last updated 12/14/2003

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So the war is over and we won, which proves those damn liberal peaceniks wrong, so goes much of my email. With this logic, Attila the Hun and Ghengis Khan were both "right" because they won their wars. Winning is not proof of justice. Let's delve into the messy details. Messy detail number 1: Bush lied to get this war. This one seems pretty obvious. Bush told us we were fighting because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which threatened us. He and his administration, in an ugly but successful exercise in fear-mongering, repeatedly mentioned mushroom clouds, drone planes that could carry WMD, and likelihood that Iraq was hiding large quantities of chemical or biological weapons. Well, where are they? We've found no stockpiles of chemical or biological agents. All we have found is some trucks that may have been usable for making small quantities of biological agents. There is no smoking gun, there are no WMD in Iraq. Just like the Iraqis said. I know some commentators have claimed that they might be hidden in some little Iraqi nook or cranny, but don't you think if Saddam had had them he would have used them? After all, we were all told he was a crazed dangerous tyrant. But nothing. So Bush lied when he told us we were threatened by WMD in Iraq. (And there is a fair bit of evidence being leaked by disgruntled CIA analysts that Bush was kept fully informed of this truth.) Bush also deceived us over Iraq's connection to the 9/11 attacks. Without ever actually saying so, he managed to link the words "Iraq" and "terrorism" so often in his paragraphs that most Americans ended up thinking Iraq was connected to the planning and execution of this Al Qaeda operation. This is a blatant lie and I remain amazed that America has swallowed it so easily. This is not some "who shot Kennedy" conspiracy theory; one mainstream newspaper after another has debunked an Iraq / Al Qaeda connection. If you don't believe me, look up these articles: U.S. intelligence has never been able to substantiate a link between Iraq and the 1993 World Trade Center attack--or the assault of 2001. -- Time Magazine, March 31, 2003 "First Stop, Iraq" the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks or Al Qaeda remains tenuous, nonexistent or unproven -- Chicago Tribune, March 20, 2003 "Al Qaeda allegation is the weakest link in justifying war" Sources knowledgeable about US intelligence say there is no evidence that Hussein played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding Al Qaeda. Yet the White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq and demonstrate seriousness of purpose to Hussein's regime. -- Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2003 "The impact of Bush linking 9/11 and Iraq" At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said. -- The New York Times, Feb 1, 2003 "THREATS AND RESPONSES: TERROR LINKS" Saddam Hussein was not involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. -- Kenneth Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm, a former CIA analyst who favored an attack on Iraq (but for other reasons). Messy detail number 2: It was a clean war with few civilian casualties. We will never have the whole story--Iraq is too roiled now to ever be able to get accurate counts--but a recent Christian Science Monitor article ("Surveys pointing to high civilian death toll in Iraq", May 22, 2003) suggests that the civilian death toll was between 5,000 and 10,000. Some of this came from stray bombs, but probably much more came from ground troops shooting large quantities of ammunition in urban areas, as well as from Iraq civilian vehicles being targeted at check points and elsewhere by American troops fearful of suicide bombers. We can argue about how much care US troops took to prevent civilian deaths, but it is clear that thousands of innocent Iraqis suffered simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would also be wrong to ignore the probably tens of thousands of soldiers who were killed by our tanks and bombs. Yes, they were the "enemy," but most of them were simply conscripts, serving in uniform as their country demanded. Their deaths are just as much a tragedy to their families as are dead civilians. And all need to be counted as part of the cost of this war. And let us not forget the thousands who did not die but were maimed by high tech American explosives. Most of us have seen pictures of a little boy with arms amputated by American bombs. There are many more just like him. And Iraqis continue to be killed by the cluster bombs left behind in the Iraqi rubble. (Cluster bombs often fail to explode on impact and lay around until some curious child touches the brightly colored, round, toy-like objects. It is the high failure rate and propensity to cause after-war deaths that has convinced many humanitarian organizations that cluster bombs should be declared illegal weapons of war.) Messy detail number 3: Iraq has been left destroyed by the war. America's military was successful in destroying the Iraq state, but they were ill prepared to replace it, which seems odd. If your whole plan is to take out the centers of power you had better expect anarchy to reign in the streets and be prepared to handle it. Instead American troops stood by as gangs of increasingly bold looters finished what American bombs had started: the destruction of all Iraqi infrastructures. Telephone systems, power systems, water distribution systems, all these are in dissaray or destroyed. And Iraqis are suffering daily as a result. It is going to take years to put this country--once one of the most prosperous and modern in the Middle East--back together again. I could go through a long list of American foul-ups in post-war Iraq, but let me just mention the one I find most bizarre. Iraq's nuclear waste dump was left unguarded for weeks, during which time it was looted by parties unknown. This looting won't lead to nuclear bombs, but it could easily lead to the creation of a "dirty" bomb, a regular bomb surrounded by nuclear materials which, when exploded, spreads radioactive wasted over a wide area. If one of our primary reasons for invading Iraq was to stop the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction, shouldn't a top priority be securing key sites like this? But we didn't. Instead we focussed on guarding Iraq's oil infrastructure. Makes you wonder what our real priority was all along, doesn't it? Messy detail number 4: Reconstruction is not going well. First we send in General Jay Garner to head a transition team (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Development), and he watches as Bagdhad tears itself to pieces. A few weeks later he's pulled out with little explanation and replaced by Paul Bremer, who now says that democracy will have to wait for present, and that American troops will continue to rule in Iraq. Which has understandably annoyed a lot of Iraqis who are fearful that American troops may stay around for far too long. Meanwhile, in the background Shia Muslims are agitating for the creation of a Islamic Republic, Kurds are simmering in the north, and Iraqis continue to be killed daily by looters, American soldiers, or just awful conditions. We also have to deal with an Islamic world that views America as a bully, and terrorist attacks continue. Well, since Iraq was not the source, you can hardly expect our invasion to have made things better. Actually, by increasing tensions it's probably made more angry young Muslim men willing to strap explosives to themselves and attack Americans. Just ask yourself a few questions. Why did we invade? Did it make things better? What's going to happen now? If you have any good answers, let me know.

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