Iraq

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States.  The hysteria following the September 11th attacks provided the cover for a war that had been planned since the very start of George W. Bush's administration.

In a sane world, Bush at the very least would have been defeated for re-election or else impeached and convicted in Congress.  But none have been held accountable for this crime.

Update (March 23):  Well deserved snark from the sharpest blogger around.  And Glenn Greenwald reacts to former Bush speechwriter David Frum's admission that oil was a major factor behind starting the war.

Update (March 28):  Dahr Jamail reports on how Iraqis view their future.  Larry Everest lists some grim statics from the war.

Update (January 3, 2014):  The year 2013 was the deadliest for Iraq since the peak violence of 2008. Over 9000 civilians and security forces were killed last year.

Update (June 10, 2014):  Deaths continue to rise and insurgents seized control of Mosul.

Update (June 13, 2014):  I'm not going to link to someone's suggestion that it was a mistake to withdraw from Iraq.  No, the mistake was invading in the first place.  From Jay Bookman:

The ignorance, callous indifference and arrogance of [the war] strategy continues to boggle the mind. And now, 11 years later, with chaos descending, there is almost nothing that we can do to stop or contain it.

Update (June 18, 2014):  Patrick Smith analyzes the failure of U.S. policy and concludes that the only solution is a negotiated political settlement among all parties.

The reality may again seem grim, but we ought to know by now there is grim and grimmer.

Update (July 11, 2016):  The Chilcot report is critical of British involvement in the Iraq War, but makes no conclusion on legality.

Heather Digby Parton reminds us that George W. Bush lied constantly about justification for the war.

There were many large and small lies for months on end. My personal favorite is a small one but it’s the one that best illustrates the “you can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes” tactic. In July of 2003, President Bush said this:

“[W]e gave [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power….”

This is completely wrong. Hussein did let U.N. weapons inspectors in, and they failed to find any weapons. The administration withdrew them so they could begin the invasion.

Calvin Exoo says the report doesn't nearly go far enough and contrasts what was said with what was known at the time. One example:

What they said: Saddam Hussein is "aggressively seeking nuclear weapons" (Cheney). Iraq attempted to acquire aluminum tubes that were "only really suited for nuclear weapons development" (Condoleeza Rice). The US has "irrefutable evidence" that the tubes were destined for centrifuges (Cheney). "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" (Rice).

What they knew: Department of Energy scientists had concluded that these tubes were the wrong size for centrifuges, but were the proper size for conventional, non-WMD rockets. Post-war CIA inspectors concluded that, indeed, the tubes had been used for this purpose and were, in inspectors' words, "innocuous."

And Juan Cole is clear that this wasn't just about lies or that the outcome was a disaster. This was an illegal war.

[I]t is the [United Nations] Security Council that decides if an international trouble spot should be responded to by war. The Chilcot Report shows that George W. Bush had no intention of even seeking a UNSC authorization, and Tony Blair was among those (along with then Secretary of State Colin Powell) who convinced Bush that just falling on Iraq with no pretense of an international process would look bad.

Some would argue that sometimes in the real world the UNSC gets hung up because of the veto of the 5 permanent members, and you have to go around it. But in this case, Bush couldn’t even get NATO to want to go around it. There was no consensus. Bush met with Blair and the Portuguese and Spanish presidents before launching his war, because apparently those were the only European countries he could find to support him.

So that’s it. You don’t need anything else. The Iraq War was an act of pure aggression, no different in moral or legal standing from Hitler’s invasion of Poland. That is what Bush and Blair made themselves. Small Hitlers, betraying all the hopes of the generation of 1945, which dreamed of forestalling further such atrocities.

The Bush-Blair war of aggression in turn authorized many others, and other countries have sometimes openly cited the Iraq War as justification for their own belligerence, or as proof that the West lacks legitimacy when it criticizes the aggression of others. To the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq, the millions wounded or displaced, must be added the toll from the “wars of choice” W. unleashed on the world.

Update (March 15, 2018):  Mel Goodman warns about the lessons of Iraq.

It is particularly important to do so at this time because [von Clownstick] has talked about a military option against North Korea or Iran (or Venezuela for that matter). Since there is no cause to justify such wars, it is quite likely that politicized intelligence would once again be used to provide a justification for audiences at home and abroad.

Update (March 18, 2018):  Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies estimate the Iraqi death toll over the past 15 years as 2.4 million people.