On Tuesday, he plans to discuss the implications of the fight in Iraq for the broader Middle East, a global crossroads that has largely missed the democratic and economic advances seen in other parts of the world and is thus vulnerable to the rise of terrorism, said a senior administration official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the president.
The pair of speeches is intended to set the stage for a crucial Sept. 15 assessment of the fighting, particularly whether the additional U.S. forces that Bush ordered to Iraq in January are improving security enough to create an environment for lasting political progress. The report, required by law to be presented to Congress, also is to measure Iraq’s performance on U.S. benchmarks for military and political development.…But he was also to make a broader argument about the importance of the fighting in Iraq. He was to argue that Iraq is at the heart of rising extremist movements in both the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities, the former dominated by al-Qaida and the latter by Iran, the official said.
"Failure in Iraq would cause the enemy not to retreat but to follow us to America," Bush said Monday night in Bellevue, Wash., in remarks at a fundraiser for GOP Rep. Dave Reichert.
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January 26, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton Dear Mr. President: We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor. The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons. Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat. Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council. We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk. Sincerely, Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristo, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick
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The rest of the history is well known. The Bush Administration came to office and immediately began looking for an excuse to go to war with Iraq. Richard Clarke and Paul O’Niell told us that, but we didn’t listen – it sounded too far fetched. Bush ignored the warnings of al Qaeda’s impending attack. He was dead set on their Iraq Plan. Even after the attack of September 11th, they still focused on Iraq.
We’ve been through a lot since then. We now know that the WMD/al Qaeda ties used to justify the war were a lie – simply a lie. The motive was probably a mixture of oil and the so called Bush Doctrine [which is simply Paul Wolfowitz’s 1991 Defense Guidance in a new wrapper]. For the nth review of the Bush Doctrine – it states [this version from Wikipedia]:
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In the events following September 11, 2001 attacks two distinct schools of thought arose in the Bush Administration regarding the critical policy question of how to handle allegedly dangerous countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea ("Axis of Evil" states). Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, as well as US Department of State specialists, argued for what was essentially the continuation of existing US foreign policy. These policies, developed during the long years of the Cold War, sought to establish a multilateral consensus for action (which would likely take the form of increasingly harsh sanctions against the problem states, summarized as the policy of containment). The opposing view, argued by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a number of influential Department of Defense policy makers such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, held that direct and unilateral action was both possible and justified and that America should embrace the opportunities for democracy and security offered by its position as sole remaining superpower. President Bush ultimately sided with the Department of Defense camp, and their recommendations form the basis for the Bush Doctrine.
The Bush Doctrine argues for a policy of pre-emptive war in cases where the U.S. or its allies are threatened by terrorists or by rogue states that are engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction. The policy of pre-emption represents a rejection of deterrence and containment as the principal foundations of U.S. foreign policy because, it is argued, terrorists cannot be deterred in the same way as states. According to the Bush Doctrine, grave threats require a military response regardless of other countries’ views. The Bush doctrine includes making reasonable efforts to include other nations in military or diplomatic actions, however in the absence of coalition partners, unilateral military action is taken against perceived threats. The policy document states that "United States has, and intends to keep, military strength beyond challenge", indicating the US intends to take actions as necessary to continue its status as the world’s sole military superpower.
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The policy is from Bush Senior’s reign in 1991, they pushed it on Clinton unsuccessfully in 1998, they got elected and put it into action in 2003, and they’re still saying it. No matter about their duplicity in sneaking it in under the guise of a War on Terror. No matter that their stated reasons for invading Iraq were lies from the beginning. No matter that what they thought would happen never happened. No matter that they’ve decimated our military and our treasury. So, when you read Bush’s speech tonight, remember this history – a history of a failed policy executed with deceit.
If I read what he’s going to say today correctly, there’s something else that it’s leaving out. "… that Iraq is at the heart of rising extremist movements in both the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities, the former dominated by al-Qaida and the latter by Iran." He’s leaving out that the reason Iraq is at the heart of rising extremist movements is because his policy, his actions made it happen. No matter what the truth now is, George W. Bush cannot be involved in what we do. He’s not part of the solution. He’s part of the cause of the problem!
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