Veterans for Common Sense

“This Administration made many assertions, for which they have yet to produce any evidence, about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The President led the nation to war, and spent at least $63 billion on that war, on the basis of these unfounded assertions. Let me repeat, the President led the nation to war on the basis of unfounded assertions. It is long past time that the Administration shows its evidence, and today, we are announcing the intention to introduce a resolution of inquiry tomorrow, to compel the White House to justify its claims.

“We all know the unfounded claims the Administration made to justify leading the country to war.

“Remember when on October 7, 2002, the President said in Cincinnati “[Iraq] possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons… And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons?”

“And in August 26, 2002, when the Vice President said “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction…What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons.”

“And even this past March, the Secretary of Defense said on “Face the Nation”: “We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they’re weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established.”

“In fact, I have a list of claims that this Administration has made over the past year about evidence they claimed they had of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But we all know that no weapons have been found. It has been 76 days since the start of war, and no weapons have been found.

“So what evidence did this Administration have to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? What evidence did this Administration have for its repeated claims that Iraq was a threat to this nation? What evidence did this Administration have to spend $63 billion in taxpayer money? What evidence did this Administration have to justify war?

“We think that it’s high time that we see the evidence—if there is any evidence—for the Administration’s many unfounded assertions. That is why we intend to compel the White House to release its evidence through a Resolution of Inquiry that we will introduce tomorrow.”

The Lies We Bought: The Unchallenged “Evidence” For War

Shortly before American military forces invaded Iraq, a troubled Ellen Goodman raised a singularly important question about the Bush administration’s propaganda campaign for war — “How we got from there to here.”

There, according to Goodman, was innocent 9/11 victimhood at the hands of religious fanatics; here, was bullying superpower bent on destroying a secular dictator. I assumed that someone as astute as Goodman would reveal at least part of the answer — that the American media provided free transportation to get the White House from there to here. But nowhere in her nationally syndicated column did she state the obvious — that the success of “Bush’s PR War” (the headline on the piece) was largely dependent on a compliant press that uncritically repeated almost every fraudulent administration claim about the threat posed to America by Saddam Hussein.

Late as she was, Goodman was better than most in even recognizing that there was a disinformation campaign aimed at the people and Congress. Just a few columnists seriously challenged the White House advertising assault. Looking back over the debris of half-truths and lies, I can’t help but ask my own question of Goodman: Where was she — indeed, where was the American press — on September 7, 2002, a day when we were sorely in need of reporters?

It was then that the White House propaganda drive began in earnest, with the appearance before television cameras of George Bush and Tony Blair at Camp David. Between them, the two politicians cited a “new” report from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency that allegedly stated that Iraq was “six months away” from building a nuclear weapon. “I don’t know what more evidence we need,” declared the president.

For public relations purposes, it hardly mattered that no such IAEA report existed, because almost no one in the media bothered to check out the story. (In the twenty-first paragraph of her story on the press conference, The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung did quote an IAEA spokesman saying, in DeYoung’s words, “that the agency has issued no new report,” but she didn’t confront the White House with this terribly interesting fact.) What mattered was the unencumbered rollout of a commercial for war — the one that the White House chief of staff and former General Motors executive Andrew Card had famously withheld earlier in the summer: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Millions of people saw Bush tieless, casually inarticulate, but determined-looking and self-confident, making a completely uncorroborated (and, at that point, uncontradicted) case for preemptive war. While we contemplate the irony of Bush quoting a UN weapons inspection agency that he would later dismiss, we might ask ourselves why no more evidence was needed than the president’s say-so — and why no reporters asked for any.

But the next day, more “evidence” suddenly appeared, on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. In a disgraceful piece of stenography, Michael Gordon and Judith Miller inflated an administration leak into something resembling imminent Armageddon: “More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.”

The key to this A-bomb program was the attempted purchase of “specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.” Mysteriously, none of those tubes had reached Iraq, but “American officials” wouldn’t say why, “citing the sensitivity of the intelligence.”

Gordon and Miller were mostly careful to attribute their information to anonymous “administration officials,” but at one point they couldn’t restrain themselves and crossed the line into commentary. After nodding to administration “critics” who favored containment of Hussein, they wrote this astonishing paragraph:

“Still, Mr. Hussein’s dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq’s push to improve and expand Baghdad’s chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.”

