Iraq conflict is an insult to services - Connecting Saddam to September 11, 2001

Among the list of words and phrases the Bush administration avoids using at all costs (“Osama bin Laden,” “Abu Ghraib,” “WMD,” “Karl Rove”), none is more important than “Congressional Authorization.” The Oct. 16, 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) is a brilliant piece of political fiction concocted by administration lawyers who implied and insinuated the Iraq/al Qaeda connection in order to get a compliant Congress to sign off on it as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq. It was designed to piggy-back on a similar authorization a year earlier to use force against those nations, persons or organizations responsible for the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Congressional Authorization is the legal foundation for the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and warrantless domestic wiretapping. It is the basis for the Executive power grab Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have been planning for since the Ford administration. The president will do anything to retain Congressional Authorization — and the time has come for the Democratic Congress to take another look at it.

The 2002 AUMF has no fewer than 10 references to Iraq’s WMD programs, almost 20 references to the United Nations/Security Council resolutions, and, most disgustingly, 10 mentions of international terrorism and/or Sept. 11, 2001. Why are these references problematic? Let’s take a look:

The WMD and weapons program references mention Iraqi defectors who basically said Iraq “had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program” which was closer to fruition than anyone thought. The problem is the U.S. intelligence community regarded the word of these defectors as less than credible, and one of them (code name “Curveball”) was called an outright “fabricator.”

The parts of the AUMF which mention U.N. resolutions are particularly interesting because the U.N. Charter (to which the U.S. is a signatory) says Member States will only use force when authorized by the Security Council, in cases of imminent danger, or in self-defense. Though Saddam Hussein was contained, the AUMF tries hard to paint the Iraqi government as a threat to U.S. security because of the weapons programs detailed by the “defectors.” The most offensive portions of the AUMF pertain to Iraq’s role in international terrorism and the hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001. First, it says Iraq was “supporting and harboring terrorist organizations” (a reference to one man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the fact that he maintained a safe-house in Iraq). Then it mentions that members of Al Qaeda, “an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, including the attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 are known to be in Iraq” (referring to the same person). It goes on to say, “Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens,” as though the people who planned the hijackings were sitting around eating hummus and pita with Saddam.

The reason this is so offensive became clear in a White House press conference the president held last Aug. 21, in which the following exchange took place:

President Bush: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before
we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

Q: What did Iraq have to do with that?

President Bush: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q: The attack on the World Trade Center?

President Bush: Nothing, except for it’s part of — and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack.

Many of my fellow Americans, wanting to take the fight back to the terrorist enemy who brought the fight to our shores, volunteered for military service in the weeks and months following Sept. 11, 2001. In his rhetoric, the president combined the unwanted war in Afghanistan with the war of choice in Iraq, while his lawyers worked hard to justify it through the prism of international terrorism. Saying Iraq had “nothing” to do with the events of that September morning when his administration worked so hard to imply a connection between the two is an insult to the men and women fighting for us.