Veterans for Common Sense

“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

Private First Class Lori Piestewa, 23, of Tuba City, Arizona, is listed as missing in action in Iraq. Piestewa, a Hopi woman, is the divorced mother of two young children.

Piestewa and Private Jessica Lynch, 19, who was rescued by U.S. Special Operations troops after being taken prisoner by Iraqi forces, were part of an Army mechanics unit that was ambushed in An Nasariya. Lynch enlisted in the Army because she could not find work near her home in rural West Virginia.

Piestewa and Lynch are examples of the demographics of America’s all-volunteer force. “Military Mirrors Working-Class America,” concludes a fascinating study in Sunday’s New York Times.

“They left small towns and inner cities, looking for a way out and up, or fled the anonymity of the suburbs, hoping to find themselves. They joined the all-volunteer military, gaining a free education or a marketable skill or just the discipline they knew they would need to get through life.”

Is it fair that we ask poor and working class youths to fight our wars? Is the all-volunteer system little more than an economic draft, conscription by poverty rather than lottery?

In July, 1972, I was inducted into the U.S. Army. After processing in downtown St. Louis, a remarkable thing happened: the Army treated us all to a baseball game. We became the willing tools of Army public relations.

Between innings, they marched the lot of us onto the playing field at Busch Stadium. With great fanfare, we were introduced to the spectators and the immense Cardinal radio audience as the “Cardinal Company” — the first all-volunteer company under a new program to upgrade pay and conditions in the transition to a total volunteer force.

The last serviceman was drafted in December, 1972. Since then, the character of the military has been radically transformed. Some in Congress want to restore the draft.

“It’s just not fair that the people that we ask to fight our wars are people who join the military because of economic conditions, because they have fewer options,” says Representative Charles B. Rangel, whose African-American constituents bear a disproportionate burden of military service.

While I oppose bringing back the draft, there is a fundamental issue of fairness involved when so many working-class Americans are putting their lives on the line while a lot of rich white men who have never spent a day in boot camp stand to make fortunes on the profits of war.

Take Dick Cheney. Without any bidding, the U.S. Army gave the Iraqi oil well firefighting contract to a subsidiary of Halliburton, once run by the Vice President. Half a billion dollars is being sought to repair Iraq’s oil fields.

In the five years Cheney headed Halliburton, the firm nearly doubled the amount of its government contracts. When he left, Cheney took his severance package, worth millions, as deferred compensation which he continues to collect. If this is not a conflict of interest, it should be. See “Halliburton’s Axis of Influence” by Frida Berrigan of In These Times (www.inthesetimes.org).

Then there is Richard Perle, who resigned as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board over alleged conflicts of interest. Perle remains as a member of the influential Board, which advises the Pentagon on many matters including weapons procurement.

According to a new report, “Advisers of Influence,” by the Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org), nine members of the Defense Policy Board “have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.”

Even as our soldiers risk injury and death on the battlefields of Iraq, the House Budget Committee voted to reduce the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) budget by $15 billion. Yet the House passed a $726 billion tax cut for the rich. Although halved by the Senate, a $350 billion tax cut during wartime deficit spending is unprecedented.

As for the $75 billion requested by President Bush to fight the war, it’s only a down payment. Colonel David Hackworth, who unequivocally opposes this war, observes that the United States still has a military presence in Japan and Germany 57 years after the end of World War II. He predicts we could stay 60 years in Iraq, costing $2 to $3 trillion. Where will the money come from to fund their health care as we face the prospect of a new generation of veterans needing assistance?

Hackworth told Ellis Henican of Newsday, “there’s a real possibility we take catastrophic casualties,” worse than the first Gulf War which disabled thousands of veterans suffering Gulf War syndrome. “All of us that were there, we look in the mirror and still wonder if something is going to happen to us.”

David L. Winkler (mediamaven@cox.net) is a Valley resident.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner has been ensconced in Kuwait City with scores of aides who are prepared to work with Iraqis who will be selected to run various government ministries. Officials said Garner’s team within days will deploy to points in the north and the south while waiting word that Baghdad has been secured.

Britain, the main partner in the U.S.-led invasion, and many other European countries have advocated a central role for the United Nations in the rebuilding of Iraq. But the rapid demise of Saddam Hussein’s government has accelerated efforts to set up some kind of civil control even before the U.N.’s role is resolved.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking to reporters traveling with President Bush for a meeting yesterday in Belfast with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said Garner and his group of “regional coordinators” will help purge the Baath Party leadership in government ministries. This will evolve into “an interim authority, growing it into a full government, and the U.N. playing a role,” Powell said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said the Iraqi military and intelligence services would be run by Americans for some undefined period. “But there are some activities that it might very well be proper to move over to Iraqis as soon as possible,” he said, without elaborating. Other U.S. officials have said “soft ministries” such as health, agriculture and education are good candidates for relatively quick Iraqi control.

U.S. officials said the dispatch of “free Iraqis” from the north to the south — including Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi — was designed to prevent chaos as looting was reported in southern Iraq. As U.S. forces make progress in eliminating armed resistance, they must find ways to stabilize and administer villages, towns and cities no longer under Hussein’s control. Defense officials believed the moment was ripe to bring in Iraqi assistance.

But Chalabi’s associates believe his arrival could also bolster his position in the scramble for leadership in the post-Hussein period, a goal long sought by his supporters in the Pentagon. “The forces advocating working with him got a huge shot in the arm over the weekend,” said Randy Scheunemann, executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. “It changes the complexion of the exile leader debate pretty dramatically.”

