What I heard about Iraq...

[itzamirakul]

What I Heard about Iraq
Eliot Weinberger
The London Review of Books
Thursday 03 February 2005 Issue

<snip>
In 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq?. I heard him say: The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: not that damned many.

In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.

That same month, I heard that a CIA report stated: We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

In July 2001, I heard Condoleezza Rice say: We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.

On 11 September 2001, six hours after the attacks, I heard that Donald Rumsfeld said that it might be an opportunity to hit Iraq. I heard that he said: Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.

I heard that Condoleezza Rice asked: How do you capitalise on these opportunities?

I heard that on 17 September the president signed a document marked top secret that directed the Pentagon to begin planning for the invasion and that, some months later, he secretly and illegally diverted $700 million approved by Congress for operations in Afghanistan into preparing for the new battle front.

<snip>
I heard the president say that Iraq is a threat of unique urgency, and that there is no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

I heard the vice president say: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

I heard the president tell Congress: The danger to our country is grave. The danger to our country is growing. The regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.

I heard him say: The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or, some day, a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.

I heard the president, in the State of the Union address, say that Iraq was hiding materials sufficient to produce 25,000 litres of anthrax, 38,000 litres of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and nerve gas.

<snip>
I heard the president say: Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent. I would not be so certain.

I heard Colin Powell at the United Nations say: They can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard gas, 30,000 empty munitions, and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.

I heard him say: Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

I heard the president say: Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. I heard him say that Iraq could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.

I heard Tony Blair say: We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.

I heard the president say: We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraq regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

I heard the vice president say: There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government. I am very confident there was an established relationship there.

I heard Colin Powell say: Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply not credible.

I heard Condoleezza Rice say: There clearly are contacts between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein that can be documented.

I heard the president say: You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam.
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: Imagine a September 11th with weapons of mass destruction. It's not three thousand it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

<snip>
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people.

I heard the president, bristling with irritation, say: This business about more time, how much time do we need to see clearly that he's not disarming He is delaying. He is deceiving. He is asking for time. He's playing hide-and-seek with inspectors. One thing is for certain: he's not disarming. Surely our friends have learned lessons from the past. This looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I'm not interested in watching it.
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say he would present no specific evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction because it might jeopardise the military mission by revealing to Baghdad what the United States knows.

I heard that Iraq would fire its long-range Scud missiles equipped with chemical or biological warheads at Israel, to portray the war as a battle with an American-Israeli coalition and build support in the Arab world.

I heard that Saddam had elaborate and labyrinthine underground bunkers for his protection, and that it might be necessary to employ B61 Mod 11 nuclear 'bunker-buster' bombs to destroy them.

I heard the vice president say that the war would be over in weeks rather than months.

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

I heard Donald Rumsfeld say there was no question that American troops would be welcomed: Go back to Afghanistan, the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and al-Qaida would not let them do.

I heard the vice president say: The Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy. Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced.

I heard that the president said to the television evangelist Pat Robertson: Oh, no, were not going to have any casualties.

I heard the president say that he had not consulted his father about the coming war: You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to.

I heard the prime minister of the Solomon Islands express surprise that his was one of the nations enlisted in the coalition of the willing: I was completely unaware of it.
I heard the president tell the Iraqi people, on the night before the invasion began: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror. And we will help you build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbours, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.

I heard an official from the Red Crescent say: On one stretch of highway alone, there were more than fifty civilian cars, each with four or five people incinerated inside, that sat in the sun for ten or fifteen days before they were buried nearby by volunteers. That is what there will be for their relatives to come and find. War is bad, but its remnants are worse.

I heard Anmar Uday, the doctor who had cared for Private Jessica Lynch, say: We heard the helicopters. We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military. There were no soldiers in the hospital. It was like a Hollywood film. They cried "Go, go, go," with guns and flares and the sound of explosions. They made a show: an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors. All the time with cameras rolling.

I heard Private Jessica Lynch say: They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff. It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Of the stories that she had bravely fought off her captors, and suffered bullet and stab wounds, I heard her say: I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do. Of her dramatic rescue, I heard her say: I don't think it happened quite like that.'