That Sunday, Card’s new-product introduction moved into high gear when Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to brandish Saddam’s supposed nuclear threat. Prompted by a helpful Tim Russert, Cheney cited the aluminum tubes story in that morning’s New York Times — a story leaked by Cheney’s White House colleagues. Russert: “Aluminum tubes.” Cheney: “Specifically aluminum tubes.” This gave the “six months away” canard a certain ring of independent confirmation: “There’s a story in The New York Times this morning,” said Cheney. “And I want to attribute the Times.”

Does it matter that, in the months that followed, aluminum tubes as weapons of mass destruction were discredited time and again? Does it matter that the former U.S. weapons inspector David Albright (not the usual suspect Scott Ritter) told 60 Minutes, in an interview broadcast on December 8 (a program in which I participated) that “people who understood gas centrifuges almost uniformly felt that these tubes were not specific to gas centrifuge” for production of enriched uranium — that the administration was “selectively picking information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent than it is, and in essence, scare people”? Will the Times ever publish a clarification (à la Wen Ho Lee) based on IAEA chief Mohammed el-Baradei’s January 9 and March 7 reports insisting that there was “no evidence” that the 81 mm tubes were intended for anything other than conventional rocket production?

As for the “defectors” with special knowledge of Saddam’s elusive chemical weapons stockpile, did Miller and Gordon — did anyone in the mainstream U.S. press — take proper note of Newsweek’s exclusive on March 3? In it, John Barry reported that Iraq’s most important defector, Hussein Kamel, who had run Saddam’s nuclear and biological weapons program, told the CIA and UN weapons inspectors in the summer of 1995 “that after the gulf war, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.”

And what of Saddam’s overall nuclear procurement program? When el-Baradei told the UN Security Council on March 7 that supporting documents of alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger were forged, no clarification of the Gordon-Miller report appeared in the Grey Lady. Perhaps Times people still believed their own scare story from all those months before: “Hard-liners are alarmed that American intelligence underestimated the pace and scale of Iraq’s nuclear program before Baghdad’s defeat in the gulf war,” the September 8 piece reported. “The first sign of a ‘smoking gun,’ they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.”

The few corrections and refutations of the White House line were too little and too late for American democracy. Enterprising reporting was needed from the moment of the Bush-Blair p.r. gambit to October 10, the day Congress abdicated its war-making power to the president. During that crucial period, I was able to find only one newspaper story that straightforwardly countered the White House nuclear threat propaganda; it appeared, of all places, in the right-wing, Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times. On September 27, a very competent piece by Joseph Curl (unfortunately buried on page 16) pointed out not only that there was no “new report” by the IAEA saying Saddam was six months away from the A-bomb, but also that the agency had never issued a report predicting any time frame. Indeed, when IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998, spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Curl, “We had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.”

The American media failed the country badly these past eight months. As journalists, what can we do about it? Perhaps we need to adopt the rapid-response techniques used in public relations, something akin to James Carville’s and George Stephanopoulos’s famous “War Room” ethos: never leave an accusation unanswered before the end of a news cycle.

Unfortunately, the politicians and their p.r. people know all too well the propaganda dictum related nearly twenty years ago by Peter Teeley, press secretary to then Vice President George H.W. Bush. Teeley was responding to complaints that the elder Bush, during a televised debate, had grossly distorted the words of his and Ronald Reagan’s opponents, the Democratic candidates Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. As Teeley explained it to The New York Times in October 1984, “You can say anything you want during a debate, and 80 million people hear it.” If “anything” turns out to be false and journalists correct it, “So what. Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000 or 20,000.”

Researchers found the infants born to male veterans of the war had higher rates of two types of heart valve defects. They also found a higher rate of a genital urinary defect in boys conceived after the war to Gulf War veteran mothers.

Also, Gulf War veterans’ children born after the war had a certain kidney defect that was not found in Gulf War veterans’ children born before the war.

The researchers said they did not have enough information to link the birth defects to possible exposures to poisonous substances, which many Gulf War veterans suspect are culprits of their mysterious illnesses.

The study by the Department of Defense Naval Health Research Center and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined data from 1989-93.

In all, researchers identified 11,961 children born to Gulf War veterans and 33,052 children of veterans who had not been deployed in the Gulf. Of those, 450 had mothers who served in the Gulf.