The State Department has strenuously opposed a leading role for Chalabi, a London-based banker who left in Iraq in 1958, believing he lacks credibility and support. But State Department officials said yesterday they were willing to accept this new assignment for Chalabi and his compatriots because it was necessary to stabilize the country and get broader Iraqi involvement in what has been viewed overseas as a largely U.S.-led operation.

“Everywhere, we want to put an Iraqi face on it,” said a senior State Department official, who reported that the Pentagon wanted Iraqi help in pacifying southern Iraq and sorting out local rivalries.

Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of U.S. Central Command, “thought it was important to get these figures into the south, to help the British. I’m in favor of it because Gen. Franks is in favor of it,” the official continued. “The only thing that matters is making sure that Gen. Franks gets what he wants.”

Asked what the decision means for Chalabi, who has been lobbying for a launching pad for a postwar leadership position, the State Department official demurred. “I’m not sure,” he said warily, “but there he is.”

Rumsfeld yesterday dismissed suggestions the move was designed to signify a broader role for Chalabi. “No, I wouldn’t think so,” he said. “The Iraqi people are going to sort out what their Iraqi government ought to look like, and that is very clear.”

Other Pentagon officials also said they were not trying to anoint Chalabi, but that the war had evolved to the point where U.S. commanders could spare the planes to fly the Iraqis in and make the effort to incorporate them into the battle plan. Also, there was a political assessment in Washington that now would be a good time to do something more that would show the Iraqis coming forward and participating in their own liberation.

Meanwhile, administration officials said a dispute between the Pentagon and State Department over the assignment of foreign service officers to Garner’s team of roughly 200 people has been resolved in favor of the State Department.

Six of seven individuals once rejected by Rumsfeld have now been accepted and will go to Garner’s operation, officials said. The seventh decided not to go to the region. The fate of an eighth person, an Interior Department staff member, could not be determined.

The State Department officers are expected to become what the administration calls “senior ministerial advisers.” Their job will be to advise government offices in Baghdad, offering expertise and logistical help to resurrect the Iraqi bureaucracy.

“The fact that Gen. Garner is sort of moving and getting ready to do his work . . . that suggests we’re getting ready for what happens after this campaign, as you have seen it for the last almost three weeks, comes to some culminating point of some end,” Powell said.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Some former intelligence officers and historians say they are seeing a worrisome pattern of Vietnam-style politicization of intelligence, with pressure to play up the threat from Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and to minimize the potential for Iraqi resistance and the threat the war poses to regional stability.

They note complaints from current CIA analysts as well as glimpses of deeply flawed evidence used by the administration to make the case for war, including documents purporting to show Iraq’s attempts to buy uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons. The documents turned out to be forgeries, as CIA analysts had warned before the alleged uranium quest was used by President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to illustrate the looming danger from Iraq.

More recently, as American and British troops were targeted by Iraqi irregulars, some news organizations were tipped to a secret CIA report prepared in February that detailed the threat from Hussein’s fedayeen and paramilitary units. The leak was a sign that intelligence officers do not want to be blamed for underestimating the resistance U.S. troops could face.

Yesterday, a dispute broke out over intelligence analysis of Hussein’s recent television appearances to determine whether they prove he survived the missile strikes that began the war. A Defense Department official told reporters all the video appearances were recorded before the war – but the CIA immediately disputed that, saying it had reached no such conclusion, according to the Associated Press.

The problem of intelligence being distorted or ignored is an old one, but it is particularly acute during crises, says Loch K. Johnson, an intelligence expert at the University of Georgia. “The intelligence people can spin their reports to get along with the White House,” says Johnson, who has served as a congressional intelligence staff member. “Or the White House can ignore the intelligence estimates. Either way, the danger is that the country can delude itself. When you start bending the facts, you can make very bad decisions.”

After Sept. 11, 2001, the intelligence agencies came under fire for failing to put together the clues in time to thwart the terrorist attacks. Now some critics are saying the agencies have gathered relevant information about Iraq, but it has been overwhelmed by the strong convictions of the president and his top advisers.

Patrick G. Eddington, a former CIA analyst, said current agency officers have contacted him and other agency veterans in recent weeks with complaints of political influence.

“We’ve heard from multiple sources inside the agency about the pressure to conform,” says Eddington, who resigned from the agency in 1996 after accusing superiors of covering up evidence of possible causes of gulf war syndrome. “They say they feel pressure to shape estimates to support the administration’s positions – or at least not contradict the administration’s positions.”

Eddington is an organizer of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers formed in January that has posted articles on the Internet charging that the war has corrupted the process of information-gathering and analysis.

While the intelligence veterans group has received little attention from U.S. media, members have been interviewed by Dutch, French, German and Spanish television networks, says 27-year CIA veteran Ray McGovern, another of the group’s leaders. A five-member steering group has signed its articles, but McGovern said about 25 former officers have joined the new group.

McGovern says the tussles over reporting on Iraq recall debates he witnessed in 1964 inside the CIA over the Tonkin Gulf incident, in which two reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. ships were used by President Lyndon Johnson to justify bombing North Vietnam. Historians doubt the second attack cited by Johnson ever occurred; Johnson later said, “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”

“It’s a problem whenever a U.S. administration sets its heart on a policy that cannot be supported by intelligence,” says McGovern, who retired from the CIA in 1990.

Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, said the critics are misinformed and the criticism is misplaced. Of the intelligence veterans’ group, he said, “They left the agency years ago, and they’re hardly in a position to comment knowledgeably on current analysis.”

While it is true that CIA analysts face pressure, Mansfield said, that’s not a sign that anything is amiss. “There’s always going to be pressure when dealing with matters of great import,” he said. “That pressure can come from various agencies, from congressmen, from pundits. The point is not to succumb to such pressure, and we haven’t succumbed.”

