Red, White and Liberal

by Alan Colmes

  Khidhir Hamza, a nuclear scientist who helped Saddam develop his nuclear program was trotted out to defend Bush's push for war. Hamza has appeared numerous times on Hannity & Colmes. During his February 13, 2003, appearance, I asked him how he could be such an authority on Iraq's capabilities when he hadn't been in the country in many years, and he admitted to me that his views were not based on firsthand knowledge:

  COLMES: But you know, you have not been in Iraq . . . since— or at least not part of the weapons program since 1991. ... You left the country in 1995. So why should we believe your information is current?

  HAMZA: I didn't say it's current. I said—as I said in Congress in my testimony, that it is an assessment of what is going on right now from defectors, from various intelligence reports. The German intelligence report in 2000 was the most detailed of Iraqi reports, especially using corporations based in India and other places. . . .

  COLMES: So you're not telling us firsthand information? You're basing this on other reports from Germany, for example, which is one of the most ardent antiwar countries going on right now. So when you speak, you say you're not talking from personal knowledge having been in Iraq ten years ago?

  HAMZA: Yes. What I'm saying right now, I know the system very well. I worked in the Iraqi nuclear program more than twenty years. And I am in a better position probably to evaluate than many other people. And I am using this capability, the inside knowledge of the program, to analyze the data coming out of Iraq right now.

  But that "inside knowledge" was of a program that was years old, and data coming out of Iraq at the time of that statement was questionable.

  Other Questionable Arguments

  We were told that there were links to al Qaeda when, in fact, al Qaeda was more sympathetic to the anti-Saddam forces in northeastern Iraq. During the president's ardent attempts to link al Qaeda and Iraq in the latter part of 2002, little evidence could be found that such a link existed. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 22, 2002: "Yet despite some intriguing leads, U.S. intelligence officials say they haven't found hard evidence of an active link between Iraq's secular regime and al-Qaeda's Islamic militants . . . there is little evidence that he has been willing so far to share his biological or chemical weapons with his partners in terror, even during the Gulf War." Bush 43 's Cincinnati speech, designed to galvanize the nation and the world to support an attack on Saddam, contained the claim that an al Qaeda leader was getting medical treatment in Iraq. Soon after that, our own intelligence officials acknowledged that the alleged terrorist, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was no longer in Iraq, and there was never any evidence that the Iraqi government knew he was there or had contact with him. The Washington Post reported that at a Senate hearing on February 11, 2003, Tenet said that "Zarqawi was not 'under the control' of President Saddam." The next day Tenet slightly altered his rhetoric, saying " 'it's inconceivable' that Zarqawi and two dozen Egyptian Islamic Jihad associates 'are sitting there without the Iraqi intelligence service's knowledge of the fact that there is a safe haven being provided." The Post pointed out another inconsistency: "The CIA director said Zarqawi took money from bin Laden, but later he said Zarqawi and his network were 'independent'."

  In February 2003, as the engines were revving up to attack Saddam Hussein, and Secretary of State Colin Powell was about to address the United Nations, word was that the FBI and CIA were still at odds with the administration's attempt to tie Iraq to al Qaeda. The New York Times reported: "At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. 'We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there,' a government official said."

  Four months later, the New York Times also reported that Abu Zubaydah, the al Qaeda terror coordinator who was captured in March 2002, told the CIA, "Osama bin Laden vetoed the idea of working with Hussein's government because he did not want to be beholden to Hussein." A separate CIA interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top al Qaeda leader who was captured in March 2003, revealed the same information. The Times reported that "spokesmen at the White House, State Department and Pentagon decline to comment on why Zubaydah's debriefing report was not publicly disclosed by the Bush administration last year." Could it be because it didn't fit their agenda?

  Democratizing Iraq was another reason given for war. But the State Department issued a report just before the commencement of hostilities in Iraq stating that regime change would likely not lead to democratization. "Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve," the Los Angeles Times reported. "Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements." Funnily enough, the report was dated February 26, 2003, the same day that Bush 43, speaking to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, put forth his democratic domino theory.

  Bush 43 also stirred fear by warning that Iraq had a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States." But intelligence and Pentagon sources knew that Iraqi aircraft lacked the range to reach the United States.

  During Powell's United Nations address, he talked about trucks that were really mobile biological weapons laboratories, Iraqi scientists who had left the country to avoid being interviewed, leaks that allowed Iraq to know where inspections were going to be ahead of time, and ties to al Qaeda. But just five days earlier chief weapons inspector Hans Blix gave an interview to the New York Times that discounted much of what Powell laid out at the UN.

