Rationale for the Iraq War

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Main article: Iraq War

See also: 2003 invasion of Iraq, Legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, The UN Security Council and the Iraq war, Public relations preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Category:Stances and opinions regarding the 2003 Iraq conflict

Colin Powell holding a model vial of anthrax while giving a presentation to the United Nations Security Council. Critics have referred to this and other claimed evidence as a MacGuffin —ie. a promotional device ultimately unrelated to the true motive for going to war.

The rationale for the Iraq War (i.e. the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent hostilities), as stated in either rhetorical or official claims, has been a contentious issue since it was first introduced by the Bush administration during the 2002 Iraq disarmament crisis. After the invasion (as the claims appeared to change from a focus on "weapons of mass destruction" to less publicized rationales such as promoting freedom and democracy^[1]), these became the focal point for both criticism of the way the Bush administration promoted and ultimately gained support to initialize the conflict, and also its subsequent manner of conduct ("handling").

The single common thread for these rationales has been the claim that the invasion of Iraq was a part of the Global War on Terrorism —itself ostensibly claimed to have begun with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. This assertion however rests largely on a claimed connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, for which positive evidence remains thin. To the contrary, claims of false or exaggerated evidence and rhetoric (Yellowcake forgery, Downing Street memo) have largely been substantiated. Bush's own State Department listed 45 countries, including the United States where Al Qaeda was active. Iraq was not one of them ^[2].

Promoters of the war often referenced the religion of Islam, which proponents claimed was likely to produce a future alliance between Iraq and rogue terrorist elements, and claim this was sufficient case for the "preemptive war," as outlined in the "Just War" clause of the Bush Doctrine.^{[citation needed]} Critics have charged that, in the absence of material reasons, the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, a fraud, or (as claimed by anti-War intellectuals and activists) a "crime of aggression," as defined in the Nuremberg Principles. As of 2006, as many as 76% of the American public has been polled as believing the war to be a "mistake."

[edit] Background

The Iraq War

Prior to the war

Iraq disarmament crisis WMD claims UN actions... UN Security Council... Rationale for the Iraq War

Invasion and occupation

2003 invasion of Iraq Occupation of Iraq ...Casualties Multinational force Iraqi insurgency Terrorist attacks

Aftermath to present

Coalition Provisional Authority Iraqi Refugees Iraq Survey Group (WMD) Reconstruction of Iraq Human rights... Civil war in Iraq

Opinion

Views on the War Opposition to the Iraq War Protests against... Legitimacy... Opinions... List of People

Related

Years: '03 • '04 • '05 • '06 • '07 Other: Wikinews • Images This box: view • talk • edit

Prior to the election of George W. Bush as president, many in the Clinton administration and in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, postulated that Saddam had a program to produce weapons of mass destruction and the willingness to use them.^{[citation needed]} They felt that he should be removed from power. In 1998, with the passage of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (P.L. 105-338), it became official United States policy to work for the overthrow of Saddam's regime. The act stated: "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime." The act was unanimously approved by the Senate with the strong support of the Clinton administration.

Major American news organizations, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post ran news stories in the 1990s (as well as after Bush's election) about the danger of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program, and they editorialized that the problem was an urgent one that the president (Clinton, then Bush) needed to address seriously. Robert Kagan the neoconservative [2] co-founder of the Project for the New American Century notes that the Post editorialized on January 29, 2001: "[O]f all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous -- or more urgent -- than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [...]"^[3]

Before Bush was elected, several members of the Bush team, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz wrote urging an invasion of Iraq as part of a larger Middle East policy. One document, published by the Project for the New American Century in September 2000 and entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century", stated, "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."^[4]

In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the seeming relative success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Bush administration felt that it had sufficient military justification and public support in the United States for further operations against perceived threats in the Middle East. The relations between some coalition members and Iraq had never improved since 1991, and the nations remained in a state of low-level conflict marked by American and British air-strikes, sanctions, and threats against Iraq.

Throughout 2002, the U.S. administration made it clear that removing Saddam Hussein from power was a major goal, although it offered to accept major changes in Iraqi military and foreign policy in lieu of this. Specifically, the stated justification for the invasion included Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction, links with terrorist organizations and human rights violations in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein government, issues that are detailed below.

To that end, the stated goals of the invasion, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were:

• Self-defense
  • find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, weapons programs, and terrorists
  • collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists
• Humanitarian
  • end sanctions and deliver humanitarian support (According to Madeleine Albright, half a million Iraqi children had died because of sanctions.)
• United Nations Security Council Resolution
  • Resolution 1205, made in 1998.
• Regime Change
  • end the Saddam Hussein government
  • help Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule
• Economic
  • secure Iraq's oil fields and other resources

Many staff and supporters within the Bush administration had other, more ambitious goals for the war as well. Many claimed that the war could act as a catalyst for democracy and peace in the Middle East, and that once Iraq became democratic and prosperous other nations would quickly follow suit due to this demonstration effect, and thus the social environment that allowed terrorism to flourish would be eliminated. However, for diplomatic, bureaucratic reasons these goals were played down in favor of justifications that Iraq represented a specific threat to the United States and to international law. Little evidence was presented actually linking the government of Iraq to al-Qaeda (see below).

Opponents of the Iraq war disagreed with many of the arguments presented by the administration, attacking them variously as being untrue, inadequate to justify a preemptive war, or likely to have results different from the administration's intentions. Further, they asserted various alternate reasons for the invasion. Different groups asserted that the war was fought primarily for:

• Energy economics
  • to gain control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market (since 2000, Iraq had used the Euro as its oil export currency)
  • to ensure the US had military control over the region's hydrocarbon reserves as a lever to control other countries that depend on it
  • to assure that the revenue from Iraqi oil would go primarily to American interests
  • to lower the price of oil for American consumers
• Defense and construction special interests
  • to channel money to defense and construction interests
• Public perception
  • to maintain the wartime popularity that the President enjoyed due to his response to the 11 September attacks, and thus distract attention from other domestic political issues on which he was politically vulnerable (in contrast to his father whose wartime popularity quickly faded when the electorate began to focus on the economy)
• Ideological, emotional reasons
  • in pursuance of the PNAC's stated strategic goal of "unquestionable [American] geopolitical preeminence"
  • a chance for George W. Bush to get revenge against Saddam Hussein for attempting to have his father, President George H. W. Bush, assassinated during a visit to Kuwait in 1993.
  • to satisfy President George H.W. Bush, Cheney, and other members of the first Bush administration who had not removed Hussein during the first Gulf War and wanted an opportunity to remove Hussein from power, even though removing Hussein from power was not an objective of the first war.