On occasion, aware of the dangers of spin, presidents have gone out of their way to be sure intelligence officers are indeed telling it like it is, says J. Ransom Clark, a retired CIA officer. “John Kennedy used to pick up the phone and call the desk officers in the CIA or state department,” Clark says. “It drove the supervisors crazy, but Kennedy was trying to reduce the number of times the information he got went through a strainer.”

But the debate that preceded the war in Iraq created unusual problems for intelligence agencies, because top administration officials strongly stated their belief that Iraq’s weapons were an imminent threat to the United States, partly because of ties between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terrorists.

Rick Francona, a retired Air Force intelligence officer who served as Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s Arabic-language interpreter in the first gulf war, says he thinks the administration stretched the intelligence.

“Why drag out this tenuous connection to al-Qaida? I just don’t buy it,” Francona says.

In addition, key officials predicted that overturning Hussein’s regime would be relatively easy. “It will be quicker and easier than many people think,” Richard Perle, then chairman of the Defense Policy Board, told the PBS television network in July. “He is far weaker than many people realize.”

Francona says he fears such predictions may create undue pressure to enter Baghdad too quickly, before adequate troops are on hand. “The politics ended the gulf war in 1991” without the removal of Hussein, he says. “In this case, I think the politics could push the war too fast.”

When he worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Francona says, the director had a slogan on his wall meant to remind subordinates to resist the temptation to spin their findings: “It said, ‘Tell ‘m what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.'”

Hong Kong – How to tell genuine reporting from an article manufactured to produce the desired propaganda effect? The war in Iraq provides us plenty of interesting samples for a study of disinformation techniques.

Take the article “Basra Shiites Stage Revolt, Attack Government Troops”, published on March 26 in The Wall Street Journal Europe. Using its example, we will try to arm readers with basic principles of disinformation analysis that hopefully will allow them in the future to detect deception.

The title of the article sounds quite definitive. The article starts, however, with the mush less certain “Military officials said the Shiite population of Basra … appeared to be rising”. “Military officials” and “appeared to be” should immediately raise a red flag for a reader, especially given a mismatch with such a definitive title. Why “officials”? Were they speaking in a chorus? Or was each one providing a complementary piece of information? A genuine report certainly would tell us this and also name the officials or at least say why they cannot be identified.

Why “appears to be”? There are always specific reasons why something “appears to be”. For example, information about the uprising may be uncertain because it was supplied by an Iraqi defector who was not considered trustworthy and has not been confirmed from other sources. Again, every professional reporter understands that his job is to provide such details and it is exactly such details that make his reporting valuable, interesting, and memorable. If such all-important details are missing, this is a sure sign to suspect intentional disinformation.

Going further down the article, we see even more astonishing example of the same vagueness. “Reporters on the scene said that Iraqi troops were firing on the protesting citizens …” For an astute reader, this short sentence should raise a whole host of questions. Were the above-mentioned reporters Western media reporters embedded with the troops? What was their location and the distance from which they observed the event?

Obviously, being inside a besieged city with riots going on is an exceedingly dangerous business. Why were the names of the reporters distinguished by such shining bravery concealed from us, instead of being proclaimed with pride? Why do they not want to tell us where they were observing from and how they managed to get there? In any case, under the circumstances, being closer to the scene than the distance of a rifle shot, say one kilometer, merits a special explanation. Now, an interesting question is, what are the visual clues allowing a reporter to distinguish, at such distance, between an uprising and, let’s say, troops firing on looters or many other possible explanations for the same observation?

The only cue I can think of is not visual, but an aural cue from an editor requesting the reporter to report what we cannot explain as anything but an attempt of intentional disinformation. Given a very specific nature of the disinformation produced in this particular case, its obvious potential effect on both resisting Iraqis and anti-war public opinion, we cannot see any other explanation for it, except that The Wall Street Journal directly collaborates with the psychological warfare department in the Pentagon.

Some unexpected light on the story is shed in “UK: Iraq to feel backlash in Basra” posted on CNN.com also on March 26. In this article, the original report on a civilian revolt is attributed to “the British military authorities and journalists”, again unnamed. Here, the chorus of “the officials” singing in unison with “journalists” makes the somewhat more specific and exceedingly bizarre statement: “We have radars, that, by tracing the trajectory of mortar rounds, are able to work out the source, as well as the target location, which in this case were civilians in Basra.” So, now we know that the uprising in Basra was detected by British officials and journalists watching a radar screen! This amazing British radar can even tell an Iraqi official from a simple citizen and a civilian from a soldier! Moreover, it apparently can read minds and determine the reasons people fire on each other!

Truly, there is a big lie in the information attributed to British officials. Or maybe I am wrong and this is an example of the famous British sense of humor deployed to get rid of pestering American correspondents? Chorus of American correspondents: “Is there an uprising going on in Basra? There must be. My editor told me to report it. You say, how would you know? That’s impossible, my editor told me …” British official: “All right, chaps. I see it on the radar.” Sounds of cellphone dialling and keyboards rattling …

To conclude: Remember the following first rule of disinformation analysis: truth is specific, lie is vague. Always look for palpable details in reporting and if the picture is not in focus, there must be reasons for it.

Want to know the names of rising stars of disinformation to watch? The Wall Street Journal article was “compiled” by Matt Murray in New York from reports by Christopher Cooper in Doha, Qatar, Carla Anne Robbins and Greg Jaffe in Washington, and Helene Cooper with the US Army’s Third Infantry Division in Iraq.

I love America.

Italy is a beautiful country, but I’m glad my grandparents came here 100 years ago. I truly believe America is one of the best countries the world has every known. That is why it is so tragic what the policies of this administration have done to the image and reputation of United States of America.

