Why Not Just Plant Some WMD?

Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq and an ardent critic of American Middle East policy, has published a new article at Truth Dig claiming that the U.S. attempted to recruit Iraqi intelligence officers to assist in planting imported WMD/WMD materials in order to falsely justify the invasion.

Here is the key section of the article:

I will relay the story as I received it from Mohammed.

On a bright morning one day in late June 2003 Mohammed waited patiently on the side of a street in the Jadariyah district of Baghdad. … Mohammed had been summoned to a meeting with a special intelligence cell that reported not to David Kay’s Iraq Survey Group, but instead directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. …

…About five minutes into the session, the two women were joined by a third person, an Army lieutenant colonel who introduced himself as Dave. … Dave quickly took over the proceedings, with Carol and Stacey taking notes. For four hours Dave questioned Mohammed about various matters dealing with the Iraqi’s former work.

The final line of questioning focused on weapons of mass destruction. Dave was on his feet, pacing before Mohammed, before turning to him and asking straight out, “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” Mohammed, who had intimate knowledge of certain aspects of the Iraqi WMD effort, replied straight back: “There are no WMD in Iraq.”

Dave continued pacing back and forth in front of Mohammed. “My president,” he said, “is in trouble. Can you help him?”

Mohammed was taken aback by the question. “Excuse me?” he asked. “Could you repeat yourself?”

Dave sat down next to the Iraqi. “George Bush is in trouble. Our people did not find any WMD in Iraq. Can you help us?”

Mohammed looked back at Dave. “How?”

“Can we prepare something for that? We could bring in some nuclear material from the former Soviet Union, and pretend they are Iraqi.”

Mohammed, stunned by the unexpected nature of the request, indicated that such a ploy could be easily uncovered by forensic examination of the evidence by outside experts, such as UNSCOM (the United Nations Special Commission) or the IAEA, who would undoubtedly be called in to verify such a finding. Dave sat in silence for a few moments, before springing to his feet. “I have to leave for a meeting,” he said. “Stacey will show you out.”

Mohammed was to meet again with Dave, Stacey and Carol in the weeks that followed. The subject of WMD, Iraqi or otherwise, was never again broached by Dave or anyone else in his team.

[found via Tiny Revolution]

Raw Story published a rumor to the same effect all the way back in January 2006:

Secret team looked to ‘solve’ WMD problem?

This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to the UN Security Council says.

During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the team, whose members who were not named by sources, is said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers. The UN source says that the political problem discussed had more to do with solving the lack of WMD than anything else.

“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”

The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them.

“But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,” the source added.

The full Ritter article also includes a chillingly plausible scenario claiming that U.S. operatives in Iraq passed information about Ritter’s visit to interview Mohammed and other Iraqi scientists along to the Badr Brigade assassins.

This answers, albeit in the most obvious way, the question of the Bush Administration didn’t plant WMD in Iraq. I think there’s another reason as well; the U.S. public writ large does not show many signs of caring that the primary justification for the Iraq War was a complete lie. Our politicians care even less about the implications of the acknowledging that lie or about actually ending the war (rather than winning over anti-Iraq War voters). In that context, why bother with the immense logistical efforts that planting WMD would entail?

Ethnic Cleansing Involved Violence? Who Would Have Thought?

Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack have published an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that the surge’s success in reducing level of violence in Iraq makes further troop draw-downs dangerously risky until 2010.

Towards the end of their analysis of the various factors that have reduced the Iraqi civilian violent death toll to 700/month average in 2008, they make the following claim:

It is worth noting that separation resulting from sectarian cleansing was not the chief cause of the reduction in violence, as some have claimed. Much of Iraq remains intermingled but increasingly peaceful. And whereas a cleansing argument implies that casualties should have gone down in Baghdad, for example, as mixed neighborhoods were cleansed, casualties actually went up consistently during the sectarian warfare of 2006. Cleansing may have reduced the violence somewhat in some places, but it was not the main cause

Of course the levels of violence increased during the period of the most intense sectarian warfare and ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing consists of violence. The cleansing argument states that dramatically increased violence during 2006 has led to reduced violence now, in 2008, because the cleansing has largely run its course in those areas where it was occurring.

This isn’t a hard argument to get and it wouldn’t be a hard argument to disprove, if you had the evidence. O’Hanlon and Pollack prefer to simply insult the intelligence of their readers and of war critics.