For example, U.S. war planners were interested in U.S. military domination of the oil-rich Gulf region, the world's top supply of this most important resource, according to U.S. General Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction in Iraq, explaining that the U.S. occupation of Iraq was comparable to the Philippine model: "Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East".^[5] "One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)", "I hope they're there a long time....And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade", Garner added.^[6]

Also, the House report accompanying the emergency spending legislation said the money was "of a magnitude normally associated with permanent bases".^[7]

[edit] Events following the 1991 Gulf War

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, United States Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney reported that "Saddam Hussein's offensive military capability, his capacity to threaten his neighbors, has been virtually eliminated." Yet there was still much concern over Iraq's weapons programs, so United Nations Resolutions were passed to impose sanctions on the regime of Saddam Hussein until it was verified that its weapons of mass destruction were destroyed.

From April 1991 and the formation of UNSCOM, Iraq had been under ongoing pressure by the United Nations to declare and destroy its biological and chemical weapons. In total the UN had passed 13 resolutions calling for complete access of UNSCOM and IAEA officials to locate and destroy all weapons of mass destruction.^[8]

Starting in the aftermath of the war and continuing until 1998, UNSCOM inspected Iraq, locating and destroying large quantities of chemical agents, nuclear-related equipment and other prohibited materials.^[8][9][10] Conflict between Iraq and the UN developed during 1998, however, which led to the withdrawal of the UN and the authorization of a bombing campaign by the Clinton administration to "degrade Saddam's capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction, and to degrade his ability to threaten his neighbors".^[11][12]

Furthermore, in November 1998, at the urging of President Bill Clinton, the U.S. House of Representatives and the US Senate passed the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998," ^[13] which "declare[d] that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq and to replace it with a democratic government." President Clinton signed this bill into law. It also stated that "nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces," instead calling for support of Iraqi opposition groups. ^[14]

[edit] Events following September 11, 2001

After the September 11, 2001 attacks the Bush administration policy toward Iraq became that of regime change. Although Saddam had not been involved in the attacks, he and the Iraqi media praised them and compared the destruction inflicted on the U.S. to U.S. actions world-wide [3].

Beginning in September, 2002, an Iraq disarmament crisis emerged due to assertions that "Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger" and that Iraq possessed and was developing weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN sanctions.^[15]

Beginning with a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002, President George W. Bush began a public campaign to convince the world that Saddam Hussein was violating both the commitments he had made at the end of the First Gulf War and which prior UN resolutions dealt with: weapons of mass destruction, human rights, Kuwaiti prisoners of war, terrorism, long range SCUD missiles, the U.N. Oil-for-Food Programme and allowing UN inspectors to return to Iraq after their removal in 1998.^[16]

Bush, Cheney, and other administration officials implied a link between the Hussein government to the September 11, 2001 attacks immediately ^[17], partly on the basis of an alleged meeting in Prague in April 2001 involving an Iraqi intelligence agent and other evidence.^[18][19]. Both a Senate Select Committee and the 9/11 Commission failed to uncover convincing evidence of such a link, and specifically found no evidence of an Atta meeting in Prague.^[20][21][22] (See also Atta in Prague and Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda).

On October 10, 2002 the 107th Congress of the United States passed HJ Res 114 titled "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002."^[23] Among the reasons noted in the Congressional resolution authorizing force were Iraq's non-compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441,^[24] aid to terrorists, a 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush (George W. Bush's father)^[25] and the Emir of Kuwait, in addition to violations of the no-fly zones.^[26]

Iraq agreed to allow inspectors back into the country on September 17, 2002.^[27][28] In November, 2002, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed unanimously demanding that Iraq comply with its disarmament obligations in a verifiable manner as well as previous resolutions on human rights, terrorism and prisoners of war. UNMOVIC began inspections on November 18, 2002, replacing UNSCOM which had previously been in charge of monitoring Iraq since April 3, 1991.^{[8][29] [30]}

In his January 27, 2003 report to the U.N., chief inspector Hans Blix, while noting Iraqi cooperation with regards to prompt access to inspection sites, stated "...Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace." The reasons for this include a failure to account for the weaponization of VX nerve agent, the whereabouts of 1,000 tons of chemical agent and anthrax, and also the inability of the U.N. to interview Iraqi scientists outside the country.^[31] As late as June 2003, Hans Blix stated that although his team had found no evidence of WMD, "I don't exclude that they can find things. ... I don't think I'd be surprised if they found it." ^[32] Later, however, Hans Blix was skeptical of the motivation for the invasion of Iraq. ^[33]

Colin Powell holding a model vial of anthrax while giving a presentation to the United Nations Security Council. He later referred to this speech as "painful," saying it was a "blot" on his record.^[34]

On February 5, 2003 Colin Powell attempted to convince the UN Security Council that Saddam Hussein's regime posed a significant and timely threat to international security.^[35] The Bush administration also claimed that Iraq was allied with al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, including the Palestinian Arab Liberation Front (PALF) and Hamas.^[36][37][38] Bush administration officials also claimed that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.^[39] Powell later expressed regret that the evidence for his claims, while they "reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community" the sourcing was "inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading." ^[40]

On March 7, 2003, chief inspector Hans Blix made his last presentation to the U.N. describing Iraq's cooperation in resolving outstanding issues as "active or even proactive," although "these initiatives three to four months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute immediate cooperation,"^[41] but UNMOVIC teams were still searching for WMD in Iraq in accordance with the Security Council mandate.

