1 Boring Old Man

• DoD/OSP: Immediately after 911, Donald Rumsfeld asked Paul Wolfowitz to find al Qaeda/Iraq connections, a task he assigned to Douglas Feith. Feith came up with thirty plus pieces of evidence for that connection, which he then leaked to the Weekly Standard. All of that data turned out to be false. Feith later claimed that his list was hypothetical, designed to show the CIA that they were unwilling to consider State sponsorship of Terrorism.
• CIA/DoJ: As they began to accumulate al Qaeda captives, John Yoo provided a group of Legal Memos condoning Torture by calling it something else. So high value detainees were tortured looking for al Qaeda/Iraq connections – some at Gitmo and some overseas. They only succeeded in getting one such confession [from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi] who later recanted, reporting that he told his interrogators what they wanted to hear in order to keep them from killing him. He recently died in a Lybian prison supposedly from suicide, though many of us suspect he was murdered.
• The Niger Forgeries: There had been an already debunked set of forged documents alleging the purchase of Uranium by Iraq from Niger. These documents were revived and pushed by the Italian Secret Service [who knew them to be false]. They were the source of Bush’s "sixteen words" in his 2003 SOTUS. By the time of the push for war, the CIA and the UN had certified the documents as forgeries.
• Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress: Amhad Chalabi supplied all kinds of intelligence [except the true kind]. The Germans interrogated one of his plants, "Curveball," who they didn’t believe – but we used the information anyway. Chalabi and his people were sources for Colin Powell’s speech to the UN and for numerous reporters – notably Judith Miller of the New York Times. When it became clear that Chalabi’s information was fraudulent, he said, "We are heroes in error. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat."
• The Aluminum Tubes: Much ado was made of a shipment of aluminum tubes for rocket housings that we claimed, erroneously, were being used for centrifuging Uranium – a claim refuted by all experts.
• Fuzzy Math: In Colin Powell’s UN speech, he claimed that Iraq had large quantities of biological weaponry – giving precise numbers. Those numbers were computed by guestimating the amount of material Iraq would have if their plants ran at 100% efficiency and subtracting the amount they found after the Gulf War. After we invaded, it wasn’t found [because it never existed]. Their plants never ran at 100% efficiency.

KEY DOCUMENT 13: The Downing Street Memo was leaked in the Spring of 2005, but got very little Press time in the US. It is the Minutes from a meeting at Number 10 Downing Street in London where the head of the British Secret Service reported on his recent visit to Washington.

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents. John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam’s regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based. C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August. The two broad US options were: (a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait). (b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option. The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were: (i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons. (ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition. (iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions. The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections. The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force. The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change. The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work. On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions. For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary. The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN. John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real. The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush. Conclusions: We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options. The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation. CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week. The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam. He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states. John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update. We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers. (I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.) MATTHEW RYCROFT

"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

Note the date – July 23, 2002. So by July, the Bush Administration had already decided to invade Iraq independent of what the UN said.  The Casus Belli would be "the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" and "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." In my way of thinking, this seals the issue for all time. Two months before the public campaign for the war, a British envoy returned  to London from Washington to report that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action" – period. The intelligence was being jury-rigged to fit what he "wanted." All of our upcoming trips to the UN were for show.

^{I know that my last four posts cover well traveled ground and are kind of boring. I did them because I wanted the pieces to the puzzle all together in one box. I know that there are a number of other documents that speak to this topic, but I thought these twelve were a good summary to make my case.}

Former Vice President Dick Cheney holds to a broad set of ideas about the direction America’s foreign policy should take. They are not his ideas alone, but he’s been the face on them for a long time. At the core, they involve a preeminent military strength, unequaled by that of any other nation – opportunizing on the fall of the Soviet Bloc.  But unlike the version during the Cold War, he evisions an active military presence in the world, striking other opposing nations preemptively rather than waiting for provocative aggression. And he sees the war-making power of the United States as operating unfettered by the constraints and deliberations of world organizations like the United Nations. He would have our military might focused not only in a defensive posture, but actively engaged in promoting the interests of the United States, fostering Democratic governments like ours in other countries, and actively promoting the goals of the American business community in its worldwide endeavors – something of a merger between our commercial interests and our political interests in an America dominant foreign policy.

