The War in Iraq: Lies, Costs, and Motives

The War in Iraq: Lies, Costs, and Motives

by VNN Staff

15 November 2003

Oct. 10, 2002 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush praised the House of Representatives for voting to give him authority to go to war to disarm Iraq Thursday, calling it "a debate and a result that all Americans can be proud of." The House voted 296-133 to give Bush the authority to use U.S. military force to make Iraq comply with U.N. resolutions requiring it to give up weapons of mass destruction.

Oct. 11, 2002 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.

June 1, 2003 (CNN) -- The search for Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction is being stepped up as international pressure mounts for the coalition to produce evidence that would support its decision to wage war on Iraq.

Nov. 14, 2003 (AP) -- As of Thursday, Nov. 13, 397 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. The British military has reported 52 deaths; Italy, 16; Denmark, Spain, Ukraine and Poland have reported one each.

Oct. 8, 2003 WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Bush administration's reported request for $600 million to fuel the continued search for Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction comes under scrutiny in the House Appropriations Committee Thursday, but details will be kept from public view.

Nov. 7, 2003 WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Despite initial assurances about keeping costs down, U.S. President George W. Bush signed a law on Thursday that will provide $87.5 billion to try to turn around the Iraq occupation after months of bloodshed.

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"The misuse of large numbers of our intelligence experts, who were pushed hard for six months in the futile attempt to prove the president's case for WMD, prevented the carrying out of essential intelligence functions in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle. These resources could have been used to help prevent the deaths and wounding of many American and Iraqis." Veteran Jon Zall, writing in the Oregonian, Nov. 5, 2003.

"The costs of the Iraq war are escalating for the United States. They are enlarging an already serious federal-budget deficit. The October-through-July deficit hit a record $324 billion, the Treasury reported last week." David R. Francis, "A tally of US taxpayers tab for Iraq," Aug. 25, 2003

"The cost of the war itself exceed previous public projections from the office of the Secretary of Defense. At an April 16 news conference, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim acknowledged that the cost of the war to that point came to $10 billion-$12 billion. But the cost of returning troops to base would be another $5 billion-$7 billion, plus another $9 billion for the 3-1/2 weeks of combat operations, bringing the total cost at that point to between $24 billion-$28 billion.

Since then, the continued cost of occupying Iraq and of the continued pacification and counter-guerrilla operations mounted there has been widely estimated at around $1 billion a week." Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst, "The High Cost of Occupation."

"The Bush administration plans to spend $1 billion in the fruitless search for unconventional weapons in Iraq. The non-existence of these weapons, which were the main excuse for the invasion, has badly damaged the White House; eroded the power of Cheney's men Wolfowitz, Feith and Perle -- who jestingly called themselves "the cabal." Eric Margolis, "Dubious Intelligence," Oct. 5, 2003.

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"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." ... "I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction." Dept. Secratary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

"Most striking is the fact that these latest remarks come from Mr. Wolfowitz, recognised widely as the leader of the hawks' camp in Washington most responsible for urging President George Bush to use military might in Iraq. The magazine article reveals that Mr. Wolfowitz was even pushing Mr. Bush to attack Iraq immediately after the 11 September attacks in the US, instead of invading Afghanistan." David Usborne, May 30, 2003, in the Independent, UK.

"Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, all played key roles in the buildup to the war with Iraq. They brought intensive pressure on the CIA to produce proof of hidden weapons and links between Iraq and al-Qaida. . . . When [they found] the CIA was not providing damning evidence on Iraq they needed to promote war, they created a special intelligence unit. It cherry-picked bits and pieces of negative data about Iraq, trumpeted lurid claims by Iraqi defectors, then passed them on to the White House. Iraqi exiles were used as a primary conduit for the disinformation, and were provided with funding and political support. The New York Times repeatedly parroted the Iraqi defectors' distortions. . . . "[M]embers of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's government reportedly provided the neo-cons' special intel unit with a stream of negative stories about Iraq." Eric Margolis, "Dubious Intelligence," Oct. 5, 2003.

Richard Perle

"Richard N. Perle is a man of many hats: Pentagon policy adviser, former Likud policy adviser, media manager, international investor, op-ed writer, talk show guest, think tank expert and ardent supporter of the war in Iraq.

Known in Washington circles as "The Prince of Darkness," Perle is associated with the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century... He is closely allied with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Perle is also a vocal supporter of Israel and a critic of Saudi Arabia. Perle is on the Advisory Board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and is a former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. . . .

