by Oliver Stone
Having pushed the resolution through Congress, the administration continued peddling fraudulent and thoroughly discredited claims. Bush unveiled one of the most infamous in the January 2003 State of the Union address, declaring, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,”97 an allegation that Joseph Wilson, former Deputy Chief of Mission to Iraq and former ambassador to three African countries, had already shown to be false. When Wilson later exposed the administration’s mendacity, top officials, including Libby, retaliated by illegally outing Wilson’s wife as a covert CIA operative, destroying her career and putting many people in jeopardy.
Relying on “evidence” provided by Feith, which had been repeatedly refuted point by point by CIA and DIA analysts, Cheney and Libby made frequent visits to Langley, pressing CIA analysts to reconsider their assertion that Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda. Tension between administration hawks and intelligence analysts escalated. As national intelligence officer for the Middle East, Paul Pillar was in charge of the intelligence community’s assessments on Iraq. He described the “poisonous atmosphere” in which administration supporters were accusing him and other intelligence officers of “trying to sabotage the president’s policies.”98 On one occasion, when Hadley demanded that the deputy director for intelligence revise the “link” paper, Tenet phoned Hadley in a fit of pique and shouted, “We are not rewriting this fucking report one more time. It is fucking over. Do you hear me! And don’t you ever fucking treat my people this way again. Ever!”99
But the most ignominious moment came on February 5, 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell, the most respected and trusted member of the administration, went before the United Nations and made the case for war. Bush had handpicked Powell for the job. “You have the credibility to do this,” he told Powell. “Maybe they’ll believe you.”100
Powell spoke for seventy-five minutes. He brought an array of props, including tape recordings, satellite photos, artists’ renderings, and a small vial of anthrax-like white powder to illustrate how little would be required to cause a tremendous loss of life. He assured the delegates:
My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. . . . We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. . . . We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each . . . the mobile production facilities . . . can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. . . . Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. . . . [Saddam] remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons. . . . what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.101
It was a thoroughly shameful performance that Powell later called a low point in his career.102 Many of the claims had already been rejected by both the intelligence community and UN inspectors. Others relied on information provided by known fabricators like Chalabi and “Curveball,” an alcoholic cousin of one of Chalabi’s aides. Curveball had earlier been exposed as a fraud by German intelligence, to which he had provided over a hundred false reports on WMD. “I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime,” Curveball later admitted. German officials alerted the CIA that Curveball could not be trusted. Powell actually resisted pressure from Cheney’s office to make an even more direct link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, dismissing many of the assertions sent over by Libby and company as “bullshit.”103
Members of the intelligence community were outraged over Pentagon neocons’ hijacking, distorting, and fabricating intelligence. When the nonexistent WMD later failed to materialize, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof described them as “spitting mad” and eager to have their say. One lashed out, “As an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, I know how this administration has lied to the public to get support for its attacks on Iraq.”104
Whereas Powell’s speech largely fell flat overseas, it had the desired impact on U.S. public opinion. The Washington Post described the evidence as “irrefutable.” Prowar sentiment jumped from one-third of the public to one-half. When Powell visited the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the next day, Joseph Biden gushed, “I’d like to move the nomination of Secretary of State Powell for President of the United States.”105
The United States still needed to secure approval from nine of the fifteen Security Council members, and it needed to dissuade France from exercising its veto. It applied enormous pressure on developing countries, which were all aware of what happened to Yemen in 1990 after it joined Cuba in opposing the use of force against Iraq. The UN gambit might have succeeded had not courageous young British intelligence officer Katharine Gun, at great personal risk, exposed an illegal NSA operation to spy on and pressure UN delegates to support the war measure. The exposé shocked Britain but went almost unreported by the U.S. media.106 Despite threats and bribes, and after weeks of unrelenting pressure, only the United States, Great Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria supported the resolution. Among those defying the United States were Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Angola, and Mexico.107
U.S. officials sneered at France and Germany for opposing the war. Rumsfeld dismissed them as “old Europe.”108 In a move reminiscent of World War I vilification of all things German, the House of Representatives cafeteria renamed French fries “freedom fries.” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called for replacing France on the UN Security Council with India: “France, as they say in kindergarten, does not play well with others.”109
