George W Bush Administration Propaganda for an Invasion of Iraq

The Absence of Evidence

Larry Hartenian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367558840
• eBook ISBN: 9781000382365
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Hartenian's history of George W Bush propaganda for an invasion of Iraq returns the administration's approach to its conceptual origins. Hartenian places "evidence" in the center of his analysis, showing that Rumsfeld's "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" meant that no evidence was necessary to justify an invasion. The 9/11 attacks, indeed, "changed everything" for the Bush administration and in its aftermath the time for regime change in Iraq had simply come.

With no good evidence to support its fears, the administration was certain of a post-9/11-conceived Iraq–al Qaeda "nexus," just as with no evidence except the "absence of evidence" it was certain of Iraqi mastery of "denial and deception" that hid "Saddam's" "evil" activities. Resting on Cheney's "one percent doctrine," administration "certainty" of the threat from Iraq required a US invasion.

The policy offices of Douglas Feith at the Pentagon, with the help of George Tenet at CIA, would generate a case of such fright and enormity—the "mushroom cloud"—that required administration action. Manipulating intelligence and ignoring the growing body of evidence undermining its case, the Bush administration invaded Iraq to bring about "regime change."

Part I
The Propaganda Build Up on Iraq in the First Year and One Half of the Bush Administration

1 Bush Administration Views on Iraq in 2001

The propaganda case made by the Bush administration to carry the United States to an invasion of Iraq was wide-ranging even as it focused on two primary issues: Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass destruction programs, and the nexus, i.e., Iraq passing such weapons to a terrorist group—al-Qaeda—to be used against the United States. The Bush administration case against Iraq and the campaign to convince the US public and Congress of this case went through various phases. In the months between George W Bush’s inauguration as president in January 2001 and the September 11, 2001 attacks, administration propaganda on Iraq was sporadic, though the framing of Saddam Hussein (not Iraq) was combative and consistent with what the public had been presented in previous years. Once the 9/11 attacks occurred, Bush administration public statements on Iraq became more belligerent even as the president announced that the United States would not attack Iraq in the first phase of the “war on terror.”

Features of this thinking and public treatment of Iraq in the first year of the Bush administration will be presented and discussed in this chapter along with insight into judgments of the intelligence community of the threat posed by Iraq, as well as how these judgments related to administration views. I will also present the articulation of the administration case for an invasion of Iraq as it was taking shape in 2001. Finally, the chapter will discuss the propagandistic role of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in generating bogus intelligence. The INC will feed this propaganda-as-intelligence to a hungry media as well as to a soliciting Department of Defense and the Office of the Vice President.

While I will frequently discuss WMD^* and Bush administration’s statements about them, my analysis and discussion will consistently be more focused on the most deadly of these, the alleged Iraqi nuclear weapons program. As will be made clear, it was the “nexus” that drove administration fears and actions.

* I note here at the outset that while I use “WMD” as an acronym to represent “­weapons of mass destruction” throughout this work, this is an unhappy decision. My problem with “WMD” is that in addition to denoting a category of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (and sometimes ballistic missiles), it was consistently used by the administration as a propagandistic term. The administration used it to conflate the threat of nuclear weapons with the threat posed by chemical and biological weapons. Confirmation (even if mistaken) that Iraq had one type of WMD was confirmation that Iraq had “WMD” tout court. Thus, use of the term raised the specter that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. The administration actively used this ambiguity to heighten fear. Whatever the case for Saddam Hussein, it was clear that for the administration, “The jewel in the crown is nuclear.” It is unfortunate—and testament to the propagandistic success of the Bush administration—that use of the acronym WMD when talking about the Saddam Hussein summons this specter. I use “WMD” because of its pervasive use by the administration, its universal currency at the time and its broad understanding since then.

Early Intelligence Building toward a Propaganda Case

The influence of neoconservatism in the George W Bush administration with its persistent call for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been well traced.¹ Indeed, the neoconservative call for “regime change” in Iraq was of long standing and thanks to their efforts it had become US policy in October 1998. In December 1999, George W Bush, campaigning as a Republican candidate for president, made the suggestive and garbled statement that if he became president and Saddam Hussein had WMD, he would “take ‘em out.” Had the president said “take him out,” meaning Saddam Hussein, or “take them out,” meaning WMD?² Candidate Bush was at pains to clarify that he meant he would take “them,” the WMD, out. In the spring, Stephen Hadley, one of candidate Bush’s Vulcan advisors, clarified the point anew for a group of Republican policymakers, noting that the “number-one foreign policy agenda” of a George W Bush administration would be the “unfinished business of removing Saddam Hussein from power.”³

