Letter to my Iraq War supporter friend

A friend wrote to me about why she thought President Bush was right to order our troops to invade Iraq. Part of her reasoning was that we had to do something to respond to the 9-11-01 attacks on the USA. I responded as follows:

Hello Jane,

As much as I oppose the Iraq War, and the lawless behavior of Bush and Cheney in the name of a “War on Terror,” I will still love you even if you totally disagree with me.

I voted for Bush in 2000 and was thrilled that he won the election. I thought he was great. But my opinion began to change when Bush and Cheney led us into war in Iraq. Since then, I’ve learned much more about their repeated violations of the Constitution.

JANE WROTE: “I would like to know how the democrats think any president should have responded to the 9/11 attacks on our country. WE did not declare war, THEY did by their violent actions. I’m seriously interested to know what course of action should have been taken.”

PATRICK'S RESPONSE: The 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were done by members of Al Queda, under the leadership of Osama Bin Ladin. Bin Ladin was in Afghanistan (not Iraq) and Al Queda training camps were in Afghanistan (not Iraq), and so any president would have been justified to attack those training camps and trying to hunt down Bin Ladin.

And, since the Taliban (the radical Muslim leaders of Afghanistan) were evidently supporting Al Queda and Bin Ladin, it made sense to attack them as well. The author of the article I recommended was not critical of THAT response to the 9/11 attacks. And I have never criticized the president for that.

The article was critical of Bush's decision to invade IRAQ. A war on Al Queda, Bin Ladin, and the Taliban in Afghanistan made sense; but Saddam Hussein and Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Nothing. (Anyone who tells you differently about that is badly misinformed. Bush himself doesn't even believe that anymore.)

So why did we invade Iraq? Because, according to Bush and Cheney:
(1) Saddam Hussein was connected to Al Queda and (2) he possessed WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) and (3) he was close to having a nuclear bomb.

None of that was true, as we now know. The way that Bush and Cheney convinced Congress to go along with their plan to invade was to "cherry pick" the intelligence information about Iraq, and make it look like there really was good evidence for those 3 accusations -- even though the intelligence reports were not unanimous about those things. So Bush and Cheney and company just didn't include the intelligence reports that disputed those 3 accusations. That has been documented by several people who were in intelligence agencies at the time.

General Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, was originally against the invasion and told Bush that "If you break it, you own it." In other words, the most experienced military person in the Administration, was concerned that an invasion would lead to a very expensive occupation. He was right. But Bush and Cheney eventually got him to try to "sell" their accusations to the United Nations. The U.N. didn't vote for war, but Powell's speech at the U.N. made it look like we were going through proper channels, in a sense.

There were voices of protest raised when Bush and Cheney began to beat the drums for war against Iraq. Scott Ritter, former Marine who fought in the first Gulf War under Bush’s dad, had served in Iraq for years a U.N. weapons inspector. I heard him in person at Boise State University in 2002. He said that his multi-person team of inspectors could go anywhere they wanted to in Iraq, and they didn’t have to give the Iraqis any advance notice. They could start out one direction and then split up and go two different directions for inspections. And Ritter was SURE that the Iraqis didn’t have any Weapons of Mass Destruction anymore. And he was SURE that Saddam Hussein was not connected to the radical, fundamentalist Muslim group Al Queda.

Saddam was not a fundamentalist Muslim in the way they are; he was more of a secular Muslim. For example, he allowed Christians to worship freely in his country, and even had a Christian as part of his cabinet. (I’m not arguing that Saddam was a nice guy, by any means. He was a brutal dictator. My point is that he was not a radical, fundamentalist Muslim like Osama Bin Ladin and members of Al Queda.)

Ritter wasn’t the only one raising a voice of protest against the idea of invading Iraq based on those 3 accusations. Former Ambassador Joe Wilson went to Niger, Africa – with his expenses paid by the CIA – to check out the story that Bush and Cheney had told about Saddam Hussein obtaining uranium yellowcake in Africa (for the supposed purpose of making nuclear weapons). Ambassador Wilson found out it was not true. He exposed the misleading information in writing, in order to warn against going to war against Iraq. For that heroic action, someone in the Bush Administration “outed” Ambassador Wilson’s wife, secret CIA operative Valerie Plame. In other words, they blew her cover, letting the public know that she was a CIA member, which pretty much ruined her career and even put her life in danger. Maybe you’ll remember how a special prosecutor investigated that and eventually prosecuted Cheney’s right hand man, Scooter Libby, for lying to a grand jury.

If you want to see some documentation for the above, read the articles at these websites: http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/04/int04023.html and http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm

There were also voices of protest within the intelligence communities. But Bush and Cheney pressed on and kept insisting that Saddam had WMDs and was connected to the Al Queda terrorists, and they clearly and repeatedly implied that Saddam was connected to the 9/11 attacks. All of that was untrue. If you can find anyone who believes any of that anymore, please tell them that Bush and Cheney don’t even believe those things anymore. (I don’t know that they ever did believe those things; but they used those lies to “sell” the war to Congress and the country.)

Since Bush and Cheney took us to war in Iraq, they failed to hunt down Osama Bin Ladin and they sent so many military forces to Iraq that could have gone to Afghanistan to stabilize that situation, so now the Afghanistan situation looks more unstable, and the Taliban are gaining ground there.

Along with going to war against Iraq (a country that had NOTHING to do with 9/11), Bush and Cheney have carried on a lawless campaign in the name of a “war on terror”:

1. They have tapped phone lines without court oversight.
2. They have , and having people arrested and imprisoned without trials,
3. They have used torture to try to get information from prisoners.

Any true conservative ought to be totally embarrassed by their lawless behavior.

Beyond all of that, their unnecessary war has had a terrible cost in blood and money. As of April 25, 2008…

1. Conservative estimates say that at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. Other estimates say the death toll has been much, much higher – possibly exceeding 1 million Iraqi deaths. (I’m not saying that all these Iraqis were killed by our military. But I am saying that they have died as a result of a war that the United States started.)
2. Multitudes of Iraqis have been uprooted, being forced to move from their homes to some safer area in Iraq or out of the country.
3. A huge amount of the Iraqi infrastructure has been destroyed.
4. 4,052 American military personnel have died.
5. 29,829 have been wounded – many of those are maimed for life.
6. Countless others are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a condition that may affect them the rest of their lives.
7. The monetary cost is at $514 billion and counting.

Here’s some of the websites where I found information for the above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/iraq

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

And what have we gained from this unnecessary war? A country led by a Shiite majority government that is very friendly to Iran! (I will resist the temptation to talk about how Bush and Cheney have tried to lead us into war against Iran – another unnecessary war, in my opinion.)

Your patriotic friend (i.e., supporter of the Constitution, not any particular president or politician),

Patrick Mulhaney