The Sorrows of Empire (57 page)

8
. David Morgan, “Ex-U.S. Official Says CIA Aided Ba’athists,” Reuters, April 20, 2003, posted on
CommonDreams.org,
May 19, 2003; CBS News, “Profile: Saddam Hussein,” April 8, 2003; Richard Sale, “Saddam Key in Early CIA Plot,” United Press International, April 10, 2003; “Bush Topples an Old U.S. Ally,”
SocialistWorkerOnline,
April 18, 2003.

9
. Michael Dobbs, “U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup; Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds,”
Washington Post,
December 30, 2002; and “Arming Iraq: A Chronology of U.S. Involvement,” March 17, 2003, <
http://www.rehberg.net/arming-iraq.html
>.

10
. Tony Paterson, “Leaked Report Says German and U.S. Firms Supplied Arms to Saddam,”
Independent,
December 18, 2002;
Die Tageszeitung
(Berlin), December 20, 2002; and James Cusick and Felicity Arbuthnot, “America Tore Out 8,000 Pages of Iraq Dossier,”
Sunday Herald
(Scotland), December 22, 2002. Also see Russ W. Baker, “Iraqgate,”
Columbia Journalism Review,
March/April 1993; Christian Dewar, “Arming Iraq: How George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan Helped Iraq Develop Weapons of Mass Destruction,”
Democratic Underground,
December
13, 2002; Stephen Green, “Rumsfeld’s Account Book: Who Armed Saddam?”
CounterPunch,
February 24, 2003; Paul Rockwell, “Who Armed Iraq?”
San Francisco Chronicle,
March 2, 2003; and “Yes, U.S. Helped Iraq Get Chemical, Biological Weapons,”
Belleville News-Democrat
(Southern Illinois and St. Louis metropolitan area), April 20, 2003, <
http://www.belleville.com/mld/newsdemocrat/5674107.htm
>.

11
. Jeremy Scahill, “What about Those Chemical Weapons? The Saddam in Rummy’s Closet,”
CounterPunch,
August 2, 2002. For other discussions of the United States’ supply of poison gas and germ warfare feeder stocks to Iraq during its 1980s war with Iran, see Eric Margolis, “Old Dreams of Empire Dance in Blair’s Head,”
Toronto Sun,
March 31, 2002; Patrick E. Tyler, “Iraqi Gas Use Didn’t Stop U.S. Aid in ‘88,”
(New York Times
News Service),
San Diego Union-Tribune,
August 18, 2002; Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot, “How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them,”
Sunday Herald
(Scotland), September 8, 2002; Robert Novak, “Following Iraq’s Bioweapons Trail,”
Chicago Sun-Times,
September 26, 2002; Matt Kelley, “U.S. Supplied Germs to Iraq in ‘80s,” Associated Press, September 30, 2002; Elson E. Boles, “Helping Iraq Kill with Chemical Weapons,”
CounterPunch,
October 10, 2002; Jost R. Hiltermann, “America Didn’t Seem to Mind Poison Gas,”
International Herald Tribune,
January 17, 2003; Stephen C. Pelletiere, “A War Crime or an Act of War?”
New York Times,
January 31, 2003; and Philip Shenon, “Iraq Links Germs for Weapons to U.S. and France,”
New York Times,
March 16, 2003.

12
. Ritt Goldstein, “Oil Wars Pentagon’s Policy since 1999,”
Sydney Morning Herald,
May 20, 2003.

13
. CBS News, as reported in
New York Times,
September 5,2002, p. A10; Bob Woodward,
Bush at War
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), pp. 49, 60–61; Chris Bury, “A Tortured Relationship: U.S.-Iraq Relations. Part 2: War,” ABC News, September 18, 2002; Michael T. Klare, “Scheduling War,” February 12, 2003, <
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=391
>; and Stephen Fidler, “Just When
Did
the President Decide to Go to War?”
Financial Times,
March 27, 2003.

