A Neocon Finally Offers The First Geopolitical Justification For The Iraq War
By Mel Goodman on January 30, 2008 at 4:13 PM in Current Affairs
Nearly five years after the invasion of Iraq, we still have no official explanation or authoritative analysis on the reasons for the Bush administration’s decision to go to war, a decision many observers consider the most profligate in more than 200 years of American foreign policy. Last month, I agreed to debate one of the administration’s leading neoconservative policymakers, David Wurmser, to gain some insight on why George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld chose to go to war against Iraq instead of continuing the successful policy of containment. Wurmser’s comments were far more revealing than any information we have gained thus far from Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.
Before he left the Bush administration in November 2007, Wurmser had held a series of high-level positions with three of the most enthusiastic supporters of the war: Cheney, Douglas Feith, and John Bolton. As a result, he attended a series of important policy meetings in the run-up to war in March 2003. In responding to my comments on the putative reasons for going to war (weapons of mass destruction and the links between Iraq and al Qaeda), Wurmser emphasized that there was never any discussion of WMD or terrorism as a reason for going to war.
Instead, Wurmser argued that the Bush administration believed there were significant geopolitical reasons for going to war and offered a fanciful explanation that broke totally new ground. Wurmser said that Cheney, Feith, and Bolton were convinced that U.S. containment of Saddam Hussein was failing and that the controls to keeping Saddam Hussein from expanding his regional influence were “dying.” As a result, the Iraqi leader was in position to exploit the rising anti-Americanism in the region and to “break out” from the sanctions strategy and the no-fly zones to lead a “rogue coalition of nations to expel the United States from the region” and even “to wage war against the United States.” The failure of the United Nations and multilateralism in general made a compelling case for U.S. intervention, according to Wurmser.
Wurmser added that there was a great deal of discussion of the so-called “freedom agenda” of such academics as Professors Bernard Lewis of Princeton University and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University that introduced the notion of “democratizing” Iraq and eventually the entire Middle East. Wurmser maintained that democratization was the only response to Saddam Hussein’s efforts to create a movement against the U.S. role in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. He added that Lewis and Ajami took part in policy discussions at the Department of Defense and the Department of State, where there was a consensus on the use of force to advance “American interests and American power.”
Although Wurmser offered no evidence for the presence of WMD in Iraq, he argued that the intelligence community made the case for Iraqi WMD and that the issue “demands more study” because such weapons were “still there or have left the country” and, in any event “were never fully accounted for.” He dismissed the efforts of thousands of U.S. analysts and technicians who found no evidence of WMD in Iraq. Instead, he disingenuously blamed Secretary of State Colin Powell and Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage for developing the case for WMD, thus absolving the White House and the National Security Council from any responsibility. Finally, he emphasized that “no one was saying there was no WMD” in Iraq and there was no intelligence collection that contended there was no WMD. He totally dismissed such agencies and departments as the Energy Department, the State Department, and even the U.S. Air Force, which dissented from the CIA’s arguments in favor of WMD in Iraq. He totally ignored the excellent intelligence collection from Iraqi and American sources that argued against the presence of WMD in Iraq.
Thus, as we approach the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, there is still no evidence to determine why it was necessary to go to war and no reason to believe that history will treat the war kindly. Bush’s description of Iraq as the center of the war against terrorism is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy because the war itself and the U.S. occupation have created the motives and conditions for terrorist actions. The war in Iraq, moreover, meant the abandonment of the campaign in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda, which has worsened the security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are training grounds and operational bases for jihadist terrorists. The creation of a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq has created the essential conditions for an eventual Iraq-Iran alliance, which will contribute to the overall instability in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The Bush administration’s war in Iraq has led to great losses of American blood and treasure over the past five years and there is every reason to believe that these conditions will continue for the next five years. Bush’s war has squandered America’s moral authority, with the United States now identified the world over with torture and abuse, secret prisons, extraordinary renditions, and ghost detainees.
