By the summer of 2003, when no WMDs had been found, many people started to wonder about all those classified intelligence reports that Saddam had active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs. By the summer of 2004, when the deadly effective insurgency started ripping our troops and materiel to shreds, the prediction that we would be "greeted as liberators" by the people of Iraq came into question. As the Sunni/Shia sectarian war heated up in 2005 it became clear that deposing Saddam had not resolved the deeper problem of suppression of Shias and Kurds by Baathist Sunnis, who were merely represented by Saddam. That's when the hidden pieces of this tragic puzzle started to fit together in a comprehensible historical stream. Below is one way to make sense of it all in the context of decades of US hostilities against Iran and Iran's clever solution to US intervention in their affairs. Then, at the end of this diary, an alternative view of the Iraq war that ignores all that imperialism and allows America some dignity, and will probably be history's final verdict.
Yesterday I left a comment on BREAKING!! Iraqi Cabinet Votes to Oust U.S.! (UPDATED x 4), a highly rec'ed diary. Some replies to my comment said I should submit it as a diary, so here it is. One reply gave me a new perspective, so I'm adding it at the end.
Here is an expanded version of my comment, How will historians tell this story?
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated:
"In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."
Of course one of the main goals for taking proxy control of Iran through the Shah was to control its oil.
By 1979, political unrest in Iran had transformed into a revolution which, on January 16, forced the Shah to leave Iran after 37 years of rule. Soon thereafter, the revolutionary forces transformed the government into an Islamic republic.
So at that point the US propped up Saddam Hussein in Iraq and provided him with funding and weapons to launch his war against Iran. Saddam wanted to invade and occupy Iran in part to control the Shia majority in Iraq which was becoming increasingly hostile toward him and his Baathist Sunni oppressive regime. The war began when Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980. Hostilities continued until August 1988, ending with the border almost unchanged and both regimes intact. Millions were killed on both sides, many by poison gas and mass deployment of land mines.
Beginning in the early 1990's a small group of Iraqi Shia and Kurdish exiles, eventually known as the Iraqi National Congress, fanned out over Europe and the US to convince the US to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam. Although thoroughly discredited by the CIA and most other western intelligence agencies, the INC methodically placed phoney reports of WMD stockpiles and production facilities, Saddam's ties to Osama bin Laden (remember "Curveball"), and various atrocities committed by Saddam (some true) among European intel agencies, who then corraborated each other's stories without revealing their sources. The INC explained that Iraq's people were all oppressed by Saddam, and as soon as Saddam was removed the people would surely form into a popular democracy that would welcome permanent US military presence and would grant lucrative oil leases for major US companies.
After 2001, the INC leader, Ahmed Chalabi, a Shia with strong ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, charmed his way into the inner circles of the Bush administration.
From "The Man Who Pushed America to War" by Adam Rostow:
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, John Hannah, Michael Ledeen and Danielle Pletka. They dined with him and met him and conversed, and through well-placed op-eds and clever talking points and sound bites, their ideas bled into the mainstream.
Or see Heros in Error in Mother Jones
Chalabi was given a seat three feet behind Laura Bush at the 2003 State of the Union address, where he was praised by George Bush. Chalabi convinced VP Dick Cheney that the US would be greeted as liberators and a friendly Iraqi government would allow the US to dominate Iraqi politics and keep troops in Iraq indefinitely. Cheney personally coerced the CIA and State Dept., and much of the media, into accepting Chalabi's stories and an "Office of Special Operations" was created in the Pentagon to "stovepipe" his version of Saddam's WMDs, ties to Al Quaida, etc. to Bush.
Cheney's unstated goals were as described by the PNAC: permanent US military bases in Iraq to form a power base to control and profit from the flow of oil throughout the mideast.
In 2003 Bush invaded and occupied Iraq, deposing Saddam and turning the country over to majority rule by Shia parties with very strong ties to Iran. Chalabi at first directed the "de-Baathification" that removed all remnants of Saddam's power structure from the Iraqi government, then he gained control of much of the reconstruction of Iraq and its oil development.
US losses included nearly 5,000 dead, 20-30,000 permanently disabled, broken soldiers and families across America, $1-3 trillion spent on credit, worldwide condemnation, and domestic political paralysis as critical problems like global warming and economic meltdown worsened.
In November, 2008 the Shia-dominated and Iran-allied Iraqi government demanded that all US troops stand down and leave Iraq as soon as possible, leaving no permanent bases, and having no control of either Iraqi or Iranian oil.
Conclusion: Iran won and became the rising superpower in the mideast while severely weakening US military and eocnomic power. The US lost, although weapons dealers and many defense contractors made out like bandits.
Now the alternate view of history that is likely to be the story told in the corporate media and in schools: The US and Iraq won, Cheney and the neocons lost.
That will be history's verdict:
"The Americans fulfilled all their acknowledged obligations in Iraq (eliminating WMD, removing the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, making possible popular election of a new Iraqi government) and then left when requested by the elected Iraqi government-- thereby repudiating the temptation to hold Iraq as a permanent colonial dependency. If it had continued, the Occupation would have permanently crippled US credibility and strategic interests, but the Americans finally recovered their moral compass and lifted the Occupation.
True, certain US elites had intended to use the intervention as a pretext to establish a colonial puppet regime in Iraq and usurp Iraqi oil. But the Iraqis refused to ratify a SOFA conceding them this and the American electorate resoundingly turned out these elites.
Surely one of the brightest moments in recent US and world history occurred in the autumn of 2008, when the Maliki government stood up against the bullying of the Bush-Cheney Administration while American voters defied conventional wisdom by throwing ther support to a presidential candidate unequivocally opposed to the continued occupation of Iraq."
by LanceBoyle on Mon Nov 17, 2008 at 06:49:42 AM PST