Jeffrey Hart: Letter to the Editor

By Jeffrey Hart | Friday, March 11, 2005

Sir,

I think everyone will agree that the debate between Victor Davis Hanson and Professor Ronald Edsforth was an outstanding occasion. Hanson's book Carnage and Culture should be read by everyone. It opened for me an entire new perspective on the way the West has fought its wars, and why it has won them.

One statement he makes in his interview with Daniel Linsalata [See TDR 2/11/05] deserves to have a question mark next to it. Speaking of Bush's invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hanson says: "If it is the policy of the United States government to go to war, and it has been ratified through democratic auspices, then you support it."

But:

When Congress agreed to the use of force it did so because it had been officially informed by the Bush administration, by Mr. Bush and other administration officials, that the United States was threatened by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, and biological.

It soon turned out that this was untrue. Saddam had no such weapons, and no present program to make them.

There exists abundant evidence to show that the Bush administration had every reason at the time to know that its claims about W.M.D. were weak, to put it mildly. Nor did Saddam Hussein have any ties with al Qaeda, as the administration frequently alleged or anything to do with 9-11, an allegation made repeatedly during the weeks leading up to the 2004 election.

C.I.A. experts doubted that Iraq had ordered any uranium ("yellowcake") from Niger. Yet Bush referred to this as a threat in a State of the Union address. Experts informed the administration that the "aluminum tubes," alleged to be intended for centrifuges used in preparing uranium for bombs, could not be used for that purpose.

Rockets alleged to threaten the entire Middle East did not exist.

David Frum, in his book The Right Man (2003), is very admiring of Mr. Bush. He does record, however, that in his job interview (January 2001) with chief speech-writer Michael Gerson for a White House speechwriter job, Gerson told him that the administration would topple Saddam Hussein, p. 26. This was eight months before 9-11. That intention is also reported in books by Ron Suskind on Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary (The Price of Loyalty, 2004) and by Richard Clarke, an intelligence specialist (Against All Enemies, 2004). It is also supported by Timothy Garton Ash in Free World (2004), p. 111.

Then there is that famous December 21st, 2002 briefing in the Oval Office, as reported by Bob Woodward in Plan of Attack (2004), p. 247-50. With C.I.A. Director George Tenet sitting on the couch, deputy director John McLaughlin, using charts and a pointer, briefed the president on Iraqi W.M.D. When he finished, Mr. Bush said that this would not satisfy Joe Citizen. Tenet slapped his knee and said, "It's a slam dunk." No, it wasn't. The ball rolled around the rim and out. In fact the National Intelligence Estimate of October 1st, 2002, on which the briefing was based, is full of doubts and qualifications.

Then we have that interview in Vanity Fair, Sam Tanenhaus interviewing Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. In answer to a question from Tanenhaus, Wolfowitz said that stressing W.M.D. as the reason for the invasion was a "bureaucratic" decision. It seems likely that Wolfowitz meant "saleable." But, saleable instead of what?

You do not have to get eyesore burrowing in the archives to find astonishing patterns of deception. For example:

· "On September 7st, 2002, Bush spoke of an International Atomic Energy Agency report indicating that Saddam was just 'six months from developing a [nuclear] weapon.' No such report existed." (Dana Milbank, "For Bush Facts are Malleable," Washington Post, October 22nd, 2002) The expression "malleable" has an almost oriental politeness.

· "On October 7st, 2002, Bush gave a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati, [claiming] that Saddam 'has trained [al Qaeda] members in bomb-making and deadly gasses.' His own intelligence officials disputed this. He also claimed that satellite photos showed that 'Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of [Saddam's] nuclear program in the past,' but when some two-hundred reporters visited the site, no sign of the nuclear weapons program existed." (John W. Dean, Worse Than Watergate (2004), p. 247-50.) Note: Famous for his testimony in the Watergate hearings, Dean has long since validated himself as a historian, and all of his claims, like these, are footnoted.

There is not enough room in this Dartmouth Review to expand this list of "malleable" statements. One more will suffice.

In the Baltimore Sun of October 24th, 2004, Julie Hirschfield covered an appearance of Condoleeza Rice on A.B.C.'s "This Week" of October 3rd. The upshot of Rice's remarks was that she, and the administration, were less certain than they sounded about W.M.D., but did not want to risk being wrong about the possibility.

But this begs the question: why not just level with the American people about just what information is solid, what less so, and let them make up their mind? I think no one wants to be vaporized.

And, of course, both Saddam and his generals knew that our satellites in the stratosphere would detect any missile launch. When they did, our missiles would rise out of their silos and Saddam, his generals, and Iraq itself would disappear from human history; the place where Iraq once was would glow in the dark for some time.

Why did the administration make a "bureaucratic" decision to sell W.M.D.? My guess is that its actual plan, to "democratize" Iraq, and through that render the Middle East less threatening, would never have passed Congress, or been accepted as plausible by the American people.

So much for Victor Davis Hanson's claim that the Iraq war was "ratified through democratic auspices."

Indeed, popular government is not necessarily peaceful. Nasser was wildly popular. So was Arafat. Hitler was enormously popular until he began to lose the war and the bombers flew over German cities. In fact, many Arab nations, if given a popular vote, would go for bin Laden. Certainly, Saudi Arabia would go for Osama.

Jeffrey Hart
Professor of English Emeritus
Lyme, New Hampshire
February 25th, 2005

Jeffrey Hart: Letter to the Editor

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