Bush remained bitter for years over “old Europe’s” refusal to support the war. In his 2010 memoirs, he accused German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of having reneged on a January 2002 promise to back an invasion. Schroeder angrily refuted those charges, shooting back, “As we know today, the Bush administration’s reasons for the Iraq war were based on lies.” That view was seconded by other German officials. Uwe-Karsten Heye, who was Schroeder’s spokesman at the time, disparaged Bush’s understanding of the international situation: “We noticed that the intellectual reach of the president of the most important nation at the time was exceptionally low. For this reason, it was difficult to communicate with him. He had no idea what was happening in the world. He was so fixated on being a Texan. I think he knew every longhorn in Texas.”110
The decision to invade on March 10 had already been made. Meeting with Blair five days before Powell’s speech, Bush proposed several ways to provoke a confrontation, including painting a U.S. surveillance plane in UN colors to draw Iraqi fire, producing a defector to publicly disclose Iraq’s WMD, and assassinating Saddam.111
As the drums of war beat louder, U.S. media abandoned any pretense of objectivity, trumpeting the militarists and silencing the critics, who vanished from the airwaves. MSNBC, which was owned by General Electric, canceled Phil Donahue’s prime-time show three weeks before the invasion. An NBC memo explained that Donohue “seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” NBC officials feared that the show would provide “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”112
And wave the flag they did. CNN, Fox, NBC, and other television networks and radio stations paraded a stream of retired generals who, it was later revealed, were being given Pentagon talking points. The Pentagon recruited over seventy-five officers, almost all of whom worked directly for military contractors that would profit from the war. Rumsfeld personally approved the list. Many were flown to Baghdad, Guantánamo, and other sites for special tours. A 2008 exposé in the New York Times reported, “Internal Pentagon documents r
epeatedly refer to the military analysts as ‘message force multipliers’ or ‘surrogates’ who could be counted on to deliver administration ‘themes and messages’ to millions of Americans ‘in the form of their own opinions.’ ”
Victory would be easy, the former military officials assured gullible listeners and fawning television anchors, whose networks paid their faux informants between $500 and $1,000 per appearance. Brent Krueger, a senior aide to Torie Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs who oversaw the effort, crowed, “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” On some days, he noted, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”
Some later regretted having peddled lies to sell a war. Fox analyst Major Robert Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret, complained, “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’ ” NBC military analyst Colonel Kenneth Allard called the program “psyops on steroids.” “I felt we’d been hosed,” he admitted.113
Major newspapers spouted the same drivel. In 2004, New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent savaged the Times for having printed stories that “pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets sprouting on the shoulders of editors.”114
For the neocons, Iraq was just the appetizer. After devouring Iraq, they planned to return for the main course. In August 2002, a senior British official told Newsweek, “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”115 Undersecretary of State John Bolton voted for Syria and North Korea. PNACer Norman Podhoretz urged Bush to think bigger still. “The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil,” he wrote in his journal, Commentary. “At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends’ of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen.”116 Michael Ledeen, a former U.S. national security official and neocon strategist, mused, “I think we’re going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we want to or not. It may turn out to be a war to remake the world.”117
When retired General Wesley Clark visited the Pentagon in November 2001, he discovered that this was more than a pipe dream. A senior military staff officer told him, “we were still on track for going against Iraq. . . . But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. So, I thought, this is what they mean when they talk about ‘draining the swamp.’ ”118
People knowledgeable about the region, including those in the State Department and CIA, tried to dispel this neocon fantasy. “It’s a war to turn the kaleidoscope, by people who know nothing about the Middle East,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles Freeman.119 “It may be excusable as a fantasy of some Israelis . . . ,” said Anthony Cordesman. “As American policy, however, it crosses the line between neo-conservative and neo-crazy.”120 Princeton international relations expert G. John Ikenberry marveled at the “imperial ambition” of neocons who foresaw “a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor” and in which “no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector and enforcer.”121
