(In these perilous times we must resort to team efforts... here is Michael Ramirez and Mike Walker)
All,
Dusted off and updated an old paper I wrote in 2005.
It summarizes the reasons why this veteran of the
Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) and the Iraq Campaign
feel the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified.
I am not proposing that I am right and therefore
others are wrong headed. Nor am I casting aspersions
as to their patriotism or sense of service.
But I am emphatically and respectfully stating that my
support of the war is based upon facts and reasoned
judgment.
Semper Fi,
Mike
(Col. Mike Walker, USMC, retired)
The War against the Terror in Iraq
Unpublished work © 2008 Michael M. Walker
Contents
I. Going to War – Casus Belli
A. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs
B. Liberation
C. The Saddam Regime and Global War on Terrorism
D. Conclusions on Going to War
I. Going to War
The casus belli that led to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was built on three arguments. All three have stood the test of time. The first and primary cause was the perceived threat from Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Second was the liberation of the Iraqi people through the forced removal of Saddam’s regime. The third was to prevent Saddam’s regime from becoming a major opponent in the global war on terrorism.
A. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) did not find large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. The ISG did not find nuclear weapons. What did the ISG find? It found out too much. It proved that on the day Coalition Forces crossed the border into Iraq, the Saddam Regime was still maintaining what probably was one of the “top ten” most advanced WMD programs in the world. It uncovered a comprehensive failure of the international community, acting principally through the United Nations, to rein in the WMD activities of the Saddam Regime. It showed that Iraq’s WMD program did not end until the Saddam Regime was forcefully removed from power and driven to ground.
The failed actions taken to eliminate Saddam’s WMD capabilities before the war revolved around a long and progressive series of UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR’s). The most relevant being 687, 707, 1051, 1284, and 1441 with UNSCR 687 being the centerpiece. UNSCR 687 (3 August 1991) established a United Nations Special Commissioner (UNSCOM) responsible for:
1. Disarming Iraq’s Chemical Weapons (CW), Biological Weapons (BW), and Ballistic Missiles, to include destruction, removal, and rendering harmless the weapons associated programs, stocks, components, research, and facilities.
2. Ensuring that the above operations be conducted under international supervision.
Additionally, UNSCR 687 charged the UN International Atomic Energy Agency with the responsibility for the abolition of Iraq’s nuclear program.
When hostilities began in March 2003, Saddam’s regime had an active WMD program in direct violation of UNSCR 687. The Saddam Regime had not disarmed all its Chemical Weapons, Biological Weapons, or Ballistic Missiles. It had not destroyed, removed or rendered harmless all its associated CW/BW/Ballistic Missile programs, stocks, research, and facilities. In fact, rather than finding that there was no credible WMD program in Iraq, the ISG proved that quite the opposite was true. What follows is information primarily drawn from the ISG Final Report of 30 September 2004.
The Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003
This was the only program that was critically degraded. Virtually all of the research had stopped and the facilities eliminated before the war began. The only meaningful remnant of the program was the people who were not allowed to leave Iraq. Saddam kept these scientists and technicians on the payroll and while they conducted a very limited amount of research, his nuclear weapons program was almost extinct by March 2003.
The Chemical Weapons Program in 2003
On the eve of hostilities in March of 2003, the Saddam regime had retained a stockpile of “Sarin” nerve agent and mustard gas munitions dating from the Iran-Iraq war despite a decade of repeated claims that these munitions had been completely destroyed. The Saddam regime still had a cadre of CW researchers, CW producers, and, most importantly, CW “weaponizers.” It maintained the ability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard agent within six (6) months and large quantities of nerve agents within two (2) years. The regime still maintained prototype experimental CW munitions in March 2003. Further, in March 2003, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) was still producing and storing limited quantities of sulfur mustard and nitrogen mustard agents as well as Sarin gas. The IIS had tested the efficacy of their Sarin agent on human subjects. The Saddam regime had no intention of ever abiding by the CW prohibitions of UNSCR 687.
