02Dec03-The Media - Intelligence experts speak out against the war in a new documentary E-mail this
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Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Iraq, 2 December 2003
"The Bush administration made up its mind to go to war [with Iraq] on September 11, 2001. From that time on you were dealing with rationalization and justification for the war; you weren't dealing with real causes for the war or real reasons for the war. There was never a clear and present danger, there was never an imminent threat," explains Mel Goodman, who served for 20 years as a CIA analyst, in the documentary Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War.
A slew of other former CIA officials, ambassadors, weapons inspectors, and high ranking governmental figures make similar statements about the illegality and sheer irrationality of the war in the hour-long documentary that has been promoted by the Internet-based lobby group MoveOn. The various interviewees dissect the "intelligence" put forth by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech, and the fuzzy photos used in Colin Powell's February speech to the UN, which is described by one former intelligence expert as a piece of "theater."
Washington Editor of The Nation magazine David Corn explains how former CIA deputy chief Richard Kerr told the few reporters who asked that the intelligence produced by the CIA and manipulated by the Bush administration was circumstantial. And Dr. David MacMichael, who worked 13 years as a CIA analyst, tells how the White House heavily influenced CIA reports to provide the language used to support going to war on Iraq.
Various intelligence experts interviewed in Uncovered state, quite frankly, that the Bush administration exploited Americans' fears after September 11 by using the mother of all trump cards - the fear of nuclear war. In between news segments of President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld telling reporters that Saddam Hussein has resumed the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, the former CIA officials debunk their statements, and explain that the intelligence community made it clear that the evidence was simply not there regarding the claims for Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program.
But it is made clear in the news clips included in the documentary how calculated the Bush administration's capitalization on America's fear of nuclear terrorism was during the buildup to the war on Iraq. Condoleezza Rice soberly says, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Bush and Rumsfeld make similar statements in press conferences, and seem amazed that anyone would even question their claims.
However, as Former Assistant Secretary to defense Philip Coyle explains, "A lot of people who supported the war on Iraq actually believed that Iraq had the capability to fire missiles that could reach the United States carrying payloads of nuclear or biological weapons. Iraq has never had the capability to do that, they didn't have it in the first Gulf War, they didn't have it in this war in Iraq, and they don't have any way of getting it in the future."
The interviewees also refute the neoconservative administration's claims regarding the supposed biological and chemical weapons believed to be in Hussein's possession. After a clip of President Bush solemnly stating that Iraq may potentially have enough sarin nerve gas to kill thousands of Americans, Former Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Peter Zimmerman explains that Bush's case for the existence of Iraq's sarin was based on the knowledge that Iraq possessed sarin in 1990, but it was also known that that the sarin had only a shelf life of two months. Stating that the sarin wouldn't be safe to eat but would be completely ineffective as a nerve gas, Zimmerman says that there's "no way that the [Central Intelligence] Agency could not have known that."
Equally as dubious are the U.S. administration's claims that Iraq is a hotbed for al Qaeda terrorists, and the implication that Iraq was somehow involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Mel Goodman, the 20 year CIA analyst explains, "Iraq, and we have very good intelligence for this, was not in the picture of terrorism before we invaded it. Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were enemies. Bin Laden considered and said that Saddam Hussein was a socialist infidel. These were very different kinds of individuals competing for power in their own way, and Saddam Hussein made very sure that al Qaeda couldn't function in Iraq.'
"The ties with al Qaeda were just a scare tactic to exploit the trauma, the very real trauma, that the American people have felt since 9/11 and to associate that trauma with Iraq. As you know from the polls, most Americans believe that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and there was a very successful, very deliberate, and very unethical and immoral operation on the part of the PR people of this administration," states Ray McGovern, former Chairman for the National Intelligence estimate.
Former CIA Director of the Office of Regional and Political Analysis Bill Christison says, "That very first day on September 12, one day after September 11, the meeting that was held in the White House, in the situation room, led to Rumsfeld asking the question, 'Shouldn't we use this as an opportunity to do something about Iraq as well?'"
Also explored in the documentary are the sources for the various claims that were used to support the war on Iraq by Bush and Powell. Regarding weapons of mass destruction, John Brady Kiesling, former Political Counselor to the United States Embassy in Athens, says, "Unfortunately, every reliable source of our own was unable to find anything convincing, so we were dependent on the defectors provided by Mr. Chalabi at the Iraqi National Congress. It's fascinating to see that he's been providing intelligence for many years and every checkable piece of that information that has come to the public's notice has been proven to be false or at least self-serving in the extreme."
Interviewed is Former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq Joseph Wilson, whose CIA officer wife's name was leaked repeatedly to the press by the U.S. government earlier this year. Wilson states that his wife's name and career was tarnished in a deliberate "smear campaign" after Wilson probed the authenticity of now known to be forged Yellowcake Niger documents that were used by Vice President Cheney's office to "prove" that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons. Leaking his wife's name "was a very vengeful act against the ambassador," explains former White House Counsel to president Nixon John Dean. Milt Bearden, former CIA Station Chief in Pakistan, asks, "The question remains - who forged the documents and why?"
The interviewed intelligence experts and foreign relations scholars paint a bleak picture for the future of U.S. foreign relations and the war on terrorism. Former CIA Operative Robert Baer, who served in Iraq and Lebanon, and says he was "studiously ignored" during the build-up to war, explains, "If you attacked another country without justification, people are going to say, 'This isn't a war on terrorism. This is imperialism, this is colonialism.'"
"Having invaded Iraq, we are likely to make it a focus of terrorism. We are likely to produce what the president has said Iraq represents, namely the central battlefield for the war on terrorism. Why? Because we've sent a lot of Americans in a place where they're sitting ducks for people who think the only good American is a dead one," says Chas Freeman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, a prediction confirmed by daily news reports of U.S. casualties in Iraq.
The documentary is a lucid expose on what can only be described as the total misinformation the U.S. administration fed the American public, as well as congress, in order the rally support for the war. But while watching the documentary, one can't help but wonder what the twenty-plus interviewees were doing to publicly disprove the neocons' claims. Certainly, Joseph Wilson tackled the Niger documents, and Baer said that he was studiously ignored, and surely other interviewees made efforts to stop the war. But this is a part of the story that Uncovered fails to provide.
However, the film will hopefully be seen by many, as it shows the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz administration for what it is - a deceptive bunch of neoconservatives who have not been truthful regarding the intelligence used to support a war that's killed thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans for no justifiable reason. MoveOn is making great efforts to make sure people do see this documentary. It is using it as part of its fundraising campaign to defeat Bush in the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, and it has organized 2,000 "house parties" that will take place around the U.S. on December 7, during which the film will be screened.
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