Seventeen months ago, there were demonstrations around the world in support of the United States in the wake of September 11. Thousands of people gathered in hundreds of cities to express their support for the US. There were one million people in the streets of Tehran -– in favor of the US. It is appalling how quickly this administration has squandered this support and sympathy for the United States.

You heard previous speakers quote famous authors, such as Thoreau. I would like to quote The Matrix. One of my favorite scenes in the movie, is when Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne, is trying to teach Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, not just how to fight Kung-fu, but how to understand that the reality that he sees, feels and touches, is a false reality. It is a computer-generated virtual reality. Morpheus gives Neo a kick that sends him flying, and he wins their first match. He goes over to Neo and asks, “How did I beat you?” Neo replies, “You were faster than me,” “Really?” says Morpheus, “Do you think my muscles had anything to with my speed, here, in this world? Do you think that’s air that you’re breathing?” Keanu Reeves starts to get it. He gives that puzzled look -– the only look he really has -– and he starts to understand that the reality he knows is not true.

I am not saying that the people in the White House are evil machines out to take over the world. However, they have constructed a false reality for us, a reality that we have bought into. Maybe not the people in this room, but we as a country. It is a reality where war equals peace. Invasion equals liberation. Military rule equals democracy. And Saddam Hussein equals Osama bin Laden.

Half the people in this country think that Hussein was directly responsible for September 11. There is not a shred of evidence that that is true. But it was a critical part of the campaign to convince us that it was urgent to take action. They had to convince America that Saddam was a terrorist, that Saddam has operational links to al Qaeda. No serious intelligence analyst believes that to be the case, but the President has repeated it over and over. Like “Drink Coca-Cola.” Iraq equals al Qaeda. Until now half of the American public believe it to be true. We’re thirsty -– we reach for a Coke. We want to strike back at al Qaeda, so we strike Iraq. This is a false reality. But only a part of the false reality.

You have heard a great deal of talk of weapons of mass destruction. What you may not realize is that this administration has now overturned fifty years of American policy and strategy on weapons of mass destruction. For fifty years the policy has been to eliminate the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The belief has been that as long has these weapons exist, someone is going to use them. This is why President Kennedy warned in 1960 that if we did not do something, 15, 20 or 25 countries would have nuclear weapons by the end of that decade. But Kennedy did something. He started negotiating a treaty -– the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. He couldn’t finish the job, Lyndon Johnson did and Richard Nixon signed the treaty. Democrats and Republicans working together, side by side, with a bi-partisan consensus to eliminated these weapons.

That treaty has worked. There are still too many weapons; there are still too many countries, but instead of 15 or 25 countries, now we have eight. There are fewer nuclear weapons in the world now than there were ten years ago. There are fewer countries with WMD programs than there were ten years ago. We are making progress. This is also why Richard Nixon in 1969, unilateral destroyed all of our biological weapons. We had the best biological weapons in the world. We had enough toxins to kill every man, woman and child and most food crops in the world. Nixon decided that this was not in our best national security interest. He negotiated the Biological Weapons Convention -– which most countries in the world have now signed -– to ban these evil weapons. So that no one would have them, no way, no time, no how.

George H. W. Bush agreed. In 1991 he adopted the strategy that weapons had to be eliminated. He negotiated the Chemical Weapons Convention. When I was in the House of Representatives and working on the staff of the Armed Services Committee, we had debates on the late 1980s on an Army plan to build a new chemical weapon -– a binary bomb. It would combine two chemicals in flight, forming a poison gas that would kill enemy troops. We had to have it, the Army said. Soldiers would die, if we did not deploy it. It was vital to US national security. But by 1991, George Bush was saying no one should have chemical weapons. We have now begun to destroy our 30,000 tons of chemical weapons. The Russians are destroying their 40,000 tons of chemical weapons. Over 145 countries have signed this treaty, which states that no one should have chemical weapons, nowhere, no how, no time. These are evil weapons and have no place in our world.

That was the strategy: focus on the proliferation of mass destruction weapons. President George Bush has now changed our strategy. In his recent State of the Union Address he amended the formula. Now, the danger is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of outlaw regimes. We have shifted from eliminating weapons to eliminating regimes. It is a strategy of picking and choosing. It’s okay that Israel has 100 nuclear weapons -– it’s not okay that Iraq has nuclear weapons. Its okay that India has nuclear weapons -– it’s not okay that North Korea has nuclear weapons. Its okay that we have nuclear weapons -– it’s not okay that Iran does. It’s a strategy of good guys and bad guys, a double standard.

This is a deeply flawed policy; it cannot be sustained. One reason is that the good guys and bad guys keep changing. Saddam Hussein is a monster. Did you hear anyone here support him? Do we have any appeasers here in this room? Did you hear anyone say that Saddam should stay in power? The world will be far better off when Saddam is gone, when his brutal regime passes into history. We all want to see him go.

He’s been a monster for 30 years. The reason he stayed in power for so long is because he used to be our monster. We put the Baathist Party in power. The CIA supported the coup that overthrew the pro-Soviet ruler of Iraq, General Abdel Karim Kassem, and brought the Baathists to power in 1963. Our CIA operatives liked the cut of Saddam’s jib. We encouraged his rise when he became vice-president. When he took over as president in 1979, we didn’t say a word when he liquidated the core of his own party’s leadership. We sold him the chemicals that he used to build his chemical weapons. We sold him the biological agents that he used to build his biological weapons.

