Operation Iraq betrayal

In the absence of anything remotely resembling victory in Iraq, Bush and Cheney play the blame game -- including in a new, authorized biography of the vice president.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Read more: George W. Bush, Politics, Sidney Blumenthal, Pentagon, Opinion, Dick Cheney, Iraq War

AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari

Vice President Dick Cheney, left, listens, as President Bush meets with members of Congress, Wednesday, June 20, 2007, in the Oval Office at the White House.

July 26, 2007 | President Bush's political strategy at home is an implicit if unintended admission of the failure of his military strategy in Iraq and toward terrorism generally. Betrayal is his theme, delivered in his speeches, embroidered by his officials and trumpeted by the brass band of neoconservative publicists. The foundation for his stab-in-the-back theory was laid in the beginning.

"Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," Bush said in his joint address to Congress nine days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And in the weeks that followed he repeated variations of his formula, reducing it to "for or against us in the war on terrorism." At the Charleston, S.C., Air Force Base on Tuesday, Bush resumed his repudiated habit of conflating threats, suggesting a connection between 9/11 and the Iraq war, and intensified his blaming of domestic critics for the shortcomings of his policy. His story line depends upon omitting his own part in the calamity. "The facts are," insisted Bush to his captive audience, "that al-Qaida terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they're fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again."

But how did it happen that al-Qaida in Iraq, sworn enemy of Saddam Hussein and his secularism, operating in isolation prior to 9/11, though almost certainly with the connivance and protection of Kurdish leader and current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, has come to thrive under the U.S. occupation? And since AQI represents perhaps 1 percent or less of the insurgent strength, how can it be depicted as the main foe, capable of seizing state power? The other Sunni insurgent groups increasingly view it as an impediment to their own ambitions and have marked it for elimination. Rather than address these problematic complexities, Bush points the finger of blame at U.S. senators who dare to question his policy. "Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of al-Qaida in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat."

Bush's accusation of betrayal anticipates the September report of Gen. David Petraeus on the progress of the "surge" in Iraq. The absence of victory inspires a search for an enemy within. Bush's stab-in-the-back theory is the latest corollary to the old policy that military force will create political success. Bush is a vulgar Maoist: "Political power comes from the barrel of a gun," said Chairman Mao. But the surge is simply an endlessly repetitive reaction to the failure of the purely military. Somehow, in the political vacuum, additional U.S. troops are supposed to quell the civil war, compel the sects and factions to lie down like lambs, and destroy AQI. U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker last week begged that the Iraqi government not be held accountable for meeting political benchmarks, none of which have been realized; and at the same time he requested exit visas for his Iraqi staff, who obviously have no confidence in the Bush policy and do not wish to leave via the embassy roof. Crocker's actions speak louder than his words -- and louder than Bush's.

Bush, however, clings to the rhetoric of conventional warfare, of "victory" and "retreat." The collapsed Iraqi state, proliferation of sectarian warfare and murderous strife even among Shiite militias bewilder him; clear-cut dichotomies are more comforting, producing deeper confusion. The friend of his enemy is his friend; the enemy of his enemy is not his friend. Meanwhile, Bush seeks to displace responsibility for the potentially dire consequences of his policy on others.

Neoconservative publicists spread the calumnies that critics of Bush's policy are against the troops and that these critics will be responsible for genocide if they and not Bush are followed. William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard -- whose July 15 article in the Washington Post, "Why Bush Will Be a Winner," Bush has recommended to his White House staff -- has published a new piece in the latest issue of his magazine, "They Don't Really Support the Troops." "Having turned against a war that some of them supported, the left is now turning against the troops they claim still to support," he writes. His combination of nuance and crudity is ideologically deft. By pointing out that "some of them supported" the war at the start, his intention is not to draw distinctions but to lump all critics together as now undifferentiated and discreditable -- "the left." Then he ascribed a common motive: fear that Bush will succeed and a hatred of the soldiers. "They sense that history is progressing away from them -- that these soldiers, fighting courageously in a just cause, could still win the war, that they are proud of their service, and that they will be future leaders of this country." But this is not enough for Kristol. "The left slanders them. We support them. More than that, we admire them." Slander?

Jonah Goldberg, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, writes in an article Tuesday that "liberals" are the ones responsible for a coming "genocide" in Iraq. "But if genocide unfolds in Iraq after American troops depart, it would be hard to argue that we weren't at least partly to blame. Yes, the mass murder would have more immediate authors than the United States of America, but we would undeniably be responsible, at least in part, for giving a green light to genocide." Having initially adopted a vague "we," he quickly dispenses with this rhetorical strategy, blaming "liberals" and one person in particular for "mass murder." Barack Obama "offers precisely that green light," he writes.

On July 16, the Associated Press reported on a letter from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman to Sen. Hillary Clinton, condemning her for deigning to request in her capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee information on Pentagon contingency plans for withdrawal. "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman replied. Even asking about such plans aids and abets the enemy, tantamount to treason. Edelman added the suggestion of a massacre if we "abandon" the "allies," and said its responsibility would fall on those who raised questions.

In response to a letter from Sen. Clinton, asking if Edelman's statement "accurately characterizes your views as Secretary of Defense," Robert Gates in effect repudiated it. "I have long been a staunch advocate of congressional oversight, first at the CIA and now at the Defense Department," he wrote on July 20. "I have said on several occasions in recent months that I believe that congressional debate on Iraq has been constructive and appropriate. I had not seen Senator Clinton's reply to Ambassador Edelman's letter until today."

Gates' note is extraordinary not only for its open acknowledgment of a breach with his undersecretary but also for its revelation that he was unaware of Edelman's vitriolic letter. Edelman is a longtime neoconservative with deep ties to Dick Cheney. Like John Bolton, who served as a counterintelligence agent for Cheney when he was undersecretary of state under Colin Powell, Edelman does not truly serve his immediate superior in the chain of command. His ultimate allegiance is pledged to an ideological network. Given the incendiary nature of his letter to a Democratic presidential candidate, which could only be conceived and interpreted as supremely political, it's hard to imagine that as seasoned an operator as Edelman would act entirely on his own. But if he did not brief and receive approval from Gates -- and Gates has gone out of his way to distance himself from any involvement -- then whom did Edelman discuss his letter with before he sent it?

Edelman is a rare Foreign Service officer long aligned with neoconservatives. As he explained in his letter of April 21 to Judge Reggie Walton requesting clemency in sentencing for I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, he has known Libby, "a deeply dedicated public servant," for 26 years. Edelman first served with Libby, he wrote, during the Reagan administration, followed by service as Libby's deputy in the Defense Department during the elder Bush's administration, under Secretary of Defense Cheney, and most recently as Libby's deputy on Cheney's staff.

Edelman, in fact, was the first person on Cheney's staff to sound the alarm against former ambassador Joseph Wilson after reading the May 6, 2003, column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times that described Wilson but did not name him. Edelman urged Libby to leak information to rebut Wilson's disclosure that it was a request from the vice president's office that initiated his mission to Niger in search of the phantom yellowcake uranium Bush claimed Saddam was purchasing -- a major rationale for the Iraq war.

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