The Biological Weapons Program in 2003
As the ISG reported, the Saddam regime never lost the scientific “know how” to produce Biological Weapons. In March of 2003, the Saddam regime still retained a BW-related “seed” stock that gave them the potential to start up the limited production of Biological Weapons within two months in complete violation of UNSCR 687. The regime actually expanded its BW capability from 1992 through 1994 in spite of UNSCR 687, UNSCR 707, and UNSCR 715. It was only due to the collapse of the state-run sector of the economy, resulting from the sanctions put in place under UNSCR 661, that Saddam’s regime unilaterally abandoned the major components of its BW program as unsupportable in 1995. Still, the Saddam regime maintained its BW potential from 1996 onward by continuing a declared and undeclared dual-use capability, a direct violation of UNSCR 1051.
The Ballistic Missile Program in 2003
Saddam’s ballistic missile program was active and productive right up to the day that the war began. As with the CW and BW programs, Iraqi missile technologies had their roots in the old Soviet Union cold war weapons inventory. Saddam’s regime conducted extensive work in delivery systems through the Al Samid Surface-to-Surface Missile (SSM) as well as the Iskandar SSM, amongst others. The international scope of Saddam’s ballistic missile program was dizzying. They obtained technology from Syria who used false “end user” documents to thwart UN sanctions. They illegally obtained ballistic missile guidance and control systems from North Korea as well as Russian, Serbian, and Belarus companies. Saddam’s regime formed front companies to allow them to produce liquid fuel propellants banned by the UN Resolutions. They illegally conducted advanced research on solid propellants, improperly obtaining Aluminum Powder (AP) from companies in India, China, France and others, and by secretly exploiting carbon fiber technologies for the Al Fatah SSM in violation of UNSCR 687 and 1051.
The record shows that the Saddam Regime blatantly and systematically violated every meaningful UNSC Resolution passed until the bitter end. They violated UNSCR 687 by maintaining BW, CW, and Ballistic Missile programs. They violated UNSCR 707 by, amongst other things, continuously attempting to conceal facilities and move or conceal materials related to their weapons of mass destruction programs. They violated UNSCR 1051 by deliberately failing to report shipments of dual-use items related to weapons of mass destruction to the UN and IAEA. And this extended well beyond violating “dual use reporting.” In order to keep their WMD programs active, they relied on smuggling operations of all manner and type, falsifying “end user” documentation, disguising shipments, and presenting false final destinations. They bribed and set up front companies to make these activities more efficient.
Perhaps the most egregious WMD related violations dealt with UNSCR 1284. This resolution created the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC) to replace UNSCOM. The Saddamists never fully allowed UNMOVIC "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access" to Iraqi officials and facilities. They never fulfilled the commitment to return Gulf War prisoners, because, as we learned after the war began, they had all been executed years earlier. While the resolution had little effect on curbing the bad behavior of the Saddam Regime it had a disastrous outcome for the Iraqi people by creating the Oil-For-Food Program. In the most Machiavellian and heartless tactic of all, they used Oil-For-Food (OFF) vouchers and “kickbacks” worth hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for their illicit WMD program despite the resolution’s requirement for the Saddam Regime to distribute humanitarian goods and medical supplies to its people and address the needs of vulnerable Iraqis without discrimination.
In a chillingly brilliant parallel move, a move that would have drawn the admiration of Hitler and Josef Goebbels, Saddam’s Regime continuously spewed forth a stream of false propaganda stating that the sanctions resulted in an insufficiency of medicines and humanitarian supplies causing the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children. They did this in order to hide the truth that the regime was stealing the hundreds of millions of OFF dollars needed to care for these people in order to maintain their army, prop up the dictatorship, and support their WMD program.
Thus it was inevitable that war would ensue when UNSCR 1441 was passed in November 2002. Eleven long years after UNSCR 687, the UN provided one final opportunity for the Saddam Regime to comply. The Saddam Regime never complied. For Saddam’s apologists, the ISG found out too much indeed.
To understand the importance of this truth recall the 26 January 2008 CBS “60-Minutes” interview of FBI Special Agent George Piro by correspondent Scott Pelley regarding the interrogations of Saddam and Saddam’s WMD goals:
Special Agent Piro: “The folks that he needed to reconstitute the program are still there.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “And that was his intention?”
