Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: International Issues

  • Support for Wall Mocks International Law

    What is most remarkable about the International Court of Justice decision on Israel’s ”security barrier” in the West Bank is the strength of the consensus behind it. By a vote of 14-1, the 15 distinguished jurists who make up the highest judicial body on the planet found that the barrier is illegal under international law and that Israel must dismantle it, as well as compensate Palestinians for damage to their property resulting from the barrier’s construction.

    The International Court of Justice has very rarely reached this degree of unanimity in big cases. The July 9 decision was even supported by the generally conservative British judge Rosalyn Higgins, whose intellectual force is widely admired in the United States.

    One might expect the government of Ariel Sharon to wave off this notable consensus as an ”immoral and dangerous opinion.” But one might expect the United States — even as it backed its ally Israel — at least to take account of the court’s reasoning in its criticisms. Instead, both the Bush administration and leading Democrats, including Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, mindlessly rejected the decision.

    Even the American justice in The Hague, Thomas Buergenthal, was careful in his lone dissent. He argued that the court did not fully explore Israel’s contention that the wall-and-fence complex is necessary for its security before arriving at its sweeping legal conclusions. But Judge Buergenthal also indicated that Israel was bound to adhere to international humanitarian law, that the Palestinians were entitled to exercise their right of self-determination and, insofar as the wall was built to protect Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that he had “serious doubt that the wall would. . .satisfy the proportionality requirement to qualify as legitimate self-defense.”

    The nuance in Buergenthal’s narrow dissent contrasts sharply with, for instance, Kerry’s categorical statement that Israel’s barrier “is not a matter for the ICJ.”

    To the contrary, Israel’s construction of the wall in the West Bank has flagrantly violated clear standards in international law. The clarity of the violations accounts for the willingness of the U.N. General Assembly to request an advisory opinion on the wall from the court, a right it has never previously exercised in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The clarity also helps to explain Israel’s refusal to participate in the ICJ proceedings — not even to present its claim that the barrier under construction has already reduced the incidence of suicide bombing by as much as 90 percent.

    Significantly, the court confirms that Israel is entitled to build a wall to defend itself from threats emanating from the Palestinian territories if it builds the barrier on its own territory. The justices based their objection to the wall on its location within occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the consequent suffering visited upon affected Palestinians.

    If Israel had erected the wall on its side of the boundary of Israel prior to the 1967 war, then it would not have encroached on Palestinian legal rights. The court’s logic assumes the unconditional applicability of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, to Israel’s administration of the West Bank and Gaza (a principle affirmed by Judge Buergenthal). That body of law obliges Israel to respect the property rights of Palestinians without qualification, and to avoid altering the character of the territory, including by population transfer.

    The decision creates a clear mandate. The ICJ decision, by a vote of 13-2, imposes upon all states an obligation not to recognize ”the illegal situation” created by the construction of the wall. This is supplemented by a 14-1 vote urging the General Assembly and Security Council to “consider what further action is required to bring an end to the illegal situation.”

    Such a plain-spoken ruling from the characteristically cautious International Court of Justice will test the respect accorded international law, including U.S. willingness to support international law despite a ruling against its ally. The invasion of Iraq and the continuing scandals have already tarnished the reputation of the United States as a law-abiding member of the international community. When U.S. officials dismiss the nearly unanimous ICJ decision without even bothering to engage its arguments, America’s reputation suffers further. In fact, elsewhere in the world, U.S. repudiation of this decision can only entrench existing views of America as an international outlaw.

    Richard Falk is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University, and is chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • A Cloud over Civilization

    At the end of the second world war, I was the director for overall effects of the United States strategic bombing survey – Usbus, as it was known. I led a large professional economic staff in assessment of the industrial and military effects of the bombing of Germany. The strategic bombing of German industry, transportation and cities, was gravely disappointing. Attacks on factories that made such seemingly crucial components as ball bearings, and even attacks on aircraft plants, were sadly useless. With plant and machinery relocation and more determined management, fighter aircraft production actually increased in early 1944 after major bombing. In the cities, the random cruelty and death inflicted from the sky had no appreciable effect on war production or the war.

    These findings were vigorously resisted by the Allied armed services – especially, needless to say, the air command, even though they were the work of the most capable scholars and were supported by German industry officials and impeccable German statistics, as well as by the director of German arms production, Albert Speer. All our conclusions were cast aside. The air command’s public and academic allies united to arrest my appointment to a Harvard professorship and succeeded in doing so for a year.

    Nor is this all. The greatest military misadventure in American history until Iraq was the war in Vietnam. When I was sent there on a fact-finding mission in the early 60s, I had a full view of the military dominance of foreign policy, a dominance that has now extended to the replacement of the presumed civilian authority. In India, where I was ambassador, in Washington, where I had access to President Kennedy, and in Saigon, I developed a strongly negative view of the conflict. Later, I encouraged the anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. His candidacy was first announced in our house in Cambridge.

    At this time the military establishment in Washington was in support of the war. Indeed, it was taken for granted that both the armed services and the weapons industries should accept and endorse hostilities – Dwight Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex”.

    In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens of millions each.

    Such expenditure is not the result of detached analysis. From the relevant industrial firms come proposed designs for new weapons, and to them are awarded production and profit. In an impressive flow of influence and command, the weapons industry accords valued employment, management pay and profit in its political constituency, and indirectly it is a treasured source of political funds. The gratitude and the promise of political help go to Washington and to the defence budget. And to foreign policy or, as in Vietnam and Iraq, to war. That the private sector moves to a dominant public-sector role is apparent.

    None will doubt that the modern corporation is a dominant force in the present-day economy. Once in the US there were capitalists. Steel by Carnegie, oil by Rockefeller, tobacco by Duke, railroads variously and often incompetently controlled by the moneyed few. In its market position and political influence, modern corporate management, unlike the capitalist, has public acceptance. A dominant role in the military establishment, in public finance and the environment is assumed. Other public authority is also taken for granted. Adverse social flaws and their effect do, however, require attention.

