THE TRUTH ABOUT IRAQ

Dick & Liz Cheney


As the jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS) capture territory and establish a
caliphate stretching across the now-eradicated
Syria-Iraq border, hard-won gains secured
with American blood and treasure are being
lost. We are watching the rise of potentially
the gravest threat to our national security in a
generation, one that surpasses even the threat
we faced on 9/11. Against this backdrop, as we
debate what our response should be, it has
become fashionable in some quarters to say,
“Let’s not relitigate Iraq.” It’s not politically
expedient, this line of argument goes, to
discuss why we invaded Iraq in the first place,
or the lessons we learned. This view is wrong
on the history, misguided on the politics, and
dangerous as a matter of policy.
The larger war, of which the liberation of Iraq
was part, is still ongoing. Winning it requires
that we understand the truth about the
liberation of Iraq, the challenges America
faced in the aftermath of the invasion, how we
overcame them with the 2007-08 surge, how
we defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq and established a
stable, functioning nation allied with America
in the heart of the Middle East. We must
understand how President Obama squandered
it all, creating a vacuum in which ISIS, the
richest terrorist organization in history, now
thrives.
Those who say the invasion of Iraq in 2003
was a mistake are essentially saying we would
be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in
power. That’s a difficult position to sustain. It
is undisputed, and has been confirmed
repeatedly in Iraqi government documents
captured after the invasion, that Saddam had
deep, longstanding, far-reaching relationships
with terrorist organizations, including al
Qaeda and its affiliates. It is undisputed that
Saddam’s Iraq was a state based on terror,
overseeing a coordinated program to support
global jihadist terrorist organizations. Ansar al
Islam, an al Qaeda-linked organization,
operated training camps in northern Iraq
before the invasion. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the
future leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, funneled
weapons and fighters into these camps, before
the invasion, from his location in Baghdad. We
also know, again confirmed in documents
captured after the war, that Saddam provided
funding, training, and other support to
numerous terrorist organizations and
individuals over decades, including to Ayman
al Zawahiri, the man who leads al Qaeda
today.
It is also undisputed that Saddam Hussein had
the technology, equipment, facilities, and
scientists in place to construct the world’s
worst weapons. We know he intended to
reconstitute these programs as soon as the
international sanctions regime collapsed. He
had an advanced nuclear program in place
prior to Operation Desert Storm in 1991. In
1998, he kicked the international weapons
inspectors out of Iraq. He violated every one
of the 17 U.N. Security Council Resolutions
passed against him.
Anyone pining for the days of Saddam would
do well to read the accounts of his 1988
chemical weapons attack on Halabja, Iraq.
Listen to the survivors talk about the babies
and children who died slow, painful deaths in
bomb shelters where they had sought refuge
with their families. The shelters became, as
Saddam knew they would, gas chambers. The
lesson of Halabja is that Saddam had no
compunction, no moral compass, no hesitation
to use the world’s worst weapons, including
against his own people.
Saddam’s was a reign of terror characterized
by torture, rape rooms, the murder of parents
in front of their children and children in front
of their parents, and the oppression and
slaughter of Kurds, Marsh Arabs, and Shiites.
George W. Bush captured it well when he
wrote that Saddam was a homicidal dictator
pursuing WMD and supporting terror at the
heart of the Middle East.
Leaving Saddam in power after 9/11, in light
of the threat he posed, would have been, as
Tony Blair has noted, an act of political
cowardice. We are not saying Saddam was
responsible for 9/11. What we are saying is
that in the aftermath of 9/11, when we saw
thousands of our fellow citizens slaughtered by
terrorists armed with airline tickets and box
cutters, our leaders had an obligation to do
everything possible to prevent terrorists from
gaining access to even worse weapons.
Saddam’s Iraq was the most likely nexus for
such an exchange.
Against the weight of historical evidence, some
critics claim the Bush administration
manufactured or exaggerated the intelligence
about Saddam’s weapons programs. The charge
doesn’t stand up against the facts. Both the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and
the Robb-Silberman Commission issued
bipartisan reports concluding there was no
politicization of the intelligence or pressure on
analysts to change their judgements about
Iraq’s WMD.