In postwar-conceived infants of male Gulf War veterans, researchers found 10 infants with tricuspid valve insufficiency, a 2.7 percent higher rate, and five with aortic valve spinosis, 6 percent higher.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz – who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war – has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is “swimming” in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

Mr Wolfowitz went on to tell journalists at the conference that the US was set on a path of negotiation to help defuse tensions between North Korea and its neighbours – in contrast to the more belligerent attitude the Bush administration displayed in its dealings with Iraq.

His latest comments follow his widely reported statement from an interview in Vanity Fair last month, in which he said that “for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction.”

Prior to that, his boss, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, had already undermined the British government’s position by saying Saddam Hussein may have destroyed his banned weapons before the war.

Mr Wolfowitz’s frank assessment of the importance of oil could not come at a worse time for the US and UK governments, which are both facing fierce criticism at home and abroad over allegations that they exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in order to justify the war.

Amid growing calls from all parties for a public inquiry, the foreign affairs select committee announced last night it would investigate claims that the UK government misled the country over its evidence of Iraq’s WMD.

The move is a major setback for Tony Blair, who had hoped to contain any inquiry within the intelligence and security committee, which meets in secret and reports to the prime minister.

In the US, the failure to find solid proof of chemical, biological and nuclear arms in Iraq has raised similar concerns over Mr Bush’s justification for the war and prompted calls for congressional investigations.

Mr Wolfowitz is viewed as one of the most hawkish members of the Bush administration. The 57-year old expert in international relations was a strong advocate of military action against Afghanistan and Iraq.

Following the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, Mr Wolfowitz pledged that the US would pursue terrorists and “end” states’ harbouring or sponsoring of militants.

Prior to his appointment to the Bush cabinet in February 2001, Mr Wolfowitz was dean and professor of international relations at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), of the Johns Hopkins University.

And anyone who talks about an “intelligence failure” is missing the point. The problem lay not with intelligence professionals, but with the Bush and Blair administrations. They wanted a war, so they demanded reports supporting their case, while dismissing contrary evidence.

In Britain, the news media have not been shy about drawing the obvious implications, and the outrage has not been limited to war opponents. The Times of London was ardently pro-war; nonetheless, it ran an analysis under the headline “Lie Another Day.” The paper drew parallels between the selling of the war and other misleading claims: “The government is seen as having `spun’ the threat from Saddam’s weapons just as it spins everything else.”

Yet few have made the same argument in this country, even though “spin” is far too mild a word for what the Bush administration does, all the time. Suggestions that the public was manipulated into supporting an Iraq war gain credibility from the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts.

Am I exaggerating? Even as George Bush stunned reporters by declaring that we have “found the weapons of mass destruction,” the Republican National Committee declared that the latest tax cut benefits “everyone who pays taxes.”

That is simply a lie. You’ve heard about those eight million children denied any tax break by a last-minute switcheroo. In total, 50 million American households — including a majority of those with members over 65 — get nothing; another 20 million receive less than $100 each. And a great majority of those left behind do pay taxes.

And the bald-faced misrepresentation of an elitist tax cut offering little or nothing to most Americans is only the latest in a long string of blatant misstatements. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team on issues ranging from tax policy and Social Security reform to energy and the environment. So why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy?

It’s long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we’ve become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down.

Meanwhile the “liberal” media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

If this same lack of accountability extends to matters of war and peace, we’re in very deep trouble. The British seem to understand this: Max Hastings, the veteran war correspondent — who supported Britain’s participation in the war — writes that “the prime minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit, and it stinks.”

It’s no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. I could point out that many of the neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980’s. But the important point is that this isn’t about Saddam: it’s about us.

The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history — worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra. Indeed, the idea that we were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility.

But here’s the thought that should make those commentators really uncomfortable. Suppose that this administration did con us into war. And suppose that it is not held accountable for its deceptions, so Mr. Bush can fight what Mr. Hastings calls a “khaki election” next year. In that case, our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted.

Dear Supporters and Friends of Veterans for Common Sense:

Since the founding of Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) in September 2002, our nation has seen a dramatic change in foreign policy. In response, VCS has been a passionate and active voice of reason injecting common sense questions about our country’s new direction. And once again as the hawks beat their drums towards Iran and Syria we are asking for your help.