    One, as just observed, is the way the corporate power has shaped the public purpose to its own needs. It ordains that social success is more automobiles, more television sets, a greater volume of all other consumer goods – and more lethal weaponry. Negative social effects – pollution, destruction of the landscape, the unprotected health of the citizenry, the threat of military action and death – do not count as such.

    The corporate appropriation of public initiative and authority is unpleasantly visible in its effect on the environment, and dangerous as regards military and foreign policy. Wars are a major threat to civilised existence, and a corporate commitment to weapons procurement and use nurtures this threat. It accords legitimacy, and even heroic virtue, to devastation and death.

    Power in the modern great corporation belongs to the management. The board of directors is an amiable entity, meeting with self-approval but fully subordinate to the real power of the managers. The relationship resembles that of an honorary degree recipient to a member of a university faculty.

    The myths of investor authority, the ritual meetings of directors and the annual stockholder meeting persist, but no mentally viable observer of the modern corporation can escape the reality. Corporate power lies with management – a bureaucracy in control of its task and its compensation. Rewards can verge on larceny. On frequent recent occasions, it has been referred to as the corporate scandal.

    As the corporate interest moves to power in what was the public sector, it serves the corporate interest. It is most clearly evident in the largest such movement, that of nominally private firms into the defence establishment. From this comes a primary influence on the military budget, on foreign policy, military commitment and, ultimately, military action. War. Although this is a normal and expected use of money and its power, the full effect is disguised by almost all conventional expression.

    Given its authority in the modern corporation it was natural that management would extend its role to politics and to government. Once there was the public reach of capitalism; now it is that of corporate management. In the US, corporate managers are in close alliance with the president, the vice-president and the secretary of defence. Major corporate figures are also in senior positions elsewhere in the federal government; one came from the bankrupt and thieving Enron to preside over the army.

    Defence and weapons development are motivating forces in foreign policy. For some years, there has also been recognised corporate control of the Treasury. And of environmental policy.

    We cherish the progress in civilisation since biblical times and long before. But there is a needed and, indeed, accepted qualification. The US and Britain are in the bitter aftermath of a war in Iraq. We are accepting programmed death for the young and random slaughter for men and women of all ages. So it was in the first and second world wars, and is still so in Iraq. Civilised life, as it is called, is a great white tower celebrating human achievements, but at the top there is permanently a large black cloud. Human progress dominated by unimaginable cruelty and death.

    Civilisation has made great strides over the centuries in science, healthcare, the arts and most, if not all, economic well-being. But it has also given a privileged position to the development of weapons and the threat and reality of war. Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilised achievement.

    The facts of war are inescapable – death and random cruelty, suspension of civilised values, a disordered aftermath. Thus the human condition and prospect as now supremely evident. The economic and social problems here described can, with thought and action, be addressed. So they have already been. War remains the decisive human failure.

    Originally published in The Guardian on July 15, 2004

    This is an edited extract from The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time, by JK Galbraith, published by Allen Lane. To order a copy for £8 (RRP £10) plus p&p, call the Guardian Book Service on 0870 836 0875

  • US Can Help End Darfur Genocide

    The time is long overdue, but not too late, to stop the active genocide in Sudan. What can we do as Americans?

    The Darfur region of Sudan is in flames. For nearly two years cynical leaders in Khartoum have been seeking to enhance their power by using the country’s armed forces and local militia to suppress the local non-Arab population. They have driven a million and a half people from their homes, holding them in concentration camps and denying them access to adequate food, water, and shelter. More than 30,000 have been killed, and a range of crimes against humanity have been committed, including the mass rape of women and the systematic destruction of villages, livestock, and crops.

    If nothing is done, US officials predict that 350,000 people could be dead of starvation, disease, or murder by the end of this year.

    Does all this sound familiar? Yes – it also happened in Rwanda , Bosnia , and Kosovo. An international convention drafted in 1948 after the Holocaust and ratified by the United States and other countries commits the world “to undertake to prevent” the crime of genocide. Shamefully, in Rwanda that commitment rang hollow in 1994 when 800,000 people were slaughtered in less than three months. In Bosnia and Kosovo the lesson of Rwanda was remembered, although too late for many victims. Intensive diplomatic and military efforts were organized within a UN framework by the United States and other countries in 1995 and 1999. These efforts saved hundreds of thousands of lives and established under international law a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention to stop a genocide in progress.

    What can Americans do to save lives in Sudan?

    First, we must put aside domestic politics. The growing genocide in Darfur is not a partisan issue but one that reaches across a broad range of constituencies, including religious, human rights, humanitarian, medical, and legal communities, among others, all of which are advocating an aggressive international response to the crisis. Many organizations with a conservative bent, particularly within the religious community, have been at the forefront of advocacy for the people of Sudan ; others have been hesitant to link up with them.

    These groups must put aside their differences and join forces to increase pressure to move Sudan to the top of the international agenda. They can do this by stimulating more media coverage, organizing grassroots contacts with members of Congress, seeking support for urgent action from both presidential candidates, and connecting with counterparts in other countries.

    Second, a new push for international action can be mounted on the recent visits to Sudan by Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Powell now “owns” the issue in the Bush administration, and he should be urged to exercise strong leadership on Darfur both in the administration and in the UN Security Council.

    The council must immediately adopt a resolution authorizing much stronger sanctions against the Sudanese leaders if they fail to carry out their commitment to Powell to disarm the militias.

    The resolution should also create the authority for a multinational military force to secure access by the people of Darfur to the humanitarian relief that the government has blocked. Third, the intervention in Darfur should be built on African support, with logistical, financial, and personnel assistance from the United States and European countries. The African Union , a coalition of African countries, recently sent a small group of observers to monitor the tenuous cease-fire in the civil war in southern Sudan . This initial commitment gives the African Union a stake in resolving the crisis and provides legitimacy to an international presence in Sudan . To be effective, however, the intervention will require a large military force to provide security both to the monitors and, more important, to the massive humanitarian relief operation needed to prevent starvation, disease, and ethnic cleansing from claiming hundreds of thousands of lives in the coming months. That force should be assembled from African countries with US and other backing.