Another Reason Violence is Down in Iraq

This appeared briefly on the RSS feed for Christopher Hayes’ blog and then disappeared from the site. I’m not sure if that’s because he decided to pull it down and re-write it or because of a server error. Either way, I though it worth re-posting here:

Conservatives had a tendency to attribute the all of the reduction of violence in Iraq to the increase in US troops. But one of the most overlooked stories of Iraq is the massive outflow of refugees, 4 million by the latest estimates. Basically Iraq has gone through its own Big Sort, whereby Sunni and Shia simply don’t live near each other, hence a diminishing amount of sectarian violence. Bobby Allyn attended a hearing on Iraq’s refugees and sent this missive:

 The Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the Iraq      Refugee Crisis yesterday. Jonathan Finer, Washington Post correspondent, testified with former Washington Post interpreter Nasser Nouri about the plight of over two million Iraqi refugees who are struggling for permanent resettlement. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, over 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced since the 2003 US invasion, with more than two million living in Syria and Jordan. The US has committed to accept 12,000 refugees by September. So far the US has only accepted 6,463, allowing three months for another 5,537. “The question isn’t will the US meet the 12,000 mark; it’s why only 12,000?” said Finer. “We took in several hundred thousand Southeast Asians after the Vietnam war, more than a hundred thousand Bosnians in the mid ’90s, 12,000 doesn’t seem like a very ambitious target.”Nasser Nouri told the harrowing story of how Al Qeada tried to capture his youngest daughter after word got out that he worked for The Washington Post, highlighting the dangers faced by Iraqi journalists who work for US news outlets. “In Iraq you don’t tell people you work for the United States because your life then could be in danger,” Nouri said. Finer told of how Nouri acted more than just an interpreter, helping him avoid death in many circumstances. “No journalism would come out of Iraqi if it weren’t for the Iraqi staff,” he said. “Their importance is only gonna grow. We’re gonna be more reliant on people like Nasser.”

The numbers here, really are outrageous. We’ve taken a total of 5,537 refugees out of 4 million from a war that a war we started. Syria alone is now home to more than a million. With a population of 16 million, that’s a 6% increase. The equivalent number in the US would be 18 million. Can you imagine the political turmoil that ensue here if 18 million foreign refugees were to flood into the country over a period of just a few years?

Keep these numbers in mind whenever a discussion of the reductions in violence in Iraq comes up. It would be nigh impossible for the worst of the sectarian violence to continue after displacing this many people. Add in the number of people killed because of the civil war and an alternative explanation (or at minimum a significant additional cause) for the recent decline in violence emerges.

These numbers also raise the question of why the U.S. has not been willing to accept dramatically more Iraqi refugees. As Hayes points out, other countries in the region (Syria especially) have been forced to shoulder a proportionally vast share of the burden of absorbing those displaced by the Iraqi civil war.

Order 81, Corn, and Imperialism

I am currently most of the way through reading Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s a fascinating and terrifying book, especially when he touches on the power of large scale industrial systems to effectively force markets to adapt to their products.

Which leads me to this article from 2005, which details Order 81 regarding seed purchases given to Iraqi farmers by Paul Bremer in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion.

Order 81

Among the Bremer decrees was Order 81, “Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law”.

Order 81 gave holders of patents on certain plant varieties, all large foreign multinationals, absolute rights for 20 years over use of their seeds in Iraqi agriculture. The protected plant varieties were Genetically Modified (GMO) plants.

Iraqi seed treasure destroyed

Iraqis have farmed since approximately 8,000 B.C. and developed the seed variety for almost every variety of wheat used in the world today. They did this through a system of saving a share of seeds and replanting, developing new naturally resistant hybrid varieties through the new plantings. That now is de facto illegal under Order 81. For years, the Iraqis held samples of these precious natural seed varieties in a national seed bank, located in Abu Ghraib. Following the US occupation, the invaluable seed bank in Abu Ghraib vanished.

The CPA’s Order 81 turned the food future of Iraq over to global multinational private companies. The details of Order 81 were written for Paul Bremer by Monsanto Corporation, the world’s leading purveyor of GMO seeds and crops.

No seeds to plant

In the aftermath of the Iraq war, Iraqi farmers were forced to turn to their government Agriculture Ministry for new seeds. Order 81’s declared aim was “to ensure good quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq’s accession into the World Trade Organization.” “Good quality” was defined by the occupation authority. As soon as Order 81 had been issued, USAID began delivering thousands of tons of US-origin “high-quality, certified wheat seed” for subsidized, initially near cost-free distribution through the Agriculture Ministry, to desperate Iraqi farmers. The USAID refused to allow independent scientists to determine whether the seed was GMO seed or not.

