![Barroso, Blair, Bush, Aznar at Azores on 16 March 2003]()
José Manuel Durão Barroso, Tony Blair, George W. Bush and José María Aznar at Azores on 16 March 2003
On March 19, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, claiming that Saddam Hussein’s regime was hiding weapons of mass destruction and posing a threat to regional and international peace. On April 3, the U.S. Army entered Baghdad, aided by the British and facing little resistance from the Iraqi army. We now know, however, that Saddam was not stockpiling WMDs. Two decades after the war, then, one question remains: What was the real motive for the invasion?
The Justification
Then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was the principal architect of the Iraq war. Hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, he asked his aides to search for evidence linking Saddam to the plot. Several days later, Wolfowitz asked President George W. Bush to consider military action against Iraq. Bush expressed to his national security advisers his belief that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks, but he did not have evidence to warrant action. When Wolfowitz and his team also found no evidence to incriminate Iraq, they changed the narrative, asserting that Saddam had nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that he intended to use against the United States, even though they knew there was no basis for the claims. Wolfowitz essentially acknowledged this when he said the U.S. administration agreed to use Iraq’s possession of WMDs as a justification for the war for bureaucratic reasons.
Wolfowitz and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pressed for action, arguing that Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, offered excellent targets to display U.S. hubris. Bush followed the consensus, and his administration began planning the invasion. Bush claimed that Saddam continued to stockpile and manufacture weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was part of an axis of evil, along with Iran and North Korea, that threatened global peace. In October 2002, Congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq.
In February 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell asked the United Nations Security Council to give the green light for military action against Iraq, saying the country had violated previous Security Council resolutions because of its possession of a WMD program. However, the U.S. request did not convince most Security Council members. They wanted International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors – who had visited Iraq in 2002 – to do more work there to find evidence of WMDs. The U.S. said it would not wait for the inspectors’ report. Powell even told the U.N. in 2003 that Iraq had mobile biological weapons production laboratories – despite acknowledging a year later that the evidence supporting this claim wasn’t strong.
Then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was beyond doubt that Saddam was continuing to produce WMDs. The British government also referenced an intelligence file claiming that the Iraqis could launch missiles within 45 minutes that could hit British targets in the eastern Mediterranean. The U.S. and Britain relied on the allegations of two Iraqi defectors – a chemical engineer and an intelligence officer – who said they had direct knowledge of Iraq’s WMD program. The two men later said they made up the evidence because they wanted the U.S. to invade Iraq and topple the regime.
Rebutting the Claims
In fact, Iraq’s WMD program was essentially dismantled following the First Gulf War. In response to the Iraqi army’s occupation of Kuwait in August 1990, the U.S. led a multinational coalition that forced Iraq out of Kuwait. Subsequently, the UNSC passed resolution 687, which ordered Iraq to destroy all weapons of mass destruction – a term describing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons – and long-range ballistic missiles. The military and technological sanctions and the work of IAEA inspectors were sufficient to destroy Iraq’s WMDs, including its nuclear program, after the war.
But those who refused to believe the U.S. justification for the 2003 invasion were quickly rebuffed. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed passing a UNSC resolution supporting the use of force against Iraq would be a waste of time and opted instead to form a “coalition of the willing.” The Bush and Blair administrations rejected massive amounts of evidence contradicting their claims that Iraq had links to al-Qaida and was secretly developing WMDs. America’s neighbors – Canada and Mexico – refused to support the U.S. position, as did key European allies Germany and France, which withheld military support.
In 2002, Jose Mauricio Bustani was controversially removed as head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons after intense American pressure ahead of the military operation in Iraq. Bustani, who described the war as absurd, was trying to persuade Iraq to join the OPCW, under which Saddam’s regime would allow inspectors full access to any chemical weapons. Bustani insisted that the OPCW had sufficient intelligence that inspectors had overseen the destruction of Iraq’s chemical weapons after the First Gulf War. He added that he received a letter from the Iraqi government at the end of 2001 saying it was ready to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and allow inspections.
Hans Blix, who led the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission before the invasion, reported on Feb. 14, 2003, that the commission did not find WMDs in Iraq. He accused the U.S. and Britain of fabricating evidence to justify the war. In March 2003, the director-general of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, reported to the UNSC that Iraq had not revived its nuclear program, which was destroyed after the 1991 war, and denied claims that Baghdad sought to acquire uranium from Niger.
After the 2003 war ended, it became clear that the allegations that Saddam had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction were baseless. The 2016 Chilcot Commission Report, which examined the U.K.’s involvement in the war, concluded that Blair pledged his support for the U.S. invasion eight months before it began, writing in a letter to Bush: “I will be with you, whatever.” Blair used flawed British intelligence to justify the war in order to get rid of Saddam, ignoring the consequences for the civilian population and failing to formulate a postwar strategy to rebuild the Iraqi political system and economy.