    Finally, we should recognize this as an opportunity for the United States to begin to reestablish its role in the world as a defender of human rights. As a result of the disastrous intervention in Iraq , the scandal over prisoner abuses, and unconstrained US unilateralism, American credibility on the world stage has sunk to its lowest point in a generation. In addition, a decade ago we looked the other way and did nothing as genocide swept through Rwanda . Actions, not words, are now needed to restore our human rights credentials. That’s why the United States should act now within an international framework to help rescue the people of Darfur before it’s too late for them, and for us.

    John Shattuck, author of “Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars and America ‘s Response”, is CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

    Originally published in the Boston Globe

  • Doctors and Torture

    There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal.

    We know that medical personnel have failed to report to higher authorities wounds that were clearly caused by torture and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture. In addition, they have turned over prisoners’ medical records to interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners’ weaknesses or vulnerabilities. We have not yet learned the extent of medical involvement in delaying and possibly falsifying the death certificates of prisoners who have been killed by torturers.

    A May 22 article on Abu Ghraib in the New York Times states that “much of the evidence of abuse at the prison came from medical documents” and that records and statements “showed doctors and medics reporting to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals.”1 According to the article, two doctors who gave a painkiller to a prisoner for a dislocated shoulder and sent him to an outside hospital recognized that the injury was caused by his arms being handcuffed and held over his head for “a long period,” but they did not report any suspicions of abuse. A staff sergeant–medic who had seen the prisoner in that position later told investigators that he had instructed a military policeman to free the man but that he did not do so. A nurse, when called to attend to a prisoner who was having a panic attack, saw naked Iraqis in a human pyramid with sandbags over their heads but did not report it until an investigation was held several months later.

    A June 10 article in the Washington Post tells of a long-standing policy at the Guantanamo Bay facility whereby military interrogators were given access to the medical records of individual prisoners.2 The policy was maintained despite complaints by the Red Cross that such records “are being used by interrogators to gain information in developing an interrogation plan.” A civilian psychiatrist who was part of a medical review team was “disturbed” about not having been told about the practice and said that it would give interrogators “tremendous power” over prisoners.

    Other reports, though sketchier, suggest that the death certificates of prisoners who might have been killed by various forms of mistreatment have not only been delayed but may have camouflaged the fatal abuse by attributing deaths to conditions such as cardiovascular disease.3

    Various medical protocols — notably, the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo in 1975 — prohibit all three of these forms of medical complicity in torture. Moreover, the Hippocratic Oath declares, “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing.”

    To be a military physician is to be subject to potential moral conflict between commitment to the healing of individual people, on the one hand, and responsibility to the military hierarchy and the command structure, on the other. I experienced that conflict myself as an Air Force psychiatrist assigned to Japan and Korea some decades ago: I was required to decide whether to send psychologically disturbed men back to the United States, where they could best receive treatment, or to return them to their units, where they could best serve combat needs. There were, of course, other factors, such as a soldier’s pride in not letting his buddies down, but for physicians this basic conflict remained.

    American doctors at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere have undoubtedly been aware of their medical responsibility to document injuries and raise questions about their possible source in abuse. But those doctors and other medical personnel were part of a command structure that permitted, encouraged, and sometimes orchestrated torture to a degree that it became the norm — with which they were expected to comply — in the immediate prison environment.

    The doctors thus brought a medical component to what I call an “atrocity-producing situation” — one so structured, psychologically and militarily, that ordinary people can readily engage in atrocities. Even without directly participating in the abuse, doctors may have become socialized to an environment of torture and by virtue of their medical authority helped sustain it. In studying various forms of medical abuse, I have found that the participation of doctors can confer an aura of legitimacy and can even create an illusion of therapy and healing.

    The Nazis provided the most extreme example of doctors’ becoming socialized to atrocity.4 In addition to cruel medical experiments, many Nazi doctors, as part of military units, were directly involved in killing. To reach that point, they underwent a sequence of socialization: first to the medical profession, always a self-protective guild; then to the military, where they adapted to the requirements of command; and finally to camps such as Auschwitz, where adaptation included assuming leadership roles in the existing death factory. The great majority of these doctors were ordinary people who had killed no one before joining murderous Nazi institutions. They were corruptible and certainly responsible for what they did, but they became murderers mainly in atrocity-producing settings.

    When I presented my work on Nazi doctors to U.S. medical groups, I received many thoughtful responses, including expressions of concern about much less extreme situations in which American doctors might be exposed to institutional pressures to violate their medical conscience. Frequently mentioned examples were prison doctors who administered or guided others in giving lethal injections to carry out the death penalty and military doctors in Vietnam who helped soldiers to become strong enough to resume their assignments in atrocity-producing situations.

    Physicians are no more or less moral than other people. But as heirs to shamans and witch doctors, we may be seen by others — and sometimes by ourselves — as possessing special magic in connection with life and death. Various regimes have sought to harness that magic to their own despotic ends. Physicians have served as actual torturers in Chile and elsewhere; have surgically removed ears as punishment for desertion in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; have incarcerated political dissenters in mental hospitals, notably in the Soviet Union; have, as whites in South Africa, falsified medical reports on blacks who were tortured or killed; and have, as Americans associated with the Central Intelligence Agency, conducted harmful, sometimes fatal, experiments involving drugs and mind control.

    With the possible exception of the altering of death certificates, the recent transgressions of U.S. military doctors have apparently not been of this order. But these examples help us to recognize what doctors are capable of when placed in atrocity-producing situations. A recent statement by the Physicians for Human Rights addresses this vulnerability in declaring that “torture can also compromise the integrity of health professionals.”5

    To understand the full scope of American torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, we need to look more closely at the behavior of doctors and other medical personnel, as well as at the pressures created by the war in Iraq that produced this behavior. It is possible that some doctors, nurses, or medics took steps, of which we are not yet aware, to oppose the torture. It is certain that many more did not. But all those involved could nonetheless reveal, in valuable medical detail, much of what actually took place. By speaking out, they would take an important step toward reclaiming their role as healers.