After failed attempts to get a United Nations Security Council resolution supporting military action against Iraq, the United States delivered an ultimatum on March 17, 2003, demanding that Saddam Hussein leave Iraq within 48 hours.^[42] On March 18, 2003 the U.S. announced the formation of the "Coalition of the willing".^[43][41][44] On March 20, 2003 the 2003 Invasion of Iraq began, led by the United States and the United Kingdom, and the "Coalition of the Willing".^[45]

[edit] Criticisms of the rationale for the Iraq war

See also: Opposition to the Iraq War, Legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Protests against the Iraq war, and Views on the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Despite these efforts to sway public opinion, the invasion of Iraq was seen by some including Kofi Annan,^[46] United Nations Secretary-General, Lord Goldsmith, British Attorney General,^[47] and Human Rights Watch^[48] as a violation of international law,^[49] breaking the UN Charter (see Legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq), especially since the U.S. failed to secure U.N. support for an invasion of Iraq. In 41 countries the majority of the populace did not support an invasion of Iraq without U.N. sanction and half said an invasion should not occur under any circumstances.^[50] In the U.S., 73 percent of Americans supported an invasion.^[50] To build international support the United States formed a "Coalition of the Willing" with the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia and several other countries despite a majority of citizens in these countries opposing the invasion.^[50] Massive protests of the war have occurred in the U.S. and elsewhere.^[51][52][53] At the time of the invasion UNMOVIC inspectors were ordered out by the United Nations. The inspectors requested more time because "disarmament, and at any rate verification, cannot be instant."^[54][41]

Following the invasion, no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were found, although about 500 abandoned chemical munitions, mostly degraded, remaining from Iraq's Iran-Iraq war, were collected from around the country[4]^[55][56]. The Kelly Affair highlighted a possible attempt by the British government to cover-up fabrications in British intelligence, the exposure of which would have undermined the Prime Minister's original rationale for involvement in the war. The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found no substantial evidence for reputed links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.^[57][58] President George W. Bush has since admitted that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong".^[59][60][61] Although evidence of WMD was searched for by the Iraq Survey Group, their final report of September 2004 stated, "While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."^[62] In the March 2005 Addendum to the Report, the Special Advisor furthermore went on to state that "ISG assesses that Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran-Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward deployed along frequently and rapidly shifting battlefronts."^[63] (For comparison, the U.S. Department of Defense itself was famously unable in 1998 to report the whereabouts of "56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin command launch units".)^[64] ISG also believed that Saddam did not want to verifiably disarm Iraq of WMD, as required by U.N. resolutions, for fear of looking weak to his enemies. [5]

Claire Short claims that in July 2002, UK government ministers were warned that Britain was committed to participating in a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and a further allegation was that “the decision by Blair’s government to participate in the U.S. invasion of Iraq bypassed proper government procedures and ignored opposition to the war from Britain’s intelligence quarters.“^[65]. Tony Blair had agreed to back military action to oust Saddam Hussein with an assessment regarding WMD, at a summit at President George W. Bush's Texas ranch. Also present at the meeting, were Geoff Hoon, then-British defence secretary, Jack Straw, then-British foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then-chief of MI6.

In Europe the peace movement was very strong,^[66][67] especially in Germany, where three quarters of the population were opposed to the war.^[68] Ten NATO member countries did not join the coalition with the U.S., and their leaders made public statements in opposition to the invasion of Iraq. These leaders included Gerhard Schroeder of Germany,^[69] Jacques Chirac of France,^[70] Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium,^[71] and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.^[72] Public perceptions of the U.S. changed dramatically as a consequence of the invasion.^[73][74]

Other possible U.S. objectives, denied by the U.S. government but acknowledged by retired U.S. General Jay Garner, included the establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq as a way of projecting power (creating a credible threat of U.S. military intervention) to the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the Middle East generally.^[75] Jay Garner, who was in charge of planning and administering post-war reconstruction in Iraq, explained that the U.S. occupation of Iraq was comparable to the Philippine model: "Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East";^[76] (see also Philippine-American War). Garner was replaced by Paul Bremer after reports came out of his position in SY Coleman, a division of defense contractor L-3 Communications specializing in missile-defense systems. It was believed his role in the company was in contention with his role in Iraq.^[77] The House Appropriations Committee said the report accompanying the emergency spending legislation was "of a magnitude normally associated with permanent bases."^[78] However, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in 2006 to not fund any permanent bases in Iraq.^[79]

[edit] War on terrorism

The war in Iraq was originally justified as part of the U.S.-led War on Terrorism. Specifically, the Bush Administration argued that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda, and that his overthrow would lead to democratization in the Middle East, decreasing terrorism overall. The alleged ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda were never confirmed, however, and numerous reports of intelligence agencies investigating the matter -- including several reports of the CIA, the U.S. State Department, the FBI, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the investigations of foreign intelligence agencies -- concluded that no evidence had been found supporting an operational connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. The New York Times commented in September 2006 on the conclusions of the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had prewar ties to Al Qaeda and one of the terror organization’s most notorious members, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."[6][7] (See main article: Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda).

However, al-Qaeda leaders have seen the Iraq war as a boon to their recruiting and operational efforts, providing both evidence to jihadists worldwide that America is at war with Islam, and the training ground for a new generation of jihadists to practice attacks on American forces. In October 2003, Osama bin Laden announced: "Be glad of the good news: America is mired in the swamps of the Tigris and Euphrates. Bush is, through Iraq and its oil, easy prey. Here is he now, thank God, in an embarrassing situation and here is America today being ruined before the eyes of the whole world."[8] Al-Qaeda commander Seif al-Adl gloated about the war in Iraq, indicating, "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap."[9] A letter thought to be from al-Qaeda leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman found in Iraq among the rubble where al-Zarqawi was killed and released by the U.S. military in October 2006, indicated that al-Qaeda perceived the war as beneficial to its goals: "The most important thing is that the jihad continues with steadfastness ... indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest."[10]

In the years since the war began, a consensus has developed among intelligence experts that the Iraq war has increased terrorism. Counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna frequently referred to the invasion of Iraq as a "fatal mistake"^[80] that had greatly increased terrorism in the Middle East. London's conservative International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded in 2004 that the occupation of Iraq had become "a potent global recruitment pretext" for jihadists and that the invasion "galvanized" al-Qaeda and "perversely inspired insurgent violence" there.[11] The U.S. National Intelligence Council concluded in a January 2005 report that the war in Iraq had become a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists; David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, indicated that the report concluded that the war in Iraq provided terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills... There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries." The Council's Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, "At the moment, Iraq is a magnet for international terrorist activity."[12] And the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which outlined the considered judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, held that "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."[13]

[edit] Weapons of mass destruction

See also: Iraq disarmament crisis and Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

Computer-generated image of an alleged mobile production facility for biological weapons, presented by Colin Powell at the UN Security Council. Absence of more substantial proof undermined the credibility of the speech on the international scene. Russian experts questioned the likelihood of such mobile facilities, which are extremely dangerous and difficult to manage.