I heard the Red Cross say that casualties in Baghdad were so high that the hospitals had stopped counting.

I heard an old man say, after 11 members of his family children and grandchildren were killed when a tank blew up their minivan: Our home is an empty place. We who are left are like wild animals. All we can do is cry out.

As the riots and looting broke out, I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: It's untidy, and freedom's untidy.

<snip>

I heard Colin Powell say: I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it now.
I heard the president say: We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, west, south and north, somewhat.

I heard Richard Perle tell Americans to relax and celebrate victory. I heard him say: The predictions of those who opposed this war can be discarded like spent cartridges.

I heard that Pentagon planners had predicted that US troop levels would fall to 30,000 by the end of the summer.

I heard that Paul Bremer's first act as director of the Coalition Provisional Authority was to fire all senior members of the Baath Party, including 30,000 civil servants, policemen, teachers and doctors, and to dismiss all 400,000 soldiers of the Iraqi army without pay or pensions. Two million people were dependent on that income. Since America supports private gun ownership, the soldiers were allowed to keep their weapons.

I heard that hundreds were being kidnapped and raped in Baghdad alone; that schools, hospitals, shops and factories were being looted; that it was impossible to restore the electricity because all the copper wire was being stolen from the power plants.

I heard that 25,000 Iraqi civilians were dead.

I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger, then campaigning for governor, in Baghdad for a special showing to the troops of Terminator 3, say: It is really wild driving round here, I mean the poverty, and you see there is no money, it is disastrous financially and there is the leadership vacuum, pretty much like California.

I heard that the army was wrapping entire villages in barbed wire, with signs that read: This fence is here for your protection. Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot. In one of those villages, I heard a man named Tariq say: I see no difference between us and the Palestinians.

I heard Colonel Nathan Sassaman say: With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them.

I heard Richard Perle say: Next year at about this time, I expect there will be a really thriving trade in the region, and we will see rapid economic development. And a year from now, Ill be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad named after President Bush.

I heard that air force regulations require that any airstrike likely to result in the deaths of more than 30 civilians be personally approved by the secretary of defense, and I heard that Donald Rumsfeld approved every proposal.

I heard the marine colonel say: We napalmed those bridges. Unfortunately, there were people there. It's no great way to die. I heard the Pentagon deny they were using napalm, saying their incendiary bombs were made of something called Mark 77, and I heard the experts say that Mark 77 was another name for napalm.

I heard a marine describe 'dead-checking': They teach us to do dead-checking when we're clearing rooms. You put two bullets into the guy's chest and one in the brain. But when you enter a room where guys are wounded, you might not know if they're alive or dead. So they teach us to dead-check them by pressing them in the eye with your boot, because generally a person, even if he's faking being dead, will flinch if you poke him there. If he moves, you put a bullet in the brain. You do this to keep the momentum going when you're flowing through a building. You don't want a guy popping up behind you and shooting you.

I heard the president say: We're rolling back the terrorist threat, not on the fringes of its influence but at the heart of its power.

When the death toll of American soldiers reached 500, I heard Brigadier-General Kimmitt say: "I don't think the soldiers are looking at arbitrary figures such as casualty counts as the barometer of their morale. They know they have a nation that stands behind them."

I heard an American soldier, standing next to his Humvee, say: "We liberated Iraq. Now the people here don't want us here, and guess what, We don't want to be here either. So why are we still here? Why don't they bring us home?"

I heard Colin Powell say: "We did not expect it would be quite this intense this long."

I heard the president say: "We found biological laboratories. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.

I heard that this was the first American president in wartime who had never attended a funeral for a dead soldier. I heard that photographs of the flag-draped coffins returning home were banned. I heard that the Pentagon had renamed body bags 'transfer tubes'.

I heard Brigadier-General Kimmitt deny that civilians were being killed: "We run extremely precise operations focused on people we have intelligence on for crimes of violence against the Coalition and against the Iraqi people. And later I heard him say that marines were being fired on from crowds containing women and children, and that the marines had fired back only in self-defence.

I heard that the US military had purchased 1,500,000,000 bullets for use in the coming year. That is 58 bullets for every Iraqi adult and child.

Entire article at:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n03/wein01_.html