This policy made its debut in a leaked Defense Planning Guidance created by his Deputies when Cheney was Secretary of Defense under President George H.W. Bush to the general horror of most who read it, and was hastily withdrawn and rewritten. Throughout the Clinton Presidency, these ideas went underground, mostly talked about in the Halls on the American Enterprise Institute where Cheney and the group who also favored this approach spent that period. Cheney himself became the CEO of Halliburton, a large company involved in oil exploration among other things. In a speech in 1998, he made it clear that he thought that the commercial interests of the United States should be a part of our foreign policy, along with other interests. And the following year, in another speech, he pointed to the Middle East as the prime object for future oil exploration.

Meanwhile in 1997, Cheney was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century, an offshoot of the Conservative Think-Tank the American Enterprise Institute. Their first order of business was to write a letter to then President Bill Clinton urging him to unseat Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, citing Hussein’s many defiant actions since we had driven him from Kuwait in 1991. The PNAC went on to publish a Report criticising Clinton’s handling of the Defense Budget and reviving the foreign policy of Cheney’s Defense Department under President George H.W. Bush. Soon, Dick Cheney himself became George W. Bush’s running mate, and became Vice President in January 2001. His first act as VP was to assemble an Energy Task Force that included his colleagues from the American Energy Companies. The proceedings of that Task Force remain secret, but we do know that they used map of Iraq with areas unexplored for oil marked out in blocks.

^{While there’s no proof, I personally think the Bush Administration ignored warnings about al Qaeda in part because they believed that the Terrorists were backed by the Arab States [like Iraq or Iran], but also that they vaguely hoped that another al Qaeda attack might serve as a provocation that would give them a shot at making a case for war with Iraq. I doubt they expected anything so grand as the 9/11 attack – maybe something more like the bombing of the Embassy in Kenya or the attack on the U.S. Cole.}

Then came the September 11th, 2001 attack on the Twin Trade Towers in New York, and the country was changed forever. At that point, most of us knew nothing of their designs on Iraq. And we had hardly heard of al Qaeda. But in the Department of Defense, on that day, Donald Rumsfeld questioned whether we should retaliate against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq immediately along with Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda. He also tasked Paul Wolfowitz to begin gathering evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda. When Congress responded by giving President Bush the power to respond against the perpetrators of the attack using our military, in the Department of Justice, Deputy Attorney General John Yoo quickly wrote a secret legal Memo stating that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed by Congress also gave the President other powers:

The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations.

The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.

KEY DOCUMENT 9:  But then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. The UN fired off a series of resolutions to no avail, then finally approved a military solution [UN Resolution 678].

KEY DOCUMENT 10:   In response, the U.S. Congress passed a Joint Resolution [Authorization for Use of Military Force], resulting in the First Gulf War.

In 1991, we played it straight under President George H.W. Bush. We waited until the U.N. acted, went to war, then pulled out of Iraq as soon as the Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait. Many wondered why we didn’t march on Baghdad [since we were in the neighborhood]. The most definitive answer was given in a later frontline interview by [of all people] Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney.

• Pre-emption
• Unilaterality
• Strength without Equal
• Promotion of Democracy in other countries

KEY DOCUMENT 11: This document was leaked to the New York Times producing an outcry of resistance. Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Colin Powell hastily rewrote it before it was released. The whole draft document remains classified, but here are a few exerpts from the leak [note the comment about oil]:

The Wolfowitz Doctrine February 18, 1992

The doctrine announces the U.S’s status as the world’s only remaining superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War and proclaims its main objective to be retaining that status. "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general global power." The doctrine establishes the U.S’s leadership role within the new world order. "The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." The doctrine downplays the value of international coalitions. "Like the coalition that opposed Iraqi aggression, we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished. Nevertheless, the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S. will be an important stabilizing factor." The doctrine stated the U.S’s right to intervene when and where it believed necessary. While the U.S. cannot become the world’s policeman, by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations. The doctrine highlighted the possible threat posed by a resurgent Russia. "We continue to recognize that collectively the conventional forces of the states formerly comprising the Soviet Union retain the most military potential in all of Eurasia; and we do not dismiss the risks to stability in Europe from a nationalist backlash in Russia or efforts to reincorporate into Russia the newly independent republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and possibly others….We must, however, be mindful that democratic change in Russia is not irreversible, and that despite its current travails, Russia will remain the strongest military power in Eurasia and the only power in the world with the capability of destroying the United States." The doctrine clarified the strategic value of the Middle East and Southwest Asia. "In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region’s oil."

President George H.W. Bush had the good sense to renounce the Wolfowitz Doctrine. I don’t know if he did that because there was such outrage at this blatantly colonialist set of ideas that it would have been political suicide to press it forward, or whether he recognized that his Department of Defense had tried to slip in these Neoconservative Precepts into official U.S. policy, and clipped their wings [I’d like to think that it was the latter, but then…]. This was a radical proposal that seems unamerican to most of us. We were basically saying that we would no longer be one nation among many. We would be "the boss," the starter of wars, acting on our own. And we would basically become something like "Democracy Jihadists," spreading our chosen form of government throughout the world. It is an arrogant position, not unlike the Empire builders of other centuries. And while there was lots of flowery language to deny the implied world domination, it was a thin veneer. Certainly, it was unique for the Department of Defense to be presuming to dictate foreign policy.

We know that this policy re-emerged in the March to Invade Iraq, specifically in President George W. Bush’s speech at the West Point Graduation Ceremony in the Summer of 2002 [as the Bush Doctrine], but I’m getting ahead of myself. The Wolfowitz Doctrine was revived before that in the Report by the Project for the New American Century entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses. The 90 page Report decried Clinton’s trimming of the Defense Budget, and revived the Wolfowitz [Cheney] Doctrine in toto.

KEY DOCUMENT 12: Here’s a short quote from this document that advocates a massive increase in Defense spending to insure our "superpower-ness."

Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century September 2000

At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible. With this in mind, we began a project in the spring of 1998 to examine the country’s defense plans and resource requirements. We started from the premise that U.S. military capabilities should be sufficient to support an American grand strategy committed to building upon this unprecedented opportunity. We did not accept pre-ordained constraints that followed from assumptions about what the country might or might not be willing to expend on its defenses. In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. Leaked before it had been formally approved, the document was criticized as an effort by “cold warriors” to keep defense spending high and cuts in forces small despite the collapse of the Soviet Union; not surprisingly, it was subsequently buried by the new administration. Although the experience of the past eight years has modified our understanding of particular military requirements for carrying out such a strategy, the basic tenets of the DPG, in our judgment, remain sound. And what Secretary Cheney said at the time in response to the DPG’s critics remains true today: “We can either sustain the [armed] forces we require and remain in a position to help shape things for the better, or we can throw that advantage away. [But] that would only hasten the day when we face greater threats, at higher costs and further risk to American lives.”

Four documents in the immediate post-9/11 days set the tone for what was to follow – two public and two private.

KEY DOCUMENT 5: Lest one questions that the Bush Administration had its eyes on invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld’s notes on the afternoon of 9/11 make things abundantly clear. "Hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time – Not only UBL [Osama Bin Laden]."

Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld 2:40 PM September 11, 2001

KEY DOCUMENT 6: Within a few days, Vice President Cheney was the official spokesman, appearing on Meet the Press. He didn’t exactly implicate Iraq. It was also the interview that introduced his idea of "the dark side." I don’t think we had any idea what he meant at the time. Like all Americans, we were all in shock and his words were comforting. We didn’t know that what was coming was the kind of "dark side" that would have us looking at the photos from Abu Ghraib. I guess we thought the dark side meant meeting with shady characters in the Casbah or something out of a James Bond Movie, and it would take a while to know what those words really meant.