Prior to the 2003 invasion, the primary rationale presented for military action was to overthrow a regime which was in violation of the agreement ending the 1991 Gulf War, specifically the requirements to verify destruction of proscribed armaments. The U.S. administration, especially the State Department, aggressively tried to make this case as universally acceptable to as many nations as possible, culminating in a presentation by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003 that contended that Iraq was successfully circumventing the U.N. inspection effort.^[81] Explaining why the Washington bureaucracy decided to focus on this particular rationale, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, stated in an interview on 28 May 2003 in Vanity Fair that "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue - weapons of mass destruction - because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."^[82]

Press coverage contributed to the focus on this rationale. Between 1998 and 2003, The New York Times and other influential U.S. newspapers published numerous articles about suspected Iraqi rearmament programs. Headlines like "Iraqi Work Toward A-Bomb Reported" and "Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort" led to a common perception in the U.S. that Iraqi WMD posed a significant potential threat, and contributed to the passage of a bill authorizing military force against Iraq by a vote of 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate. It later turned out that the sources for many of these articles were questionable, but that was not known publicly at the time.^[83][84][85]

After the invasion, a U.S. led inspection team concluded that Iraq had destroyed all major stockpiles of WMD and ceased production in 1991 when sanctions were imposed. However, the Hussein regime had preserved the expertise to restart production, and had continued developing long range missiles, despite U.N. prohibitions. Since the invasion, approximately 500 munitions dating from before 1991 containing degraded mustard or nerve gas have been found by Coalition forces.^[86][87][88]

[edit] U.N. inspections before the invasion

Between 1991 and 1998, the United Nations Security Council tasked the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) with finding and destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. UNSCOM discovered evidence of continued biological weapons research and supervised destruction of the Al Hakam biological weapons production site - allegedly converted to a chicken feed plant, but retaining its barbed wire fences and antiaircraft defenses - in 1996.^[89][90] In 1998, Scott Ritter, leader of an UNSCOM inspection team, found gaps in the prisoner records of Abu Ghraib when investigating allegations that prisoners had been used to test Anthrax weapons. Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and refused to cooperate further with UNSCOM.

On August 26, 1998, approximately two months prior to United Nations inspectors' ejection from Iraq, Scott Ritter resigned from his position rather than participate in what he called the "illusion of arms control." In his resignation letter to Ambassador Butler,^[91] Ritter wrote: "The sad truth is that Iraq today is not disarmed ... UNSCOM has good reason to believe that there are significant numbers of proscribed weapons and related components and the means to manufacture such weapons unaccounted for in Iraq today ... Iraq has lied to the Special Commission and the world since day one concerning the true scope and nature of its proscribed programs and weapons systems." On September 7, 1998, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee,^[92] Scott Ritter was asked by John McCain (R, AZ) whether UNSCOM had intelligence suggesting that Iraq had assembled the components for three nuclear weapons and all that it lacked was the fissile material. Ritter replied: "The Special Commission has intelligence information, which suggests that components necessary for three nuclear weapons exists, lacking the fissile material. Yes, sir." However, as of September 2002, Ritter stated in an interview that he had falsified the information in order to justify his team's spending^[93]

On 8 November, 2002, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441, giving Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" including unrestricted inspections by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Saddam Hussein accepted the resolution on 13 November and inspectors returned to Iraq under the direction of UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix and IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Between that time and the time of the invasion, the IAEA "found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq"; the IAEA concluded that certain items which could have been used in nuclear enrichment centrifuges, such as aluminum tubes, were in fact intended for other uses.^[94] UNMOVIC "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction" or significant quantities of proscribed items. UNMOVIC did supervise the destruction of a small number of empty chemical rocket warheads, 50 liters of mustard gas that had been declared by Iraq and sealed by UNSCOM in 1998, and laboratory quantities of a mustard gas precursor, along with about 50 Al-Samoud missiles of a design that Iraq claimed did not exceed the permitted 150km range, but which had travelled up to 183km in tests. Shortly before the invasion, UNMOVIC stated that it would take "months" to verify Iraqi compliance with resolution 1441.^[95][96][97]

[edit] Formal search after the invasion

After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), headed by American David Kay, was tasked with searching for WMD. The survey ultimately concluded that Iraqi production of WMD ceased and all major stockpiles were destroyed in 1991 when sanctions were imposed, but that the expertise to restart production once sanctions were lifted was preserved. The group also concluded that Iraq continued developing long range missiles proscribed by the U.N. until just before the 2003 invasion.

