How many more stones must be thrown onto the pile before the mountain of evidence appears so inescapably obvious that our Congressional representatives will muster the courage to act? There are now volumes of testimony on the record about how the White House manipulated the intelligence, set up its own separate back channel to manufacture self-serving “assessments” and intimidated anyone who sought to blow the whistle on the White House plan to invade Iraq on false pretenses. The Downing Street Memos provide international corroboration that the Bush Administration gave assurances to Tony Blair that the “intelligence would be fixed around the policy” – i.e. the intelligence assessments would be manipulated to support the preconceived plan for invasion. THese and other pledges were made to persuade great Britain to join the “Coalition of the Willing.” Blair obviously thought that they could get away with it because he signed up despite the absence of a UN authorization.
Today, the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Intelligence issues a report confirming that the true CIA assessment of Iraq prior to the US invasion warned of the serious risks of toppling the Saddam Hussein Regime and the potential for resistance, factional infighting and chaos that could ensue after the removal of Hussein. Consider these excerpts:
In January 2003, two months before the invasion, the intelligence community's think tank — the National Intelligence Council — issued an assessment warning that after Saddam was toppled, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.” It also warned that “many angry young recruits” would fuel the rank of Islamic extremists and "Iraqi political culture is so imbued with mores (opposed) to the democratic experience … that it may resist the most rigorous and prolonged democratic tutorials."
The same assessment added, “Iraqi patience with an extended U.S. presence after an overwhelming victory would be short,” and said “humanitarian conditions in many parts of Iraq would probably not understand that the Coalition wartime logistic pipeline would require time to reorient its mission to humanitarian aid.”
The professional intelligence assessment was remarkably prophetic. Yet the Administration attempted to scapegoat the CIA and blame "bad intelligence" for the debacle that followed the invasion. In contrast to this carefully researched assessment by intelligence professionals, Vice President Cheney predicted that the US forces would be "welcomed as liberators." We will probably never really know whether Cheney was cynically trying to dupe the public or that these were the ravings of a self-deluded madman. The result is the same, however. More than 3400 American families have lost loved ones and tens of thousands more are suffering from battle wounds, physical and mental, from participation in a military escapade that never should have happened. Add to that number the deaths of civilian contractors resulting from profit driven “privatization” of the war effort by the Administration. This toll does not begin to touch the suffering, deaths and displacement of Iraqis caused or facilitated by the collapse of civil authority that resulted from the botched US invasion.
It is hard to define the precise obstacle to action holding the Bush and Cheney Administration accountable for these deliberate and deadly deceptions. Clearly, if such conduct leading to the predictable death of an innocent third person had been perpetrated by the average American, an indictment for manslaughter would be the minimum action taken. Perhaps it is the sheer magnitude of the crime that holds the Congress back. For it is not just a crime against a single person sacrificed to the Presidential ego and Administration lies, but thousands of deaths. Many Americans may shrink from accepting the notion that this country is capable of the kinds of war crimes for which we have easily condemned Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and others. At some point, however, America will have to remove the blinders and see what is obvious.
Each “stone” of evidence that has been amassed and the additional ones that continue to appear collectively represent a mountain of guilt on the part of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney.
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