Did he build them? Absolutely. Was it a crime against humanity? Absolutely. Was it a crime that he killed 50,000 Iranians with chemical attacks in the Iran-Iraq War? Yes. Did the Reagan Administration do anything to stop it? No, we did not. We wanted to kill Iranians, and Saddam was doing just that. We sent Donald Rumsfeld to seal the deal in 1983 and again in 1984 during Iraq’s chemical attacks on Iranian troops, to restore relations with Saddam’s regime and make sure that Saddam and the US were in close coordination on policy. Did those good relations help us stop him when he gassed 10,000 Kurds in Halabja in 1988? They did not. We did not even try. We had sold him the helicopters he used to spray the poison gas.

We kept him in power. Now he has changed, now he’s evil and has to go. I believe he has to go. But that is the problem with the good guy/bad guy strategy. Now, we want democracy in Iran. Iran use to have a democracy -– we over threw it in 1954. We put the Shah of Iran in power. We supported that evil dictatorship and kept him in power. We sold the Shah his first nuclear reactor. When the people in Iran did then what some say they should do now, when they rose up and overthrew the dictatorship, we did not like the results and we have been campaigning against the new Iranian government ever since. Is it an undemocratic government? Yes. Would I like to see us invade Iran next? No. Yet some people in this administration are in favor of invading Iran. That is the next country on their “To Do” list.

The reason there is no exit strategy for Iraq is because some of these guys do not want to leave. Remember the Powell Doctrine? One, use overwhelming force -– we may have that. Two, clear political objectives -– sorry, do not see that. Three, support of the American people -– well, today, maybe, but it has been up and down all year. Fourth and finally, there is no exit strategy. You heard Bobby Mueller talk about this. You need to understand that Iraq is a part of a grander strategy. This is not about WMD. It’s not about terrorism. It’s about seeing that the US -– the most powerful nation that the world has every known -– uses its power to transform the world.

Some people are advocating this with noble intentions. They want to do good in the world, but they want to do it through the use of military power. They want to start with Iraq, and then they believe that Iraq will let off a “democratic tsunami” in the region. They believe that with US help we can topple the government of Syria, breaking the Syrian grip on Lebanon, eliminating the operating bases for Hamas and Hezbollah, and thus improving the security situation for Israel. In this process we will transform the Palestinian Authority into a democratic organization, giving the Israelis a reliable negotiation partner for a final peace settlement. The reason this president has not spent more than two hours on Middle East peace is that for him the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad. We will also deal with our problem in Saudi Arabia by moving the bases from Saudi Arabia to Iraq. We will establish a pro-American regime that can host our troops and consolidate a permanent American presence in the Gulf.

You think that I am making this up?

Go read the 2002 National Security Strategy for the United States, which holds that our defense “will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia.” Or come to Carnegie Non Proliferation web site (www.ProliferationNews.org). You can find on our site all the documents arguing for this strategy going back ten years. Read the 2000 report from the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century signed by many current administration officials. The report says, “The U.S. has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in the Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

When did the planning of this war begin? It began the day President Bush stopped the 1991 war. There were some people in that Administration that never wanted to stop. Paul Wolfowitz sat in the corner in a huff, according to reporters. He never wanted to stop the war. Neo-conservatives thought that we had not finished the job; they wanted us to begin the war again. So they planned and organized. They started with the Wolfowitz draft Defense Policy Guidelines in 1992. There, he talked about establishing the permanent supremacy of US power in the world. No one should be allowed to challenge our power, he wrote. Not regionally, not globally. He advocated adopting a policy of pre-emption. He wrote of being prepared for a war with Iraq — in 1992. When that plan was leaked to the New York Times, (thank god for leakers) it was considered so outrageous, so extreme, they were forced to withdraw the draft and rewrite it. “Pre-emption” was replaced with “containment.”

They thought they would get another try with the strategy plans next year, but the American people voted them out of power. Some guy from Arkansas became president, and they were furious. They spent their years in exile well. They learned, studied and organized, and now as a group they have entered the government and have key positions in the State Department and in the Defense Department, and now have a hammerlock on the national security policy apparatus of the US. For them, Iraq is just the beginning. As one of the official said to me “we have a long ‘to do’ list.”

We have failed to stop this war. It is an unnecessary war. Inspections could have worked; they could have done the job. It was not necessary to go to war at this time, in this place with a Potemkin coalition with no international organization behind us. But that does not mean we have failed. This battle is just beginning.

If you’re a student, this is a wonderful time to be a student. Before you the most important political experiment of our time is being conducted. Study it, learn from it, organize around it.

And make sure that this never happens again.

Fretfully, obsessively and suspiciously, they watch this new war unfold and recall what they went through a decade ago: recurrent medical problems, bureaucratic headaches and a tough transition back to their former lives. This time, they say, they are determined to find ways to ease the transition for veterans returning from the war in Iraq.

“The biggest problem I’ve been having is watching history repeat itself,” said Jim Brown, 39, a mechanic in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division in 1991.

Despite flashbacks and anxiety attacks since the start of the new war, Mr. Brown says, he keeps his television tuned to coverage and listens to radio news when he drives.

“I’m interested in watching to make sure no mistakes are made,” said Mr. Brown, who lives in Gastonia, N.C., about 20 miles west of here. “That is the highest calling of any veteran.”

For many 1991 veterans watching from the sidelines, the new war has brought painful memories and conflicting feelings.

The veterans say they fret not only about this country’s mission in Iraq but also about their own responsibilities to a younger generation of soldiers facing battle for the first time.

Some are trying to find ways to help the new generation. Michael Woods, 34, a former Army mechanic from Kissimmee, Fla., who received a medical discharge and is partly paralyzed in one leg, is documenting what is being broadcast on television from Iraq.