In an interim report on October 3, 2003, Kay reported that the group had "not yet found stocks of weapons", but had discovered "dozens of WMD-related program activities" including clandestine laboratories "suitable for continuing CBW [chemical and biological warfare] research", a prison laboratory complex "possibly used in human testing of BW agents", a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B bacteria kept in one scientist's home, small parts and twelve year old documents "that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment", partially declared UAVs and undeclared fuel for Scud missiles with ranges beyond the 150km U.N. limits, "[p]lans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km", attempts to acquire long range missile technology from North Korea, and document destruction in headquarters buildings in Baghdad. None of the WMD programs involved active production; they instead appeared to be targeted at retaining the expertise needed to resume work once sanctions were dropped. Iraqi personnel involved with much of this work indicated they had orders to conceal it from U.N. weapons inspectors.^[86][98]

After Charles Duelfer took over from Kay in January of 2004, Kay said at a Senate hearing that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq having stockpiles of WMD, but that the other ISG findings made Iraq potentially "more dangerous" than was thought before the war.^[99][100] In an interview, Kay said that "a lot" of the former Iraqi government's WMD program had been moved to Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion, albeit not including large stockpiles of weapons.^[101]

On September 30, 2004, The ISG, under Charles Duelfer, issued a comprehensive report. The report stated that "Iraq's WMD capability ... was essentially destroyed in 1991" and that Saddam Hussein subsequently focused on ending the sanctions and "preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted". No evidence was found for continued active production of WMD subsequent to the imposition of sanctions in 1991, though "[b]y 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions".^[102]

The report concluded in its Key Findings that: "Saddam [Hussein] so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone.... The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them." The report also noted that "Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of [Iraq's WMD revival] policy.... The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary." A March 2005 addendum to the report stated that "[B]ased on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."^[87][103]

On January 12, 2005, US military forces abandoned the formal search. Transcripts from high level meetings within Saddam Hussein's government before the invasion are consistent with the ISG conclusion that he destroyed his stockpiles of WMD but maintained the expertise to restart production.^[104]

[edit] Other discoveries

In May 2004, a binary Sarin nerve gas shell was used in an improvised explosive device (roadside bomb) in Iraq. The device exploded before it could be disarmed, and two soldiers displayed symptoms of minor sarin exposure. The 155mm shell was unmarked and rigged as if it were a normal high explosive shell, indicating that the insurgents who placed the device did not know it contained nerve gas. Binary nerve gas shells are designed to mix the two components into sarin when used from an artillery piece; use in the roadside bomb resulted in incomplete mixing, limiting the effect on the soldiers. Earlier in the month, a shell containing mustard gas was found abandoned in the median of a road in Baghdad. Typical use of such shells in battle would involve barrages of hundreds of shells to saturate a battlefield with poison gas.^[105][106]

A July 2, 2004 article published by The Associated Press and reported by Fox News stated that more WMD not destroyed by the Iraqi Regime were discovered in South Central Iraq by Polish Allies. Terrorists were trying to purchase Sarin Gas warheads dating back to the last Iran-Iraq war for $5000 a warhead. The Polish troops purchased items on June 23, 2004. The U.S. military acknowledged that "while two of the rockets tested positive for sarin, traces of the agent were so small and deteriorated as to be virtually harmless" and that "These rounds were determined to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces"^[107][108]

Senator Rick Santorum claimed that as of June 2006, approximately 500 munitions containing "degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent" produced before the 1991 Gulf War had been found by Coalition forces in Iraq.^[109][88]

[edit] Conclusions

Press coverage and administration statements had led many Americans to expect large stockpiles of proscribed weapons in Iraq - stockpiles which were not found. Some administration officials felt that the intelligence community had failed to provide an accurate picture of the WMD program in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In an interview, David Kay said that U.S. intelligence services owed President Bush an explanation for having concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. At least one former CIA official contends the problem was that the administration selectively ignored contrary intelligence, citing dismissal by a White House planning group of information from a former Iraqi Foreign Minister that there were no active WMD programs. The Downing Street Memo also raised questions in this regard.^{[110][111][112][113][114][115]}

Some controversy also exists regarding whether the invasion increased or decreased the potential for nuclear proliferation. For example, hundreds of tons of dual-use high explosives that could be used to detonate fissile material in a nuclear weapon were sealed by the IAEA at the Al Qa'qaa site in January 2003. Immediately before the invasion, UN Inspectors had checked the locked bunker doors, but not the actual contents; the bunkers also had large ventilation shafts that were not sealed. By October, the material was no longer present. The IAEA expressed concerns that the material might have been looted after the invasion, posing a nuclear proliferation threat. The U.S. released satellite photographs from March 17, showed trucks at the site large enough to remove substantial amounts of material before U.S. forces reached the area in April. Ultimately, Major Austin Pearson of Task Force Bullet, a task force charged with securing and destroying Iraqi ammunition after the invasion, stated that the task force had removed about 250 tons of material from the site and had been detonated it or used it to detonate other munitions. Similar concerns were raised about other dual use materials, such as high strength aluminum; before the invasion, the U.S. cited them as evidence for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, while the IAEA was satisfied that they were being used for permitted industrial uses; after the war, the IAEA emphasized the proliferation concern, while the Duelfer report mentioned the material's use as scrap. Possible chemical weapons laboratories have also been found which were built subsequent to the 2003 invasion, apparently by insurgent forces.^{[116][117][118][119]}

On August 2, 2004 President Bush stated "Knowing what I know today we still would have gone on into Iraq.… The decision I made is the right decision. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."^[120]

[edit] Sanctions

See also: Iraq sanctions

At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, in which an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had been defeated by a United Nations force, a stringent set of sanctions were been imposed on Iraq at the urging of the US and some of its senior coalition allies. The sanctions imposed a humanitarian cost on the civilian population of Iraq. Lack of food and medical supplies had severe repercussions on the health and welfare of the population. According to UNICEF, over 500,000 children died because of the sanctions between 1990 and 2000, and the child literacy rate dropped from among the highest in the world to among the lowest.^[121][122]

To address some of these issues, the U.N. created the U. N. Oil for Food Programme in 1997. This program permitted Iraq to export a limited amount of oil under U.N. supervision, and use the proceeds to import food and other humanitarian supplies that could not be used in the manufacture of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons ("weapons of mass destruction").

