[Vision2020] The Deceptions of War

[Phil Nisbet]

THE DECEPTIONS OF Nick:
THE COOKING OF the Books ON IRAQ

Dr. Nick Gier is an interesting guy who really ought to stick to what he 
knows and stay out of the political deception business.

Nick says;

“President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are busy defending themselves 
against the charge that they deceived the American people about the reasons 
for going to war in Iraq.  Sorting through my thick Iraq file, I've come up 
with following examples of outright deception.”

But it is interesting that Nick is actually deceiving V2020 and the people 
he writes for with the ‘facts’ he attempts to put forward.

For an example;

“The bipartisan 9/11 Commission reported that there was no "collaborative 
relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but Bush and Cheney 
blithely continued to make these charges.”

The report actually says “no evidence that these or the earlier contacts 
ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship." which is 
substantially different than the disingenuous statement Nick has given us.  
The actual 9-11 Commission report details extensive meetings between Al 
Queda and Iraqi officials, including trips back and forth discussing the 
potential for relocating Al Queda’s training and other facilities to Iraq.  
Though none of the various proposed agreements between the two sides ended 
in a final agreement or in active dual operational activity, they were 
talking and had agreed not to hinder the activities of each other.

One of the principle reasons that Bill Clinton did not take action to make a 
surgical strike that would have taken out Bin Ladin in Afghanistan is 
clearly detailed in the 9-11 Commission report.  “Clarke was nervous about 
such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for 
someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald 
Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi 
officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources 
said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin 
to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his 
network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually 
impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke 
declared.”

Then the 9-11 Commission reported that in emails between Sandy Berger and 
Clarke stated “"Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie 
to Baghdad," Clarke wrote in a February 11, 1999 e-mail to Berger.”  That 
hardly suggests that there were no possible cooperative actions between the 
groups, just that they had not formalized their relationship.

Then Nick says;

“Even though on June 17, 2004 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld stated that 
Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was "not Al Qaeda," Bush and Cheney continued 
to state that he was.”

>From Wikipedia;
“Zarqawi is believed to be a long time ally of Osama bin Laden, and is now a 
high-ranking member of bin Laden's terrorist network Al Qaeda, and since 
October 2004 has referred to his own organization (Jama'at al-Tawhid 
wal-Jihad, or Unification and Holy War Group, an insurgent network operating 
in Iraq) as "Al-Qaida in Iraq." On October 21, 2004, Zarqawi officially 
announced his allegiance to Al Qaida; on December 27, 2004, Al-Jazeera 
broadcast an audiotape of bin Laden calling Zarqawi "the prince of al Qaeda 
in Iraq" and asked "all our organization brethren to listen to him and obey 
him in his good deeds."

So, Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, alias Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says he 
is part of Al Queda, Bin Ladin says he is as well and somehow Bush and 
Cheney referring to him as part of Al Queda makes them liars?

And from Nick we then get this;

“ Zarqawi now heads the main terrorist organization in Iraq because of the 
turmoil of the U.S. invasion, not because Saddam invited him there.”

Actually, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi left Afghanistan during the invasion there 
and moved to Kurdish controlled Iraqi territory where Saddam had little 
sway.  Since his organization, Jama'at at-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ), had 
previous links to Ansar al-Islam, Zarqawi did not exactly need Saddam’s 
permission to be where he was.  To assume that once the US based invasion of 
Afghanistan had shut down Zarqawi’s Herat training camp, he would move to 
Ansar al-Islam’s area so as to become a Boy Scout seems pretty unlikely.  He 
and his group were already planning terrorist acts, had killed people in a 
number of attacks and would have been killing people regardless of a US 
invasion of Iraq.

Then Nick gives us this;

“The day after the 9/11 report was released Cheney claimed that Zarqawi "ran 
[a] poisons factory in northern Iraq out of Baghdad," but he should have 
known full well that this camp was not under Saddam's control, and when it 
was taken by U. S. troops, captured documents revealed no connection to 
Baghdad.”

Hum. . .  And how exactly should Cheney have ‘known this”?  Zarqawi had been 
invited to set up shop by Ansar al-Islam and Abu Abdallah al-Shafi'i had 
connections to Saddam.  Prior to actually taking the training camp, how 
exactly do you get the intellegence to know that connection exists or not?


Then Dr Gier hands us this one;
“With regard to Iraq's capacity to produce nuclear weapons, Bush, at a 
September 2, 2002 news conference, declared that a new report from the UN's 
International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iraq was "six months away" 
from building a nuclear weapon.  It was later discovered that no such report 
existed.”

