1 Boring Old Man

Insider: Iraq Attack Was Preemptive
Pentagon Insider Tells 60 Minutes U.S. Attack On Iraq Was Anticipatory Self-Defense; Not 9/11 Retaliation

The first Pentagon insider to give his account of the run-up to war says the attack on Iraq was more a defensive move against possible future threats from Saddam Hussein than a retaliation for the 9/11 attacks. Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy, also tells Steve Kroft that the Pentagon failed to foresee the insurgency or the need for more troops to prevent the post-war chaos that included looting…

"What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States would come," says Feith, the No. 3 person in the Pentagon’s hierarchy from 2001 to 2005. "Our main goal was not merely retaliation for the 9/11 attack, it was preventing the next attack"…

Feith concedes this line of thought could rationalize attacks on other countries, including North Korea, Syria and Iran. But he says Saddam’s attacks on his Middle Eastern neighbors, use of chemical weapons on his own people and his interest in building a nuclear weapon made Iraq a special case. "In an era where weapons of mass destruction can put countries in a position to do an enormous amount of harm, the old idea of having to wait until you actually see the country mobilizing for war doesn’t make a lot of sense," says Feith. When all the factors were considered, says Feith, Saddam had to go. "If we had left him in power, we would be fighting him down the road at a time and place of his choosing," Feith says. President Bush weighed the options.

"The president decided that the risks of war … were overweighed by the risks of leaving Saddam Hussein in power," Feith tells Kroft. The risks of war, says Feith, were well known and documented in a memo from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Feith refers to as “the parade of horribles” in his upcoming Harper Collins book, War and Decision. They included ruining the reputation of America overseas, strengthening Muslim militant resolve and the ethnic strife occurring in Iraq now. What they didn’t anticipate? "That the Bathist regime, even after it was overthrown, would be in a position to organize and recruit for and to finance and command and insurgency," says Feith. His book also addresses the fact that the smaller and more mobile American force conducting the attack saved U.S. lives, but was too small to control the country after the initial fighting, allowing widespread looting…

Douglas Feith was in charge of the Office of Special Plans in the Department of Defense. He prepared a slide presentation claiming that there were ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda – widely quoted by Bush and Cheney. His office leaked a version of it to the Weekly Standard which was then parrotted by Dick Cheney. Feith says that he never said that these ties existed, but that he was simply pointing out problems in the C.I.A.’s analysis of this possibility. In fact, he has an answer like that for every criticism. But in the recent Vanity Fair article, Green Light, he was more candid – gleefully describing hoodwinking people into believing we weren’t using torture [which we were]. He reframes every criticism to his own advantage. I’ve come to see him as a tragic figure. His father was a Zionist Holocaust survivor who became a successful businessman and prominant Republican. Doug got caught up with the Neoconservatives, dividing his time between matters Jewish and U.S. Government service. He must be as obnoxious in person as in interviews, because the people who he worked with are scathing in their comments [listed in Wikipedia’s write-up on Feith] – epitomized by General Tommy Frank’s comment about Feith, "I have to deal with the stupidest fucking guy on the planet almost every day."