14
. Robert Kagan and William Kristol, eds.,
Present Dangers: Crisis and
Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy
(San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000); and
Rebuilding America’s Defenses,
<
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
>, s.v.RebuildingAmericanDefensespdf>. On PNAC and the backgrounds of the neoconservatives in the second Bush administration, see Elisabeth Bumiller and Eric Schmitt, “On the Job and at Home, Influential Hawks’ 30-Year Friendship Evolves,”
New York Times,
September 11, 2002; Tom Barry and Jim Lobe, “The Men Who Stole the Show,”
Foreign Policy in Focus,
October 2002; Steven R. Weisman, “Abrams Back in Capital Fray at Center of Mideast Battle,”
New York Times,
December 7, 2002; Glenn Kessler, “U.S. Decision on Iraq Has Puzzling Past,”
Washington Post,
January 12, 2003; ABC News, “The Plan: Were Neo-Conservatives’ 1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?” March 10, 2003; and William O. Beeman, “Military Might: The Man behind ‘Total War’ in the Mideast,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
May 14, 2003.

15
. PNAC,
Rebuilding America’s Defenses,
p. 51; and Nicholas Lemann, “The Next World Order,”
New Yorker,
April 1, 2002, p. 44. I am indebted to John Pilger for drawing my attention to PNAC’s activities. See his article in the
New Statesman,
December 16, 2002.

16
. Scott Ritter, “Is Iraq a True Threat to the U.S.?”
Boston Globe,
July 20, 2002. On April 5, 2003, British Home Secretary David Blunkett admitted that no weapons of mass destruction were likely to be found in Iraq because they did not exist. See al-Jazerra (English), April 6, 2003.

17
.
PNAC, Rebuilding America’s Defenses,
p. 14.

18
. See Tom Regan, “When Contemplating War, Beware of Babies in Incubators,”
Christian Science Monitor,
September 6, 2002; Associated Press, “Not All Iraq Claims Backed by Evidence,” December 22, 2002; and Mitchell Cohen, “How Bush Sr. Sold the Bombing of Iraq,”
CounterPunch,
December 28, 2002.

19
. See Victoria Samson, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Iraq’s ‘Secret’ Weapon?” Center for Defense Information, Terrorism Project, October 10, 2002.

20
. The most important source on this subject is Seymour Hersh, “A Case Not Closed,”
New Yorker,
November 1,1993.

21
. Stephen Zunes,
Tinderbox: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Roots of Terrorism
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2003), p. 86; Robert Dreyfuss, “Persian Gulf—or Tonkin Gulf?”
American Prospect
13:23 (December 2002); and Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Shows Videos of Iraq Firing at Allied Jets,”
New York Times,
October 1, 2002.

22
. James Harding, Richard Wolffe, and James Blitz, “U.S. Will Rebuild Iraq as Democracy, Says Rice,”
Financial Times,
September 22, 2002.

23
. Anthony Sampson, “West’s Greed for Oil Fuels Saddam Fever,”
Observer,
August 11, 2002. On the younger Bush’s dubious past as a member of the board of Harken Energy Corporation of Houston, see “Bush Was Told of Risks before Stock Sale: Harken Memo Went to SEC after Probe,”
Boston Globe,
October 30, 2002; and Michael Lind,
Made in Texas
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 102–3. For a summary of American oil machinations in the Persian Gulf over the past fifty years, see Robert Dreyfuss, “The Thirty-Year Itch,”
Mother Jones,
March 1, 2003.

24
. Ed Vulliamy, “Troops ‘Vandalize’ Ancient City of Ur,”
Observer,
May 18, 2003.

25
. Julian Borger, “Anger at Peace Talks ‘Meddling,’”
Guardian,
July 13, 2000; Brian Whitaker, “U.S. Thinktanks Give Lessons in Foreign Policy,”
Guardian,
August 19, 2002; Jill Junnola, “Perspective: Who Funds Whom?”
Energy Compass,
October 4, 2002; Eric Margolis, “After Iraq, Bush Will Attack His Real Target,”
Toronto Sun,
November 10, 2002; Margolis, “Bush’s Mideast Plan: Conquer and Divide,”
Toronto Sun,
December 8, 2002; Sandy Tolan, “Beyond Regime Change,”
Los Angeles Times,
December 1, 2002; Jim Lobe, “Neoconservatives Consolidate Control over U.S. Mideast Policy,”
Foreign Policy in Focus,
December 6, 2002; Bill Christison and Kathleen Christison, “Too Many Smoking Guns to Ignore: Israel, American Jews, and the War on Iraq,”
CounterPunch,
January 25, 2003; and Michael Lind, “The Weird Men behind George W. Bush’s War,”
New Statesman,
April 7, 2003, <
http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?sec=programs&pg=article&pubID=l189&T2=Article
>.