VCS needs your contribution today to continue our efforts to restore integrity to our foreign policy with sound ideals based on democracy, freedom, and our Constitution. http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/partner.cfm

Just as many of you, we were shocked and awed by the levels of deceit and fear-mongering coming from Washington. The current Administration, in cooperation with some major media corporations, lied to the American public about Iraq. They used forged documents and unsubstantiated politically motivated intelligence to try and “prove” that Iraq posed an immediate threat. They attacked the patriotism of those of us who questioned them. Many people were successfully manipulated with fear and false statements.

Now we see the cycle starting over again. Recent reports regarding the Administration’s deal with an anti-Iranian terrorist group and the call for covert action to effect regime change just proves that their hunger for war has not been satisfied. We anticipate the same kinds of lies and manipulation to be used once again.

But we veterans refuse to deceived and intimidated into inaction. We will not remain silent while our brothers and sisters are sent off to impose the will of an Administration whose policies fly in the face of the values we hold dear.

As our troops transitioned beyond a military victory executed with great skill and bravery on the battlefield to the political quagmire engulfing them as an occupying force, Veterans for Common Sense made the commitment to increase our efforts to present an alternative vision of how America should interact with the world.

The Administration might have its agenda of aggression and domination but Veterans for Common Sense has other ideas. We have laid out a simple framework for our organization to follow based on promoting the American values of cooperation, respect and engagement that has served us well for so many years.

VCS will continue to raise legitimate questions about US domestic and foreign policy in an era of increased militarism, war and development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in order to:

-Make war a policy of last resort and -Ensure that the United States is engaged in a positive manner in the global community

To accomplish these goals we will continue to speak-out and educate on the issues and policies that stand in our way. With your help we will build on our success and reputation as a mainstream Veterans voice for Common Sense and return to the ideas of the America that we served. Please consider a tax-deductible donation today to Veterans for Common Sense as a show of support for our cause. Go to the “Donate” section of our web site at http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/

Thank you for your support.

Members of the Board Veterans for Common Sense

As you consider a donation please reflect on our many accomplishments and plans.

Veterans for Common Sense Key Accomplishments

– Between September 2002 and March 2003 VCS leaders were interviewed nearly one hundred times. Major media interviews included FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, Time Magazine, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the San Francisco Chronicle, and National Public Radio. High-visibility interviews were conducted by Connie Chung, Phil Donahue, Democracy Now, NPR News, On-Point Radio and a large number of other radio stations around the country.

– VCS, working with other organizations, successfully convinced 23 U.S. Representatives to change their mind about another Gulf War. The Representatives originally voted for the war resolution, and they subsequently changed their position in a letter to the President before the invasion of Iraq.

– On May 9, 2003 VCS co-sponsored an Ad in the New York Times showing what “Support the Troops” really means. http://emailimages.ctsg.com/blsp/winwithoutwar/troopsadfinal.pdf

– VCS is a vital member of the national Win Without War coalition and is affiliated with United for Peace and Justice and Move On. http://www.winwithoutwarus.org/html/coalition.html

– Our “Deeds Not Words” campaign was the catalyst for a national outcry against the Bush administration budget cuts to Veterans benefits. As of the date of this letter a bi-partisan agreement was reached to roll back those cuts.

– VCS helped organize and sponsor Operation Dire Distress, a peaceful gathering of hundreds of veterans in Washington DC the weekend of March 22-24. In additional to a tremendously well received symposium on war related issues which was carried live on national television from American University, this event brought together thousands of Veterans to express their opposition with both a march through the streets of our capital and a congressional lobbying day.

– The Veterans for Common Sense web site has become a valuable resource for news and debate and recently re-launched with an updated look and improved features. http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/

– VCS will soon begin work on the creation of a Speaker’s Bureau, which will be a valuable mechanism to get our voice heard around the country.

– VCS placed dozens of editorials in a variety of forums, both on-line and in-print. We’ve also assisted on background with dozens more editorials and news articles.

– The VCS statement and subsequent letter to the President provided an expression of true patriotic voices in opposition to the war in Iraq.

– VCS will soon hire our first paid staff member and create a more permanent presence in Washington, DC.

Please Help Veterans for Common Sense continue this vital work as we seek to inject the element of Common Sense into debates over war and national security. http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/donations.asp