    From the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

    References

    1. Zernike K. Only a few spoke up on abuse as many soldiers stayed silent. New York Times. May 22, 2004:A1.
    2. Slevin P, Stephens J. Detainees’ medical files shared: Guantanamo interrogators’ access criticized. Washington Post. June 10, 2004:A1.
    3. Squitieri T, Moniz D. U.S. Army re-examines deaths of Iraqi prisoners. USA Today. June 28, 2004.
    4. Lifton RJ. The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
    5. Statement of Leonard Rubenstein, executive director, Physicians for Human Rights, June 2, 2004. (Accessed July 9, 2004, athttp://www.aclu.org/news/NewsPrint.cfm?ID=13965&c=36.)

  • Holes in America’s Defense

    In the war on terrorism, reliable intelligence is America’s first line of defense.

    The Senate intelligence committee report scheduled to be released today reveals in stark terms that in many key areas, the prewar intelligence regarding Iraq’s threat to the United States was neither reliable nor accurate. And the report tells only half of the story.

    What’s missing is the ways intelligence was used, misused, misinterpreted or ignored by administration policymakers in deciding to go to war and in making the case to the American people that war with Iraq was necessary. The intelligence committee leadership chose to defer these issues to a second report — one that will not be released until after the November elections.

    While failures by the CIA and other intelligence agencies are a significant part of the problem identified in this inquiry, the responsibility — and the blame — for the prewar intelligence debacle is much broader than described in today’s report.

    Senior decision makers throughout the executive branch must bear responsibility as well. They should have been more diligent in challenging the validity of analytical assumptions and the adequacy of intelligence collection and reporting related to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war. Instead, those analyses that conformed with pro-war views were routinely accepted and reports that did not conform to the pro-war model were largely ignored.

    Beyond Secretary of State Colin Powell’s examination of Iraqi intelligence in preparation for his February 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council, there is little evidence that administration officials took the time to question any intelligence reports related to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

    CIA Director George Tenet is famously reported to have responded to President Bush’s question on the intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by stating it was “a slam-dunk.” If this conversation did take place, it would have been incumbent upon the president’s senior advisers to demand to see and verify the underlying information that constituted the intelligence community’s “slam-dunk” case. Apparently that did not happen.

    The dissenting views regarding Iraq’s weapons programs in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, and the cautionary notes sounded by intelligence analysts at the Energy and State departments regarding nuclear matters, and the Air Force’s concern regarding Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicle program all fell on willfully deaf ears. In contrast, the CIA’s analysis of terrorism, which found only weak connections between Iraq and al Qaeda, elicited considerable questioning from policymakers. Undoubtedly, this was because the administration’s decision to invade Iraq had already been made.

    Unfortunately, the administration’s conclusions drove the evidence instead of the other way around. The historic House and Senate joint intelligence inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks issued a report in December 2002 that recommended intelligence community reform. Within weeks, the Senate intelligence committee should have initiated an in-depth review of the structure and effectiveness of U.S. intelligence operations. Based on the results of such a review, it should then have initiated appropriate reforms. But more than 18 months later, no movement in that direction has occurred.

    So today we have a report that asks only some of the right questions and, at best, comes to only some of the right conclusions.

    The responsibility for problems related to prewar intelligence regarding Iraq should not be confined to intelligence analysts at the CIA but should extend to policymakers as well — particularly those at the Defense and State departments, the National Security Council, and the White House.

    Nor should the intelligence oversight committees of Congress, which are charged with scrutinizing intelligence analysis as part of their mandate, be excluded from criticism. It should be noted that the inquiry into prewar intelligence related to Iraq was initiated — and its scope expanded — in the face of significant resistance within the committee.

    The intelligence failures noted in today’s report add to the compelling need for Congress to undertake an unbiased and nonpartisan effort to strengthen our first line of defense. Time is not on our side.

    The writer is a Democratic senator from Illinois and a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

    Originally published in the Washington Post on July 9, 2004

  • So Much for Democracy: Iraqis Plan For Introduction of Martial Law

    Seventeen months after the Anglo-American invasion in which President George Bush promised to bring democracy to Iraq, the country’s American-approved Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, yesterday introduced legislation allowing the Iraqi authorities to impose martial law, curfews, a ban on demonstrations, the restriction of movement, phone-tapping, the opening of mail and the freezing of bank accounts.

    Military leaders may be appointed to rule parts of Iraq. A temporary reinstatement of Saddam Hussein’s death penalty is also now probable. Already, therefore, Iraq has begun to look just like any other Arab country. But the insurgency, which the laws are supposedly intended to break, exploded in gunfire in the very centre of Baghdad just as the new legislation was announced.

    Incredibly, the fighting broke out in Haifa Street, in one of the busiest streets next to the Tigris river, as gunmen attacked Iraqi police and troops.

    US helicopter gunships at roof-top height could be seen firing rockets at a building in the street which burst into flames. Bullets hissed across the Tigris and at least three soldiers, all believed to be Iraqis, were killed near the river bank.

    The violence in the capital yesterday was impossible to avoid. It began with mortar attacks on the walled-off area where government officials live under American protection, one of the mortars falling close to Mr. Allawi’s home, another exploding beside a medical clinic close to his party headquarters. The explosions echoed over the city.

    A bomb in a van, packed with shrapnel and artillery shells, was defused close to the government headquarters during the morning. Driving out of Baghdad at 11am, I saw another tremendous explosion blasting smoke and debris into the air close to an American convoy. US troops closed all highway bridges in the area in a desperate attempt to protect a long convoy of trucks and supplies moving into the city from the west. Traffic jams trailed for miles across Baghdad in 150F heat.

    Many Iraqis may initially welcome the new laws. Security – or rather the lack of it – has been their greatest fear since the American military allowed thousands of looters to ransack Baghdad after last year’s invasion. They have, anyway, lived under harsh “security” laws for more than two decades under Saddam. But the new legislation may be too late to save Mr. Allawi’s “new” Iraq.

    For large areas of the country – including at least four major cities – are in the hands of insurgents. Hundreds of gunmen are believed to control Samara north of Baghdad; Fallujah and Ramadi – where four more US Marines were killed on Tuesday – are now virtually autonomous republics.