In practice, the Oil for Food Programme had limited success. Imports of many vaccines and other medical supplies continued to be prohibited because they could potentially be used in biological or chemical weapons manufacture. Illicit kickbacks to the Iraqi government only strengthened Saddam Hussein's hold on the country, and the ability of the Iraqi government to direct contracts permitted Iraq to favor nations that tended to support Iraq on the U.N. Security Council. Corruption surrounding the program extended to French officials and the son of the U.N. Secretary General.^[123][124] The money that was left over was insufficient to address the humanitarian needs, and two successive UN humanitarian coordinators for Iraq resigned in protest.^[121]

The suffering caused by the sanctions on Iraq, and the ineffectiveness of the Oil for Food Programme in ending that suffering, formed a humanitarian justification for ending those sanctions. Subsequent to the Iraq War, the sanctions were discontinued and humanitarian functions turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

[edit] Human Rights

Another key rationale for the war was ending Saddam Hussein's nearly 40-year track record of abuse of human rights (see Human rights in Saddam's Iraq). Some critics called this justification self-serving, since the US government did not do much to prevent or to punish those crimes while they were happening.

With the Iran-Iraq War escalating in 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, at the time presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan, was dispatched to Iraq to meet with Hussein and discuss "topics of mutual interest". Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post reported that the United States “in a shift in policy, has informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with Iran would be ‘contrary to U.S. interests’ and has made several moves to prevent that result.” Rumsfeld met with Hussein and then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz several times in late 1983 and early 1984 amidst rumors of suspected chemical and biological weapons use against Iranian troops. The UN released a number of reports in 1984 citing the following:

"Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded."

"Chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs have been used in the areas inspected in Iran by the specialists."

On March 5, the US State Department issued a statement saying “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.” Rumsfeld resigned in May of 1984 and US diplomatic relations were fully restored by November of that year.

From 1986 to 1989, Hussein embarked upon a policy of ethnic cleansing that cost the lives of an estimated 182,000 Kurds (see Al-Anfal Campaign). In 1988, the last year of the Iran-Iraq War, chemical weapons were used in the Halabja poison gas attack in which an estimated 5,000 Kurds were killed.

After the Persian Gulf War, the US government encouraged rebellions by the Shiites but did not intervene when Saddam crushed the rebels.^[125][126]

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch has argued that the justification of "human rights" for the war in Iraq does not meet appropriate standards for the level of suffering that it causes.^[127]

[edit] Petroleum

Texas Republican congressman Ron Paul alleged that part of the reason for the war was to maintain "Dollar hegemony." Before the war, Hussein had planned to require Euros for all petroleum sales. That was bad for the dollar, since it lacks the backing by gold or silver which it had historically, and demand for dollars to purchase oil helped to support its market value. After the war began, the Americans quickly returned Iraq petroleum sales from Euros to "Petrodollars."

Meanwhile, post-war opinion polls [14] in Muslim countries show that a clear majority believe that the Iraq War was a war for natural resources, intended to bring Iraq's oil reserves under American control. On this view, the other issues (WMD, Saddam, terror links, etc) are seen as mere smokescreens. The same opinion polls also show the vast majority of those Muslims have a negative attitude towards Jews and believe suicide bombings are justifiable - which in no way invalidates the first opinion.

[edit] Purported links between Saddam and terrorists

See also: Global War on Terrorism, Yellowcake forgery, and Downing Street memo

In justifying the war to the United Nations, the U.S. government claimed that Saddam Hussein's government was aiding terrorist organizations.^[81] Various sources alleged links to the September 11, 2001 attacks, to the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, and to other terrorist organizations.

[edit] Russian Warnings

Several days prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Russian President Putin claims to have delivered a personal warning to President Bush concerning an imminent attack on the US by Saddam's Iraqi regime. Putin also claims to have warned Washington on several later occasions that Saddam Hussein was planning terrorist attacks against the United States before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Putin indicated, "the information was given to U.S. intelligence officers and that U.S. President George W. Bush expressed his gratitude to a top Russian intelligence official." However, Putin made a distinction between preparations for attacks and actual attacks, saying, "It is one thing to have information that Hussein's regime was preparing acts of terrorism -- we did have this information, and we handed it over.... But we did not have information that they were involved in any terrorist acts whatsoever and, after all, these are two different things."^[128][129] The U.S. never mentioned the Russian intelligence in making the case for war with Iraq.

[edit] Purported links — Al-Qaeda

Main article: Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda

Saddam Hussein's regime had some contacts with terrorist organizations in the past. The Bush Administration mentioned these contacts frequently in the run-up to the war, even falsely suggesting direct ties to al-Qaeda. Some even alleged that Saddam supported the attacks of 9/11, but this has no basis in evidence of any kind. And, according to the U.S. Intelligence Community's Kerr Group report of July 29, 2004, despite "a 'purposely aggressive approach' in conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links... [the U.S.] Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed."^[130] Some newspapers in 1998 reported an "alliance" or "pact" between Saddam and al-Qaeda.^[131] In January 1999, Newsweek magazine also reported statements by a Saudi intelligence officer that Saddam and al-Qaeda had formed an alliance. Network news organizations also picked up the story.^[132] But by 2003 most news organizations were extremely skeptical of such claims; certainly no evidence of any "alliance" or "pact" ever emerged in the mainstream press. One January 2003 article in the San Jose Mercury News said the claim "stretches the analysis of U.S. intelligence agencies to, and perhaps beyond, the limit."^[133]

After the invasion, in January of 2004, Secretary Powell stated "I have not seen [a] smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did." But by September 2005 Secretary Powell, when asked if there was any connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of 9/11, said "I have never seen a connection. I can't think otherwise, because I've never seen any evidence to suggest there was one."^[134] Various independent investigations into the question of an al-Qaeda connection by U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, FBI, and NSA concluded that there was no evidence of cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

Some unspecified information once perceived as "evidence" for a connection between the two turns out to have been disinformation coming from several sources, most notably an associate of Ahmed Chalabi who was given the code name "Curveball", and from captured al Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The Chalabi source has been thoroughly discredited, and the al Qaeda source has since recanted his story. Other al Qaeda leaders have claimed that there was no operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and indeed that Osama bin Laden had forbidden such a relationship with the Iraqi leader, whom he considered an infidel.

