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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- Sorting Fact From Fiction
Ellis Henican
NewsDay, July 16, 2003
So what can we still believe about the war in Iraq?
That's a tough one. So many of the claims and assertions of the Bush administration are turning out to be wrong.
The duration, the cost, the reaction of the Iraqi people, the ease of the post-war recovery, the reason we attacked in the first place, even the story of our plucky poster girl: Every day we learn that more and more of it was built on lies, exaggeration, miscalculation or deceit.
Let's take 'em one by one, all the things we thought we knew about Iraq's "liberation." Maybe we'll find something in here that still remains true.
Mission Accomplished? Those two words - minus the question mark - were printed on a banner hanging behind President Bush, as he stood in a snappy flight suit aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, declaring the end of "major fighting" in Iraq. It made for stirring video. Unfortunately, in the almost seven weeks since, we've been losing at least a soldier a day. Millions of Iraqis still have no reliable water or electricity. Their economy barely functions at all. Anti-American sentiment is clearly rising. Saddam Hussein can't be found. No one knows what he is plotting. Looters and snipers still run unchecked. Many Iraqi religious leaders rail against the "foreign occupation." Our attempts at political organization keep failing. The peace, it turns out, is a whole lot tougher than the war.
Home Soon? We have 147,000 American troops in Iraq right now. That number won't shrink for the "foreseeable future," Gen. Tommy Franks admitted last week. Even the exhausted members of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, who spearheaded the Iraqi campaign, have now been told they probably won't be home by September, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised just last week. No fresh troops are available to replace them. Maj. Gen. Buford Blount broke the "disappointing news" in an e-mail to the soldiers' families Sunday night. Their return is delayed indefinitely "due to the uncertainty of the situation in Iraq and the recent increase in attacks on the coalition forces."
War May Be Hell, but It Sure Ain't Cheap: The price tag could reach $100 billion through next year, far more than the administration officials predicted. The current "burn rate," $3.4 billion a month, is almost as high as the $4 billion the actual fighting cost, even though most of the Navy and the Air Force have been sent home.
Coalition? What Coalition? Call them the "coalition of the absent." Post-war Iraq is still an overwhelmingly American affair, just like war-time Iraq was. Yesterday, France's president followed the lead of India and Germany, saying sending troops "cannot be imagined in the current context."
They Love Us, They Love Us Not: "The United States and the British were hoodwinked when they were told that the Iraqi people would receive them with flowers and hugs," Mohammed al-Douri, the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, warned one testy day in March. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte was so outraged at that, he stormed out of the Security Council. But hugs and flowers have been few and far between. They've been mixed, quite frighteningly, with ambushes, denunciations, frustration and resentment.
Tell Me Again, Why Did We Go? Of the five big reasons advanced by President Bush, four have largely been discredited.
1. No weapons of mass destruction have been found.
2. No connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein has been discovered.
3. Even President Bush now admits the claims about an Iraqi nuclear program can't be confirmed, including Niger's purported deal to sell uranium to Iraq.
4. There's no evidence that attacking Iraq has reduced the threat of international terrorism, not yet anyway. If anything, it's inflamed our enemies.
Only reason No. 5 is holding up. Saddam Hussein, a dreadful tyrant, is gone. Not captured, but at least he is gone. And that is clearly a good thing. Was that reason enough to go to war? If so, we'd be attacking half the nations on earth. Sadly, despots are easy to find.
Jessica, on Second Thought: Pvt. Jessica Lynch, whose dramatic capture and rescue was the single most gripping story of the war, is expected home this week in Palestine, W.Va. The only problem? The story that brought her to national attention was mostly made up.
It now turns out Lynch was hurt in a vehicle accident, not in a firefight with Iraqi troops. She was treated well, not harshly, by Iraqi doctors. And when a Special Forces commando unit went to rescue her, they were met with no resistance at all. The Iraqi soldiers had already left the hospital. Good for her.
Not so good for the Pentagon, which let the pleasing deceptions dangle in the media for weeks and weeks.
...
July 16, 2003
<snip>
... Blair sounded confident, as always. But his words didn't come close to rescuing his good friend Bush, as he stands at the edge of hole Blair has already fallen in.
Bush's political opponents, including the bashful Democrats who are running to replace him, have already been emboldened by this fresh crack in the president's credibility. For the first time since 9-11, Bush's approval numbers have really begun to fall — not off a cliff like Blair's, but enough to worry Karl Rove.
And what if the imaginary yellowcake uranium from Niger isn't the only provable falsehood in January's State of the Union speech? What if another Bush war plank is called into serious question?
That could be a dangerous one-two punch.
The facts aren't in yet, but keep your eyes on the aluminum tubes.
In the same State of the Union speech, Bush warned darkly: "Our intelligence sources tell us that [Saddam Hussein] had attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear-weapons production."
CIA officials say that late last year they looked at the documents purporting to prove this and the documents appeared to be fakes. That was exactly what the International Atomic Energy Agency had told the UN Security Council in March. "Not authentic," Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's director, said back then.
But all of this will unfold in its own sweet time, unfolding as post-war Iraq grows deadlier and dicier by the day. If the war is over, no one told Saddam. He, it seems, was heard from again Thursday.
This was the other, gruffer foreign voice.
The man puts out more tapes than Jay-Z.
"The enemy wants to weaken Iraq and the only genuine solution is to resist the occupation through jihad to inflict losses and evict the enemy from Iraq," said this voice, which sounded awfully like Saddam, broadcast over the Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera TV networks.
It was a Ba'ath Party anniversary card, commemorating the 35th year since Saddam's band of hoodlums came to power.
That reminded everyone — in America, Britain and Iraq — about the war's biggest disappointment. The villain we were fighting got away. Just like the first villain we were fighting, Osama bin Laden, got away.
Remember him?
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