    Bakhityar Amin, Iraq’s new “minister of justice and human rights”, a combination of roles unheard of anywhere else in the world, was chosen to announce the martial-law legislation. “The lives of the Iraqi people are in danger, in danger from evil forces, from gangs and from terrorists,” he said. “We realise this law might restrict some liberties, but there are a number of guarantees. We have tried to guarantee justice and human rights.”

    The legislation was necessary to fight insurgents who were “preventing government employees from attending their jobs, preventing foreign workers from entering the country to help rebuild Iraq and … to derail general elections.”

    Iraq therefore entered into another fatal chapter of its history yesterday, and it didn’t look much like democracy.

    Originally published in the Independent UK on July 8, 2004

  • A Safer Form of Deterrence and Security

    Proliferation Brief, Volume 7, Number 9

    The following are excerpts from remarks by Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, to the 2004 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference, June 21, 2004 . To read the full text, and for video and audio of the remarks, visit www.ProliferationNews.org.

    Nuclear weapons nations must visibly and steadily reduce their reliance on nuclear weapons, and today they are not. The presidents of the United States and Russia should urgently undertake a new nuclear initiative and end their nations’ Cold War nuclear force postures by removing all nuclear weapons from hair-trigger status.

    Today, the risk of an accidental or unauthorized launch of a nuclear weapon is unacceptably high. We are running the irrational risk of an Armageddon of our own making. It is time to find a safer form of deterrence and security. If both the United States and Russia remove nuclear weapons from hair-trigger status, we can immediately eliminate the threat of rapid assured destruction and dramatically reduce the chance of an accidental, mistaken, or unauthorized launch. By taking this step, we will de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons and make them less relevant.

    Keeping our nuclear weapons on hair trigger now increases the risk it was designed to reduce. President Bush knows this: In the summer of 2000, Presidential candidate George W. Bush said: “The Clinton-Gore administration has had over seven years to bring the U.S. force posture into the post-Cold War world. Instead, they remain locked in a Cold War mentality.”

    Later in the same speech, Mr. Bush said: “The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status – another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation. Preparation for quick launch – within minutes after warning of an attack – was the rule during the era of superpower rivalry. But today, for two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch. So, as president, I will ask for an assessment of what we can safely do to lower the alert status of our forces.”

    I have a proposal. Candidate Bush said we should remove “as many weapons as possible” from hair-trigger status. I propose that today “as many weapons as possible” should mean “all of them.” I urge the president of the United States and the president of Russia to order the military and defense officials of each country to present to the presidents, within six months, a set of options for removing all nuclear weapons of both countries from hair-trigger status. These officials should jointly:

    1. Determine what threats posed by the other side justify keeping any nuclear weapons on hair-trigger status.
    2. Determine what steps the other side must take to remove those threats and thus end the justification for hair-trigger status.
    3. Integrate these findings into proposed nuclear force postures that can assure the survivability of nuclear forces and end the need for quick launch capacity by either the U.S. or Russia.

    The presidents should then jointly adopt an approach and a timetable to get the job done and challenge other nuclear nations to follow this lead. If the defense establishments say they cannot, we need clear and convincing answers why not. The burden of proof must shift to those who insist on maintaining the hair-trigger posture in Russia and in the United States .

    Removing all nuclear weapons from hair trigger alert would move towards a nuclear posture where the decision to launch will be slower, more deliberate and far less likely. This is an essential first step in coming out from under the shadow of Mutual Assured Destruction toward an expanded doctrine of “Mutual Assured Safety” – an idea first advanced by former Defense Secretary Bill Perry – where both the U.S. and Russia would shift their nuclear weapons doctrine from one that “seeks security by threatening destruction” toward one that “seeks security by threat reduction.”

    There are a number of possible options for beginning the removal of all nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert, including:

    1. Immediately ordering that the warheads from each side scheduled to be taken out under the 2002 Treaty of Moscow be taken off alert;
    2. Limiting the number of hair-trigger status warheads each side can deploy to several hundred;
    3. A reciprocal approach where the U.S. would remove all land-based missiles from hair-trigger alert, and Russia would do the same for its sea-based missiles.

    If the United States and Russia de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons in our security, it would: immediately reduce the danger we pose to each other; give us more standing to encourage other nations to dismiss the nuclear option; and help build the international cooperation required to apply pressure on nations still seeking the nuclear option – nations like Iran and North Korea – and rally the world to take essential steps in preventing catastrophic terrorism

  • US Justice Is on Trial in Iraq

    In a courtroom in Baghdad, there are two defendants – Saddam and the coalition forces.

    Justice, like evil, has a banal face. The dock to which former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was brought sat in one of those familiar blond-wood courtrooms which feature on television whenever celebrities face the might of the US judicial process. If the set looked borrowed from LAPD Blues, then the detail belonged to the sort of magistrates’ bench rendered comatose by offenses involving absent tax returns.

    Saddam himself looked diminished, as all captured tyrants do, especially those delivered to their day of reckoning in shackles.

    Newspapers called him shabby or haggard, but he didn’t look too bad, in a white shirt worn over worked-out pectorals. The orthodontist called in, post-spider hole, for some televised emergency flossing seemed to have done a good job. Nothing in this tableau of groundbreaking justice leapt out to frighten the spectators.

    But there are many questions to disturb not only the Iraqis whose lives Saddam wrenched apart but also global conscience. Many think the process begun last week is a blatant example of US stagecraft. Salem Chalabi, the tribunal head and nephew of one of the most vocal (and unsavory) Saddam opponents, is not a name to conjure impartiality. Nor does the sidelining of lawyers for the accused, and the exclusion of most Iraqi journalists, augur well for a process that may culminate in a hastily resurrected death penalty.

    Much of the anxiety is justified, but not all. The statute under which Saddam stands trial bears the name of Paul Bremer, the departed US proconsul, but its drafters were a battery of international human rights lawyers. The charge sheet, though generic in content and silent about the war against Iran – when America tacitly backed Saddam – is clearly framed. Procedures for including independent prosecutors and judges are in place, as are provisions for a fair process.