VICE PRESIDENT: DICK CHENEY SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 MEET THE PRESS MR. RUSSERT: Saddam Hussein, your old friend, his government had this to say: "The American cowboy is rearing the fruits of crime against humanity." If we determine that Saddam Hussein is also harboring terrorists, and there’s a track record there, would we have any reluctance of going after Saddam Hussein? VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. MR. RUSSERT: Do we have evidence that he’s harboring terrorists? VICE PRES. CHENEY: There is – in the past, there have been some activities related to terrorism by Saddam Hussein. But at this stage, you know, the focus is over here on al-Qaida and the most recent events in New York. Saddam Hussein’s bottled up, at this point, but clearly, we continue to have a fairly tough policy where the Iraqis are concerned. MR. RUSSERT: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to this operation? VICE PRES. CHENEY: No… VICE PRES. CHENEY: I’m going to be careful here, Tim, because I – clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward. We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world’s finest military. They’ve got a broad range of capabilities. And they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy. We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective. MR. RUSSERT: There have been restrictions placed on the United States intelligence gathering, reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violated human rights, to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions? VICE PRES. CHENEY: Oh, I think so. I think the – one of the by-products, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we’ll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. There’s – if you’re going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you’re not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I’m convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.

KEY DOCUMENT 7: Within a week, Congress authorized the use of Military force to deal with the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack on New York. It passed 420:1:2 in the House and 98:0:2 in the Senate. Notice the wording. It’s broad ["planned, authorized, committed, or aided…" "or harbored such organizations or persons"], but specific ["the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001"].

Authorization for Use of Military Force September 18, 2001 JOINT RESOLUTION To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States. Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force’. SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. (a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. (b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-       (1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.       (2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution. Approved September 18, 2001.

KEY DOCUMENT 8: At the time, probably none of us had ever heard of the O.L.C. [Office of Legal Counsel] in the DoJ. We certainly never heard of this Memo. If you read it carefully, the questions have to be, "Why was it written? What was ambiguous about the broad powers Congress gave to the President?" The second paragraph seems to simply reiterate the wording of the AUMF itself. But the third paragraph  is a gigantic leap ["…deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11"]. You will have to read the whole thing to try to follow Yoo’s logic. So, we didn’t know about this rewriting of the AUMF because it was a secret, but in these few words, the specificity of the Congressional Act was destroyed. This was the beginning of a pattern of rewriting and reframing Congressional actions to expand Presidential powers by unobserved OLC Memos or Signing Statements that would continue unabated throughout the Administration’s tenure. And why make these assertions? It seems easy to see now that the door was being opened for the Invasion of Iraq [and maybe more], but at the time, neither Congress nor the people knew about what was happening..

THE PRESIDENT’S CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST TERRORISTS AND NATIONS SUPPORTING THEM        The President has broad constitutional power to take military action in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Congress has acknowledged this inherent executive power in both the War Powers Resolution and the Joint Resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001.         The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations.         The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11… September 25, 2001

Four public documents in the pre-9/11 period make it perfectly clear what was coming, though those of us not in the thick of things had no idea of what was going on:

KEY DOCUMENT 1: Not long after the Project for the New American Century was founded in 1997, they sent a letter to President Clinton urging him to go to War with Saddam Hussein – the goal being to unseat him as the head of Iraq’s government.

C.E.O. HALLIBURTON: DICK CHENEY FOUNDING MEMBER – PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: DICK CHENEY JANUARY 26, 1998 PNAC LETTER TO PRESIDENT 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.

KEY DOCUMENT 2: Meanwhile, George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had taken a job as CEO of Halliburton. Not long after the PNAC letter to President Clinton, CEO Dick Cheney made a remarkable speech at the Cato Institute suggesting that our commerce should drive our foreign policy – and made one of the most patently transparent rationalizations of the 20th Century, "Oftentimes the absolute best way to advance human rights and the cause of freedom or the development of democratic institutions is through the active involvement of American businesses."