Some support for claims of collaboration between al Qaeda and the now deposed Iraqi government have come from weapons smuggler Mohamed Mansour Shahab, who said in an interview in The New Yorker that he had been directed by the Iraqi intelligence community to organize, plan, and carry out up to nine terrorist attacks against American targets in the Middle East, including an attack similar to the one carried out on the USS Cole.^[135] Reporter Guy Dinmore questions his credibility however, writing in the London Financial Times: "it is apparent that the man is deranged. He claims to have killed 422 people, including two of his wives, and says he would drink the blood of his victims. He also has no explanation for why, although he was arrested two years ago, he only revealed his alleged links to al-Qaeda and Baghdad after the September 11 attacks." (22 May 2002 p. 13) Al Qaeda expert Jason Burke wrote after interviewing Shahab, "Shahab is a liar. He may well be a smuggler, and probably a murderer too, but substantial chunks of his story simply are not true."^[136]

The only member of the original plot to destroy the World Trade Center to escape US law enforcement officials, the Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad shortly after the attacks in 1993. Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only alleged member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large after the investigation into the bombing where he fled to Iraq. After major fighting ceased U.S. forces discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, that allegedly show that the Iraqi government gave Yasin a house and monthly salary.^[137]

FBI and CIA investigations in 1995 and 1996 concluded "that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack"; then-U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has since testified, "the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was Al Qaeda; not Iraq.... [T]he allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation."^[138]

Abbas al-Janabi, who served for fifteen years as personal assistant to Uday Hussein before defecting to United Kingdom, has often claimed that he knew of collaboration between the former Iraqi government and al Qaeda. Al-Janabi said that he had learned that Iraqi officials had visited Afghanistan and Sudan to strengthen ties with Al-Qaeda and he also claimed he knew of a facility near Baghdad where foreign fighters were trained and instructed by members of the Republican Guard and Mukhabarat.^[139] Salman Pak, a facility matching al-Janabi’s description, was captured by US Marines in Mid April of 2003,^[140] but no evidence of al Qaeda presence at the camp has been found. Some claim that the camp was actually a counterterrorism facility built by the British in the mid 1980's but UN weapons inspectors, including Charles Duelfer believed it had been converted from its original purpose and was being used to train militants.^[141] Inconsistencies in the stories of the Iraqi defectors have led U.S. officials, journalists, and investigators to conclude that the Salman Pak story was inaccurate. Al-Janabi and other Iraqi defectors who tell this story are associated with the Iraqi National Congress, an organization that has been accused of deliberately supplying false information to the US government in order to build support for regime change.^[142] "The INC’s agenda was to get us into a war," said Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News. "The really damaging stories all came from those guys, not the CIA. They did a really sophisticated job of getting it out there."^[143] One senior U.S. official said that they had found "nothing to substantiate" the claim that al-Qaeda trained at Salman Pak.^[144]

In April of 2001, the Czech Security Information Service reported a meeting between Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, an Iraqi Intelligence Service officer operating out of the Iraqi embassy in Prague, and a man they believed to be Mohamed Atta. The Czech report was based on a single eyewitness from Prague who is now generally considered unreliable. Nevertheless, this Prague connection was seen as a crucial link between Iraq and al Qaeda by proponents of collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission examined this evidence, saying that circumstantial evidence appeared to place Atta in Florida at the time, and that "The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting." The report concluded, "Based on the evidence available including investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting we do not believe that such a meeting occurred." It also says that Czech intelligence indicates that al-Ani "was about 70 miles away from Prague" at the time that the meeting supposedly took place.^[145][146]

The Senate Report concludes that, while representatives of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had indeed met, an operational relationship was never realized and there was a deep sense of mistrust and dislike of one another. Osama Bin Laden was shown to view Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an "apostate regime." A British intelligence report^[147] went so far as to say of Bin Laden "His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq."

The state-run Iraqi local paper Al-Nasiriya published an opinion piece praising Osama bin Laden that Senator Ernest Hollings interpreted as foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Senator Hollings read the opinion piece into the Congressional Record.^[148] Nobody has offered any evidence that such "foreknowledge," if it existed at all on the part of the article's author, extended to Saddam's regime. Neither the 9/11 Commission Report nor the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq found this article worth mention.

In 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, concluded that there was no evidence of a "collaborative operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[149][150] This conclusion was consistent with the conclusions of all agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, according to documents released in 2005. Senator Carl Levin wrote that the documents "are additional compelling evidence that the Intelligence Community did not believe there was a cooperative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite public comments by the highest ranking officials in our government to the contrary."^[151]

[edit] Purported links — Other terrorist organizations

Aside from the contentious allegations of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, the former government did have relationships with other militant organizations in the Middle East including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is known that some $10–15M total was paid to the families of suicide bombers, presented as compensation for the demolition of their homes in Israeli collective punishment operations. Abu Abbas (associate with the PLO and the Achille Lauro hijacking) was found in Iraq, and had been wanted for quite some time. In August 2002, Abu Nidal (attacks in Italy and elsewhere) died in Baghdad from gunshot wounds while facing treason charges under Saddam's government.

In 1998, Iraq plotted to blow up Radio Free Europe in Prague, for broadcasting opposition communications into Iraq. According to Jabir Salim, the consul and second secretary at the Iraq embassy in Prague, Saddam Hussein had allocated $150,000 to recruit and train individuals who would not be traceable back to Iraq. This plot was aborted in December 1998 when Salim defected in Prague, revealing details of the plot to the CIA, British MI-6 and Czech intelligence.^{[citation needed]}

The now deposed Iraqi regime has also been accused of an assassination plot on former President George Bush. On April 14, 1993, it is charged that Iraq plotted to assassinate former President George Bush while he was visiting Kuwait. The assassins were Ra'ad al-Asadi and Wali al-Ghazali, two Iraqi nationals, who had been supplied with a car bomb. The plot was foiled when the two were captured in Kuwait City. The FBI learned that the two had been recruited by the Iraqi intelligence Service in Basra, Iraq, who also gave them the explosive devices shortly before Bush arrived in Kuwait.

Some documents indicate that the leadership was attempting to distance itself from Islamist militants instead of working with them,^[152] and that any connection between al Qaeda and Iraq is new. This was in relation to the rising insurgency in Iraq: Saddam was fearful that the foreign fighters might use this as an opportunity for themselves, rather than fight for Saddam to take control again. Many international jihadists have in fact begun operating in Iraq since the U.S. occupation began. (See Iraqi insurgency for further details).

