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Wolfowitz
Admits Iraq War Was Planned
Two
Days After 9/11
by
Jason Leopold
June
3, 2003
While
the hawks in the Bush administration attempt to justify the logic behind a
preemptive strike against Iraq now that its become clear the country’s alleged
weapons of mass destruction are nowhere to be found, the true reasons for going
to war are finally coming to light.
In
his State of the Union address in January, President Bush said intelligence
reports from the CIA and the FBI indicated that Saddam Hussein “had the
materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent,”
which put the United States in imminent danger of possibly being attacked
sometime in the future.
Two
months later, despite no concrete evidence from intelligence officials or
United Nations inspectors that these weapons existed, Bush authorized the use
of military force to decimate the country and destroy Saddam Hussein’s
regime.
Now
it appears the weapons of mass destruction will never be found and many critics
of the war are starting to wonder aloud whether the community was duped by the
Bush administration.
Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz,
both of who spent a better part of the past decade advocating the use of military
force against Iraq, put the issue to rest once and for all.
Judging
by recent interviews Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz gave to a handful of media outlets
during the past week, the short answer is yes, the public was mislead into
believing Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States. Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz admit that the war with Iraq was planned two days after the terrorist
attacks on September 11, 2001.
On
September13, 2001, during a meeting at Camp David with President Bush, Rumsfeld
and others in the Bush administration, Wolfowitz said he discussed with
President Bush the prospects of launching an attack against Iraq, for no
apparent reason other than a “gut feeling” Saddam Hussein was involved in the
attacks, and there was a debate “about what place if any Iraq should have in a
counter terrorist strategy.”
“On
the surface of the debate it at least appeared to be about not whether but
when,” Wolfowitz said during the May 9 interview, a transcript of which is
posted on the Department
of Defense website. “There seemed to be a kind of agreement that yes it
should be, but the disagreement was whether it should be in the immediate
response or whether you should concentrate simply on Afghanistan first.”
Wolfowitz
said it was clear that because Saddam Hussein “praised” the terrorist attacks
on 9-11 that besides Afghanistan, Iraq went to the top of the list of countries
the United States expected to launch an attack against in the near future.
“To
the extent it was a debate about tactics and timing, the President clearly came
down on the side of Afghanistan first. To the extent it was a debate about
strategy and what the larger goal was, it is at least clear with 20/20
hindsight that the President came down on the side of the larger goal.”
In
an interview with WABC-TV last week, Rumsfeld took it a step further saying
United States policy advocated regime change in Iraq since the 1990s and that
was also a reason behind the war in Iraq.
“If
you go back and look at the debate in the Congress and the debate in the United
Nations, what we said was the President said that this is a dangerous regime,
the policy of the United States government has been regime change since the mid
to late 1990s … and that regime has now been changed. That
is a very good thing,” Rumsfeld said during the interview, a transcript of
which can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030527-secdef0228.html
Rumfeld’s
response is only partly true. He and Wolfowitz, along with Vice President Dick
Cheney and others in the administration, wrote to President Clinton in 1998
urging regime change in Iraq but Clinton rebuffed them saying his
administration was focusing on dismantling al-Qaeda cells.
In
the bigger picture, Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein, who ruled the
country with an iron fist, torturing and murdering any citizen who spoke
against his regime. But that’s beside the point. The issue is the Bush
administration lied to the world and launched an unjustifiable war.
And
it’s just the beginning of a so-called two front war the U.S. is planning
against other “outlaw” regimes. The administration is ratcheting up the
rhetoric on Iran by making similar allegations that this country too poses a
threat to national security by harboring al-Qaeda terrorists and building a
nuclear arms arsenal.
Serious
disagreements exist between the State Department and the Bush administration on
how to deal with Iran, with the State Department pushing for an open dialogue
and the Bush administration pushing for a new regime.
In
a half a dozen interviews last week, Rumsfeld refused to respond to questions
about whether the U.S. will use military force to overthrow Iran’s governing
body.
“That’s
(military force) up to the President but the fact is that to the extent that
Iran attempts to influence what’s taking place in Iraq and tries to make Iraq into
their image, we will have to stop it.
And to the extent they have people from their Revolutionary Guard in
they’re attempting to do that, why we’ll have to find them and capture them or
kill them,” Rumsfeld said in an interview last week with WCBS-TV.
Wolfowitz,
however, is more direct in how to deal with Iran. Responding to the question of
whether military force will be used to weed out the clerics running the
country, Wolfowitz said in an interview with CNN International Saturday “you know,
I think you know, we never rule out that kind of thing.”
Jason Leopold, formerly the
bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires, is a freelance journalist based in
California. He is currently finishing a book on the California energy crisis.
He can be contacted at jasonleopold@hotmail.com.
* Related article link: “Plans
For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11”
* See also DV News Service’s Compilation:
“Bush
Administration's Lies About Iraq's WMD Unraveling”