After the report’s release, Blair said he felt “more sorrow, remorse, and apology than you may know or can believe” for the mistakes made in preparing for the war. Still, he also said that the world was a better place without Saddam and that he had not deceived Parliament or made any secret commitments prior to the invasion to go to war in Iraq. Former Prime Minister David Cameron, who voted for the invasion as a member of parliament in 2003, said learning the lessons identified in the Chilcot report was important for the future.
![The Fertile Crescent]()
The Real Motive
The West would never allow a Middle Eastern country to become a leading power. Iraq thus fell victim to its modern history. The country’s Sunni Triangle, stretching north and west of Baghdad, saw the rise of Arab nationalism in the 1920s, led by Iraqi army officers. Iraq won a reputation as an Arab Prussia that would unite the Arab world. Amid the events that rocked the Arab region in the first half of the 20th century, the Hashemite Kingdom in Hejaz, led by Sharif Hussein and his sons, played a prominent role in what was called the Great Arab Revolt in 1916. It led to the rise of Arab nationalist discourse, rapprochement with the British, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1921 by Sharif Hussein’s son Faisal I, who aspired to establish an Arab kingdom in the Fertile Crescent countries (Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon). Faisal I, who died in 1933, was succeeded by his son Ghazi, who followed in his father’s footsteps in advocating Arab unity.
![Iraq's Sunni Triangle]()
Ghazi believed the British had broken their promises to his grandfather to create an Arab kingdom in West Asia. He resented the British domination of Iraq, opened to Nazi Germany, sponsored the Arab officers who dominated the Iraqi army, and advocated Arab nationalism. The 21-year-old was not the king the British wanted, as he obstructed the formation of loyal Iraqi governments and refused to cooperate with the British Oil Co. Although he could not challenge British domination of Iraq, his repeated declarations of the need to establish a national government made him famous in Iraq, Syria and Kuwait, where the ruling council demanded unity with Iraq.
In 1936, Iraqi army officer Bakr Sidqi staged the first coup in the Middle East and allied with Ghazi, who was seriously considering immediate union with Syria. Sidqi, who was hostile to Britain and vociferously opposed its plan to partition Palestine, was assassinated in 1937, one month after the Peel Commission recommended creating a Jewish state in Palestine. Ghazi died in a car accident in 1939, but the prevailing opinion in Iraqi circles is that intelligence operatives rigged the accident. In one of his telegrams just before Ghazi’s death, the British ambassador in Baghdad said Ghazi must be brought under control or deposed.
Immediately after Britain terminated the 1899 Anglo-Kuwaiti protection agreement and granted Kuwait complete independence, Iraqi strongman Abdulkarim Qasim announced his intention to annex it. Britain defused the crisis by launching Operation Vantage, sending Kuwait a powerful naval taskforce and squadrons of fighter jets.
Before Operation Desert Storm, military analysts informed Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney that Iraq had a competent military and a developed industrial base for a Third World country. They also noted that Iraqis were staunch Arab nationalists. Iraq is the only Arab country with the three production factors (land, labor and capital) essential for economic development. In the late 1970s, Iraq appeared to be moving toward becoming the Middle East’s economic and military tiger by the end of the 20th century. The U.S. invaded Iraq ostensibly to eliminate its non-existent WMDs. At the same time, it tolerated Iran’s actual nuclear program for 30 years, assuring Iran that it prefers a diplomatic solution, not a military one.
The British created Iraq in 1921 as a pro-Western country. They had little tolerance for Iraqi leaders’ aggressive regional policy. In 1941, the British crushed a pan-Arab military coup in Baghdad that sought to expel them from the country. Iraq actively participated in Arab-Israeli wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973, and invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. Saddam aspired to fill the Arab political vacuum after the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970 and proclaim himself the leader of the Arab world. Neither the U.S. nor Britain felt comfortable about his ambitions after Iraq emerged victorious from its eight-year war with Iran. A massive media campaign targeted him after he announced in April 1990 that he would destroy half of Israel should it attack Iraqi nuclear facilities again, alluding to its 1981 destruction of Iraq’s unfinished nuclear reactor near Baghdad.
Erratic Policy
A few days after Bush declared victory on May 1, 2003, he appointed Paul Bremmer as the coalition’s top administrator in Iraq, replacing Jay Garner, a career officer who participated in Operation Desert Storm and understood the country. Bremmer, who had little knowledge of Iraq and no military experience, immediately disbanded the Iraqi army and initiated a de-Baathification campaign. The move angered U.S. military commanders and paved the way for the rise of the Islamic State.
Saddam never targeted U.S. interests in the Middle East and was always keen on fostering good relations with Washington, even after the expulsion of the Iraqi army from Kuwait. He tried to engage the U.S. and assure it that he would grant lucrative contracts to American companies to develop Iraq’s oil industry and lead postwar construction projects. The U.S. rebuffed him, leading to the Iraqi regime’s ouster and allowing Iran’s proxies to dominate the country and target U.S. troops, not only in Iraq but also later in Syria. The decision to invade was made two decades ago, and the U.S. paid the price for years thereafter.
Original here.
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