Chalmers Johnson - The Sorrows of Empire - Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

Following his less than sterling performance before the U.N. Security Council, Secretary Powell insisted to Peter Jennings, the anchor of ABC News, “I think I have better information than the inspectors, I think I have more assets available to me than the inspectors do.” 43One of these assets proved to be some letters between Iraq and the Central African country of Niger purporting to show that between 1999 and 2001 Niger agreed to sell uranium to Iraq. In his January 28,2003, State of the Union address, President Bush referred to this evidence: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Secretary Powell turned these documents over to Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as proof of the Anglo-American charges that Iraq had revived its efforts to produce nuclear weapons after the U.N. inspections ended in 1998.

Allegations about Iraq’s purchase of uranium actually first surfaced in a British government report published on September 24,2002, which did not name Niger as the source. On December 19, 2002, the U.S. State Department elaborated on the British originals and for the first time said that Niger had supplied the fissionable material. According to the Washington Post, however, although U.S. intelligence officials had “extensively reviewed” the documents, they failed to notice the “relatively crude errors” in the letters, including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written. 44

On March 7,2003, ElBaradei testified to the Security Council that “the IAEA was able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the government of Niger and to compare the form, format, contents, and signature[s] of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation. Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which form the basis for the reports of recent uranium transaction[s] between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.” 45

A final instance of the governmental manufacture of intelligence involves the question of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. On October 7, 2002, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA director George Tenet said that the agency could find no ties between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden’s network. Yet in a letter to the same committee on February 11,2003, Tenet reversed himself. Two days later, Ray McGovern, an analyst for the CIA for twenty-seven years, denounced Tenet for having “caved in to political pressure.” 46McGovern noted that on February 5, as Tenet sat “like a potted plant” behind Powell at the Security Council, he “did not wince once” at what he heard. Instead, Tenet had ensured that statements based on America’s vast, expensive intelligence apparatus would no longer be believed. It also seemed likely that Secretary Powell’s integrity had been hopelessly compromised.

After the second Iraq war, no unconventional weapons of any kind were found that came even slightly close in terms of quantities or deadliness to the claims of the Bush administration. Postwar analysis strongly indicated that a small group of ideologues working for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz had manufactured the intelligence, sometimes based on reports of Iraqi exiles who had already been discredited by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and then vigorously sold it to the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, and the president. An intelligence insider interviewed by New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh said of this group, “They didn’t like the intelligence they were getting [from the CIA and the DIA], and so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with—to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God. If it doesn’t fit their theory, they don’t want to accept it.” 47

It is not usual for the aides and advisers of a president of the United States to allow him to deliver a fake intelligence report in a State of the Union address. It is even more unusual that, such a blunder having occurred, the director of central intelligence would keep his job. The only logical explanation is that the director’s political superiors instructed him in what they wanted done. If so, then it seems that high government officials falsified pretexts for the second Iraq war and committed a fraud against the Congress and the American people. In a constitutional republic, these are impeachable offenses. The fact that such proceedings have not even been mentioned is a further sign of the political decadence brought about by militarism and imperialism.

The final sorrow of empire, financial ruin, is different from the other three in that bankruptcy may not be as fatal to the Constitution as endless war, loss of liberty, or habitual official lying; but it is the only sorrow that will certainly lead to a crisis, regardless of how cowed, deeply in denial, or misinformed the public may be. During 2003, the United States may have been ready militarily for a war in Iraq, even for wars in North Korea and Iran, but it was unprepared economically for even one of them, much less all three, or—equally important—their aftermaths.

Permanent military domination of the world is an expensive business. For fiscal year 2003, our military appropriations bill, signed on October 23, 2002, came to $354.8 billion. For fiscal year 2004, the Department of Defense asked Congress for and received an increase to $379.3 billion, plus $15.6 billion for nuclear weapons programs administered by the Department of Energy and $1.2 billion for the Coast Guard. The grand total was $396.1 billion. These amounts included neither intelligence budgets, most of which are controlled by the Pentagon, nor expenditures for the second Iraq war itself, nor a Pentagon request for a special $10 billion account to combat terrorism. When this outsized budget was presented to the House, sycophantic members spent most of their time asking the secretary of defense if he was sure he did not need yet more money and suggesting weapons projects that might then be located in their districts. The message they sent seemed to be: No matter how much the United States spends on “defense,” it will never be enough. The budget of the next-largest military spender, Russia, is only 14 percent of the U.S. total. The military budgets of the next twenty-seven highest spenders would have to be added together to equal our expenditures. 48

The first Gulf War cost slightly over $61 billion. However, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other American allies chipped in $54.1 billion, about 80 percent of the total, leaving the U.S. financial contribution at a minuscule $7 billion. 49Japan alone contributed $13 billion. Nothing like that will happen again soon. Virtually the entire world was agreed on the eve of the second Iraq war that if the lone superpower wanted to go off in personal pursuit of a “preventive” victory, it could pick up its own tab.

The problem with the Bush administration’s unilateralist policies and their focus on military power is that the United States is actually quite short on cash. Forecasts based on the 2003 budget estimate a $480 billion federal deficit, excluding the costs of the Iraq war. Virtually every state in the country faces a severe fiscal shortage and is pleading with the federal government for a bailout, particularly to pay for congressionally mandated antiterrorism and civil defense programs. The Congressional Budget Office projects federal deficits over the next five years of a staggering $1.08 trillion, on top of an existing government debt in February 2003 of $6.4 trillion. 50