Special Agent Piro: “Yes.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “What weapons of mass destruction did he intend to pursue again once he had the opportunity?”
Special Agent Piro: “He wanted to pursue all of WMD. So he wanted to reconstitute his entire WMD program.”
CBS Correspondent Pelley: “Chemical, biological, even nuclear?”
Special Agent Piro: “Yes.”
B. Liberation
The liberation of the Iraqi people was always a clear objective of the war. To state the obvious, Coalition actions were conducted under “Operation Iraqi Freedom” not “Operation Maximum UNSCR Compliance.” To argue that the liberation of the Iraqi people was not a major goal of the war is to beggar the truth. The March 2003 Coalition military operation against Saddam was universally referred to as the liberation by the Iraqis we met; not just by the Kurds, Shi’a, and progressive Sunni’s but even by the Sunni’s who were unrepentant Ba’athists and strongly opposed to the presence of Coalition Forces after the end of the convention battle. To understand this we need to look back at the recent history of Iraq under Saddam.
During the sixteen years prior to the liberation, hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women, and children were murdered by the state. Additionally, by the close of 2002, over three million Iraqis had fled the Saddam Regime (+15% of the population) and close to another million Iraqis were internally displaced. The internally displaced were predominantly the Marsh Arabs. The ecological attack on them, what some have called an ecological genocide, began in 1992 with the destruction of nearly five million acres of marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
Although precise numbers are still not available, from 1987 until 2002, roughly 425,000 Iraqis were murdered by the Saddam Regime , the most deadly years being 1987-88 (when genocidal attacks killed approximately 100,000 Kurds) and 1991 (when an estimated 165,000 Shi’a and Kurds were put to death); that averages to over 26,000 victims per year or an average over 2,200 civilian deaths per month during the later half of Saddam’s era of power.
How did life end for the hundreds of thousands of Saddam’s victims? Thousands died through the use of WMD in chemical warfare (CW) attacks. For example, in September 1988 Ali Hassan al-Majid, AKA “Chemical Ali,” began the Anfal Operation. In those Kurdish regions spared the horrors of chemical attacks, he specifically issued orders to execute all civilians between 15-70 years of age after any information of intelligence value was “extracted” from them. Many Iraqis died through the accepted state means of execution, hanging, firing squad, beheading, etc. More died through torture that extended far beyond beatings and electric shocks but branched out into sodomy, eye gouging, acid baths, the drilling holes through hands with power tools and more. Victims were found with blackened genitals, blown into gaping pieces of raw flesh from grenades inserted into shirt pockets after being bound, arms and legs. Other victims had their tongues ripped out during interrogations and bled to death.
And Saddam’s henchmen did not differentiate between men and women or even children. During a “retribution campaign” against the Shi’a, Saddam’s operatives killed babies by smashing their bodies against walls. One Saddam loyalist “fighter” had his occupation listed as a violator of women’s honor, a full-time rapist on the government payroll. Nor were the victims limited to traditional anti-government opponents. Hazani Oraha owned an art gallery. He showed art works that were deemed “controversial” by the Saddam Regime. In addition to losing his gallery and having the art confiscated, he was hung from a ceiling fan, with his legs bound. The fan was then tuned on, twisting him until his back was broken. A female doctor who criticized corruption in the Ministry of Health was arrested, charged with prostitution and beheaded. These are a few examples of hundreds of thousands of people who died under the Saddam Regime.
The liberation that resulted from Operation Iraqi Freedom was too late for these victims but thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children are alive today because the Coalition Forces put an end to this madness. The one thing that has remained unchanged since the liberation is the determination of Saddam’s remaining henchmen, in alliance with Al Qaeda, to continue to murder innocent Iraqi civilians. Although they can no longer kill in the large numbers seen before the war and have largely lost the ability to conduct their murderous business outside the harsh glare of humanity, they are still killing as best they can. Putting a final end to that and allowing the Iraqi people to move forward in creating a new and peaceful Iraq is the task at hand.
