WMDs didn’t matter, stupid

2005.11.19 — Government | War | by Derek Jensen

This is part two of a two-part article. Look for part one: "Stop saying everyone was fooled by Iraq intelligence."

So the whole idea of bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction being the reason we accidentally wrongfully invaded a foreign nation and took over its government is completely bogus. The Bush administration was willfully deluding itself and had ample warning internally and externally that its faith-based intelligence gathering was dead wrong.

But there's more to it than that. The argument that we were lost lambs led astray by bad information assumes that everything would have been okay if only Iraq had actually had weapons of mass destruction or a nuclear weapons program. That's delusional too.

Invading a foreign country and changing its government when it hasn't attacked you is wrong. It's imperialistic. It's the kind of thing we condemned the Soviets for doing when they thought that communism was the greatest thing since sliced vodka.

Worse, WMDs would have been a false justification. There are plenty of bad regimes in the world with nasty weapons and actual ties to terrorism—hell, plenty of bad regimes in the Middle East:

• Iran (which is pursuing nukes)
• Pakistan (which has them)
• Syria and Saudi Arabia (which covertly support terrorism and abuse human rights)
• Libya (which had WMDs until recently and supported terrorism)
• Uzbekistan (where they boil people alive)

And some of those our our allies.

So, no, we didn't invade Iraq because Saddam was bad or had WMDs. The Bush administration did it because they wanted to make Iraq a friendly democracy, a giant US military base, and a wrench against OPEC. They chose Iraq instead of Syria or Iran because Saddam was particularly hated in the West and the Middle East and had demonstrated in the Gulf War that his military was a pushover.

And they did it because they knew they could sell it to the American people. The American people liked the idea of revenge on Saddam for surviving the Gulf War. Conservatives hated him in particular for humiliating George HW Bush by outlasting him.

Democrats and moderate Republicans in Congress went along with it because the American people were quickly sold on the idea—mixed up as it was with 9/11—and everyone thought it would be over quickly.

The Bushies monkeyed with the National Intelligence Estimate given to Congress to eliminate qualifiers and caveats. It divided Democrats badly in the 2004 election, since most of the top contenders had stupidly voted for the administration's request for authorization to use force as a "last resort."

The American people were sold on the idea of invasion so quickly in part because the Bush administration was stating their case boldly and ignoring contrary evidence but also in part because the US news media loved it. Loved it. War is great television, and every 24-hour news channel was salivating over the prospect of another quick and largely bloodless video game Gulf War. They made bumper graphics and theme music and updated their maps and everything.

And every foreign correspondent was peeing his pants to become an "embed." They marveled at military technology, wore the tough-guy clothes, stood on armored transports, delivered the play-by-play in breathless tones, rolled across the desert hand-in-hand with US soldiers.

It wasn't bad intelligence that go us into Iraq. It was militaristic political ideology, self-serving desire for revenge, and greed for glory.

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