    So far, so good. Those who see the Hague as the better way must also acknowledge the endlessness of Slobodan Milosevic’s trial. The initial judge is dead; the defendant begins his account tomorrow. This may be scrupulous justice, but such slow-lane catharsis offers at best a scenic route to reconciliation. Some experts, including Peter Carter, chair of the Bar Council’s human rights committee, much prefer the Baghdad model.

    But Carter rightly worries that the US risks ruining everything, and says its interference so far has been “unforgivable.” Film from the courtroom went out silenced. Arab television stations were excluded, and the tapes of the court proceedings on CNN were marked “Cleared by US Military.” Reports of disgraceful acts of censorship, destroyed videotapes of Saddam with a chain around his waist and other deletions not only blight justice, they also suggest to many Iraqis that, in a process manipulated by a hated occupier, some of the horrors perpetrated by the defendant may be cooked up as well.

    On the face of it, the proof of Saddam’s crimes is everywhere, but evidence is flimsy stuff. Command responsibility, blurred in the Milosevic trial, may be easier to ascribe to Saddam the arch-controller. Even so, the occupation forces have already allowed some of the paper trail to be shredded. Witnesses may never divulge their testimonies if fear or intimidation ordain their silence. Some Iraqis argue that basic security is more important than bringing a dictator to trial, but justice is not a matter of ticking one box or another.

    The success of the process against the dictator depends on whether the invisible legions he persecuted feel safe to tell their stories.

    As the legal process begins, the coalition also has a case to answer. It is no good for George Bush to pretend that last week’s stage-managed display of freedom reigning is Iraqi justice for Iraqis, when the signs are it could be nothing of the kind. It is indefensible, too, for the government to suggest that we shall have to condone the death penalty if that is the course chosen by a semi-sovereign Iraq. A country pledged never to return citizens to regimes where they might be executed cannot, because expediency or obeisance to the US demands it, suddenly decide there is a corner of the world where it is fine for the state to kill people. Such a view, shaming to the British government, would also demean the new Iraq.

    Perhaps Iraq will look to its history. In 1963, five years after the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy, rebels executed Brigadier Qassim, the country’s “Sole Leader.” As his bullet-riddled corpse was paraded on Iraqi television, the Baath Party moved toward power, and the scene was set for a new savior.

    Saddam, rumored to have extracted a bullet from his leg with a razor blade before swimming the Euphrates and fleeing to Syria, was already a legend-in-waiting.

    Now, in his disgrace, he retains one hope of potency. The power of pity is available even to monsters, if they are seen to be suitably ill-treated by their captors. Saddam clanking in chains is a more persuasive figure, for all his viciousness, than a tyrant offered the protective panoply of the law. But what, exactly, is that?

    It is assumed, patronizingly, that the Iraqi model of justice is some tinpot effort of questionable legitimacy, propped up by the exemplary jurisdictions of the West. But recent lessons, from Guantánamo to Abu Ghraib, show how shoddy and rough that justice can be. In England and Wales, the process of picking senior judges is so biased that, according to a report last week, appointments should be suspended.

    Though good at exporting justice and giving places such as Trinidad and Jamaica written constitutions, we retain for domestic use a constitutional shambles and a Human Rights Act that Peter Carter calls “wimpish.”

    If Iraq and those who saw their loved ones die are to have their reconciliation, it will not be signed in a tyrant’s blood or delivered by Western hypocrisy. Violence is rarely assuaged by more of the same. The cycle of hatred brought no peace in Northern Ireland and it will bring none in Iraq.

    The Saddam trial may promise an end to division and a better future. It may help cement the rule of law that is the cornerstone of all democracies. But if the former occupiers censor and interfere, the process could instead symbolize the collapse of justice that disfigures citizens’ lives in all centuries.

    The image lingers of a prisoner with a bad beard, a murderous reign and a fantasy of being King Lear. Saddam is not the only defendant. In the years to come, the conduct of those who ended his tyranny will also be on trial.

    Originally published in The London Observer on July 4, 2004

  • Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

    A Study by the Institute for Policy Studies
    and Foreign Policy In Focus

    Key Findings

    I. Costs to the United States

    A. Human Costs

    U.S. Military Deaths: Between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and June 16, 2004, 952 coalition forces were killed, including 836 U.S. military. Of the total, 693 were killed after President Bush declared the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003. Over 5,134 U.S. troops have been wounded since the war began, including 4,593 since May 1, 2003.

    Contractor Deaths: Estimates range from 50 to 90 civilian contractors, missionaries, and civilian worker deaths. Of these, 36 were identified as Americans.

    Journalist Deaths: Thirty international media workers have been killed in Iraq, including 21 since President Bush declared the end of combat operations. Eight of the dead worked for U.S. companies.

    B. Security Costs

    Terrorist Recruitment and Action: According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, al Qaeda’s membership is now at 18,000, with 1,000 active in Iraq. A former CIA analyst and State Department official has documented 390 deaths and 1,892 injuries due to terrorist attacks in 2003. In addition, there were 98 suicide attacks around the world in 2003, more than any year in contemporary history.

    Low U.S. Credibility: Polls reveal that the war has damaged the U.S. government’s standing and credibility in the world. Surveys in eight European and Arab countries demonstrated broad public agreement that the war has hurt, rather than helped, the war on terrorism. At home, 54 percent of Americans polled by the Annenberg Election Survey felt that the “the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over.”

    Military Mistakes: A number of former military officials have criticized the war, including retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, who has charged that by manufacturing a false rationale for war, abandoning traditional allies, propping up and trusting Iraqi exiles, and failing to plan for post-war Iraq, the Bush Administration made the United States less secure.

    Low Troop Morale and Lack of Equipment: A March 2004 army survey found 52 percent of soldiers reporting low morale, and three-fourths reporting they were poorly led by their officers. Lack of equipment has been an ongoing problem. The Army did not fully equip soldiers with bullet-proof vests until June 2004, forcing many families to purchase them out of their own pockets.

    Loss of First Responders: National Guard troops make up almost one-third of the U.S. Army troops now in Iraq. Their deployment puts a particularly heavy burden on their home communities because many are “first responders,” including police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. For example, 44 percent of the country’s police forces have lost officers to Iraq. In some states, the absence of so many Guard troops has raised concerns about the ability to handle natural disasters.