The purpose of Order 81 was to facilitate the establishment of a new seed market in Iraq, where transnational corporations could sell their seeds – genetically modified– which farmers would have to purchase afresh every season. The old Iraqi constitution had prohibited private ownership of biological resources. The new US-imposed patent law introduced a system of monopoly rights over seeds.

“Let them eat…Pasta?”

Six kinds of wheat seeds were to be developed for Iraq. Three were to be used for farmers to grow wheat that is made into pasta…’ That meant that 50% of the grains being developed by the US in Iraq after 2004 were meant for export as pasta was a food foreign to the Iraqi diet.

In spring 2004 as Order 81 was promulgated by Bremer’s CPA, supporters of the radical young cleric Moqtada al Sadr were protesting the closing of their newspaper, al Hawza, by US military police. The CPA accused al Hawza of publishing “false articles” that could “pose the real threat of violence.” As an example, it cited an article that claimed Bremer was, “pursuing a policy of starving the Iraqi people to make them preoccupied with procuring their daily bread so they do not have the chance to demand their political and individual freedoms.”

When anti-war activists criticize U.S. foreign policy as imperialistic, they are criticizing these kinds of orders first and foremost. If the U.S. carried out its foreign interventions and preemptive wars of choice without also destroying certain very basic forms of personal autonomy among the populations who it supposedly seeks to “liberate”, then the U.S. might begin to have some credibility for its claims to represent …

Whether or not the conversion to genetically modified, American-produced commodity corn offers a net economic benefit to Iraqi farmers (and it does not) should not even need to enter into our evaluation of the orders. Instead, let us consider why Bremer would choose to mandate the purchase of these seeds rather than simply guaranteeing that Iraqi farmers have free access to them. The Coalition Provisional Authority knew that an insufficient number of farmers would consider the seeds worth buying and did not consider dictating planting choices to farmers against their own interests to be in tension with “liberating” them from a tyrannical government. Add in the 20 year contracts and you have the classic methodology of the colonial empires; conquer by force, then demand exclusive trading rights to the detriment of the conquered, and finally gloss it all over with propaganda about “civilizing” or “liberating” the colonized nation.

As the article also implies, pursuing market-share for U.S. agribusiness at the expense of Iraqi citizens also provided legitimacy to the claims of anti-U.S. insurgents. Thus the logic of endless imperial warfare, where the invaders’ meddling gives fuel to resistance movements whose presence allows the invaders to justify to their own home populations the ongoing (or even escalating) presence of troops.

Paul Rosenberg on FISA, Rule of Law, and Terrorism

Over at Open Left, Paul Rosenberg perfectly captures the problem with the Democratic response to retroactive immunity (as well as the underlying failure of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama to actually lead the opposition to the worst of the Bush Administration’s policies. I would expand on it, but there’s really no need:

It’s elementary, really.  The terrorists’ strategy is to draw out the “true face” of an evil and oppressive regime, so that the people will rise up against it.  Of necessity, the terrorists strike innocents, because this is the only way to strike terror, and thus draw a repressive response. Whether they realize it or not, the terrorists are counting on the government they oppose being run by men just like themselves-men who believe in force, not law.  So long as this is true, the terrorists win.

For five long years, the terrorists were winning, because the Bush Administration was run by men just like them.  Instead of going after those who attacked us, the Bush Administration took out its enemies list and went after them, instead.  Top of the list was Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi regime.  Nothing could have delighted bin Laden more.  We knocked off his chief ideological rival, and fully validated his claim that America’s interest and intent lay with fighting Muslims and occupying their lands.

Then in November 2006, the Democrats won the mid-term election.  

But it’s worse than that.  And the Congressional Democrats had made it abundantly clear.  It’s not just the Bush Administration that thinks like terrorists, and therefore is blindly committed to helping them win.  The Democrats are just as heedless and contemptuous of the rule of law as the Republicans are.  Which means that, so far as they are concerned, bin Laden was right.  We don’t stand for anything higher or better.  When push comes to shove, we believe in brute force and violence, not the rule of law.  We are barbarians, the same as he.