“I’m watching because when we came back, one of the main things gulf war vets had wished is that people had archived events, stories and exposures,” said Mr. Woods, president of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a support group for veterans.

http://www.ngwrc.org

“I’m writing everything: what reporters say, when troops are entering into what areas, that type of thing,” he said. “I know when I was there that was the last thing on my mind, trying to remember where I was at and when.”

Mr. Woods said the information would be critical to soldiers who developed symptoms of exposure to chemicals but were unsure where they were exposed.

“They’re still being exposed to a lot of the same environmental hazards,” he said. “The oil well fires — gulf war vets were exposed to that — and then it is a chemically dirty battlefield to start with. When they are exposed to sand storms, it stirs up everything in the soil.”

He added: “We’re trying to save some kind of history for them in case they need it, because it was real difficult getting that information from the Defense Department. With these embedded reporters, that’s making it a whole lot easier at least following some of the troops. I feel like I’m doing something to help.”

Some gulf war veterans said they did not trust the military to protect the soldiers better this time. Others said they were proud of the current troops but found it too hard to watch the war on television.

“My wife turns on the TV and calls me over to watch,” said Mark Zeller, 40, of Dahlonega, Ga., near Atlanta. “She keeps telling me I should come watch because I wasn’t around to watch it on TV last time.”

But for Mr. Zeller, who was a staff sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division in the gulf war, the images are too painful.

“I just try to get out of here,” he said. “I take my shower, get my clothes on and get in the car and leave. I can’t even listen to the radio. They’re talking about it there, too. It’s just better for my mental health to stay away from it.”

Since the start of the war in Iraq, some support groups say calls from gulf war veterans with symptoms of anxiety and depression have increased.

Some veterans report feeling helpless because they are not on the front lines with the current soldiers, the groups say.

“They’ve got double problems because they are reliving all of the anxiety of deploying, and they’re also reliving the fact that they don’t feel these troops are being protected,” said Joyce Riley, spokeswoman for the American Gulf War Veterans Association who has accused the military of disregarding the health of soldiers in the 1991 war.

Ms. Riley says calls from distressed gulf war veterans have doubled since the start of the war in Iraq, to about 20 a day on average.

“The ones that are calling are so upset they don’t know what else to do,” she said.

Experts on post-traumatic stress say it takes little to cause flashbacks, sleeplessness and anxiety in veterans.

“Combat veterans could have experiences retriggered just from, for example, being in heavy rain, which could remind them of when they were in a monsoon,” said Dr. Gary Kohls, a family doctor and psychology professor at the University of Minnesota in Duluth who has treated gulf war veterans. “Certain smells or sounds might also retrigger the experience. Watching it on TV is definitely a big one. Visual images are probably the strongest ones.”

Doug Rokke, 53, of Rantoul, Ill., about 160 miles south of Chicago, was a physicist on a team that helped clean up contamination in the gulf war. Mr. Rokke, a Vietnam veteran and an Army Reserve major, said he feared televising the conflict had left many people oblivious to war’s harshness and effects on soldiers.

“Everybody forgets war is about killing and destroying,” Mr. Rokke said. “You’re physically changed forever, and you’re psychologically changed forever. People think this is a computer game where you come back famous and wealthy. It’s not about that. War is death. When the war is over and the troops return, they will need psychological and medical care, just like the rest of us who have gone to wars.”

A nation decides to go to war for many reasons. Whatever one may think of the wisdom of President George W. Bush’s decision to embark on war with Iraq, hopefully we can agree that the debate over going to war should not be skewed by powerful special interests and their ability to purchase access and influence in Washington.

Unfortunately, the facts about the defense industry’s history of campaign contributions raises troubling questions about the decision-making not just for this war, but for national security beyond this war.

There is no doubt that the defense sector has been, since World War II, an evermore powerful lobby in Washington. Just recall President Eisenhower’s warning in his farewell address to the nation on Jan. 17, 1961:

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the Federal government…. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

That was 40 years ago. What would Ike think today?

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics conservatively estimates that defense contractors have been the source of $72.5 million in contributions to federal candidates and parties from 1989 to present. The total number is somewhat higher, because some major arms makers, like Boeing and General Electric, are giant diversified companies. Unless they give directly to a member of a defense-related committee in Congress, CRP classifies their giving along their main line of business — aircraft manufacturing for Boeing, miscellaneous manufacturing for GE. (President Bush himself received nearly $200,000 from the defense industry for his 2000 campaign.) By comparison, peace and arms-control groups have given a total of $1.4 million over the same thirteen-year period, the Center reports.

The defense sector also gives to government in another influential way: with its top employees, through the revolving door.

According to the World Policy Institute’s Arms Trade Resource Center, 32 major appointees of the Bush Administration — including the deputy secretaries of defense and state, and the secretaries of the Navy and Air Force — are former executives, consultants or major shareholders of top military contractors. This is one-and-a-half times as high as the number drawn from the energy sector. In addition, Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, served on Lockheed’s board of directors from 1994 to January 2001, accumulating over $500,000 in deferred director’s fees in the process.

Three key policy decisions by the Bush Administration, above and beyond the war with Iraq, are boons to the defense industry: deploying a missile defense system by 2004, developing a new generation of more “usable” nuclear weapons system, and adopting a national security strategy of aggressive pre-emption of potential threats. Missile defense (which has yet to pass objective testing measures of effectiveness) could alone cost as much as $238 billion to deploy and maintain over the next 20 years, a windfall to prime contractors Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and TRW.