Finally, Bush’s support for authoritarian governments throughout the region, particularly in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, has made a mockery of his promotion of democracy and human rights abroad. His failure in Iraq will dominate his presidency and, just as Vietnam determined the legacy of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, the Iraq War will determine the Bush legacy. Wurmser’s specious reasoning for the onset of war provides no genuine help in ameliorating this legacy or understanding what the Bush administration was trying to achieve in Iraq. And the stubborn persistence of the Bush administration and such neocons as Wurmser to continue the war only worsens all of the problems that it has created.
Melvin A. Goodman is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the forthcoming “The Failure of Intelligence: the Decline and Fall of the CIA.”
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By Sarah Palin (Release date: November 17. 2009)
Here is one explanation from book “The Bush Tragedy”(http://www.newsweek.com/id/96372/page/3):
“Cheney accepted without reservations that Saddam was a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Libby and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had long been interested in their friend Laurie Mylroie’s unified field theory of terrorism. Mylroie argued that Saddam was behind every major terrorist attack against Americans in the 1990s, including the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Mylroie’s book “Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America” was published by the American Enterprise Institute, where she was a fellow. On the back cover are glowing blurbs from Libby, Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. Cheney followed these men into the tortured pathways of Mylroie’s conspiracy theory, including her seizing on reports that the 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague.”
Apparently these fools bought into a crackpot conspiracy theory. I particularly like the scientific name for their collective delusion, the “unified field theory of terrorism”. And the American Heritage Institute published this garbage. They should have as much credibility as the National Enquirer after that. Instead, they are still treated with regard by our media.
Odd somehow that Wurmser left out Wolowitz and Libby’s roles
Don’t forget Feith, Perle and Cambone
This is precisely why we cannot let it slide. They’ll be back in 8 or 12 years with the same crap.
There’s a time and place for Hamiltonianism, like Germany 1944. Iran, now (2020), seems more than foolhardy.
Bernie,
Where is Lurch Mylroie these days?
Sometime,
They’ll be back in 8 or 12 years with the same crap.
We need to look at what campaigns they’ve attached themselves to.
Does anyone have names?
that is why John Deans suggestion to impeach some of these lower level officials so that they can not recycle themselves into future administrations…to do more damage.
Refocusing the Impeachment issue
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20061215.html
When Dean visited Firedoglake I asked him who would be first on his lower level officials Impeachment list. He said “Addington”
Addington knows what skeletons are in whos’ closet. Great place to start. No immunity.
I would love to see J. Yoo in the first run up to this act of impeachment or going to the Hague
Addington is the point man, he had patsies like Gonzales along for the ride.
The extent to which you could Ashcroft to make statements when he tried to push back before his resignation could perhaps be your only hope of getting someone to turn.
He tried to railroad items through while the man was nearly on his deathbed.
Good catch on that link Kathleen - Thank you!
What do you mean they WILL be back in 8 0r 12 years?! They’re already at it again with Iran, and Syria is probably next!
Those are the guys who belong in Guantanamo, not the poor blokes they’ve got there now! Better yet, drop them off on some isolated desert island with a few tents, a week’s worth of food and water, no communication equipment, and let them fend for themselves for the rest of their lives.
Yeah and Wolfowitz is back…I am with John Dean Impeach these psychopaths so that they can not slip back into a future administration. But as you point out they have never gone away.
Deigo Garcia has no people other than Military. They have lovely housing with bars and dark windows I understand. Will that do for a deserted island?
Without underestimating Cheney’s paranoia, it is my impression the war was supposed to fufill fantasies of endless empire, wealth, security and glamour.
It is also my impression the neocons are not psychologically healthy people, you say to yourself “no one could be THAT crazy, that immoral, that dissociated,” (because YOU’RE not) but yes, they can.
The bigger question is WHY the system was allowed to fail, by those who, IMO, had no intention of letting Cheney succeed.
It reminds me of MacArthur, and Eisenhower.
