Karl Rove’s latest attempt to rewrite history provides an excellent opportunity to review the events that put our nation in its longest and costly war. Hint: WMDs had nothing to do with it. When they write this one up in the history books, some of the key events and players will be….
I. The NeoCons and Project for the New American Century Note that the NeoCons date all the way back to the 1970s and Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the Senator from Boeing. That is how long they have been plotting to win U.S. energy independence by stealing the nationalized oil of Middle Eastern states. You know, the old fashioned Standard Oil way. They did not find any suckers with a figurehead politician in possession of a name familiar enough to voters to be elected president until they stumbled upon George W. Bush.
From Wikipedia:
The goal of regime change remained their consistent position throughout the Iraq disarmament crisis.<5> ….On November 16, 1998, citing Iraq's demand for the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors and the removal of Richard Butler as head of the inspections regime,
William Kristol, co-founder of the PNAC and editor of The Weekly Standard, called again for regime change in an editorial in his online magazine: "...any sustained bombing and missile campaign against Iraq should be part of any overall political-military strategy aimed at removing Saddam from power."<7> Kristol states that
Paul Wolfowitz and others believed that the goal was to create "a 'liberated zone' in southern Iraq that would provide a safe haven where opponents of Saddam could rally and organize a credible alternative to the present regime ... The liberated zone would have to be protected by U.S. military might, both from the air and, if necessary, on the ground."
From 2001 through 2002, the co-founders and other members of the PNAC published articles supporting the United States' invasion of Iraq.<10>. On its website, the PNAC promoted its point of view that leaving Saddam Hussein in power would be "surrender to terrorism."<11><12><13><14>
On September 20, 2001 (nine days after the September 11, 2001 attacks), the PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, advocating "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," or regime change:
...even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.
The group published a position paper in 2000 in which it recommended that the U.S. stage wars on multiple fronts across the world but most especially in Iraq. They envisioned this as an ongoing occupation, with the purpose of harassing Iran.
Commentators from divergent parts of the political spectrum––such as Democracy Now! and American Free Press, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and former Republican Congressmen Pete McCloskey and Paul Findley––have voiced their concerns about the influence of the PNAC on the decision by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq.<45><46> Some have regarded the PNAC's January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton, which urged him to embrace a plan for "the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power,"<19> and the large number of members of PNAC appointed to the Bush administration as evidence that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion. <37><41><47>
snip
Media commentators have found it significant that signatories to the PNAC's January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton (and some of its other position papers, letters, and reports) include such Bush administration officials as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_CenturyNote that
Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, and Scooter Libby signed the 2000 document which called for an invasion and occupation of Iraq. In other words,
the war was never meant to be a quick in and out operation. It was originally conceived as a long term venture, designed to allow the U.S. a military base in the Middle East. W., not being part of the club, may not have realized this. Dick Cheney and everyone else in his administration certainly knew the truth.
II. Bush: “History. We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” Bush’s Brain does not know Bush very well. W. wanted to invade Iraq even
before day one.
1999: Bush was thinking about invading Iraq while he was running for president.
Houston: Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
http://www.gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=761January 2001 : Bush was thinking about invading Iraq while his wife was putting up the new curtains in the White House.
And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtmlThe report goes on to say that
the occupation of Iraq was planned in January 2001.Um, Karl, did you have the WMD evidence all sewn up by then?
Dec. 2001: According to Bob Woodward and the Washington Post, Donald Rumsfeld was not the only one who seized upon 9/11 as an excuse to target Iraq.
Beginning in late December 2001, President Bush met repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq even as he and administration spokesmen insisted they were pursuing a diplomatic solution, according to a new book on the origins of the war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17347-2004Apr16.htmlWith the Enron collapse scandal unfolding around them, I can see why Bush and Rove might have wanted to distract the country with something a little bit more patriotic. Had the nation been given a chance to realize that Rove helped to appoint the members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who looked the other way while Enron price gouged California (and Cheney mocked the state’s consumers), the nation’s voters might have been pretty mad come the 2002 midterm elections. Plus, we all know that W. wanted to be a
real boy Oops. I mean a real Commander-in-chief.