In early January 2001, prior to Bush’s inauguration, Vice President-elect Cheney arranged a special briefing for the incoming president from the outgoing Secretary of Defense William S Cohen. The president needed to be “briefed up,” and the first topic would be Iraq.⁴ Once the candidate became president, Iraq was on the agenda. Indeed, author Ron Suskind, basing his writing on the recollections and documents of Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, quotes O’Neil that as of January 30, 2001—10 days into the new president’s first 4-year term—“Getting Hussein was now the administration’s focus….” The discussion was about the “hows,” not the “whys.” At the administration’s first National Security Council (NSC) principals meeting—led by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and with a prepared briefing by Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet—Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton were instructed by the president to “examine our military options” against Iraq.⁵ Tenet unfurled a grainy surveillance photo of a factory that might produce materials for chemical and biological weapons (CBW), though there was “no confirming evidence.”⁶ At the second meeting of the NSC, when Secretary of State Colin Powell took up the subject of “targeted sanctions” against Iraq, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld interrupted saying, “Sanctions are fine…But what we really need to think about is going after Saddam.”⁷ In addition, it was within weeks of Bush coming into office that the president authorized US strikes beyond the no-fly zones in Iraq.⁸

Despite this early and bellicose focus, President Bush did not set in motion plans for regime change in Iraq in the first 8 months of his administration.⁹ Rather, in the months and days prior to the 9/11 attacks, the administration was more actively focused on another long-standing Rumsfeld concern, that of ballistic missile defense. Missile defense garnered most foreign policy attention even as the administration essentially ignored the warnings of an al-Qaeda terrorist threat that was being pressed on them from numerous sources.

Highlighting administration attitudes to warnings of an impending al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the United States, Joseph Cirincione at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace remarked that for the administration, “Terrorists were just a distraction.”¹⁰ However, along with everything else, 9/11 changed the president’s and vice president’s views on foreign policy priorities: not only would the al-Qaeda attack be responded to with a “war on terror,” but “regime change” in Iraq was now on the to-do list.¹¹

From September 11, 2001 up until the United States invaded Iraq on the president’s orders, the public case of the Bush administration on Iraq had a varied and shifting relationship to the intelligence analysis provided by the US IC. Certainly, however, the IC was beset by a range of the same assumptions about Iraq as the administration. A quick glimpse back at US intelligence assessments of Iraqi capabilities will provide some helpful context.

From the end of the 1991 Gulf War¹² to the publication of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s continuing programs for WMD, there were a number of “coordinated assessments regarding possible Iraqi nuclear programs.”

These assessments consistently concluded that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) had destroyed or neutralized Iraq’s pre-Gulf War nuclear infrastructure and that Iraq did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.¹³

Subsequent IC assessments were consistent in claiming that:

• Iraq had maintained some of the intellectual capital and physical infrastructure necessary for a nuclear weapons program.
• Iraq continued to procure “dual use” technologies (i.e., with both nuclear and non-nuclear potential uses).
• Iraq continued low-level, clandestine theoretical research and training of personnel….
• If Iraq decided to restart a nuclear weapons program, with proper foreign assistance, Iraq could produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon within 5 to 7 years.
• If Iraq in some way acquired adequate fissile material from a foreign source, it could produce a nuclear weapon within 1 year.¹⁴

Based on these conclusions, these assessments were furthermore in agreement that, “Iraq did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.”¹⁵ In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, a December 2001 NIE on Foreign Missile Developments noted that, “Recent Iraqi procurements…suggest possible preparation for a renewed uranium enrichment program.”¹⁶ While this suggestion of “possible preparation” was seen as a slight shift in thinking within the IC, it was still consistent with the view that it did not appear that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.¹⁷ As noted, it was not until the October 2002 NIE on Iraq’s continuing programs for WMD (henceforth October 2002 NIE) that the IC put forth the judgment that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, which still at that time was not a unanimous judgment within the IC.

While my analytical focus here is on IC assessment of Iraqi nuclear programs and weapons, it is also important to note IC assessments of Iraqi biological weapons (BW) and chemical weapons (CW) when President Bush entered office. Regarding BW, the IC view was that programs had continued since the Gulf War, were revitalized and expanded since the suspension of UNSCOM inspections in December 1998 and were now capable of producing BW agents. Reporting from “Curveball,” the infamous German intelligence asset, raised fears of mobile bioweapons labs. Regarding CW, the IC judged that Iraq had stockpiles, which were or could be weaponized and be militarily useful. Limited Iraqi production of CW agents “could not be ruled out.”¹⁸

When in the aftermath of invasion US forces failed to find either WMD or active WMD programs in Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I The Propaganda Build Up on Iraq in the First Year and One Half of the Bush Administration
• Part II Bush Administration Vigorous Propaganda for an Invasion of Iraq
• Part III Shock and Awe
• Works Cited
• Index