Bush ignored warning on Iraq War chaos

‘Sadly, the administration’s refusal to heed these dire warnings - and worse, to plan for them - has led to tragic consequences for which our nation is paying a terrible price…’

By Amina Anderson

Numerous investigations have found that U.S. intelligence agencies were dead wrong about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam Hussein’s alleged links to al-Qaeda.

A recent Senate report dealt a major blow to the Bush administration as it showed that top U.S. intelligence experts predicted before the 2003 invasion that al-Qaeda could exploit any U.S. military action in Iraq as an opportunity to extend its sway in the region and that Iran would try to shape a post-war Iraq.

The declassified document, which was distributed to scores of White House, national security, diplomatic and congressional officials, is the latest chapter in the Intelligence Committee’s ongoing investigation into the pre-war Iraq intelligence which reviews assessments from a number of agencies, with special focus on two January 2003 papers from the National Intelligence Council: “Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq” and “Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq.”

According to the report, the Bush administration was warned in January 2003 that al-Qaeda “probably would try to exploit any post-war transition in Iraq by replicating the tactics it has used in Afghanistan during the past year to mount hit-and-run operations against U.S. personnel.” It also said the risk of terror attacks in Iraq would increase after the invasion and slow over the next three to five years. However, the State Department recently found that violence rose sharply in the war-torn country last year.

The analysts also warned that Iraq’s neighbours would struggle for influence and that “some elements in the Iranian government could decide to try to counter aggressively the U.S. presence in Iraq.” The less Tehran felt threatened by U.S. actions, they said, “the better the chance that they could cooperate in the post-war period.”

Among other conclusions, the analysts warned that:

• There is a “significant chance that domestic groups (in Iraq) would engage in violent conflict with each other.”
• Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a “long, difficult and probably turbulent process.”
• Post-war Iraq would face significant economic challenges, having few resources beyond oil. 
• Military action to destroy Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction wouldn’t prevent other countries from giving up such programs.

The Senate committee released its conclusions about pre-war intelligence on Friday, one day after a divided U.S. Congress approved $100 billion to fund the war in Iraq, with many Democrats vowing to keep pushing for a U.S. troop withdrawal, a move President Bush strongly rejects.

Democrats, who now control the U.S. Congress, said the Senate report made clear that President Bush, a Republican, and his aides ignored warnings about the chaos that would follow a U.S. invasion of Iraq. “Sadly, the administration’s refusal to heed these dire warnings - and worse, to plan for them - has led to tragic consequences for which our nation is paying a terrible price,” said Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and the committee’s chairman.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat and longtime war critic, said the report was no surprise, because President Bush had ignored “chapter and verse” of intelligence warnings.

“President Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq in the worst possible way, and he did,” Pelosi told reporters.

Despite the publication of the recent findings, President Bush, asked by reporters before the release of the report, defended his decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Going into Iraq, we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn’t happen,” he said. “Obviously, as I made a decision … I weighed the risks and rewards of any decision.”

Many other Republicans disputed the findings of the Senate report, saying that they merely represented speculation from experts in and out of the U.S. government, despite the fact that most of the report’s conclusions turned out to be true.   

At least one Republican admitted that U.S. intelligence had been prescient about the effects of war in Iraq. “Our intelligence community accurately predicted many aspects of the chaotic landscape that we see in Iraq today,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who voted for the war in 2002 but soon afterward became a vocal critic of the invasion. 

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