Dance of the Reptiles (30 page)

But neither Defense Secretary Rumsfeld nor myself intentionally pressured the CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI, or even FOX News to exaggerate the Iraqi menace for the purpose of mobilizing public opinion behind the war.

I still firmly believe that our worst fears about Saddam Hussein will prove well founded. And I’m sure that he had a perfectly good reason for not using his secret stash of poison gas and deadly germs against invading allied troops, even though he was desperate to avoid defeat.

It’s very possible that Saddam took a few weapons of mass destruction with him when he fled Baghdad. A lethal supply of smallpox, for example, could have fit easily in the glove compartment of his Range Rover. As time passes, we must
seriously consider the possibility that Saddam now intends to peddle these smuggled weapons to terrorist groups or countries hostile to the United States.

According to recent intelligence chatter, both Syria and Iran “really hate our guts.” Radical elements within those regimes would snap up Saddam’s weapons technology faster than you can say “Hans Blix.”

As you’re probably aware, American forces did discover two mobile biowarfare laboratories abandoned in Iraq. We know they’re biowarfare laboratories because they resemble the pinlike shapes on those grainy satellite photos that Secretary of State Powell showed to the United Nations—and Secretary Powell is a righteous stand-up guy.

Frankly, I was a little disappointed that no traces of actual bio-crud were found in the mobile labs, which evidently had been scrubbed clean with the Iraqi equivalent of extra-strength Comet. But you should have no doubt, my fellow Americans, as to the sinister purpose and intent of those facilities. Nor should you doubt our resolve to track down Saddam’s hidden arsenal of mass destruction no matter where the trail leads us, even to Iran.

Which, according to our most recent intelligence, is four times larger than California. So please don’t get your hopes too high.

November 30, 2003

Iraq Becomes Operation Sitting Duck

A few days ago, two American soldiers in Iraq were shot, dragged from a truck, and viciously beaten with concrete blocks. Their bodies were left on a dusty street in Mosul, a city once considered one of the safest for U.S. forces.

The murder and mutilation were carried out not by hardened
operatives of Al Qaeda but by a gang of Iraqi teenagers, the very generation for whom we’ve been battling to “liberate” the country.

For any civilians to act so barbarously shows a depth of hatred that is chilling. As the months drag on and the flag-draped coffins of fallen Americans keep arriving at Dover Air Force Base, the mission in Iraq makes less sense than ever. What are we doing there? Who are we fighting? How do we get out? The only question that now seems hollow is why we ever invaded in the first place.

The search for the phantom weapons of mass destruction has been reduced to a nightly punch line in Jay Leno’s monologue. No nukes, no anthrax, and no nerve gas have been found; nothing to justify President Bush’s prewar declaration that Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to global security.

So far, the most dangerous weapons uncovered are decidedly low-tech—pistols, rifles, homemade bombs, land mines, and RPGs fired from donkey-drawn wagons. Unfortunately, they’re doing a bang-up job of maiming and killing Americans. The atmosphere in Iraq remains so perilous that on Thanksgiving Day, Bush had to sneak into Baghdad on a darkened
Air Force One
.

Whether the war was launched on false pretenses or merely faulty intelligence will be argued endlessly. The grim fact is that we’re there now, and we’re stuck.

In Afghanistan, the mission was so clear. We were responding to a brazen attack against Americans on American soil. We knew who did it and where they were hiding. The international community was virtually united behind us.

Iraq is another story. Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant, but not even the White House claims that he played
a direct role in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The hijackers themselves weren’t Iraqis, nor were those who planned the crime. The man who approved it, Osama bin Laden, was known to detest Saddam. Yet here we are, mired in Iraq, our troops getting picked off by snipers, sappers, and roadside rocket jockeys. Call it Operation Sitting Duck.

The hawks in the administration gripe that the media is focusing only on the bad news out of Baghdad, but where’s the good news?

Last week, U.S. Col. William Darley told reporters that attacks by Iraqi insurgents against U.S. forces had declined from a high of 40 per day in mid-November to about 30 per day now. It hardly makes you want to pop the champagne, knowing that our troops are coming under fire more often than once an hour.

