Most of what President Bush wrote about Iraq in Decision Points aligned as expected with my research.
However, I was surprised by several statements that suggest President Bush has not read key fact findings on Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) — namely, the UNMOVIC, Iraq Survey Group (ISG), and Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) reports — carefully. I guess he's read summaries of the WMD-related fact findings rather than the reports directly. Based on Bush's characterization of Saddam's terrorism, I believe he hasn't read the IPP report at all.
I block-quote President Bush's suspect statements and respond to them. I may have overlooked suspect statements on the Iraq issue, but these should provide a representative sample.
Bush:
Later, many of the assertions in Colin's speech would prove inaccurate.
President Bush is incorrect. In fact, nearly all the main points of Secretary of State Powell's 05FEB03 case presentation to the UN Security Council are substantiated.
Many of Powell's points on Iraq's WMD weren't "assertions" (Bush) at all but rather reiteration of the operative enforcement procedure and the fact record established by UNSCOM/UNMOVIC and IAEA in the decade-plus course of the UNSCR 687 disarmament process.
When I say "substantiated", I don't necessarily mean the intelligence-estimated details Powell presented were proven to be predictively precise, but rather that the substantive element in Powell's point was validated.
For example, the Iraq Survey Group did not find “mobile production facilities used to make biological agents” (Powell). However, ISG confirmed "secret biological work in the small IIS [Iraqi intelligence service] laboratories discovered by ISG" and “The UN deemed Iraq’s accounting of its production and use of BW [biological weapon] agent simulants—specifically Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus lichenformis, Bacillus megaterium and Bacillus thuringiensis to be inadequate … the equipment used for their manufacture can also be quickly converted to make BW agent.”
Moreover, ISG did not conclusively determine the extent of Saddam's BW program. Rather, ISG was unable to account for the fate of much of Iraq’s BW agents, stocks, and equipment due to Iraq’s “denial and deception operations” and “concealment and destruction efforts” in breach of UNSCRs 687 and 1441. ISG also noted "fragmentary and circumstantial" evidence of greater WMD-related activity, including BW production.
The only part of Powell’s speech that falls down in hindsight, knowing what we know now, is the extent to which the Saddam regime sought fissile material for the ISG-confirmed Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) modernization program.
Bush:
Kay conducted a thorough search of Iraq and found irrefutable evidence that Saddam had lied to the world and violated Resolution 1441.
The second part of Bush's statement is correct. By procedure, Iraq's violation of UNSCRs 687 and 1441 established casus belli.
However, the first part of the statement was the first thing in Decision Points that made me suspect President Bush has not read the ISG report firsthand.
In fact, the Iraq Survey Group was not able to conduct a "thorough search of Iraq" (Bush). As David Kay informed the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28, 2004:
I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.ISG was able to corroborate UNMOVIC's confirmation of Iraq's WMD-related "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire. But as a "thorough" account of Saddam's WMD, the ISG report falls short. The Iraq Survey Group's findings are heavily qualified with caveats about significant limitations to the reach and scope of the post hoc investigation, including that the Saddam regime was expert at hiding proscribed items and activities, much evidence was lost prior to, during, and after the war, key regime officials were not forthcoming, statements conflicted, suspect areas were found "sanitized", and other practical factors, such as the terrorist insurgency, impaired the ISG investigation. As such, ISG's findings constituted a floor, not a "thorough" account of Saddam's WMD.
A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."
I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.
The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
Even if ISG had been able to conduct a thorough post-war search of Iraq, it still would not have been a reliable account of Saddam's WMD because the pre-war UNSCR 687 disarmament process was not like a crime-scene forensic investigation that searched for evidence while guarding carefully against the contamination or loss of physical evidence in a controlled area. Carrying the burden of proof, Saddam was in effect allowed by the UN weapons inspections to hide, alter, or destroy evidence of proscribed armament — which ISG confirmed happened. Iraq's known denial and deception only hindered Iraq from meeting its burden to prove it disarmed according to the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441). For that matter, the OIF invasion and post-war occupation also were not designed to scour for, guard, and preserve evidence.
Bush:
But there was one thing Kay did not find: the WMD stockpiles everyone expected.
...
I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it.
...
I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it.
That expectation, however widespread, was incongruous with the operative enforcement procedure and practical circumstances. Again, the UNSCR 687 disarmament procedure was designed upon Iraq's burden of proof to provide a total verified account of its proscribed armament with no obligation on the US and UN to demonstrate it. Therefore, the UN weapons inspections that preceded the ISG investigation were not designed to guard carefully against the contamination or loss of physical evidence. Neither were the OIF invasion and post-war occupation designed to scour for, guard, and preserve evidence.