C. The Saddam Regime and the Global War on Terrorism
While Saddam’s IIS was in frequent contact with various Al Qaeda operatives, there is no evidence that the Saddam Regime had any direct connection to the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States on 9/11. But the regime is linked to other terror attacks on the United States by al Qaeda followers. If the Global War on Terrorism is completely limited to fighting al Qaeda and its supporters, then in March 2003, the Saddam Regime was certainly involved on a limited basis both through its support of Abdul Rahman Yasin and the Ansar al Islam (AaI) terrorist group. The Saddam regime provided a safe haven and funding to Iraqi Abdul Rahman Yasin after he was listed on the FBI’s most wanted list for alleged participation in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured 1,042 Americans. Yasin is still at large.
Also before the war, Saddam supported AaI by providing bases in northern Iraq along the Iranian border. AaI was used by Saddam as an indirect terrorist weapon against the Iraqi Kurdish region after he could no longer directly attack due to the Coalition’s enforcement of the UN “no-fly zone” established there. He further supported AaI because of its violent opposition to the radical Shi’a regime in Iran. After the 2003 invasion, AaI’s training camps, along with its weapons and munitions caches were destroyed, its operations against the Kurds and Iran terminated, its leaders forced underground, and many of its members killed or captured.
The Saddam Regime also had a long history of working with other terrorists and their organizations. The regime actively aided and abetted the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). Besides carrying out a number of infamous aircraft hijackings and attacks at airports, ANO was responsible for assassinating a Jordanian diplomat, PLO Chairman Arafat’s Second-in-Command, and an attack on a synagogue in Israel where 22 worshipers were killed.
The Regime also backed the terrorist organization Hamas by providing a “Blessing from Saddam” in the form of a $25,000 payout to families of suicide bombers. To be clear, Hamas is not simply an enemy of Israel. It is a potent threat to the Palestinian Authority and evolving into a terrorist threat to the peoples of the Middle East.
Saddam’s Intelligence Services had contacts with terrorist Chechen organizations although these were limited for fear of alienating Saddam’s most important ally, Russia. And the IIS needed to be circumspect in regards to Russia:
In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basayev, along with Osama bin Laden, have been "clear" about wanting to "set Russia on fire," says Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
Saddam was the chief supporter of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a paramilitary force made up of Iranians operating in Iraq dedicated to violently seizing power in Iran. This Marxist oriented organization targeted and killed a number of Americans in Iran during the 1970’s and actively supported the seizure of the US Embassy in Iran in 1980. In 1991, it assisted the Saddam Regime in suppressing the Shi’a rebellion in southern Iraq and the Kurdish uprisings in the north. In April 1992, the MEK, headquartered in Iraq, conducted near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian Embassies and installations in 13 countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Coalition Forces seized and destroyed MEK munitions and weapons, and about 4,000 MEK operatives were consolidated, detained, disarmed, and screened for any past terrorist acts.
Although Saddam’s intelligence service had long been in contact with Al Qaeda, there is no credible evidence that Al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime were solid allies in March 2003. It is equally true that the two groups were following a complementary policy in their pursuit of terror as demonstrated by the Saddam Regime’s support for Abdul Rahman Yasin and the Ansar al Islam terrorists. The facts cannot allow one’s eyes to be closed to the reality that in March 2003 Saddam was providing active and bloody support to a number of terrorist organizations that were and are still our enemies in the Global War on Terrorism.
The destruction of the Saddam Regime removed one of the most potent and dangerous forces in world terrorism.
D. Conclusions on Going to War
The evidence would allow a reasonable person to conclude that the war was and is justified. The WMD argument boils down to an old saying, one usually used in a far more positive context; if you give someone a fish they eat for a day, if you teach someone how to fish they can eat for a lifetime. If you allow a tyrant to horde a stockpile of WMD he can only use it once, if you allow him to maintain a WMD program, he can potentially use the weapons forever and that was the exact aim of Saddam.
By going to war we liberated an oppressed people. By destroying the Saddam Regime we ended, once and for all, both its WMD programs and its long established and very active support of world-wide terrorist organizations. For this author, who served two tours in Iraq, those were and are honorable and worthwhile objectives worth pursuing.