A veteran Washington insider, Perle has on occasion been accused of being an Israeli agent of influence. It has been reported that, while he was working for [Senator] Jackson [1969-1980], an "FBI summary of a 1970 wiretap recorded Perle discussing classified information with someone in the Israeli embassy." In 1983, after stepping into a Pentagon job in the Reagan administration, Perle came under fire for accepting a $50,000 payment from an Israeli arms manufacturer. . . .

According to a Dec. 24, 1985, Associated Press report, Perle, still a Reagan Defense Department official, was challenged by Jeremiah Denton, then a Republican senator from Alabama, on Perle's choice of Stephen D. Bryen as a Pentagon aide. In the email copy of Lee Byrd's report provided by John Sugg (JohnSugg@aol.com), Denton charged that Bryen, moving from a job with the powerful American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, had been forced to resign his Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff job after being investigated for trying to gain information for the Israeli government.

In February 2002, the dispute spilled over into the Washington Post's editorial pages, with one writer blasting the 'toxic' charge that Israel is unduly influencing President Bush's Iraq policy. A Post editorial responded by pointing out that Perle, who is chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, and two other Bush policy men, Douglas Feith , undersecretary of defense for policy, and David Wurmser, a State Department special assistant, had in 1996 participated in Likud policy deliberations. Under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a Likud-leaning Israeli think tank, the three helped come up with a paper, 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,' which declared that 'removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq' was an 'important Israeli strategic objective in its own right as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions.' . . .

Perle has close business ties with Conrad Black, chairman of Hollinger International Inc., which owns more than 400 daily and weekly newspapers in Canada, the United States, Britain, Israel and Australia. Hollinger papers include London's Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Jerusalem Post. Perle uses these papers and others to trumpet his anti-Saddam sentiments . . .

Perle is a top executive of Hollinger Digital Inc., which is the media management and investment arm of Hollinger. Perle is listed on various corporate boards through his association with Hollinger. Whether or not Perle speaks for Bush, the president's recent reasoning on Iraq follows a pattern found in Perle's writings, particularly in a lengthy piece for Israel Insider, which uses numerous non-sequiters in its emotionally-charged connection of Saddam to terrorist activity . . .

Perle is also associated with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which backs Bush's Iraq war push. Others with the foundation are columnist Charles Krauthammer, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and Georgia senator Zell Miller . . ."

(From Disinfopedia, the encyclopedia of propaganda: http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Richard_N._Perle)

David Wurmser

"David Wurmser, a neo-conservative, who was a "special assistant" to John R. Bolton at the State Department and a research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) ... has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to roll back the Ba'ath-led government in Syria. For the latter part of the 1990s, he wrote frequently to support a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez Assad in hopes of destroying Ba'athist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant . . . Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favor of an Iraqi National Congress . . . "Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS).

. . . Wurmser is married to Israeli born Meyrav Wurmser who, as head of Middle East studies at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000' . . . The paper, called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,' was directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu . . . It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel trading land for peace by transforming the balance of power in the Middle East . . . To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein . . . From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on Syria . . . Wurmser is a close friend and political ally at the AEI with Richard N. Perle. Perle wrote the introduction to Wurmser's book "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein."

(From Disinfopedia, the encyclopedia of propaganda: http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=David_Wurmser)

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"A stronger Israel is very much embedded in the rationale for war with Iraq. The destruction of Saddam's Iraq will not only remove an enemy of long-standing but will also change the basic power equation in the region." Joe Klein, Time Magazine, Feb. 5, 2003.

"In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town (Washington): the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer." Ari Shavit, Haaretz News Service (Israel), April 5, 2003.

"I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened." Thomas Friedman, April 4, 2003.

"Everybody knows that: The only country that fears Iraq's WMD's is Israel; American-Jewish neo-conservatives on the Defence Policy Board planned this war in 1998 and made it Bush Administration policy; The purpose of the war is to change the balance of power in the Middle East so Israel can settle the Palestinian issue on its own terms; and Congress trembles in fear before the Israeli Lobby, "AIPAC." Dr. Henry Makow Phd., February 10, 2003.

"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this." Rep. James Moran, March 3, 2003.

"The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: ³Can you assure American viewers ... that we¹re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?²...

"Current key leaders [of the neoconservative movement] include an astonishing number of individuals well placed to influence the Bush Administration: (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis Libby, Elliott Abrams, David Wurmser, Abram Shulsky), interlocking media and thinktankdom (Bill Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Stephen Bryen, John Podhoretz, Daniel Pipes), and the academic world (Richard Pipes, Donald Kagan) ... They are attempting to rearrange the entire Middle East in the interests of Israel." Prof. Kevin MacDonald, "Thinking About Neoconservatism," Vdare.com, Sept. 18, 2003.