C.E.O. HALLIBURTON: DICK CHENEY JUNE 23, 1998 CATO INSTITUTE I believe that economic forces have driven much of the change in the last 20 years, and I would be prepared to argue that, in many cases, that economic progress has been a prerequisite to political change. The power of ideas, concepts of freedom and liberty and of how best to organize economic activity, have been an essential, positive ingredient in the developments in the last part of the 20th century. At the heart of that process has been the U.S. business community. Our capital, our technology, our entrepreneurship has been a vital part of those forces that have, in fact, transformed the world. Our economic capabilities need to be viewed, I believe, as a strategic asset in a world that is increasingly focused on economic growth and the development of market economies. I think it is a false dichotomy to be told that we have to choose between "commercial" interests and other interests that the United States might have in a particular country or region around the world. Oftentimes the absolute best way to advance human rights and the cause of freedom or the development of democratic institutions is through the active involvement of American businesses. Investment and trade can oftentimes do more to open up a society and to create opportunity for a society’s citizens than reams of diplomatic cables from our State Department. I think it’s important for us to look on U.S. businesses as a valuable national asset, not just as an activity we tolerate, or a practice that we do not want to get too close to because it involves money. Far better for us to understand that the drive of American firms to be involved in and shape and direct the global economy is a strategic asset that serves the national interest of the United States.

KEY DOCUMENT 3: In a speech at the endof 1999, he makes it very clear  in a speech to the Institute of Petroleum where his sights are being focused, "While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."

C.E.O. HALLIBURTON: DICK CHENEY NOVEMBER 15, 1999 INSTITUTE OF PETROLEUM – LONDON Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you’ve got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is true for companies as well in the broader economic sense as it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It’s like making one hundred per cent interest discovery in another major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every four months or finding two Hibernias a year. For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.

^{The composition of the task force, according to the report, was confined to government officials. However, according to media reports at the time, energy industry executives participated in the Task Force. In particular, those identified as having been involved included then-Enron President and Chairman Kenneth Lay and lobbyists Haley Barbour and Marc Racicot.}

^{In April 2001, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, sought to obtain the records of the task force meetings. In July 2001 Judicial Watch filed suit on the grounds that the administration was not "in compliance with the Federal Advisory Commission Act (FACA), which mandates that certain documents, task force members, meetings, and decision-making activities be open to the public." Judicial Watch argued that the acting as energy lobbyists — "regularly attended and fully participated" in the group’s meetings held behind closed doors, and were in fact members of the group. The Sierra Club also filed suit. (The two actions were later merged.) "At issue is whether Cheney allowed private energy lobbyists and big-name campaign contributors to participate in the work of the group, and if so, whether that information should be made public," UPI reported.}

^{The organizations claim the documents will show the extent to which the task force staff met secretly with industry executives to craft the Bush administration’s energy policies, such as drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and weakening power plant pollution regulations.}

^{Between late January and April 4, 2001, when "representatives of 13 environmental groups were brought into the Old Executive Office Building for a long-anticipated meeting" with Cheney, a "confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the [April 2001] meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.">[1]} "In all, about 300 groups and individuals met with staff members of the energy task force, including a handful who saw Cheney himself, according to the list, which was compiled in the summer of 2001."