With war approaching, some noticed how few of the war enthusiasts had served their country during the Cold War or in Vietnam, earning them the label of “chickenhawks.” Despite heartily supporting the Vietnam War, most went out of their way to avoid combat. Now they were blithely sending other young men and women off to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill and be killed. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Vietnam veteran who opposed the administration’s warmongering, remarked, “It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don’t know anything about war. They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off.”122 Highly decorated Marine General Anthony Zinni found it “interesting to wonder why all the generals see it the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger and really hell-bent to go to war see it a different way. That’s usually the way it is in history.”123
It was even more so now. Dick Cheney called Vietnam a “noble cause,” but after leaving Yale for Casper Community College in Wyoming, he applied for and received four student deferments and then another one for being married. “I had other priorities in the 60s than military service,” he explained.124 Some think it not accidental that the Cheneys had their first child in July 1966, nine months after the Johnson administration announced it would begin drafting married men without children.125 George W. Bush used family connections to get into the National Guard, which was only 1 percent African American. Bush failed to complete his six-year commitment and got himself assigned to Alabama, where he engaged in politics.126 Four-star General Colin Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his 1995 autobiography, “I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed . . . managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.”127 Future House Speaker Newt Gingrich got a student deferment. He told a reporter that Vietnam was “the right battlefield at the right time.” When asked why it wasn’t right for him, he replied, “What difference would I have made? There was a bigger battle in Congress than in Vietnam.”128 But he wasn’t elected to Congress until four years after the United States pulled out all its troops. John Bolton supported the Vietnam War while attending Yale but enlisted in the Maryland National Guard to avoid combat. He later wrote in his Yale twenty-fifth reunion book, “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.”129 Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Peter Rodman, Richard Perle, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, John Ashcroft, George Will, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Phil Graham, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, Joe Lieberman, Senator Mitch McConnell, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Trent Lott, Richard Armey, and former Senator Don Nickles got deferments. John Ashcroft got seven of them. Elliott Abrams had a bad back, former Solicitor General Kenneth Starr psoriasis, Kenneth Adelman a skin rash, Jack Kemp a knee injury—though he managed to play quarterback in the NFL for another eight years. Superhawk Tom DeLay, the future Republican majority leader, had worked as a pest exterminator. He assured critics that he would have served but that minorities had already taken the best positions. Rush Limbaugh missed Vietnam because he had a pilonidal or anal cyst.130
As war drew near, protesters took over the streets of over 800 cities around the world. Estimates range from 6 million to 30 million. Three million came out in Rome alone in what Guinness World Records lists as the largest antiwar rally in history.131 More than a million protesters marched in London. Hundreds of thousands marched in New York. In most of Europe, more than 80 percent opposed a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ninety-four to 96 percent did in Turkey. Opposition in Eastern Europe ranged from the mid-60s in the Czech Republic to the high 70s in Poland.132
In the Arab world, where the United States waged an aggressive campaign for public opinion, opposition was greatest. Polling firm Zogby reported that the percentage of Saudis with an “unfavorable opinion” of the United States rose from 87 to 97 percent in one year.133 A Time magazine survey of over 300,000 Europeans found that 84 percent considered the United States the greatest threat to peace and only 8 percent considered Iraq the greatest threat.134 Columnist Robert Samuelson wrote, “To foreign critics, [Bush’s] Ramb
o-like morality confirms their worst stereotypes of Americans: stupid, incautious and bloodthirsty.”135
Contemptuous of global opinion, Bush unleashed a massive aerial assault on March 20. The strategy was labeled “Shock and Awe,” based on a 1996 study by Harlan Ullman and James Wade, who wrote, “Shutting the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese.” The goal, they explained, was to “impose a regime of Shock and Awe through delivery of instant, nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction directed at influencing society writ large, meaning its leadership and public, rather than targeting directly against military or strategic objectives.” They warned that this strategy will be “utterly brutal and ruthless,” and “can easily fall outside the cultural heritage and values of the U.S.”136
Antiwar protesters gather at the Washington Monument. As the invasion of Iraq drew near, U.S. protesters were joined by millions around the world, including an estimated 3 million in Rome.
But under Bush and Cheney, the cultural heritage and values of the United States had fundamentally changed. NBC anchor Tom Brokaw effervesced, “One of the things we don’t want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we’re going to own that country.”137 Rumsfeld went to Baghdad to thank the troops for their sacrifice, declaring, perhaps a trifle prematurely, “unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate and the Iraqi people know this . . . many . . . came to the streets to welcome you. Pulling down statues of Saddam Hussein, celebrating their newfound freedom.”138
