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CounterPunch
February
25, 2003
Powell Warned Bush
Last Year of Bloody Iraq War
Unjustified
Warfare
by JASON LEOPOLD
If the United States decides to wage a war with
Iraq without the full support of the United Nations it will be
"much more complicated and bloody" than the siege in
Afghanistan after 9-11 and the first Gulf War combined, Secretary
of State Colin Powell warned President Bush privately early last
year, Bob Woodward wrote in the book "Bush
at War."
"It's nice to say you can do it
unilaterally," Powell said to Bush about attacking Iraq,
Woodward wrote. "Except you can't. A successful military
plan would require we need allies... International support has
to be garnered."
So what has changed between the time
Powell warned Bush about alienating a majority of our allies
in the United Nations and now, when Powell's rhetoric before
the U.N. Security Council this month is understood to mean that
if the U.N. doesn't back a full-scale war with Iraq the U.S.
and Britain will attack Iraq alone if necessary?
Absolutely nothing. Despite the fact
that Powell has recently changed his tone before the U.N., he
knows full well that if the U.S. made good on its threats it
will face a bloody battle in the Iraqi desert or on the streets
of Baghdad.
A "unilateral war would be tough,
close to impossible" Powell told Bush, according to Woodward's
book.
One can only assume that Powell's sudden
departure from the earlier warnings he made to the President
is just Powell being a team player and agreeing with the "hawks"
even though he knows better, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political
and media analyst at the University of Southern California's
school of Public Policy and Development.
"If anything, international support
for a war in Iraq has eroded over the past five months,"
Jeffe said. "So it's likely that those risks Powell presented
to President Bush last year still exist. Powell's rhetoric is
just that. He knows better having spent most of his life in the
military that without international support the U.S. is facing
a dangerous situation if it decides to go to war alone."
Dr. Hussein Shahristani, once Iraq's
top nuclear scientist who spent 11 years in solitary confinement
for refusing Saddam Hussein's order to build an atomic bomb,
said in an interview Sunday on 60 Minutes that he believes the
U.S. is rushing into a war without fully understanding the threat
it faces. Shahristani was tortured for refusing to comply with
the Saddam's order and fled Iraq during the first Gulf War. He
said would like nothing more than to see Saddam removed from
power but he warned the Bush Administration not to start a war
with Iraq without the support of the U.N.
As the U.S. moves closer to war it's
important to take another look at how the Bush Administration
got here and how through lying, manipulation and with the events
that brought this country to its knees, the Bush Administration
has used this in attempt to make a case for war.
Of the half-dozen books that have been
written about Bush since he was sworn into office two years ago,
the recurring theme throughout all of them is the strong desire
by the Administration to find a reason to start a war with Iraq--be
it allegations that the country is concealing weapons of mass
destruction or using 9-11 as an excuse to launch an immediate
assault--without caring about how such a war would alienate the
U.N. and the public or the fact that the U.S. cannot make a good
case to justify a war with Iraq.
Woodward wrote in "Bush at War"
that Vice President Dick Cheney was "hell bent for action
against Saddam. It was as if nothing else existed."
Following the 9-11 terrorist attacks
on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, Woodward wrote that
Rumsfeld "could take advantage of the terrorist attacks
and make Iraq a target immediately."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
said, without a shred of evidence to back it up, that there was
a 10 to 50 percent chance that Saddam Hussein was involved in
9-11, Woodward wrote.
David Frum, the former White House speechwriter
who coined the phrase "Axis of Evil," wrote in "The
Right Man," his book about the year he spent in the Bush
Administration, that the U.S. received intelligence information
from Czechoslovakia that it could not confirm that a meeting
took place between Mohammed Atta, the lead 9-11 hijacker, and
an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001 "suggesting
some degree of cooperation between the al-Qaeda and the Iraqi
dictator."
That information, which has never been
confirmed by U.S. intelligence, according to Frum, became the
excuse the Bush Administration would use to attack Iraq and link
9-11 to Saddam Hussein. But according to Woodward, who spent
ample time with Bush before writing his book, the President had
no evidence that Iraq was involved in 9-11. He only had a gut
feeling.
"I believe Iraq was involved but
I am not going to strike them now. I don't have the evidence
at this point," Bush said to his war cabinet, which includes
Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell and Wolfowitz, Woodward wrote.
Hard evidence linking Iraq to 9-11 never
materialized. Still, the Bush Administration debated the idea
of using 9-11 as an excuse to attack Iraq and remove Saddam from
power, which Frum wrote in his book "was quite a gamble
but also quite a prize."
But it was Powell who was the lone dissenter
and told Bush that he must put Iraq on the backburner and focus
on dismantling al-Qaeda cells because "Americans were focused
on al-Qaeda, Woodward's book says.
Moreover, Powell told Bush that if he
does consider attacking Iraq it's crucial that he gets the public's
support first. Bush said recently, in response to the millions
of anti-war protestors who marched in opposition to a war with
Iraq last week, that the anti-war movement will not sway his
efforts to use military force against Iraq if necessary.
"Any action needs public support,"
Powell told Bush, Woodward wrote in his book. "It's not
what the international coalition supports it's what the American
people want to support."
The American people have spoken.
Jason Leopold
can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
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