Overall spending on national defense is approaching $400 billion for the current fiscal year, up from $329 billion when Bush took office. Most troubling, this rush to throw money at the defense industry has resulted in huge continued spending on Cold War-oriented weapons systems that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said he wanted to abandon. The World Policy Institute notes that the 2003 budget includes $17 billion in such spending, for such outdated products as the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor (prime contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing and United Technologies) and the Navy’s F-18E/F fighter (Boeing, GE and Northrop Grumman). According to a new General Accounting Office report, the F-22 fighter program is dragging behind schedule and attempts by the Air Force to control costs are failing miserably. The new report, released last week by Representative John Tierney (D-MA), says that the Air Force has been unable to implement cost-saving measures it promised and has essentially kept Congress in the dark about excessive cost overruns.

It’s not individual corruption, but systemic corruption that’s the problem.

And then, there is this war. When Members of Congress voted last October to give President Bush blanket authority to use force in Iraq, they were influenced by many factors. They heard from constituents, they heard from experts, they heard from administration officials and they listened to their own consciences. To say that campaign contributions from defense contractors were the defining consideration when they cast their vote would be a stretch. Nevertheless, it is important to examine the strong correlation between defense industry campaign contributions and members’ votes.

Members of the House who voted to authorize the use of force got slightly more than twice the contributions from the defense sector than members who voted “no.” The 296 members who voted “yes” received an average of almost $19,000 from defense contractors for the 2002 election cycle, and those who voted “no” received an average of $9,000. Of the 150 members of the House who had received at least $10,000 from the defense sector, 123 voted “yes” and 25 voted “no.”

On the Senate side, where the vote was more lopsided (77-23), the correlation is almost as strong. “Yes” voters got an average of almost $60,000 over the past six years, a full Senate cycle, while those who voted “no” received an average of $38,000.

Overall, there was a total of $6.9 million in defense-sector contributions to House members in the 2001-2002 cycle, and another $2.6 million to the Senate. Peace and arms control oriented PACs gave a total of $396,000, meaning they were outspent by about 23 to one.

Why is it important to look at these numbers? Again, we are not suggesting that Members of Congress cast a vote last October giving the president the kind of war powers he wanted because of campaign contributions. No one’s vote on the war was bought for $10,000, or even $60,000.

It’s not individual corruption, but systemic corruption that’s the problem. The financial heft of the defense lobby, like that of other special interest lobbies that are generous contributors, influences the larger pool of people who become our representatives in Congress, skewing it toward people who are predisposed to their positions. Candidates with different convictions about America’s role in the world have a much smaller universe of deep-pocketed donors in which to hunt for sufficient funds to run a viable campaign.

Boeing and Lockheed would not, after all, fund someone who thinks the defense budget is too large. Then consider that, of the 435 members of the House, all but 73 received contributions from the defense sector. In the Senate, 95 out of 100 were so favored. The very lack of money from the millions of Americans — up to half in surveys — who during the war debate have been skeptical of the Administration’s call to confront Iraq means that they were underrepresented in Washington, and that their concerns did not get as much attention from Congress as they might have.

Alas, when we have a dollar-driven democracy, those with cash are more equal than others.

Brize Norton Royal Air Force Base, United Kingdom – They heard the noise first. Then a dark shape broke through the clouds that hung over RAF Brize Norton.

The C-17 cargo aircraft slowly came into view over the Oxfordshire airbase. After landing and taxiing past flags flying at half-mast, Flight 22073 came to a halt at 12.10 yesterday afternoon.

Three chaplains from the navy, air force and army walked towards the plane – a small poignant welcome party, dwarfed by the shadow of the hulking black craft. A hundred yards away, relatives waited.

The tailgate of the plane inched down. As the giant engines slowed and the noise of cars on the nearby M40 drifted over the Oxfordshire base, fellow servicemen entered the cavernous hold. A military band played Handel’s death march.

The coffins, each draped in the Union Flag, appeared tiny next to the C-17, normally used to carry tanks and armoured personnel carriers to theatres of war. The bodies wouldn’t have taken up much space in the hold, a place where young men being ferried home might share a joke, be boisterous and talk about the good times ahead.

But this was a different type of homecoming. The bodies of the first 10 British servicemen to die in the Iraq war were coming home.

Groups of six servicemen from HMS Collingwood in Portsmouth emerged from the gloom of the aircraft hold with a coffin on their shoulders and began a slow march to a waiting hearse. As each coffin was brought out, the three chaplains said quiet prayers. A band from the Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade, based at Stonehouse Plymouth, began to play Handel as the first body – that of Royal Navy mechanic Ian Seymour – was brought out. All of the British dead brought home yesterday had died as a result of accidents.

The first eight coffins to be carried from the aircraft were those containing the bodies of the British servicemen who died when a US helicopter they were aboard crashed south of the Kuwait border.

The final two contained the bodies of Flight Lieutenant Dave Williams and Flight Lieutenant Kevin Main of the Royal Air Force. They died when their GR4 Tornado aircraft was engaged near the Kuwaiti border by an American Patriot missile battery.

The families of the dead, each of whom was allowed to bring five members to see their sons come home, rose slowly to their feet, leaning on each other for support, as the coffins were placed in black hearses. The aircraft taxied along the two-mile long runway and disappeared over the horizon before reappearing behind a nearby hanger and gliding to a halt just 50 yards in front of the mourners.

There was a moment of stillness broken only by bird song, then the rear door of the terminal building opened and the Royal Marine band marched out in silence. It was followed by 70 coffin bearers, the three chaplains and, finally, 10 hearses.

Inside the coffins were: Captain Philip Guy; Warrant Officer Mark Stratford; Major Jason Ward; Marine Sholto Hedenskog; Sergeant John Cecil; Lance Bombardier Llywelyn Evans; Sergeant Les Hehir; Operator Mechanic Ian Seymour; Flt-Lt Kevin Main; and Flt-Lt Dave William.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, and Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, also attended the ceremony along with several senior military and defence officials.