Wikinews has news related to:

BBC global poll finds majority feel the US led Iraq invasion increased likelihood of terrorist attacks

The Bush Administration also has claimed that there are links between Saddam Hussein's government and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose organization Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War) has taken credit for kidnappings and beheadings directed against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Zarqawi is rumored to have been treated in an Iraqi hospital after being wounded in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi had settled in Kurdish northern Iraq (an area not controlled by Saddam Hussein's government) where he joined the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam, which was an enemy of the Ba'athist government. Nevertheless, U.S. officials continued to assert that Zarqawi constitutes an important link between Saddam's government and al Qaeda. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harbouring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."^[153] Also, Zarqawi does not seem to have ever been, as some have asserted, an al Qaeda leader, and only pledged his allegiance to the al Qaeda organization in October 2004.^[154] This pledge came two days after his insurgent organization in Iraq was officially declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

On October 19, 2004, the International Institute for Strategic Studies published its annual report stating that the war in Iraq had actually increased the risk of terrorism against westerners in Arab countries.^[155][156]

[edit] Other Justifications

[edit] To Protect Israel

In 2002, Philip D. Zelikow, a Bush administration appointee to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, who now works for the United States Department of State, made remarks alleging that the United States entered the Iraq War to protect Israel, saying:

"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.” ^[157]

[edit] Mideast Peace

A BBC documentary quoted former Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, who quoted President Bush as saying:

I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ...' And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God I'm gonna do it.

Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and quoted Bush as saying, "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."^[158]

[edit] Libyan disarmament

Also included in the list of postwar justifications is Libya's agreement to abandon its WMD programs in December of 2003. Those who argue that this action was directly inspired by the invasion of Iraq point to a phone call Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says he had with Libya's leader, Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi in April of 2003, in which he quotes Gadaffi as saying "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."^[159] Negotiations between Libya and the United States and Britain on disarmament began almost immediately thereafter.^[160]

On the other hand, it is argued by opponents of military intervention in Iraq that the Libyan case shows that traditional "carrot-and-stick" diplomacy can be successful in reducing the risk posed by "rogue states" without the need for invasion. For example, Flynt Leverett (former senior director for Middle Eastern Affairs at the NSC) and Martin S. Indyk (former Clinton administration official) argue that the agreement was instead a result of good-faith negotiations on a range of political, military and economic issues, intended to persuade Libya to move closer to the West. Libya had in principle agreed to surrender its programs in 1999, long before the Iraq War.

[edit] Purported Iraqi intelligence plots

David Harrison claims in the Telegraph to have found secret documents that purport to show Russian President Putin offering the use of assassins to Saddam's Iraqi regime to kill Western targets on November 27, 2000.^[161] This story has disappeared from the media since it was first reported in April 2003; the documents themselves have never materialized.

October 12, 2002 - Newsmax wrote that CNSNews correspondent Jeff Johnson reported US Senator Spector wanted a probe of the OKC City Bombing link to Iraq after receiving 22 sworn affidavits by Oklahoma residents identifying 8 Middle Eastern men, including a former Iraqi Republican Guard (Hussain Al-Hussaini) from Conspiracy Theorist Jayna Davis.^[162] Jayna Davis had theorised on the purported links between OKC bombing and Iraq^[163] as well OKC bombing to Al-Qaeda.^[164]

Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect detained shortly after the 1993 US World Trade Center Bombing attacks, fled upon release into Iraq. Shortly after release, the FBI had discovered evidence linking him to the creation of the bomb. He is on the FBI's 22 most wanted fugitive list. After the invasion, Iraqi government official documents translated from Arabic to English described Saddam's regime provided monthly payments to Yasin while in residing in the United States. Yasin is still at large.^[165]

John Lumpkin, Assiciated Press Writer, consolidates statements made by Vice President Cheney concerning the 1993 WTC bombing and Iraq. Cheney indicated Saddam's Iraqi government claimed to have FBI Fugitive Yasin, alleged participant in the mixing of the chemicals making the bomb used in the 1993 WTC attack, in an Iraqi prison. During negotiations in the weeks prior the invasion of Iraq, Saddam refused to extradite him.^[163]

Fox News claimed that evidence found in Iraq after the invasion was used to stop the attempted assassination of the Pakistani ambassador in New York with a shoulder fired rocket.^[166]

U.S. government officials have claimed that after the invasion, Yemen and Jordan stopped Iraqi terroristic attacks against Western targets in those nations. U.S. intelligence also warned 10 other countries that small groups of Iraqi intelligence agents may be readying similar attacks.^[128]

After the Beslan school hostage crisis, public school layouts and crisis plans were retrieved on a disk recovered during an Iraqi raid and had raised concerns in the United States. The information on the disks was "all publicly available on the Internet" and U.S. officials "said it was unclear who downloaded the information and stressed there is no evidence of any specific threats involving the schools."^[167]

[edit] Preemption of Terrorist Ties

Promoters of the war often referenced the religion of Islam, which proponents claimed was likely to produced a future alliance between Iraq and rogue terrorist elements, and claim this was sufficient case for the "preventative or preemptive war," as outlined in the "Just War" clause of the Bush Doctrine. Critics have charged that, in the absence of material reasons, the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, a fraud, or (as claimed by anti-War intellectuals and activists) a "crime of aggression," as defined in the Nuremberg Principles. As of 2006, as many as 76% of the American public has been polled as believing the war to be a "mistake."

[edit] A post-Saddam solution

Another commonly cited reason for wanting to invade Iraq concerned Iran's obvious desire to obtain power (or at least substantial political influence) in Iraq should Saddam Hussein die. Iran had put a substantial amount of effort into infiltrating Iraqi opposition organisations, and into obtaining popular support in Iraq. Both the US and UK governments were concerned that if Saddam Hussein died, Iraq would become an Islamic state under the control of Iran. The invasion of Iraq and the setting up of a democratic government were seen as the only way of avoiding this scenario.

[edit] References