It should have been a turning point-not just the election, but the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that recommended a plan of withdrawal from Iraq.  It was far from a perfect plan, especially since it called for enforcing an oil law that was sure to enrage the Iraqi people, but compared to Bush’s post-9/11 conduct it represented a dramatic improvement. Even with this bipartisan cover, however, the Democrats proved entirely inept.  Within a matter of weeks a new escalation was announced-along with strict instructions not to call it what it was-an escalation. Instead, we were all supposed to call it “the surge,” as if it were something that college football fans did to pump up the home team.After the initial ineptitude, we’ve been treated to a year and a half of more of the same, sometimes spectacularly so-with the clamor to denounce MoveOn-more often in passive frustration mode.  The missed opportunities have been legion.  We could have been actively tearing down the Bush Administration lies-as in the virtually ignored Winter Soldier hearings held by the Out of Iraq Caucus several weeks ago.  Why was this not an official committee hearing instead?  Why wasn’t it a joint House/Senate hearing?  Why wasn’t it held within days of Bush putting out his escalation plan?  Why?  Because the Democratic Party has ceased to be a functioning political entity, that’s why.  Even with majorities in both houses, they can’t even mount an effective opposition, much less act like a governing legislative majority.  

The (Current) Idiocy of This War

This article from Democracy Arsenal is about a week old but nonetheless timely, especially in light of General Petraeus’ claims that Iranian-backed groups represent the largest current threat in Iraq.  Here’s what Democracy Arsenal had to say, and keep in mind that ISCI is now the Iraqi Prime Minister’s biggest parliamentary ally:

So, I was at a great Center for American Progress panel yesterday with journalists Nir Rosen and Michael Ware.  They have been in Iraq for most of the last five years and get the perspective on the ground the we don’t usually hear about here.  Ware said something that just totally blew my mind.

The Badr Organization is the military arm of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI previously known as SCIRI).  Now ISCI is closely aligned with Maliki government and is arguably the most significant player in the current central government.  In fact significant elements of the Badr Organization have been incorporated into the Iraqi Security Forces.

Now, here is where things start to break down.  The Badr Organization (Originally called the Badr Brigades) was originally formed by Iran.  But according to Ware many of its members were considered to be part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.  And many of them are now considered to be retirees of the IRGC.  Which means…wait for it… wait for it…

They still get pensions from the IRGC!!  But it gets better.  The Bush Administration has classified the IRGC as a terrorist organization!!

So, just so that we’re clear on this.  We are building an army full of people who are still getting pension payments from an organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.  And we are basing our entire future in Iraq on that army.  Not only that, but when this army decides it’s going to take out its major opponent for power as it did last week, and doesn’t even tell us about it, we still back it up with air power and American troops as it stumbles.  And then we tell everybody that this is a good sign

The Salon article I linked to above has this to add:

Likewise in the Shiite south, the ISCI, led by Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is largely in power, even though probably a majority of the population favors Sadr. To have a minority in power and the majority feeling disenfranchised is especially dangerous in a violent society such as Iraq. The disjuncture has contributed to endemic fighting in the capital of Qadisiya Province, Diwaniya, for instance, between Sadr’s Mahdi army and the paramilitary of the Islamic Supreme Council, or Badr Corps. In many provinces, ISCI has infiltrated members of its Badr paramilitary into the police and security forces, thus giving them the presumption of legitimacy and allowing the branding of the Mahdi army as violent militiamen with no popular mandate, won at the polls.

That the week’s fighting was intended to bolster pro-government forces in preparation for the October provincial elections is at least plausible. During the fighting, the Iraqi army was allied with the Badr Corps paramilitary of the ISCI, which was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. ISCI, the leading Shiite political party in parliament, is now al-Maliki’s main backer in the government, along with his own smaller Da’wa (Islamic Call) Party. And U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner told a news conference on Wednesday that the Iraqi army’s military operation, which U.S. forces aided, was aimed at improving “security” in the city ahead of provincial elections.

All of which just goes to show precisely how hypocritical the Administration’s current positions vis-a-vis Iran and Iraq are. If, on the one hand, we want stability in Iraq at all costs and backing Maliki’s government is the best way to get there then we share a mutual strategic interest with the Iranians. On the other hand, if Iranian interference is now the primary threat in Iraq (and if it is, that also goes to show exactly how slippery the justifications for this war and the attendant permanent occupation really are; reacting to any new problem in Iraq automatically becomes the primary goal of a war whose original aims are either longer discredited or long forgotten) then it makes no sense to provide funding and political support to either the ISCI itself (as we have done) or those who maintain their largely through ISCI backing.