This holiday weekend concludes the bloodiest month for U.S. forces since the so-called end of major combat. More than 60 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire in November. As of Thanksgiving Day, a total of 183 had died since the president triumphantly jet-landed on that aircraft carrier May 1.

Technically, though, the White House was correct. Major combat in the conventional sense ended in Iraq. These days our soldiers are dying by ambush and assassination.

Despite somewhat muted media coverage—Michael Jackson’s arrest received more attention than the GI murders in Mosul—polls show that the war is increasingly a political liability for the White House. Efforts are accelerating to put a new Iraqi government in place.

Bringing the troops home, however, will be a long time
in coming. As long as Saddam Hussein remains at large, Bush will keep a sizable fighting force on the ground. His insistence that occupying Iraq is central to the war on terrorism grows more preposterous by the day. Saddam has disappeared, but the much larger evil of Al Qaeda has been lethally busy in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Meanwhile, bin Laden himself is still alive and making dire threats. He’s certainly not in Iraq, and nothing that happens in Iraq will bring us closer to catching him.

The grisly scene in Mosul last week recalled that infamous horror in Mogadishu a decade ago, when a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down and the mangled remains of U.S. servicemen were dragged through the streets by a celebratory mob.

It was a demoralizing episode for this country, but at least the soldiers in Somalia went down fighting. In Iraq the enemy is often unseen, indistinguishable from friendly civilians, and the shots and grenades come out of nowhere.

Troops who were trained to wage war are now courageously trying to wage peace. In such a role, they must be visible and ubiquitous in a land where they aren’t universally welcome.

The results have been deadly, though not unanticipated. The question for Bush is how long before the American people decide that the best exit plan is to elect a president with an exit plan.

February 22, 2004

Iraq War Is Boon for Halliburton

McDonald’s sells Happy Meals. Halliburton Co. sells invisible ones.

The mammoth defense firm once headed by Vice President
Dick Cheney has suspended outstanding food bills of $174.5 million until it can resolve an embarrassing dispute with the Pentagon. According to military officials, Halliburton invoiced the government for four million phantom meals that were never served to U.S. troops in Kuwait.

A Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, has the contract to feed all American service personnel in the war zone. Soldiers eat lots of food, and Halliburton has been making lots of money. Too much money, according to the army.

Earlier this month, Halliburton agreed to repay the U.S. government about $27.4 million that it had overbilled for meals at five military bases in Iraq and Kuwait. Auditors are currently reviewing the records at 53 other dining installations operated by KBR. The company says it has done nothing wrong and “is a good steward of taxpayers’ dollars.”

Back when Halliburton was given such a large and lucrative role in U.S.-occupied Iraq—it also got the contract to repair and refit the oil fields—the Bush administration denied that it was handing out favors to the Texas-based conglomerate. Americans were assured that the selection of Halliburton had nothing to do with the Cheney connection, a line that nobody with an IQ over 75 believed.

Not surprisingly, the decision is now backfiring. First came allegations that the firm was overcharging for gasoline being shipped to Iraq, a matter now under investigation by the Pentagon inspector general. Then, in January, the company admitted that two of its employees had pocketed enormous bribes from a Kuwaiti subcontractor servicing U.S. troops. Halliburton promptly coughed up a $6.3 million reimbursement check.

Americans aren’t naive about war. They know it’s a highly expensive enterprise and a profitable one for defense contractors. Still, there will be little public tolerance for findings of
price-gouging and overbilling by an outfit with ties to the vice president, who is nearly as invisible as Halliburton’s troop meals.

As the war in Iraq grows increasingly unpopular, the company’s windfall looks increasingly obscene. Democrats are already urging voters to connect the dots:

The White House wants us to believe it’s all coincidence, and maybe it is. Maybe someday I’ll win the Daytona 500, too. In a golf cart.