  Blix disputed Powell's claims that inspectors discovered Iraqi officials hiding illicit materials, saying that the inspectors had reported no such incidents. Blix also took issue with Powell's statements that Iraq was sending scientists to Syria to prevent them from being interviewed and disagreed with the administration's contentions that his inspection agency had been infiltrated by Iraqi agents or that there were Iraqi ties to al Qaeda. "More broadly," the Times reported, "he challenged President Bush's argument that military action is needed to avoid the risk of a Sept. 11-style attack by terrorists wielding nuclear, biological or chemical weapons."

  Most embarrassing to the administration was Powell's invocation of British intelligence, which turned out not to be intelligence at all: "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities," Powell said. Britain claimed the report was based in part on "intelligence material" and that it gave "up-to-date details" of Saddam's security and intelligence network. It turns out that this "intelligence" was almost word for word the work of a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey. The researcher, Ibrahim Al-Marashi, said he hadn't been approached by the British government: "It was a shock to me." It was embarrassing enough that this information had been published the previous September, but even more excruciating was that it was based on information from the 1991 Gulf War. Ouch!

  We were also told that we had to go after Saddam because in the 1980s he gassed his own people, the Kurds. So let me get this straight. Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988, and for that we must get him now, in spite of choosing not to get him then or during the Gulf War in 1991. Presidents Reagan and Bush were silent about that genocide. It was more important at the time to have Iraq as an ally against Iran than to speak up on a human rights issue. Only when it became useful as a political tool to argue against an evil regime did Republicans feign outrage about the fate of the Kurds, fourteen years after the fact. They've yet to find a way to blame Clinton for this one, although I know that there is a conservative laboratory somewhere, busily finding a way to do so retroactively. In fact, among conservative think tanks, there are the highly regarded "Heritage Foundation," the "Manhattan Institute," and the ever-expanding, "Institute for the Study of How Clinton Did It Worse."

  All of these justifications paved the way for the war and its aftermath: nat
ion-building, something candidate Bush said he wouldn't do: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions," he said in October 2000, "then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. I'm going to prevent that." This promise was broken on the morning of March 20, 2003, Iraqi time, when the first raid of Gulf War II commenced and became the first step in the remaking of Iraq. Or, to use the phrase from the October 3 debate, "nation-building."

  Oh! What a Lovely War

  Richard Attenborough made his directorial debut at the helm of a 1969 movie that satirized World War I. While poor British men were off fighting and dying for their country, the aristocracy limited its sacrifices to boycotting German wine. One nice touch in the film was a cricket Scoreboard that kept track of the war's casualties. Sound familiar?

  On the night of March 19, 2003, I debated former secretary of state Alexander Haig on Hannity & Colmes about the appropriateness of placing political blame on the eve of war.

  COLMES: ... shouldn't we be rising above that now and stop pointing fingers at each other, whether it's left to right or right to left?

  HAIG: Well you know, Alan, you make a very good point. Our country does best when it has two viable vital political movements, one Democratic, one Republican. But. . . they—[the Democrats]—they are the ones that started this mess. In the first place, they participated wholly in the creation of the conditions that have made this war absolutely essential.

  COLMES: See, General, there you go, you're pointing fingers. You want to blame one political party for getting us where we are today. There's plenty of blame to go around on both sides, when you had a Reagan-Bush administration that tilted toward Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. This is not a time for finger-pointing, is it?

  HAIG: Alan, ... if you listened to the last three weeks, all of the criticism has come from the Democratic leadership. And it's been outrageous, unconscionable, and totally wrong in terms of timing. And they're going to pay a heavy political price in my view.

  Moments later news broke that Gulf War II had begun, and we broke away to Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and war coverage commenced. At that point I decided that it was no longer appropriate for me to debate the validity of the war while American men and women were in harm's way. Many on the left chose to continue their vocal and vociferous opposition. I felt that the beginning of hostilities rendered that debate obsolete. An unintended consequence was the suddenly positive responses I began to receive from conservatives.

  From: Larry

  Sent: Friday, April 04,2003 10:18 AM

  To: colmes

  Subject: Liberals can be good Americans!

  Dear Allen:

  I watch the show solely for Seans point of view. However I must say the way you have conducted yourself since the war began has been exemplary. It is the first time I have ever thought of a liberal as patriotic.You have managed to communicate your obvious liberal views without shaming your country.Your comrades should take a lesson and they might survive to debate another day!

  Respectfully,

  Larry

  We should never lose sight of the valor of those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. It's not the grunts in the field who make foreign policy; they're the foot soldiers carrying out the geopolitical objectives of others, usually selflessly and, in this case, brilliantly. The outcome, however, was never in doubt. Iraq had no nuclear capability, no long-range missiles, a debilitated air force, and a depleted army. The fear that the Iraqis would use chemical or biological weapons never materialized.