    Use of Private Contractors: An estimated 20,000 private contractors are carrying out work in Iraq traditionally done by the military, despite the fact that they often lack sufficient training and are not accountable to the same guidelines and reviews as military personnel.

    C. Economic Costs

    The Bill So Far: Congress has already approved of $126.1 billion for Iraq and an additional $25 billion is heading towards Congressional approval, for a total of $151.1 billion through this year. Congressional leaders have promised an additional supplemental appropriation after the election.

    Long-term Impact on U.S. Economy: Economist Doug Henwood has estimated that the war bill will add up to an average of at least $3,415 for every U.S. household. Another economist, James Galbraith of the University of Texas, predicts that while war spending may boost the economy initially, over the long term it is likely to bring a decade of economic troubles, including an expanded trade deficit and high inflation.

    Oil Prices: Gas prices topped $2 a gallon in May 2004, a development that most analysts attribute at least in part to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. According to a mid-May CBS survey, 85 percent of Americans said they had been affected measurably by higher gas prices. According to one estimate, if crude oil prices stay around $40 a barrel for a year, U.S. gross domestic product will decline by more than $50 billion.

    Economic Impact on Military Families: Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 364,000 reserve troops and National Guard soldiers have been called for military service, serving tours of duty that often last 20 months. Studies show that between 30 and 40 percent of reservists and National Guard members earn a lower salary when they leave civilian employment for military deployment. Army Emergency Relief has reported that requests from military families for food stamps and subsidized meals increased “several hundred percent” between 2002 and 2003.

    D. Social Costs

    U.S. Budget and Social Programs: The Bush administration’s combination of massive spending on the war and tax cuts for the wealthy means less money for social spending. The $151.1 billion expenditure for the war through this year could have paid for: close to 23 million housing vouchers; health care for over 27 million uninsured Americans; salaries for nearly 3 million elementary school teachers; 678,200 new fire engines; over 20 million Head Start slots for children; or health care coverage for 82 million children. Instead, the administration’s FY 2005 budget request proposes deep cuts in critical domestic programs and virtually freezes funding for domestic discretionary programs other than homeland security. Federal spending cuts will deepen the budget crises for local and state governments, which are expected to suffer a $6 billion shortfall in 2005.

    Social Costs to the Military: Thus far, the Army has extended the tours of duty of 20,000 soldiers. These extensions have been particularly difficult for reservists, many of whom never expected to face such long separations from their jobs and families. According to military policy, reservists are not supposed to be on assignment for more than 12 months every 5-6 years. To date, the average tour of duty for all soldiers in Iraq has been 320 days. A recent Army survey revealed that more than half of soldiers said they would not re-enlist.

    Costs to Veteran Health Care: About 64 percent of the more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq received wounds that prevented them from returning to duty. One trend has been an increase in amputees, the result of improved body armor that protects vital organs but not extremities. As in previous wars, many soldiers are likely to have received ailments that will not be detected for years to come. The Veterans Administration healthcare system is not prepared for the swelling number of claims. In May, the House of Representatives approved funding for FY 2005 that is $2.6 billion less than needed, according to veterans’ groups.

    Mental Health Costs: A December 2003 Army report was sharply critical of the military’s handling of mental health issues. It found that more than 15 percent of soldiers in Iraq screened positive for traumatic stress, 7.3 percent for anxiety, and 6.9 percent for depression. The suicide rate among soldiers increased from an eight-year average of 11.9 per 100,000 to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2003. Almost half of soldiers surveyed reported not knowing how to obtain mental health services.

    II. Costs to Iraq

    A. Human Costs

    Iraqi Deaths and Injuries: As of June 16, 2004, between 9,436 and 11,317 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. During “major combat” operations, between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed.

    Effects of Depleted Uranium: The health impacts of the use of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq are yet to be known. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from the toxic and radioactive metal during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Many scientists blame the far smaller amount of DU weapons used in the Persian Gulf War for illnesses among U.S. soldiers, as well as a sevenfold increase in child birth defects in Basra in Southern Iraq.

    B. Security Costs

    Rise in Crime: Murder, rape, and kidnapping have skyrocketed since March 2003, forcing Iraqi children to stay home from school and women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

    Psychological Impact: Living under occupation without the most basic security has devastated the Iraqi population. A poll by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2004 found that 80 percent of Iraqis say they have “no confidence” in either the U.S. civilian authorities or in the coalition forces, and 55 percent would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign troops left the country immediately.

    C. The Economic Costs

    Unemployment: Iraqi joblessness doubled from 30 percent before the war to 60 percent in the summer of 2003. While the Bush administration now claims that unemployment has dropped, only 1 percent of Iraq’s workforce of 7 million is involved in reconstruction projects.

    Corporate War Profiteering: Most of Iraq’s reconstruction has been contracted out to U.S. companies, rather than experienced Iraqi firms. Top contractor Halliburton is being investigated for charging $160 million for meals that were never served to troops and $61 million in cost overruns on fuel deliveries. Halliburton employees also took $6 million in kickbacks from subcontractors, while other employees have reported extensive waste, including the abandonment of $85,000 trucks because they had flat tires.

    Iraq’s Oil Economy: Anti-occupation violence has prevented Iraq from capitalizing on its oil assets. There have been an estimated 130 attacks on Iraq’s oil infrastructure. In 2003, Iraq’s oil production dropped to 1.33 million barrels per day, down from 2.04 million in 2002.

    Health Infrastructure: After more than a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq’s health facilities were further damaged during the war and post-invasion looting. Iraq’s hospitals continue to suffer from lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients.

    Education: UNICEF estimates that more than 200 schools were destroyed in the conflict and thousands more were looted in the chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Largely because of security concerns, school attendance in April 2004 was well below pre-war levels.

    Environment: The U.S-led attack damaged water and sewage systems and the country’s fragile desert ecosystem. It also resulted in oil well fires that spewed smoke across the country and left unexposed ordnance that continues to endanger the Iraqi people and environment. Mines and unexploded ordnance cause an estimated 20 casualties per month.