Among the senior military officials attending were the Commandant General of the Royal Marines, Major General Tony Milton; the Commander-in-Chief, Land Command General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman; the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet Admiral Jonathon Band; and Air Marshal Sir John Day. They stood among the families of the servicemen in full dress uniform as each coffin was slowly brought from the rear of the aircraft to a waiting hearse before being driven to a temporary mortuary at the airbase.

After the final coffin was brought from the aircraft and placed in a hearse, the Royal Marines band stopped playing and marched slowly and solemnly away.

The military and defence officials and families of the dead servicemen then began to file back into the main passenger terminal as the three chaplains who had led the prayers walked back to join them. The RAF flag above the passenger terminal had been flying at half-mast for the duration of the ceremony, which was bathed in hazy sunshine.

After the bodies of their sons had gone, the families filed back inside the terminal building and the C-17 sat on the deserted runway. No one knows where it will be sent next, but the likelihood is that it will return to the Gulf.

Soon, the plane will take off again and disappear into the sky. Outside RAF Brize Norton, the traffic will roar by.

Washington, DC — Though the scion of a family steeped in politics and public service, George W. Bush remains a young president who came to the White House with relatively limited knowledge of the world and its ills. Yet for two years he has ridden high in public esteem, thanks to confident leadership after Sept. 11 and a surer political touch than his detractors give him credit for.

Is his luck about to turn in the winds and sands of Iraq?

It is quite true, as administration officials say with metronomic regularity, that coalition forces have scored singular successes in the early days of the war, and it is too early to rule out a speedy conclusion. But there have been military surprises and diplomatic shortfalls.

With every passing day, it is more evident that the failure to obtain permission from Turkey for American troops to cross its territory and open a northern front constituted a diplomatic debacle. With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein.

Already, the commander of American ground forces in the war zone has conceded that the war that they are fighting is not the one they and their officers had foreseen. “Shock and awe” neither shocked nor awed.

Other potential perils lie ahead. Among senior Washington political figures of both parties, four are mentioned most, as follows:

The war could last so long that the American public loses patience, having been conditioned by predictions from American officials (to quote one of them, Vice President Dick Cheney) that Mr. Hussein’s government would prove to be “a house of cards.” This has not happened yet; the polls indicate that nearly three of four Americans remain unshaken in their support of Mr. Bush’s war policies, despite surprises on the battlefield. The White House believes that public patience, often fickle in recent years, was fortified by 9/11.

Street-by-street fighting in the rubble of Baghdad and other cities — an eventuality that American strategists have long sought to avoid — now looks more likely. Mr. Hussein’s aides have promised savage resistance. If it materializes, it could produce large coalition casualties, challenging American resolve, and equally large Iraqi civilian casualties, with dire consequences for the coalition’s attempt to picture itself as the liberator of Iraq. A heart-rending picture of a wounded 2-year-old was widely published today after a Baghdad market was ripped apart by an explosion Iraqi officials attributed to a coalition bomb.

Saddam Hussein could escape, denying the war effort a definitive totem of victory. It sounds improbable, given the terrifying array of force available to the coalition, but other notorious figures remain at large despite intensive manhunts, including the wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and the Qaeda mastermind, Osama bin Laden.

The hunt for weapons of mass destruction could prove futile — a development that would make the war look like a wild-goose chase.

Of course, all that is a worst case prognosis. As the war in Afghanistan showed, hard military slogging can give way suddenly to victory. But will victory in Iraq take the shape the United States so badly needs?

Mr. Hussein seems to have decided that he can turn this war into Vietnam Redux. He appears willing to take casualties and to give away territory to gain time. Over time, his strategy implies, he thinks he can isolate the United States and build a coalition of third world nations. Already he is seen as less of an ogre and more of a defender of Islamic honor across the Arab world.

Most Republicans radiate confidence in not only military but also political and diplomatic success.

The longtime Republican pollster Robert Teeter said recently, “If we’ve gotten rid of Saddam and stabilized Iraq, then things will look pretty good.” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, steadfast in his argument that that is precisely what will happen, told the naysayers on Friday that “it’s a bit early for history to be written.”

Democrats are more dubious.

“Saddam won’t win,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States representative at the United Nations. “Unlike L.B.J. in Vietnam, Bush won’t quit. He’s a different kind of Texan. He’ll escalate and keep escalating. In the end his military strategy will probably succeed in destroying Saddam.

“But it may result in a Muslim jihad against us and our friends. Achieving our narrow objective of regime change may take so long and trigger so many consequences that it’s no victory at all. Our ultimate goal, which is promoting stability in the Middle East, may well prove elusive.”

Mr. Bush came to office determined, by his own account, not to swagger and not to overreach. “If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us,” he said in the second presidential debate against Al Gore in 2000. “If we’re a humble nation but strong, they’ll welcome us.” That was a promise to check hubris at the door, an effort to guard against the temptation to believe that because he had such awesome power at his fingertips, he could and should use it to achieve grandiose objectives.

Like remaking a chaotic region in our own democratic image.

The very term “shock and awe” has a swagger to it, no doubt because it was intended to discourage Mr. Hussein and his circle. But it rings hollow now, and there are other signs of overconfidence. A reserve officer was told some time ago, for example, that he would be needed as part of a provisional government in Baghdad, on March 28.

For the moment, Mr. Bush seems secure. People like him. None of his possible Democratic opponents loom as a major threat, not so far.

Still, for presidents, especially for wartime leaders, political capital can drain quickly from the White House account. After the guns fall silent, voters’ eyes turn elsewhere, often to social and economic needs. It happened to Winston Churchill late in World War II, and as this president remembers better than most, it happened to his father, too.