^{An earlier document obtained by the Washington Post in 2005 "was based on records kept by the Secret Service of people admitted to the White House complex." "This person said most meetings were with Andrew Lundquist, the task force’s executive director, and Cheney aide Karen Y. Knutson." Andrew D. Lundquist was then Director of the U.S. Department of Energy. The names of participants cited on the lists include:}

• ^{Eli Bebout, "an old friend of Cheney’s from Wyoming who serves in the state Senate and owns an oil and drilling company", visited in March 2001.}
• ^{Red Cavaney, "president of the American Petroleum Institute, also met with Lundquist"}
• ^{Jack N. Gerard, "then with the National Mining Association, had a meeting with Lundquist and other staffers" in February 2001.}
• ^{Wayne Gibbens and Alby Modiano, U.S. Oil and Gas Association}
• ^{Alan Huffman, "Conoco manager until the 2002 merger with Phillips, confirmed meeting with the task force staff."}
• ^{Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron, "came by for the first of two meetings."}
• ^{Bob Malone, BP regional president, and Peter Davies, chief economist, and "company employees" Graham Barr and Deb Beaubien.}
• ^{Steven Miller, Shell Oil chairman, "and two others."}
• ^{Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s chairman.}
• ^{James J. Rouse, former Exxon vice president. In 2005 Rouse "denied the meeting took place." In 2007, Rouse was revealed to be "One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14, [2001] … then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration".}
• ^{J. Robinson West, "chairman of the Washington-based consulting firm PFC Energy and an old friend of Cheney’s" met with Cheney.}
• ^{Daniel Yergin, "chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of The Prize, a history of the oil industry", met with Cheney and Lundquist.}

^{"One advocacy group that visited was the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, founded in 1998 by Grover Norquist and Gale A. Norton, who became Bush’s first interior secretary. Later, the group was run by Italia Federici, who was involved socially with Steven Griles. Griles, then Norton’s deputy at Interior, was recently sentenced to prison for obstructing a Senate investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff…}

^{In a November 2005 joint hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Democrat Senator Frank Lautenberg asked the representatives of major oil companies "Did your company or any representatives of your companies participate in Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001?" Exxon’s CEO Lee Raymon, Chevron Chairman David J. O’Reilly and ConocoPhillips chief executive, James J. Mulva all said "no". BP America chief executive Ross Pillari told the hearing he wasn’t sure as he hadn’t been with the company at the time. Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, told the hearing "not to my knowledge."}

It does not take a Freudian Psychoanalyst to hear the music behind these words. There was a move afoot to integrate American Foreign Policy into the goal of the American business community, specifically the Energy giants. We would unseat Saddam Hussein in Iraq to establish an American friendly regime that would give us access to the oilfields in Iraq – those already functioning and those yet to be explored. And the now Vice President, Dick Cheney, was the man spearheading this plan. All of this was before 9/11.

School is starting soon and a new crop of law students will begin their struggles with how our codes of criminal justice have come to look at attributions of blame, the paradigm being action that resulted in the death of another person. The students will obsess about the actus rea and the mens rea – what did the defendant do? what was the result? what was their mental state when they did it? And their professors will describe cases after case, handed down over the centuries, that illustrate the permutations of blame. Then they will create diabolical hypothetical cases for the final exams approximating the judges’ worst courtroom nightmares.

And how do we assign blame when it has to do with countries, or their leaders? What about the mass killing of others in those endeavors we call War? What Laws govern such things? First, there is the Casus Belli, the case for war. Then there is a concept known as a Just War. Just War Theory has two sets of criteria. The first establishing jus ad bellum, the right to go to war; the second establishing jus in bello, right conduct within war:

The United Nations doesn’t have the authority of a court. We’re just not that civilized on Planet Earth. So there’s no real JUST WAR cop or Casus Belli court. But if you go by these criteria, they fit fine for al Qaeda and the Taliban – the case for war is solid, a Just War. No problem. But our Invasion of Iraq fails in all sorts of ways. I want to review it, because I am getting hopeful that the Cheney testimony in the CIA Leak case will be released, and will reawaken the whole question of the Iraq War itself.