Who says that to himself/herself? Some bloody half-wit? All we have to do is look at the world around us and confer with the chronicles of history to see that nature curiously, abundantly and mercilessly provides us with an overflowing staff of melodramatic psychopaths such as Cheney. Just because they don’t seemingly foam at the mouth does not exclude them from mental illness. And that is precisely why they are so dangerous; most of the time we discover their mental illnesses after they have wreaked irreparable damage upon well-meaning humanity.
Somehow we limp along though. However, it’d be nice to sprint once and for all. Now that IS a naive statement.
Ever since this site became the “Hillary press release transcription and republication blog”, I had almost stopped coming.
Thanks for giving some reason for checking in.
Ain’t that the truth.
Yeah, just when you decide to give up on obamasuckshillaryrocks.com they throw in a bit of real content to lure you back!
Wurmser maintained that democratization was the only response to Saddam Hussein’s efforts
Hmmmm, so was that the same Wurmser (and I’m going from memory here and could be completely wrong) who several years back worked out a paper for the PNAC crew that also worried over Iraq and the Palestinian situation and Israel and offered up a solution that went something like:
Go get what’s left of the exiled Iraqi royal family from Jordan and “get rid” of Hussein, then prop them up. Although Sunni - he opined that bc the royal family has blood of The Prophet, the Shia would be thrilled to be ruled by them. And of course the Sunni would be too. With strong US backing, the Shia in Iran would look and see how happy the Shia in Iraq were, being ruled by the royal family, and they would throw off their democratized process and bolt to co-join with the Iraqis. This would then cause Syria to tremble and with Iran and Syria thus dealt with, Hamas would have no support and Palestinians would realize they had to do whatever Israel said on whatever terms it offered. But it would be ok, bc the US and Israel would be good.
Something like that - distilled - IIRC.
I guess Wurmser didn’t know that Saddam is also supposedly a Sayyid (that is, a descendant of the Prophet), and furthermore that Iraqis were unlikely to be thrilled at the idea of being ruled by that royal family, having already thrown them out back in ‘58.
As for democratization being the way to produce a pro-U.S., pro-Israel Iraq - LOOOOOOOOLOLOLOLOLOLOLHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHEEHEEEHEEHEEHEEEEEE!
Pardon me while I pick myself up off the floor on which I have been rolling, while laughing my - ummmmmm - head of!
Shirin,
The joke is that when the British imposed “King Faisal” upon the Iraqis he had already been kicked off the coveted throne of Syria by the French, making Iraq the Booby Prize–of course his brother Abdullah got the Bargain Basement Booby Prize, Jordan. So this made Faisal a USED STOOGE.
“unified field theory of” ______________ (fill in the blank as to which crime was commited)
Happy Birthday Dick. Inside your Birthday card there is an inditement for Treason. Hope you enjoy it.
I just do not get it why people like Wurmser, Rove, Libby, Ari Fleisher and the rest of the team that outed Plame get to walk the streets let alone give their opinions about foreign policy. Wurmser should be in jail for undermining National Security
Plain and simple Wurmser is a liar and a traitor. He was part of the team that outed Plame.
How is it that Wurmser just happened not to mention Wolfowitz’s role in the run-up to the invasion? Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul ONeil stated in
Rons Susskinds book “The Price of Loyalty” that Rumsfeld was not especially keen on the idea. But that Wolfowitz and Cheney were all about Iraq Iraq Iraq in the very first cabinet meetings.
Wurmser has also played a very serious role. How about the paper and plans that he and his wife Liv and Richard Perle put together for Israel’s Netanyahu.
http://www.irmep.org/Policy_Briefs/3_27_2003_Clean_Break_or_Dirty_War.html
Wurmser’s little almost-apologium can be summed up thus:
“Yes, I DID live in the brothel, but I just played the piano and answered the phone…HONEST!!!”
I love that line.
He did his time. He is so young and talent. My friends on mixedfriends dotcom love him very much. It is a niche interracial dating service
i still find it amazing that otherwise intelligent people still hold onto the notion that iraq had WMDs. they were not uncovered because they were too well hidden or moved to some other mid eastern country. can anyone say conspriarcy theory 101?
wurmser is one in a long line of neocon hacks who are attempting historical revisionism … sorta like the manical musings of rove when he blamed congress for forcing the invasion. these people have demonstrated a lack of a moral comapass time and time again … and they will continue to do the same in the future.
