Stateside with Rosalea: Lest We Forget

With all the hoopla a couple of weeks back about the end of US combat operations in Iraq, I thought I’d put together a compilation of Statesides from the war years, but I’ve got something even better for you. The National Security Archive, “an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, DC,” today released the first of a three-part series of documents detailing the run up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Part 1 covers the first year of the George W Bush presidency, and the next two parts will “treat the question of whether the Bush administration ever seriously considered alternative strategies for Iraq and how the U.S. and Great Britain attempted to sell the war strategy to the world.” They will include documents newly declassified by the British Government

The NSArchive Electronic Briefing Book includes a timeline (pdf) going back as far as 1985, and a selection of quotes (pdf), including this little gem from September 2000 ascribed to the Project for the New American Century regarding the need for the US military to project uncontestable power : “Further, the process of transformation even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event– like a new Pearl Harbor.”

One of the featured documents is the notes for a briefing Donald Rumsfeld gave then-Central Command chief Tommy Franks in November 2001. In handwriting at the bottom, it says: “Influence Campaign… when begin?” and “Next steps”.

I clearly remember one of my next steps just over a year later. I was walking to work one morning listening on a transistor radio to Colin Powell giving his presentation to the United Nations about the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein supposedly had. Anybody with half a brain could tell it was all a fabricated excuse to invade a country that had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, yet there he was giving this “evidence” and you just knew the world’s media would suck it up and spit it out undigested and uninvestigated.

“You lying bastard!” I said to myself (probably out loud). I was so angry that I wasn’t watching where I was going and almost tripped on the kerb as I was crossing a street. (Okay, so that’s more of a mis-step than a step, but you get the idea. And to be truthful, some people soon recovered from their ingestion of the accompanying Kool Aid, as this editorial cartoon shows.)

Of course, you have to wonder why all this material is being declassified now. For example, Document 11 in the Briefing Book is a State Department Intelligence Assessment from August 2002 outlining the Seven Principles of a Just War, as expounded by Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius circa 1600 but updated to fit with the “influence campaign” strategy. Its declassification date was to be ten years later—in August 2012.

Whatever. You should read the analytical essay on the home page, and click through to the documents to remind yourself why thousands of US military personnel died, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis lost their lives or limbs, health, wellbeing, and way of life while Bush Jr. tried to emulate his Daddy, and the military-industrial complex profited to the tune of trillions of dollars glad-handed to them by the ever-credulous US taxpayer, courtesy of their elected (?) representatives in Congress.

Oh, and lest we forget: “The present state of things is the consequence of the past; and it is natural to enquire into the sources of the good we enjoy and the evils we suffer.” Ben Jonson, also circa 1600.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--Peace—

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