Hope Builds for the Economy As Positive Reports Pile Up
By Neil Irwin
Washington Post
July 24, 2009

^{Companies that a few months ago were too fearful even to project their future earnings are now seeing glimmers of hope in the year ahead. The rate of home sales has risen for three straight months. And the number of people drawing unemployment insurance benefits has fallen back to April levels, having receded for the third straight week.}

^{All those recent signals sent the stock market surging Thursday as investors sensed that the recession could be in its waning days. Many suspect that even if no recovery is imminent, the steep economic decline has either already ended or will soon.}

^{That confidence drove the stock market, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, up 2.3 percent Thursday — continuing a rally that has driven the broad measure up 44 percent since March 9 and 11 percent in the past two weeks. The Dow Jones industrial average has gained 39 percent since March 9 and closed above 9000 for the first time since January. European markets rose by a similar amount on Thursday, and Asian markets opened up in early trading Friday.}

^{"It’s a lot easier to argue now that the recession is fading," said Joel L. Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. "We can be more comfortable now that the recession is winding down and should be over within the next few months." The cheery mood on Wall Street notwithstanding, the latest data are hardly evidence of a new boom on the way.}

^{Sales of existing homes rose 3.6 percent in June, the National Association of Realtors reported on Thursday, to an annual rate of 4.9 million homes sold. While that level is very low by historical standards, it is the third straight month of increase — a sign that housing may no longer be a net drain on economic growth. "One month is nice, two months opens eyes, and three months is a trend," said Naroff.}

^{Home prices are still falling, however, and it could take some time for the bloated inventories of homes for sale — 3.8 million of them, a 9.4-month supply — to come back into a more normal range. A six-month supply would be typical.}

^{Similarly, the job market remains in terrible shape, but the pace of layoffs appears to be abating. The Labor Department said Thursday that 6.2 million Americans were receiving unemployment insurance benefits, continuing a decline in that measure of joblessness. Some 554,000 people filed new claims for jobless benefits, high by any conventional standard but remaining below 600,000 for the third straight week and down substantially from the 674,000 such filings in the last week of March.}

^{The continued weakness in the labor market is among the greatest continuing threats to the economy, analysts said, an argument that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke made in congressional testimony this week. Even as companies begin cranking up production to replace depleted inventories, Americans who are out of work — or fear they may become so — could be disinclined to spend money…}

When it’s all said and done, however, it all hinges on the economy. They can yell and scream all they want to, but the fulcrum will be placed by the job situation and people’s personal economic status – all the rest is much ado about nothing. Health Reform is also key. Right now, an outrageous number of Americans have no real access to health care – even many of the insured. And the Lobbies are pouring gajillions into trying to defeat health care reform [to their own shame].

It’s almost impossible to imagine this last year – history just feels strange when you’re living it. All my conscious life, I wondered what it would feel like to have "lived through" the Great Depression like my parents, or World War II. I kind of think living through history is lost on the young. Being in Civil Rights marches where tear gas was being hurled, living in Memphis when King got shot, being escorted out of Ruleville Mississippi by shotgun toting guys that followed us to the County Line – those things didn’t feel like history at the time. And going to the 1972 Munich Olympics and sitting on a knoll above the practice track where we could see the Terrorists on the balcony of the dorms didn’t feel like history either. Those things feel like history now, but then – it was just life.

This last year has felt like history. I guess being old makes it that way. In fact, the last nearly a decade has felt like history. The Stock Market soared then tanked. We elected a black, sane president. The Republican Party turned into a version of the Klan from the 60’s. We had characters from a bad summer thriller run the country into ruin – lying, torturing, warring around. No question about it, it’s history all right.

I’ve decided that America’s ‘diversity problem’ has a distinct and clear cause – diversity itself. Nothing much to say about that in my opinion. Trying to pretend we don’t have a diversity problem doesn’t work because it’s in the DNA. Human beings are herd animals, no doubt about it. If you look at those cows in a mixed pasture. the black ones congregate together as do the white ones. It doesn’t get much more scientific than that.

C Street’s Waterloo
By emptywheel
July 22, 2009

If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him. And we will show that we can–along with the American people–begin to push those freedom solutions at work in every area of our society.

About a million people have commented on Jim DeMint’s prayer to "break" our first African-American President by thwarting his attempts to reform and extend health care. But few–at least that I’ve seen–have connected it with another lingering news story: the role of C Street in pushing hyper-capitalist policies.