Case in point. Although the ISG account of Iraq's WMD stocks is usually represented as unequivocal, it is in fact heavily qualified in the ISG report:
With the degradation of the Iraqi infrastructure and dispersal of personnel, it is increasingly unlikely that these questions will be resolved. Of those that remain, the following are of particular concern, as they relate to the possibility of a retained BW capability or the ability to initiate a new one.I appreciate that Bush "had a sickening feeling" over the Iraq Survey Group not finding battlefield-ready WMD stockpiles. And I could understand if he made a strategic choice to deemphasize the shortcomings of the ISG investigation while President. But not acknowledging the qualified nature of the ISG account in his memoir, despite the potential political impact, strikes me as an oversight rather than a purposeful choice.
• ISG cannot determine the fate of Iraq’s stocks of bulk BW agents remaining after Desert Storm and subsequent unilateral destruction. There is a very limited chance that continuing investigation may provide evidence to resolve this issue....
• The fate of the missing bulk agent storage tanks.
• The fate of a portion of Iraq’s BW agent seed-stocks.
• The nature, purpose and who was involved in the secret biological work in the small IIS laboratories discovered by ISG.
ISG’s investigation of Iraq’s ammunition supply points—ammunition depots, field ammunition supply points (FASPs), tactical FASPs, and other dispersed weapons caches—has not uncovered any CW [chemical weapon] munitions. ISG investigation, however, was hampered by several factors beyond our control. The scale and complexity of Iraqi munitions handling, storage, and weapons markings, and extensive looting and destruction at military facilities during OIF significantly limited the number of munitions that ISG was able to thoroughly inspect.
• ISG technical experts fully evaluated less than one quarter of one percent of the over 10,000 weapons caches throughout Iraq, and visited fewer than ten ammunition depots identified prior to OIF as suspect CW sites.
• The enormous number of munitions dispersed throughout the country may include some older, CW-filled munitions, and ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq.
Bush:
While the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone, the reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false.
I agree with the first part of Bush's statement. On the second part, yes and no.
I address this issue in the OIF FAQ answer to "Did Bush lie his way to war with Iraq". Note especially parts 5 to 7 of the answer.
President Bush is correct that the pre-war intelligence estimates were predictively imprecise, and the intelligence community is fairly criticized concerning its tradecraft but with the understanding that demonstration of WMD to match the pre-war estimates was not an element of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) that determined casus belli, the effectualness of Iraqi counter-intelligence denial and deception was known, and ISG's non-findings — the basis of criticism — are heavily qualified, so it's indeterminate how much the estimates were off the mark. The political demand to prove that pre-war estimates of Saddam's secret inventory were predictively precise was inapposite of and practically incompatible with the UNSCR 687 disarmament process and an abnormal treatment of intelligence in general.
At the same time, Bush is not correct to say the "intelligence ... proved false". ISG's heavily qualified non-findings do not make for a proven disposition and the pre-war intelligence correctly indicated Saddam was illicitly reconstituting Iraq's conventional armament and WMD capabilities in violation of UNSCR 687 for casus belli. Much of the underlying data of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) was sound: the baseline fact of Saddam's WMD established by UNSCOM and IAEA, the ISG-confirmed data of Iraq's illicit procurement and activities, and the UNSCR 1441-inspection findings that triggered enforcement.
Bush:
That was a massive blow to our credibility — my credibility — that would shake the confidence of the American people. No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons.
The President should not have been shocked. The notion of demonstrating that Saddam's WMD matched the pre-war intelligence estimates was always unrealistic since the UNSCR 687 disarmament process, OIF invasion, and post-war occupation were not designed for that kind of proof. If the Iraq intervention's legitimacy pivoted on proving the pre-war estimates were predictively precise, then of course it likely would be de-legitimated given that Saddam's forces had a long, practically free hand to conceal, alter, and destroy evidence before and during the ISG investigation.
Nonetheless, the UNMOVIC and ISG findings are rife with UNSCR 687 violations. With the burden of proof on Iraq to cure the "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441), the pre-war intelligence estimates should not have been positioned politically to overshadow Saddam's evidential categorical breach of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" — including the UNSCR 687 WMD mandates — in Iraq's "final opportunity to comply" (UNSCR 1441).
Bush blames the "intelligence failure on Iraq's WMD" for the political controversy, but President Bush should blame himself for enabling the political controversy by deviating from the standing precedent of President Clinton's presentation of the case against Saddam. In accordance with the operative enforcement procedure, Clinton cited to Iraq's noncompliance as "clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program". Clinton didn't cite to the intelligence at all when justifying his Gulf War ceasefire enforcement. Yet inapposite of the compliance-based enforcement that Bush faithfully carried forward from Clinton, Bush officials improperly characterized speculative estimates as "evidence" of Saddam's secret inventory. The intelligence, if cited at all, should have been properly characterized as indicators of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441). In some cases, such as records of Iraq's illicit procurement, the intelligence did qualify as evidence in hand of the Saddam regime violating UNSCR 687.
