Here are a few of the growing number of stories about how administration officials worked to ensure that the threat of Iraq’s claimed WMD prgrams and readiness were overstated, in making the case for war with that country.

Powell was Under Pressure to Use Shaky Intelligence on Iraq: Report

US News and World Report magazine said the first draft of the speech was prepared for Powell by Vice President Richard Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in late January.

Cheney’s aides wanted Powell to include in his presentation information that Iraq has purchased computer software that would allow it to plan an attack on the United States, an allegation that was not supported by the CIA, US News reported.

Full Article…

(Here is a link to the U.S. News & World Report article referred to in the above. The article will go to their for-pay archives after a while.)

Might and Right
Commentary by Philip Gourevitch
The New Yorker
Issue of 2003-06-16
Posted 2003-06-09

Two weeks ago, on the first day of his first foreign trip since the fall of Baghdad, President Bush went to Auschwitz. The symbolism could not have been more heavy-handed: with the international press full of images of the grisly excavations of Saddam Hussein’s killing fields, the President claimed the memory of the six million to explain his “war on terror,” invoking the Nazi gas chambers and crematoriums as “a sobering reminder of the power of evil and the need for people to resist evil.” Bush ended his trip in the same spirit, telling a cheering throng of American troops in Qatar, “The world is now learning what many of you have seen. They’re learning about the mass graves. They’re learning about the torture chambers. Because of you, a great evil has been ended.” It’s true that stopping Saddam’s tyranny is the most heartening and unambiguous consequence of the war in Iraq. But Bush did not take over that country on a humanitarian impulse. As Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has said, although Saddam’s “criminal treatment of the Iraqi people” was a “fundamental concern” for Washington’s war planners, it was “not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it.” Rather, according to the repeated claims of the Administration, our kids were put at risk in order to disarm Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons, which, intelligence assessments were said to show, posed an urgent threat to our national security.

So where is Saddam’s terrible arsenal? Bush, on his way to Auschwitz, took time out to tell Polish television, “We found the weapons of mass destruction.” That wasn’t true. After more than two months of searching, American forces in Iraq had yet to discover any trace of biological or chemical agents. All they have found is a pair of tractor trailers, which appear to have been fitted out as weapons laboratories but never used. The President’s readiness to present this discovery as a finding of the weapons themselves follows a pattern of distortions on the part of the Administration—hypotheticals proclaimed as facts, suspicions and fears spun as clear and present dangers, actions taken accordingly—throughout the planning, marketing, and prosecution of the war.

Full Article…

Senators Urge Congress to Hold Hearings on Iraq
Reuters
Tuesday 10 June 2003

WASHINGTON – Two key senators said on Tuesday that Congress should hold hearings on what intelligence led the United States to go to war against Iraq.

President Bush stopped short on Monday of repeating his pledge that weapons of mass destruction would be found, although he stated flatly that Iraq had a banned arms program.

Full Article…

(NOTE: This is the first in a series of recent commentaries on developments in the conservative political movement– namely the “rise of the neo-conservatives”, and the concern this is causing with the more traditional conservatives and “paleo-conservatives”.)

Gary North, a veteran of the modern conservative movement, provides an extraordinary overview of the history of the “neoconservative” branch of that movement, which has culminated in the sharp changes in U.S. foreign policy focus and demeanor seen since the September 11th attacks. His analysis is long, intensely revealing, and it is delivered from the view of a long-time insider and “player” in the conservative ranks.

An Introduction to Neoconservatism

Questions relating to neoconservatism – what it is, who runs the show – have begun to be raised by the conventional press, mainly due to the invasion of Iraq, which is clearly the fruit of policy recommendations made by neoconservative advisors to President Bush. Foreign policy is the traditional monopoly of the Establishment. After all, the Council on Foreign Relations is not called the Council on Domestic Policies. Any invasion of turf by outsiders is therefore resented by the Establishment. The neocons are turf-invaders, which bothers the Establishment far more than the invasion of Iraq does.

In tracing the rise of neoconservatism, it is best to use the five W’s of old-fashioned journalism: what, who, when, where, and why, in that order. I offer these thoughts as an introduction, not as anything remotely definitive. Let us begin with the pre-neo conservative movement.

Full Article…

(NOTE: This is the second of a series of recent commentaries on developments in the conservative political movement– namely the “rise of the neo-conservatives”, and the concern this is causing with the more traditional conservatives and “paleo-conservatives”.)