    Human Rights Costs: Even with Saddam Hussein overthrown, Iraqis continue to face human rights violations from occupying forces. In addition to the widely publicized humiliation and abuse of prisoners, the U.S. military is investigating the deaths of 34 detainees as a result of interrogation techniques.

    Sovereignty Costs: Despite the proclaimed “transfer of sovereignty” to Iraq, the country will continue to be occupied by U.S. and coalition troops and have severely limited political and economic independence. The interim government will not have the authority to reverse the nearly 100 orders by CPA head Paul Bremer that, among other things, allow for the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises and prohibit preferences for domestic firms in reconstruction.

    III. Costs to the World

    Human Costs: While Americans make up the vast majority of military and contractor personnel in Iraq, other U.S.-allied “coalition” troops have suffered 116 war casualties in Iraq. In addition, the focus on Iraq has diverted international resources and attention away from humanitarian crises such as in Sudan.

    International Law: The unilateral U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, setting a dangerous precedent for other countries to seize any opportunity to respond militarily to claimed threats, whether real or contrived, that must be “pre-empted.” The U.S. military has also violated the Geneva Convention, making it more likely that in the future, other nations will ignore these protections in their treatment of civilian populations and detainees.

    The United Nations: At every turn, the Bush administration has attacked the legitimacy and credibility of the UN, undermining the institution’s capacity to act in the future as the centerpiece of global disarmament and conflict resolution. The recent efforts of the Bush administration to gain UN acceptance of an Iraqi government that was not elected but rather installed by occupying forces undermines the entire notion of national sovereignty as the basis for the UN Charter.

    Coalitions: Faced with opposition in the UN Security Council, the U.S. government attempted to create the illusion of multilateral support for the war by pressuring other governments to join a so-called “Coalition of the Willing.” This not only circumvented UN authority, but also undermined democracy in many coalition countries, where public opposition to the war was as high as 90 percent.

    Global Economy: The $151.1 billion spent by the U.S. government on the war could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization and clean water and sanitation needs of the developing world for more than two years. As a factor in the oil price hike, the war has created concerns of a return to the “stagflation” of the 1970s. Already, the world’s major airlines are expecting an increase in costs of $1 billion or more per month.

    Global Security: The U.S.-led war and occupation have galvanized international terrorist organizations, placing people not only in Iraq but around the world at greater risk of attack. The State Department’s annual report on international terrorism reported that in 2003 there was the highest level of terror-related incidents deemed “significant” than at any time since the U.S. began issuing these figures.

    Global Environment: U.S.-fired depleted uranium weapons have contributed to pollution of Iraq’s land and water, with inevitable spillover effects in other countries. The heavily polluted Tigris River, for example, flows through Iraq, Iran and Kuwait.

    Human Rights: The Justice Department memo assuring the White House that torture was legal stands in stark violation of the International Convention Against Torture (of which the United States is a signatory). This, combined with the widely publicized mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. intelligence officials, gave new license for torture and mistreatment by governments around the world.

  • The United States Has Lost its Moral Authority

    Peoples the world around have a history of culture and religion. In the Mideast , the religion is predominantly Muslim and the culture tribal. The Muslim religion is strong, i.e., those that don’t conform are considered infidels; those of a tribal culture look for tribal leadership, not democracy. We liberated Kuwait , but it immediately rejected democracy.

    In 1996, a task force was formed in Jerusalem including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser. They submitted a plan for Israel to incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Clean Break. It proposed that negotiations with the Palestinians be cut off and, instead, the Mideast be made friendly to Israel by democratizing it. First Lebanon would be bombed, then Syria invaded on the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. Afterward, Saddam Hussein was to be removed in Iraq and replaced with a Hashemite ruler favorable to Israel .

    The plan was rejected by Netanyahu, so Perle started working for a similar approach to the Mideast for the United States . Taking on the support of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Cambone, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld et al., he enlisted the support of the Project for the New American Century.

    The plan hit paydirt with the election of George W. Bush. Perle took on the Defense Policy Board. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith became one, two and three at the Defense Department, and Cheney as vice president took Scooter Libby and David Wurmser as his deputies. Clean Break was streamlined to go directly into Iraq .

    Iraq , as a threat to the United States , was all contrived. Richard Clarke stated in his book, Against All Enemies, with John McLaughlin of the CIA confirming, that there was no evidence or intelligence of “Iraqi support for terrorism against the United States ” from 1993 until 2003 when we invaded. The State Department on 9/11 had a list of 45 countries wherein al Qaeda was operating. While the United States was listed, it didn’t list the country of Iraq .

    President Bush must have known that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq . We have no al Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorism from Iraq ; we were intentionally misled by the Bush administration.

    Which explains why President-elect Bush sought a briefing on Iraq from Defense Secretary William Cohen in January before taking the oath of office and why Iraq was the principal concern at his first National Security Council meeting – all before 9/11. When 9/11 occurred, we knew immediately that it was caused by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan . Within days we were not only going into Afghanistan , but President Bush was asking for a plan to invade Iraq – even though Iraq had no involvement.

    After 15 months, Iraq has yet to be secured. Its borders were left open after “mission accomplished,” allowing terrorists throughout the Mideast to come join with the insurgents to wreak havoc. As a result, our troops are hunkered down, going out to trouble spots and escorting convoys.

    In the war against terrorism, we’ve given the terrorists a cause and created more terrorism. Even though Saddam is gone, the majority of the Iraqi people want us gone. We have proven ourselves “infidels.” With more than 800 GIs killed, 5,000 maimed for life and a cost of $200 billion, come now the generals in command, both Richard Myers and John Abizaid, saying we can’t win. Back home the cover of The New Republic magazine asks, “Were We Wrong?”

    Walking guard duty tonight in Baghdad , a G.I. wonders why he should lose his life when his commander says he can’t win and the people back home can’t make up their mind. Unfortunately, the peoples of the world haven’t changed their minds. They are still against us. Heretofore, the world looked to the United States to do the right thing. No more. The United States has lost its moral authority.

    Originally published in The State on June 23, 2004