26
. Dan Plesch, “Weapons of Mass Distraction,”
Observer,
September 29, 2002; and Brian J. Foley, “War Cries: Weapons of Mass Distraction,”
CounterPunch,
November 8, 2002.

27
. On presidential decision making during the Vietnam War, see Daniel Ellsberg,
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
(New York: Viking, 2002). On Ellsberg’s analysis, see Chalmers Johnson, “The Addiction to Secrecy,”
London Review of Books,
February 6, 2003. On Karl Rove, see James C. Moore and Wayne Slater,
Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made Bush Presidential
(New York: Wiley, 2003).

28
. Jay Bookman, “The President’s Real Goal in Iraq,”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
September 29, 2002.

29
. Carol Morello, “Saudi Officials Shield U.S. Troop Presence from Public,”
Washington Post,
March 22, 2003; and Robin Allen, “Gulf States Keep Lid on Extent of Defense Ties,”
Financial Times,
February 18, 2003.

30
. Global Security Organization, “Eskan Village,” <
http://www.global-security.org/military/facility/eskan-village.htm
>. The Global Security Organization’s collection of reports on CENTCOM bases is an invaluable source.

31
. Catherine Taylor, “U.S. Air Base Ready for War after Millions in Upgrades,”
Christian Science Monitor,
December 31, 2002. Also see Vernon Loeb and Dana Priest, “Saudis Balk at U.S. Use of Key Facility,”
Washington Post,
September 22, 2001; Julian Borger, “U.S. Paves Way for War on Iraq; Attack Base to Be Moved into Qatar to Bypass Saudi Objections,”
Guardian,
March 27, 2002; Kim Sengupta and Andrew Buncombe, “Saudi Bans Use of Its Air Bases to Attack Iraq,”
Independent,
August 8, 2002; and Reuters, “Saudi Says Will Not Help Any U.S. Strike on Iraq,” November 3, 2002.

32
. “U.S. Military Women Cast Off Abayas,” CBS News, January 22, 2002.

33
. Eric Schmitt, “U.S. to Withdraw All Combat Units from Saudi Arabia,”
New York Times,
April 30, 2003; and Maureen Dowd, “Hypocrisy and Apple Pie,”
New York Times,
April 30, 2003.

34
. Global Security Organization, “Ahmed al Jaber Air Base,” <
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/ahmed-al-jaber.htm
>.

35
. Global Security Organization, “Ali al Salem Air Base,” <
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/ali-al-salem.htm
>.

36
. Global Security Organization, “Manama, Bahrain,” <
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/manama.htm
>.

37
. Ali Akbar Dareini, “Bahrain Joins Iran in Opposing U.S. Attack on Iraq,” Associated Press, August 18, 2002.

38
. Gary C. Gambill, “Qatar’s al-Jazeera TV: The Power of Free Speech,”
Middle East Intelligence Bulletin
2:5 (June 1, 2000); Andrea Koppel and Elise Labott, “U.S. Pressures Qatar to Restrain TV Outlet,” CNN.com, October 3, 2001; Tariq Ali, “Diary,”
London Review of Books,
August 22, 2002; and Robin Shulman, “From Ramallah to Oakland: Al-Jazeera Is a Rising Star in the New Information Age,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
August 18, 2002. During the second Iraq war, the United States kept up a drumbeat of criticism against al-Jazeera’s reporting. See Elizabeth Ptacek, “Backlash against al-Jazeera,”
In These Times,
April 4, 2003.

39
. 1st Lt. Johnny Rea, 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs Officer, <
http://198.65.138.161/military/library/news/2002/06/mil-02061l-usaf01.htm
>.

40
. Associated Press, “U.S. to Close One Air Base, Upgrade Another,”
Washington Times,
May 12, 2003; Global Security Organization, “Al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar,” <
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/udeid.htm
>.

41
. Michael Wolff, “Live from Doha,”
New York Magazine,
April 7, 2003; Verne Gay, “Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the Face of the War Effort,”
Chicago Tribune,
April 10, 2003.

42
. BBC News, “U.S. to Expand Abu Dhabi Air Base,” May 14, 2003.

43
. See “Oman Open to Closer U.S. Military Ties,”
WorldNetDaily.com,
January 14, 2002; Ian Bruce, “U.S. to Spend £90m on Air Base in Oman,”
Herald,
April 19, 2002; and “Oman Allocates Land for New Base,”
World
Tribune.com,
April 25, 2002.