DeMint is the most senior C Street resident not currently embroiled in a sex scandal (or the cover-up of it, in Tom Coburn’s case).  And while his roomies all scramble to keep their jobs in the aftermath of being proven utter hypocrites, DeMint has taken the lead attacking health care and–significantly–counterposing it to "freedom solutions."

This is what C Street is really about–fighting back any check on hyper-capitalism. As Jeff Sharlet explained in a recent interview,

Sharlet: Exactly. However you look at it, The Family is effectively a union busting organization. They’re particularly concerned about the Teamsters and the Longshoremen. They thought they were run by some sort of devils. The Family was instrumental in the breaking of the spine of organized labor.
One of the things that makes them different from other Christian conservative organizations, and I think even upset some Christian conservative organizations, is that the issues for them are not abortion or morality or same-sex marriage. The important issue to them is what they call Biblical capitalism, and I think what even some conservative observers looking at them call crony capitalism.

That needs to the be the story here: the loudest opponent to health care reform is advocating the position of a morally discredited fascistic cult, that he’s interested in defeating a wildly popular policy so as to replace it with Orwellian "freedom solutions."

Sure, the opponents of health care reform are partly people–like Ben Nelson–being spoonfed honey by the insurance industry’s bean counters. But there are others–notably this loudmouthed and unrepentant member of the Family–who are opposing it as a rallying cry to some fundamentally authoritarian whack-jobs.

DeMint is going to continue to get face time for his outrageous comments.  We would do well to emphasize that he’s a morally hypocritical cult member just like Ensign and Sanford.

Sharlet: In some ways the greatest effect of The Family is the influence of their ideas, the elite fundamentalism ideas, free-market fundamentalism trickling down into popular fundamentalism, the regular churches of America filled with Christian conservatives with very good hearts who are democratic in spirit, even if they hold very conservative views about morality and so on.

I saw The Family’s influence when I spent time at a megachurch in Colorado Springs run by Ted Haggard, who a lot of people are now familiar with because of a sex scandal. Haggard had 11,000 church members believing that the most important aspect of the gospel related to free trade. He had ordinary folks talking about getting rid of steel tariffs as God’s work, and they did so, he said because where capitalism goes, God follows.

I think that’s a sad thing when churches have been steered away from their real mission into this very specific economic set of ideas.

And it certainly wasn’t the only such group. The American Enterprise Institute arose from the same fabric. "AEI was founded in 1938 as the American Enterprise Association by a group of businessmen led by Lewis H. Brown. AEA’s original mission was to promote a ‘greater public knowledge and understanding of the social and economic advantages accruing to the American people through the maintenance of the system of free, competitive enterprise’… Its stated mission is ‘to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate’."

Unlike Abraham Vereide the preacher, Lewis Brown was an Industrialist, CEO of the Johns-Manville, the Asbestos Company. He was, however, a strong supporter of the same free market, pro-business, anti Union, anti-New Deal ideas as The Family. Brown knew that Asbestos caused cancer and kept it hidden for decades. After his death, his Company was dissembled and held responsible for the countless deaths from mesothelioma. His American Enterprise Institute is still involved in trying to cap the payout for that disorder. And oh the havoc these anti-FDR holdovers have caused in these last eight years in their modern incarnation – The Neoconservatives.

emptywheel is correct in her use of the term "hypercapitalist." These anachronistic organizations and others have been at work since the Great Depression to fight Communism, Socialism, and promote Free Market Capitalism. Their secret tenacles into government became visible when they finally "won" with George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. emptywheel is also correct to focus our attention on  Senator Jim DeMint [R-SC]. His line, "If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him" is the whole point of The Family’s pseudo-religious Christian Fascism. When they say, "freedom solutions," they mean Free Big Business, Free Market Capitalism, No Social Programs, No Worker’s Rights – they mean close to the same thing Hitler meant, without the uniforms, and "with the Cross of Jesus, Marching on before"…