Revisionist for sure. This right wing neo theo oil cons are a sick group of psychopaths.
I’m not a psychologist, but I think the term is “minimizing cognitive dissonance.” Many such people can’t accept that the great City On The Hill, America, The Hope Of The World, would launch an aggressive war against a non-threatening state for unjust purposes and wage it by immoral means. All the rational and empirical evidence points that way, but such a conclusion threatens their core of being as they’ve always constituted it. Hence they will go to any lengths to twist the evidence in order to support that core. This is what happens if your primary values don’t rest on anything deeper than “my country, right or wrong.”
And the people currently in power are doing everything they can to encourage them.
Hey c’mon folks, “leaders” like cheney, wurmser and so many others were busy creating our reality then (and now). Too bad they couldn’t figure out it was a murderous treasonous reality. Ship the whole bunch off to the Hague, let the world sort it out, convict and hang them.
In light of this piece, McCain looks like a dupe. Logic be damned, full speed ahead!
[...] A Neocon Finally Offers The First Geopolitical Justification For The Iraq War Filed under: Iraq, Neocons — James Rudy @ 11:57 pm A Neocon Finally Offers The First Geopolitical Justification For The Iraq War [...]
McCain isn’t a dupe, that’s the problem with him, he’s enabled this shit train to rain down all over our Constitution.
Wurmser makes no sense.
Based on what? Rogue coalition of which nations? The neighboring nations who said Hussein was a regional pain in the ass?
Then, is spite of previously saying
“that there was never any discussion of WMD or terrorism as a reason for going to war”,
he come’s up with:
This argument fails, because it is a fundamental failure of logic. Logic matters. Simply stringing items together in pseudo-syllogism will not get you there.
Notice how he implies that lack of proof of the absence of WMD infers it’s existence. Logic 101 - non-existence is not provable, it can only be at most, a premise by observation.
Note that there also is no intelligence collection to establish that there is no Santa Claus. That does not lead to the likelyhood of a notorious over-weight guy in red pajamas racing across the sky every Christmas, in a reindeer-drawn flying sled vehicle.
“he emphasized that “no one was saying there was no WMD” in Iraq and there was no intelligence collection that contended there was no WMD.
”
In addition to the obviously bad logic, which you pointed out very nicely, this is not a true statement. A number of people were saying there were no WMD in Iraq, including some very well qualified people, such as Scott Ritter (I was saying it too, but my word on things like that doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight, even with all my friends!).
Just hang em high…all of them
war crimes anyone?
Reasons for the destruction of Iraq, and the resulting chaos? There is very clear logic. Think very long term. Very long term.
The Israelis, and their friends? - See Oded Yinon.
The Evangelicals? -Necessary preparation for the Second Coming.
The Miliitary Industrial Complex? - A 700 billion defense budget, not including Iraq or Afghanistan, black budgets, interest on previous budgets, ‘homeland security’ and so on and on, indefinitely.
BINGO!!!!!!!!
the un-holy trinity wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross singing “onward Christian soldiers” and our lemmings are like lambs to the slaughter….
are There NO adults in our government left who see this writing on the wall? or are they afraid of being labeled anti-American/ Christian/semite? if so, they need to step aside and let someone with balls take the wheel.
I mean really , John Fricking McCain? Jesus Christ !!!! the man is delusional and somehow expects to buck 70% of our populations wishes to win the general election. IF this happens, it defies mathematical probabilities.. the one who promises us MOR WAR wins the general election?
for a much better written piece on this read Pat Buchanan’s blog on how McCain would be worse than Bush
http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=925
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhAokoMgSDc
no truer words were ever spoken.
man I wish this guy would win
Eastern Tibet Training Institute…
Maybe, but I’m not sure it’for everyone….