  True, Iraq was proclaimed "free." But what did "free" mean; and, at what price, freedom? Even after Bush 43 proclaimed on May 1, 2003, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," the country was characterized by anarchy, looting, and guerrilla warfare that resulted in the regular killing and wounding of more Americans. Asked about the ravages of post-Saddam Iraq, Rumsfeld replied, "Freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." Or, as they used to say on Saturday Night Live, "No big whoop." It's so much more wonderful to commit crimes and do bad things in a free country than it is in a dictatorship. Listening to Rummy, you'd think newly freed Iraq was like Great Adventure; but instead of animals, it's criminals who "roam free."

  Also untidy is acknowledging how many civilians died during Persian Gulf War II. Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jim Cassella said on June 10, 2003, that the U.S. military doesn't count civilian casualties, explaining, "Our efforts focus on destroying the enemy's capabilities, so we never target civilians and have no reason to try to count such unintended deaths." However, a five-week investigation by the Associated Press reveals that at least 3,240 civilians died in Iraq during the war. AP journalists looked at logs from 60 of Iraq's 124 hospitals between March 20, when the war began, and April 20, when the fighting eased. The AP included only those records that distinguished between civilian and military deaths. Furthermore, many of the dead never made it to hospitals; instead, they were buried by their families or lost in the rubble, so the actual count is likely much higher. The 1991 Gulf War, by comparison, saw an estimated 2,278 civilian casualties, according to Iraqi civil defense authorities.

  Untidiness, it seems, is small price to pay for a lovely little war.

  How We Wound Up Between Iraq and a Hard Place

  This administration's Iraq obsession has its roots in something called the "Project for the New American Century." A group of neoconser-vatives, including Dick Cheney, his chief of staff Lewis Libby, Don Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Bush 43's brother Jeb got together in 1997 to formulate a plan to reshape the Middle East. In 1998, eighteen of them signed a letter to President Clinton urging unilateral action against Iraq, claiming, "we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition" to enforce UN resolutions. In 2000, they published a blueprint called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century." Here is just one of its juicy tidbits: "Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

  Ten of the eighteen signers of that letter to President Clinton now serve in the Bush 43 administration, most in high-ranking positions.

  Leave it to columnist Molly Ivins to put the situation succinctly: "We weren't attacked by Iraq—we were attacked by bin Laden's terrorist network. We weren't attacked with nuclear weapons—we were attacked with box cutters."

  When it was clear that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, President Bush made his capture a priority, even if only for a few, brief moments: "I want justice," Bush 43 proclaimed. "There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.' "

  But as "The 'War' on Terror" morphed into the Saddam obsession, our priorities changed, even though the nature of the threats against the United States did not, and Bush 43 was soon singing a very different tune about bin Laden: "I truly am not that concerned about him. I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. We shoved him out more and more on the margins."

  Apparently, Bush thought he could get away with applying the first comment not to bin Laden, but to Saddam Hussein. As in a three-card-monte game, there was a bait and switch, and the hunt for bin Laden became the hunt for Saddam.

  The Friendly Skies

  While we're questioning this administration and "The 'War' on Terror," why have so few questions been raised about how and why our government, with the help of the Saudis, flew members of the bin Laden family out of the United States to Saudi Arabia in the wake of the September 11 attacks? Here's what the New York Times reported on September 30, 2001: "The young members of the bin Laden clan were dr
iven or flown under F.B.I, supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks."

  We never could get a straight story about the circumstances under which the bin Ladens left America. Conflicting press reports show that they either left voluntarily or were told to leave. The Independent of London reported on September 26, 2001: "A spokesman for the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington denied claims yesterday that the bin Ladens had been told by the FBI and the Saudi government to return. He said: 'There was no official warning from the government that they should go but maybe they thought it would be better if they went home'."

  But the Boston Globe, put it this way a few days later: "A Saudi diplomat said his government and the FBI advised the bin Ladens to leave for their own safety."

  In all, twenty-four members of bin Laden family were escorted from the United States to Saudi Arabia. Did the FBI interview them?

  Were questions asked about their relationship with their estranged relative Osama? Did investigations take place into any transfers of money between these rich relations and their prodigal wayfarer? So far, there have been no answers to these questions.

  War Makes Good Politics

  In late 2002, White House chief of staff Andrew Card chaired a meeting in which they discussed a document called "Possible '04 Signature Issues." The White House claimed that it was just an innocent list of issues that needed attention to ensure that 2003 issues and 2004 issues didn't conflict, although it refused to reveal who wrote the list. The meeting in question was conducted by Karl Rove's strategic planning unit. And just what might they be planning for in 2004? Oh, I don't know, could it be an ... election? And why deny the obvious? Rove's job is not to set policy; he's not a member of the cabinet. Rove's job is to position the president politically.