Plan of Attack, Part 2
More things from
Plan of Attack that are worth mentioning:
The idea of covert action to effect the removal of Saddam Hussein was never considered. This was for two reasons. The first was that, due to a history of largely bungled Iraq operations, the CIA had very little credibility with Iraqis. This resulted in the CIA having no sources inside Iraq and few prospects of an alliance with any sort of opposition group. The second was that Saddam had himself taken power in a coup, and had successfully put down coups. He had organized his regime around the principle of preventing coups, and therefore CIA action in support of a coup would be futile.
With regard to the "axis of evil" language that was drafted for the State of the Union speech on 29 January 2002, Iraq was originally singled out as the epitome of a state with weapons of mass destruction that would be willing to share them with terrorists. Condoleeza Rice suggested adding other nations (Iran and North Korea) in order to reduce the impression of a near-declaration of war against Iraq. But the language was only there in order to begin a national discussion on war in Iraq. Iran and North Korea were in the speech solely to provide political cover. (Interestingly, Rumsfeld thought the Axis of Evil speech was "not particularly in my area.")
By August 2002, the war plan for Iraq was nearly in its final form. The problem was that the military planning had been given much more attention than any other aspect of Iraq policy -- much more than diplomacy or even postwar planning. The implementing of the plan's prerequisites was complete, and additional steps towards war followed in their wake, almost of their own volition. The war planning had taken on a life of its own, and no one in the Administration (with the possible exception of Colin Powell's State Department) put any thought into putting on the brakes before we were put in a position from which there was no exit save war. The CIA was building a network of informants, using what little credibility it had remaining; in order to gain cooperation, they had to tell people that we were definitely going to war. The military was moving troops into the region, using the cover provided by
Operation Enduring Freedom to make it appear that action against Iraq was not imminent. And we were already starting to work with other nations in the region, including but not limited to Saudi Arabia, to make sure that we would have the necessary support in order to launch an invasion.
The march to war reached a turning point on August 27, when Dick Cheney gave a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. During the month of August, support for diplomacy had finally gotten some steam within the Administration, mostly because of the reality that our key allies such as Britain could not possibly support us in a war without first trying a diplomatic soluion. Cheney was concerned, though, that going to the UN would cause the issue of Iraq to get debated to death without any decisive action being taken. Bush agreed to let him speak before Bush's upcoming speech at the UN on September 12, but he did not review the details of what Cheney would say.
In his speech, Cheney made an astonishing claim. He said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction [and] there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Neither Bush nor the CIA had made any assertion like this at this point, externally or internally. There was no intelligence to support such a bold and uncompromising assessment of Iraq's WMD capability. But Cheney nonetheless stated, unequivocally, that Iraq had WMD, in order to continue the drive to war and to short-circuit the long, tedious, and sometimes ultimately ineffective process of diplomacy.
I hadn't intended to make writing about
PoA my life's work, but I suppose it's inevitable that given a 450-page book about such a weighty topic that there'd be a lot of ground to cover. So, be sure to check out
Part 3.
