowledges. 

This was not a case of knowledge acquired after the fact of the invasion. Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, was cited by both Bush and Blair as a star defector and source of information. Kamel had been in charge of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs. He told interrogators that he had overseen the destruction of all weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Gulf War. This was known to the political leaders but withheld from the public (10). His testimony was corroborated by UN weapons inspectors such as Scott Ritter (11).

Insofar as there was a legal basis for the attack on Iraq it had to rest upon either force used in self-defence (Article 51 of the UN charter), or when the UN Security specifically authorises it. Both of these grounds were rebutted in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald of 26 February 2003 submitted by a group of senior Sydney lawyers. A lengthy and detailed legal opinion prepared by several eminent British lawyers reached the same conclusion (12).

The evidence now available however, demonstrates that not only was there no real, imminent or present danger to the US, UK or Australia (thereby invoking Article 51) but that the politicians in those respective countries knew that the "evidence" they were presenting to the public was false. The claim that there were "intelligence failures" simply does not accord with the evidence.

Rather, the policy to invade Iraq is the implementation of a wider assertion of a policy of political and military hegemony that was set out in the 1990s and early 2000s. All that was needed was the cataclysmic event of September 11 2001 to sell the policy to a gullible public. The persons making the argument prior to the 2000 presidential election were then appointed to positions where they could directly influence policy along the predetermined lines. They set up the mechanisms to ensure that the "evidence" they would present to the public was in accord with the policy objectives (13).

It is the realization that the public and the mainstream media (14) have begun to question the official line that has lead to the shifting of ground in recent weeks. We are now told that the war was "justified" in any case, notwithstanding the absence of weapons of mass destruction, because Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who had used WMD in the past, on the Iranians, and upon his own Shi'ite and Kurdish people.

Such a rationale conveniently overlooks a number of factors. The first of these is that the overthrow of a regime however despotic is not a legitimate action in international law. It was certainly not an action sanctioned by the Security Council in the present case. Unless the said regime is the subject of a Security Council resolution authorising such action, or poses an imminent and real danger to the state acting in self defence, then the invasion is a criminal act and its perpetrators war criminals.

The second factor is that being a despot has not in the past and nor is it at present, a bar to American, British or Australian support. The Suharto regime is a local case in point. The current American support for sundry Northern Alliance warlords in Afghanistan or the current dictatorship in Azerbaijan demonstrates that moral repugnance is never allowed to influence perceived national interest. One should not forget that until Saddam Hussein misread the signals and invaded Kuwait he was supported politically and militarily by Britain and the United States.

The third factor is that when Saddam Hussein did wage war on the Iranians and his own people with a variety of chemical and biological agents, he did so with such weapons supplied by the US and Britain (15). 

In looking at the current political justifications for the ongoing occupation of a sovereign nation it is important not to lose sight of the prime motivation for that occupation as set out in the PNAC documents. Whether Australia really wishes to be associated with such policies and whether it is in Australia's best interests to do so will only be served by an honest appraisal of the real reasons for the war. 

Insofar as there has been a "failure of intelligence" the real failure has been in the intelligence of the mass media and the general public who have both allowed events to develop without a sufficiently critical appraisal of the political motives of the perpetrators. It would be a tragedy for Australia's real interests if the current obfuscation of the debate were allowed to proceed in a similar manner.

References.

1. N.F. Ahmed Behind the War on Terror New Society Publishers 2003
2. M. Klare Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy. Foreign Policy in Focus January 2004; Michel Chossudovsky War and Globalisation Global Outlook 2002
3. Z. Brzezinski The Grand Chessboard Basic Books 1997
4. K. Phillips American Dynasty Viking 2003
5. R. Suskind The Price of Loyalty Simon & Schuster 2003
6. N. Ahmed The War on Freedom Tree of Life Publications 2002
7. Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whittaker The fifty lies exaggerations, distortions and half truths that took this country to war. The Independent (UK) 25 January 2004; Robert Dreyfuss & Jason Vest The Lie Factory Mother Jones January/February 2004.
8. ibid.
9. S. Hersh The Stovepipe The New Yorker 27 October 2003
10. Glen Rangwala Briefing Notes on UNSCOM Interview with Hussein Kamel www.iraqwatch.org
11. N.F. Ahmed Behind the War on Terror op cit
12. Legality of use of force against Iraq (2003). See also: M.E. O'Connell The Occupation of Iraq Jurist April 2003
13. S. Hersh op cit
14. M. Massing Now They Tell Us New York Review of Books Vol 51 (3) February 2004 
15. N. Ahmed Behind the War on Terror op cit.

Copyright: James O'Neill. <joneill@qldbar.asn.au>