In Decision Points, President Bush compounds the "massive blow to our credibility" enabled by his presentation error by fixating on "Kay did not find: the WMD stockpiles everyone expected" at variance with the actual case against Saddam, overlooking the qualified nature of the ISG account, and barely crediting the raft of UNSCR 687 violations reported by UNMOVIC and ISG that confirmed Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire.
Bush:
If Saddam didn't have WMD, why wouldn't he just prove it to the inspectors?
...
Saddam still had the infrastructure and know-how to make WMD.
...
Saddam still had the infrastructure and know-how to make WMD.
Bush answers his question by referring to Saddam's policy of bluffing Iran and Saddam wrongly evaluating the US-led threat of regime change. Which is correct, but incomplete.
A more complete answer is Saddam wouldn't prove he didn't have WMD to the UNSCR 1441 inspections because he couldn't — Iraq was in fact heavily violating the UNSCR 687 WMD mandates.
The notion, "Saddam didn't have WMD", assumes a narrow definition of WMD proscription inapposite to the US-enforced "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441) that Saddam violated to trigger Operations Desert Fox and Iraqi Freedom. Yet on September 12, 2002, President Bush reiterated the (paraphrased) UNSCR 687 standard to the UN General Assembly, "If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related material."
UNMOVIC verified Iraq's "continued violations of its obligations" (UNSCR 1441) to establish casus belli, and then the Iraq Survey Group, notwithstanding its practical limitations, was able to confirm Saddam was guilty of many UNSCR 687 violations:
Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material. [Kay, 28JAN04]Bush's phrasing, "Saddam still had the infrastructure and know-how to make WMD," connotes a holdover quality. But ISG found more than retained Gulf War-vintage infrastructure and know-how, although that would have been sufficient by itself to violate UNSCR 687 and corroborate Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441). The chiefly sanctions-based 'containment' was de facto neutralized by 2000-2001, and "[a]s UN sanctions eroded there was a concomitant expansion of activities that could support full WMD reactivation" (ISG) even before UNSCOM failed in 1998 with "military reconstitution efforts starting in 1997" (ISG). ISG confirmed Saddam was applying the funds from the Oil For Food scandal to illicitly reconstitute a broad array of conventional arms, military infrastructure, and nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile research, development, and production capabilities with a "large covert procurement program" under cover of "denial and deception operations".
Saddam was bluffing, which by itself violated UNSCRs 687 and 1441 for casus belli. But Saddam wasn't only bluffing, and it's not clear how much he was bluffing. Iraq was hiding many UNSCR 687-proscribed items and activities, including IIS and production capabilities. When viewed with the operative lens of the "governing standard of Iraqi compliance" (UNSCR 1441), the facts show Saddam was rearming. Due to the ISG investigation's practical limitations and evidentiary gaps that Bush doesn't acknowledge in Decision Points, the Iraq Survey Group can offer a guess, but ISG can't be sure about the fate of all Saddam's secret stores and the extent Iraq's WMD program was reconstituted. For example, the CW munitions missed by ISG and confiscated under Operation Avarice bore out ISG's caveat "ISG cannot discount the possibility that a few large caches of munitions remain to be discovered within Iraq."
Regarding the casus belli for OIF, the Iraq Survey Group is sure that "the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions" and "ISG judges that Iraq failed to comply with UNSCRs".
Bush:
Saddam could have turned to Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda — a marriage of convenience, not ideology — as surrogates in an attempt to match Iran's use of Shia terrorist groups like Hezbollah.
President Bush appears not to have read the IPP report. His statements on Saddam's terrorism in Decision Points seem to be grounded in the pre-war assessment of Saddam's terrorism, which to be fair, was already sufficient to satisfy the counter-terrorism element of OIF's casus belli.
However, the post-war analyses by the Iraqi Perspectives Project and UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) show pre-war assessments underestimated Saddam's "regional and global terrorism" (IPP) in breach of UNSCR 687 and "widespread terror" (UNCHR) ruling Iraq in breach of UNSCR 688.
Bush is correct to say that "Saddam could have turned to Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda" because there is ample evidence that Saddam was already deeply engaged with Sunni terrorist groups including al Qaeda. Jim Lacey, who authored the IPP report, concluded based on the IPP and ISG findings, "Given the evidence, it appears that we removed Saddam’s regime not a moment too soon."