Editor’s Note: I was hesitant at first about posting this article by Pat Buchanan, partially because he has been seen by many as an extremist on some issues, and partly because he occasionally dips below our standard of decorum in his analysis. However, he is a major voice in the conservative community. He has been the conservative commentator for many left-right political shows over the past many years, he has been a Republican candidate for president, and he is an Editor of The American Conservative. Furthermore, his article is quite extensive, he backs up his assertions with extensive quotes and references to other sources, and he provides a valuable in-depth, insider viewpoint on the growing rift in the conservative movement. It certainly provides essential background information in understanding the roots and branches of the PNAC.

It’s also worth saying that the growing level of disgust among those “in the know” about the rise of the PNAC and neoconservativism in U.S. foreign policy is making it harder to find analyses and commentaries in which the disgust doesn’t show through to at least some extent.

Whose War?
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.

by Patrick J. Buchanan
March 24, 2003 issue
Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative

The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers … that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”

Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative’—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a “key tenet of neoconservatism.” He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)

Full Article…

(NOTE: This is the third of a series of recent commentaries on developments in the conservative political movement– namely the “rise of the neo-conservatives”, and the concern this is causing with the more traditional conservatives and “paleo-conservatives”.)

The American Conservative Union recently issued an open memo to “Conservative Leaders and Activists”, entitled Revitalizing Conservatism. In it, ACU vice-chairman Donald Devine makes 12 numbered points, arguments, and appeals, all centered around the idea that conservatives need to rally around traditional, small-government conservatism, and to resist the rising forces in the Republican Party, and more specifically the so-called “neo-conservatives”, which is one of the terms frequently applied to the promoters and friends of the PNAC.

Here are a few of the 12 points he addresses:

1. Beginning a Discussion on the Future of Conservatism. We at ACU believe that it is time for the conservative movement to begin a serious discussion of its future course. The issue is, are we to become just a lobbying force for the Republican Party or should we regain our status as a cutting-edge force moving the country towards freedom and responsibility?

4. The Split on the Right. But it is worse. Conservatives are fighting each other on the front pages of their own magazines. National Review writer David Frum made the argument public with a banner denunciation of any conservative with reservations about the invasion of Iraq. Those conservative intellectuals and activists opposed or even those critical of it before the fighting or even those who mentioned that protecting Israel’s interests could complicate matters were all labeled paleo-conservatives and pushed off to the nutty fringe. The only good guys remaining on the right were neo-conservatives. Frum named names, some of who differed on principle, but most simply saw the facts differently. He was so obsessed with his own righteousness in anathematizing heretics he was heedless of how the split would further weaken the forces of the right.

6. The Public Voice of Conservatism? Intellect abhors a vacuum as much as physical matter. So “national greatness” neo-conservatism soon replaced limited government as the ideal and filled the pages of the journals on the right, very much including NR, which at one point even called for a revival of colonialism under U.S. auspices and the building of an American empire. Bill Buckley himself was forced to repair to the pages of rival Human Events-which remained faithful to the original ideals but saw its role as a news magazine rather than as a journal of opinion–to condemn empire-building as incompatible with American conservatism. With the Weekly Standard message boosted by the TV stardom of its editor Bill Kristol-who recently boasted, “if people want to say we’re an imperial power, fine”–neo-conservatism became the dominant public face of the movement. The alternatives were the paleo-conservative magazines, Chronicles and The American Conservative, which were equally disdainful of mainstream conservatism.

9. Empire Makes Or Breaks Conservatism. Global empire is an important issue for conservatism. If the U.S. government has the ability to bring peace and democracy to the world, big government can obviously also run America’s economy and plan its social life–and limited government becomes irrelevant. Here most of neo-conservatism and paleo-conservatism unite in their lack of interest in limited government. Modern conservatism literally shifted the center of American and world politics against unlimited government, at least in thought, in a not insubstantial manner. All politicians today-especially in the GOP– find it difficult to push higher taxes and the belief is widespread that government programs do not work very well. Politically, however, government keeps growing and almost no politician concedes there is any limit to where its benefits and power may reach in the future. Even with the largest programs approaching bankruptcy, the government is immobilized by fear of taking action. Government keeps growing and journalistic conservatism is silent that this growth, especially fueled by dreams of empire, threatens the whole project of American liberty.

12. Back To Square One. The conservative movement today is in danger of becoming a lobbying adjunct of the Republican Party. This means its ideas would no longer lead policy and soon thereafter its ideas would die. At the beginning, there were probably only a few thousand committed conservative activists and intellectuals in the whole country. Liberal intellectuals proclaimed “The End of Ideology” because there was no conservative alternative. The GOP was dominated by Nelson Rockefeller and the Eastern liberal Republicans controlled the White House, which threatened conservatives with expulsion if they even complained. We rose up then and moved the world right and we can do it again. If we cannot rise to oppose empire, the movement deserves to fail. All we need to do is get off our butts and speak up for our principles.

Read the whole ACU memo here.