WHY IRAQ WAS INVADED
to understand that it may not be all oil suggest reading The Israel Lobby and US foreign policy by John J. Mearsheimer professor of political science at the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University there is interesting chapter on Iraq
"Pressure from Israel and the lobby was not the only factor behind the U.S. decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a critical element. Some Americans believe that this was a "war for oil," but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (200103), executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the "real threat" from Iraq was not a threat to the United States.153 The "unstated threat" was the "threat against Israel," Zelikow told a University of Virginia audience in September 2002, noting further that "the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell." 154
On August 16, 2002, eleven days before Vice President Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hard-line speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, The Washington Post reported that "Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein." 155 By this point, according to Sharon, strategic coordination between Israel and the United States had reached "unprecedented dimensions," and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programs.156 As one retired Israeli general later put it, "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities." 157
Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when President Bush decided to seek U.N. Security Council authorization for war in September, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let U.N. inspectors back into Iraq, because these developments seemed to reduce the likelihood of war. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002, "The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must. Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors."158
At the same time, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that "the greatest risk now lies in inaction." 159 His predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in The Wall Street Journal entitled "The Case for Toppling Saddam." 160 Netanyahu declared, "Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do," adding, "I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a preemptive strike against Saddam's regime." Or, as Ha'aretz reported in February 2003, "The [Israeli] military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq." 161
As Netanyahu suggests, however, the desire for war was not confined to Israel's leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam conquered in 1990, Israel was the only country in the world in which both the politicians and the public enthusiastically favored war.162 As journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, "Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced." 163 In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho for war that their allies in America told them to damp down their hawkish rhetoric, lest it look as if the war was for Israel.164
The Lobby and the Iraq War
Within the United States, the main driving force behind the Iraq War was a small band of neoconservatives, many with close ties to Israel's Likud party.165 In addition, key leaders of the lobby's major organizations lent their voices to the campaign for war.166According to Forward,
As President Bush attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq, America's most important Jewish organizations rallied as one to his defense. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.167
The editorial goes on to say that "concern for Israel's safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.”
Although neoconservatives and other lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not.168 In fact, Samuel Freedman reported just after the war started that "a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52% to 62%." 169 Thus, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on "Jewish influence." Rather, the war was due in large part to the lobby's influence, and especially that of the neoconservatives within it.
The neoconservatives were already determined to topple Saddam before Bush became president.170 They caused a stir in early 1998 by publishing two open letters to President Clinton calling for Saddam's removal from power.171The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP and whose ranks included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble convincing the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam.172 But the neoconservatives were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. Nor were they able to generate much enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration.173As important as the neoconservatives were for making the Iraq war happen, they needed help to achieve their aim.
That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that fateful day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war to topple Saddam. Neoconservatives in the lobby — most notably Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and Princeton historian Bernard Lewis — reportedly played especially critical roles in persuading the president and vice president to favor war.
For the neoconservatives, 9/11 was a golden opportunity to make the case for war with Iraq. At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on September 15, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the United States and Bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan.174 Bush rejected this advice and chose to go after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious possibility. The president tasked U.S. military planners on November 21, 2001, with developing concrete plans for an invasion.175
Meanwhile, other neoconservatives were at work within the corridors of power. We do not have the full story yet, but scholars like Lewis and Fouad Ajami of John Hopkins University reportedly played key roles in convincing Vice President Cheney to favor the war.176 Cheney's views were also heavily influenced by the neoconservatives on his staff, especially Eric Edelman, John Hannah and chief of staff Libby, one of the most powerful individuals in the administration.177 The vice president's influence helped convince President Bush by early 2002. With Bush and Cheney on board, the die was cast for war.
Outside the administration, neoconservative pundits lost no time making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism. Their efforts were partly aimed at keeping pressure on Bush and partly intended to overcome opposition to the war both inside and outside of the government. On September 20, a group of prominent neoconservatives and their allies published another open letter, telling the president, "Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."178 The letter also reminded Bush that "Israel has been and remains America's staunchest ally against international terrorism." In the October 1 issue of The Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol called for regime change in Iraq immediately after the Taliban was defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in The Washington Post that after we were finished with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed by Iran and Iraq. "The war on terrorism," he argued, "will conclude in Baghdad," when we finish off "the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world."179
These salvos were the beginning of an unrelenting public-relations campaign to win support for invading Iraq.180 A key part of this campaign was the manipulation of intelligence information so as to make Saddam look like an imminent threat. For example, Libby visited the CIA several times to pressure analysts to find evidence that would make the case for war. He also helped prepare a detailed briefing on the Iraq threat in early 2003 that was pushed on Colin Powell, then preparing his infamous presentation to the UN Security Council on that subject.181According to Bob Woodward, Powell "was appalled at what he considered overreaching and hyperbole. Libby was drawing only the worst conclusions from fragments and silky threads." 182 Although Powell discarded Libby's most outrageous claims, his U.N. presentation was still riddled with errors, as Powell now acknowledges.
The campaign to manipulate intelligence also involved two organizations that were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.183 The Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was tasked with finding links between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the intelligence community supposedly missed. Its two key members were David Wurmser, a hard-core neoconservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American who had close ties with Perle. The Office of Special Plans was tasked with finding evidence that could be used to sell war with Iraq. It was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neoconservative with longstanding ties to Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks.184
Like virtually all the neoconservatives, Feith is deeply committed to Israel. He also has longstanding ties to the Likud party. He wrote articles in the 1990s supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the Occupied Territories.185 More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he wrote the famous "Clean Break" report in June 1996 for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.186Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." It also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not implement their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon advocating that the Bush administration pursue those same goals. This situation prompted Ha'aretz columnist Akiva Eldar to warn that Feith and Perle "are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments … and Israeli interests."187
Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. Forward once described him as "the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration," and selected him in 2002 as the first among 50 notables who "have consciously pursued Jewish activism." 188 At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong partnership between Israel and the United States. The Jerusalem Post, describing him as "devoutly pro-Israel," named him "Man of the Year" in 2003. 189
Finally, a brief word is in order about the neoconservatives' prewar support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi National Congress (INC). They embraced Chalabi because he had worked to establish close ties with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good relations with Israel once he gained power.190 This was precisely what pro-Israel proponents of regime change wanted to hear, so they backed Chalabi in return. Journalist Matthew Berger laid out the essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal:
The INC saw improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in replacing Saddam Hussein's regime.191
Given the neoconservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq and their influence in the Bush administration, it is not surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests. For example, Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee acknowledged in March 2005 that the belief that Israel and the neoconservatives conspired to get the United States into a war in Iraq was "pervasive" in the U.S. intelligence community.192Yet few people would say so publicly, and most who did — including Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) and Representative James Moran (D-VA) — were condemned for raising the issue.193Journalist Michael Kinsley put the point well in late 2002, when he wrote, "The lack of public discussion about the role of Israel … is the proverbial elephant in the room: Everybody sees it, no one mentions it."194The reason for this reluctance, he observed, was fear of being labeled an antisemite.
To be sure, the groups and individuals that pushed for war did not operate in a vacuum, and they did not lead the United States to war by themselves. As noted, the war would probably not have occurred absent the September 11 attacks, which helped convince President Bush and Vice President Cheney to support it. Still, neoconservatives like Wolfowitz, then-deputy defense secretary, were quick to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11 (even though there was no evidence he was involved), and portray his overthrow as critical to winning the war on terror. Thus, the lobby's actions were a necessary but not sufficient condition for war. Without its efforts, the United States would have been far less likely to have gone to war in March 2003."