President Bush's suspect statements in Decision Points look like the popular yet misleading summaries that conceal that the UNMOVIC and ISG reports are rife with disarmament violations, and the often-cited ISG conclusion, "it appears that Iraq, by the mid-1990s, was essentially free of militarily significant WMD stocks", is more equivocal than it's usually portrayed. In fact, the ISG report's non-findings are heavily qualified due to the procedural and practical character of the UNSCR 687 disarmament process and other factors that impaired ISG's post hoc investigation. As such, the ISG findings of UNSCR 687-proscribed armament constituted a floor only, not a complete account of Saddam's WMD.
It's possible that Bush was simply trying to be unsparing in his memoir. But his harsh self-recrimination can only misinform the public by obscuring that the burden of proof was on Saddam, which Bush does reiterate in Decision Points, the UNSCR 1441 inspections verified Iraq did not disarm as mandated, and the Iraq Survey Group found many UNSCR 687 and 1441 violations. The UNSCR 660 series' enforcers were not obligated to find anything to justify enforcement: by procedure, "[r]ecognizing the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security" (UNSCR 1441), casus belli was established with UNMOVIC's confirmation of Iraq's "material breach" (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire.
The political fallout enabled by his presentation error with the pre-war intelligence estimates doesn't negate that President Bush's decision on Iraq was substantively correct on the facts, procedurally correct on law and precedent, and justified on the policy. As Saddam was in violation of the spectrum of essential international norms that defined the Gulf War ceasefire, President Bush's decision on Iraq was also essentially correct for the sake of liberal international order.
Note that the above criticisms of President Bush's memoir apply as well to Prime Minister Blair's response to the Chilcot report. Regarding Blair's statement, also see my criticism of his "apology", my commentary about the post-war setbacks, and my response to British pundit John Rentoul's article, "Chilcot Report: Politicians".
PREFACE: On October 19, 2017, President Bush announced the George W. Bush Institute Human Freedom Initiative's The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World, a new project advocating "freedom, free markets, and security". I e-mailed the following recommendation to Ken Hersh, the George W. Bush Presidential Center President and Chief Executive Officer, Holly Kuzmich, the George W. Bush Institute Executive Director and Senior Vice President, and the Human Freedom Initiative's general contact. Reference.
from: [Eric LC]
to: [Ken Hersh], [Holly Kuzmich], humanfreedom@bushcenter.org
date: Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 5:45 PM
subject: You must clarify the Iraq issue to effectually advocate the spirit of liberty at home, in the world
Mr. Hersh, Ms. Kuzmich, and the George W. Bush Institute Human Freedom Initiative,
I support your campaign to champion the revival of American leadership of the free world that President Bush heralded today in New York City.
However, your political effort will be constantly undermined by the prevalent conjecture, distorted context, and misinformation that have obfuscated the Iraq issue and stigmatized Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The prevailing OIF stigma, in addition to shading President Bush and his namesake organization, is purposefully applied as keystone premise in the politics to degrade the essential international norms and neutralize the vital enforcement principles that embodied with the paradigmatic US-led compliance enforcement of the UNSCR 660 series with Iraq. The "Spirit of Liberty" campaign advocates the same fundamental set of norms and principles that are purposefully degraded and neutralized by the OIF stigma.
For your political effort to be effectual, your team must publicly clarify — relitigate — the pivotal Iraq issue in order to re-lay the foundation of the politics at the premise level. The People at home and in the world must be made to understand that President Bush's decision for OIF was correct on the law, justified on the policy, and right on essential principle. That the US and our allies demonstrably were right on Iraq. And OIF opponents demonstrably have been revisionist and wrong.
To equip you for that contest, here is my explanation of Operation Iraqi Freedom's law and policy, fact basis: https://operationiraqifreedomfaq.blogspot.com/.
The OIF FAQ post synthesizes the controlling law, policy, and precedent and determinative facts that define the OIF decision. Its FAQ-style framework is oriented on the usual main talking points of the revisionist anti-OIF narrative. Hewing to the bedrock of the primary source authorities is the most effective way to correct the prevalent conjecture, distorted context, and misinformation that have obfuscated the Iraq issue.
In other words, the OIF FAQ is essentially the relitigation of the Iraq issue that Governor (Jeb) Bush should have undertaken when he was confronted with the Iraq issue during the 2015-2016 presidential campaign. "Knowing what we know now", President Bush's decision on Iraq demonstrably was correct on the law and facts.
You're trying to do the right thing, and it's needed. But to make headway, you must re-lay the foundation of the politics by clarifying the Iraq issue to the public. If you have questions about my work, please ask.
[See 2015 advice to Republican presidential candidates, How Republicans should talk about the Iraq issue.]
Also see Criticisms and suggestions for "International Law and the War in Iraq" (John Yoo, 2003) and Rebuke of and advice to Charles Duelfer.
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