The war has been a spectacular boon for Halliburton, which last year raked in $3.4 billion for its work in Iraq—about 20 percent of the company’s total revenue, according to
Bloomberg News
. Wall Street investors are jolly as well. The price of Halliburton stock has shot up about 61 percent since the invasion.

Those are grand statistics indeed, until you stack them up against the half-trillion-dollar deficit that the country is now stuck with, thanks in large part to this pointless war. Or the zero weapons of mass destruction that have been found. Or the 545 U.S. soldiers who have so bravely given their lives on Iraqi soil. Two more were killed Thursday, blown up by a coward’s bomb on a road near Khaldiyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad.

The night before, the U.S. base at Abu Ghraib prison was
shelled for 20 solid minutes by unseen insurgents. Thirty-three mortars and five rockets were fired at our troops. Miraculously, none were killed.

Every day brings new attacks, and often a new bloodbath. The latest trend is suicide car bombers who target Iraqi police and civilians. Speaking of which, that’s one statistic nobody has nailed down—exactly how many thousands of Iraqi citizens have died since the bombs began to fall almost a year ago. Perhaps nobody in command knows for sure, or wants to.

Faced with gloomy polls, the Bush administration is eager to start withdrawing forces before the November election. It wouldn’t be the first time that a military exit strategy has been accelerated by political pressure. In the meantime, as U.S. diplomats and local religious leaders debate what kind of democracy the new Iraq should have, our troops will stay where they are—getting sniped at and bombed and rained with mortars.

Halliburton will get richer, even as it argues with the Pentagon over how many meals it’s actually serving to American units.

This week, sadly, there are at least two fewer soldiers on the food line.

June 20, 2004

Why We Went to War Awaits Honest Answer

It’s a good thing that Dick Cheney’s pacemaker doesn’t have a built-in polygraph.

The guy just can’t stick to the truth.

Last Monday he gave a speech in which he declared for the umpteenth time that Saddam Hussein had “long-established ties with Al Qaeda.” Two days later, the bipartisan
commission investigating the 9/11 attacks reported precisely the opposite, shooting another hole in the Bush administration’s flimsy rationale for invading Iraq.

The White House has steadfastly claimed that Hussein maintained close and sympathetic connections with Al Qaeda operatives. Staff reports released last week by the commission say that no such ties—long-standing or otherwise—can be found. This isn’t good news for the White House, which has righteously touted the Iraqi invasion as a blow against a strategic Al Qaeda ally. The vice president was, and continues to be, the loudest peddler of this myth.

While President Bush has never publicly suggested that Hussein played a role in the September 11 plot, Cheney hasn’t discounted the idea. As recently as January, he contended there was no proof “one way or another” regarding an Iraqi connection to the suicide hijackings.

Yet the 9/11 panel had very little trouble reaching a conclusion. It found no “collaborative relationship” between the Hussein regime and Al Qaeda and “no credible evidence” that Hussein was involved in the September 11 conspiracy. Moreover, the oft-cited April 2001 meeting between hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer never occurred, according to the commission staff. Telephone records and other evidence positively locate Atta here in Florida at the time he was supposedly in Prague, conspiring with the Iraqi operative.

The 9/11 panel, which includes Democrats and Republicans, portrays Osama bin Laden as the main architect of the September 11 plot. Not a single e-mail, cell-phone call, or even a fruit basket was found to have passed personally from bin Laden to Hussein, either before or after attack. According to the commission, bin Laden did meet with an Iraqi
intelligence officer in 1994, but nothing came of it. The Al Qaeda leader is reported “to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded,” according to the commission staff.

In recent months, as the 9/11 panel’s investigation has unfolded, Bush himself has said little about the increasingly imaginary Hussein–Al Qaeda connection. Cheney, however, hasn’t eased up. Never one to let facts clutter a good speech, the vice president is pitching the same line today that he did in advance of the war. And no one pitched the war more enthusiastically—to Congress, to foreign leaders, to Bush himself. The vice president is a persuasive fellow, and lots of folks believed what he told them. Maybe he believed it himself.