Mohamed El Baradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy 
Agency (IAEA) made statements that Iraq had the capability to produce 
nuclear weapons in that time frame.  At the same time, he stated that to his 
knowledge they were not acting on carrying out a program, but he could not 
be sure, since the Iraqi regime would not let them take proper soils and 
other samples.  He made those statements to CNN, BBC and a variety of 
sources.  The report mentioned by Bush was 1200 pages in length and not out 
officially until October, with 300 pages of the document in Arabic.  Has 
Nick read the October 2002 IAEA report on Iraq?  Because that report exists 
and is noted in IAEA press releases, so is Dr. Gier’s discovery process 
flawed?

Then Nick hands us this distortion;

“On December 8, 2002, former U.S. weapons inspector David Albright appeared 
on "60 Minutes" and stated that the aluminum tubes Saddam ordered could not 
be used to enrich uranium. He concluded that Bush administration was 
"selectively picking information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear 
threat was more imminent than it is, and in essence, scare people."

David Albright was never a former U.S. weapons inspector he worked briefly 
for the UN’s IAEA.  As for any statement he may have made in December of 
2002, look at what he said in January 2003, 
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june03/inspectors_1-27.html . 
Though Albright questioned the Administration’s intelligence reports, he 
also was categorical that Iraq was not complying with UN resolutions and 
should be given only a couple of weeks to begin complying.  He also stated 
“However, if Iraq doesn't cooperate, they can't prevent Iraq from getting 
weapons of mass destruction in the long run. I mean, it finally...it's a 
losing game for the inspectors to play if Iraq isn't going to cooperate and 
in essence, comply.”


In essence, Nick is cooking the books far more carefully than any of the 
statements he makes with regard to the Administration.  It’s called 
intellectual dishonesty, something that is supposed to be anathema to 
persons in academic systems.

Because then Nick tells us this;

“The result has been an Iraq in far worse shape than before, the recruitment 
of new terrorists and insurgents where none existed before, and the 
unnecessary deaths of 2,100 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.”

As previously noted, there were terrorists in Iraq prior to the invasion.  
But in addition to terror cells of the Islamic variety, there were also 
terror cells of Hamas and other Palestinian groups that were indeed backed 
with financial and other support by Saddam.  So telling us that no 
terrorists existed in Iraq prior to the US lead invasion is simply false and 
completely demonstrably false.  Once we invaded and took Afghanistan out of 
the terror camp business, the people behind those camps headed to Iraq, as 
is easily demonstrated by Zarqawi’s move there.

As for necessity for casualties, the question that Nick has not dealt with 
at all is why not Iraq?   Was there and is there a case for geopolitical 
action and war in Iraq?

The Middle East has been the potential flash point for global conflict for 
ages.  Islamic and Pan Arab Nationalist groups have been able to spawn 
terror cells, spark wars and threaten global economic security for decades 
now.  What exact solution does Dr. Gier propose to solve the problem of an 
unstable Middle East?  If not Iraq, then what alternative proposals does he 
have?

And finally Nick gives us this;

“During the Cold War millions of innocent people in the Third World died 
because both sides chose to fight in some else's country.  Our country would 
be much more secure if the billions spent in Iraq had been used to repair 
our crumbling infrastructure, protect our ports, search air cargo, and 
secure our nuclear and chemical plants.”

Yes, Professor, rather than blow the world into small bits and leave the 
globe a radioactive slag heap, we ended up fighting small scale actions 
between the USSR and the USA.  Are you suggesting that it would have been 
wiser to simply pull the trigger and do a Dr Strangelove?  The alternative 
was capitulation to the Russians and a close review of the situation in the 
former Worker’s Paradise is not exactly a ringing endorsement for such a 
plan.

And as for the idea that rather than interact globally we should simply 
build a giant security fence around ourselves, hunker down and let the world 
go to heck in a hand basket, we tried that as I recall in 1939.  The idea of 
Fortress America was silly then and is just as silly now.  I would hope that 
America First style Isolationism is not Nick’s proposal for how to solve the 
problem of Middle East instability, because we have to deal with the globe 
or it will deal with us.

Through faulty intelligence and bad planning, the current administration 
made some very strange calls about Iraq.  But the reality is that Iraq is a 
geopolitical linchpin.  Bush et al may have made a bad case for war, but 
eventually we were going to have to deal with the situation there.  Nick has 
no stated solutions, but seems perfectly willing to use book cooking to 
attack those who took action.  Instead of giving us some stale rehash of 
selected politcally motivated 'facts', give us some sort of idea what you 
would do otherwise Dr. Gier.

Phil Nisbet

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