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Dapital Games

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Capital Games by DAVID CORN Is Bmh's War in Iraq A "Brain Fart"? 09/26/2003 @ 4:50pm E-mail this Post

Did retired General Anthony Zinni really call George W. Bush's war in Iraq a "brain fart"? That seems to be the case. But first, some background. On Thursday night, Zinni, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, was interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline. And he was rather sharp in his assessment of George W. Bush's policy in Iraq. Before the war, Zinni, who had been an envoy for Bush in the Middle East, opposed a U.S. invasion of Iraq, arguing that Saddam Hussein did not pose an imminent threat. On Nightline, Zinni compared Bush's push for the war with the Gulf of Tonkin incident—an infamous episode in which President Lyndon Johnson misrepresented an attack on two U.S. Navy destroyers in order to win congressional approval of the war in Vietnam—and he challenged "the credibility behind" Bush's prewar assertions concerning Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and its association with anti-American terrorists. "I'm suggesting," Zinni said, "that either the [prewar] intelligence was so bad and flawed—and if that's the case, then somebody's head ought to roll for that— or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a way to make a more convenient case to the American people." Zinni said he believed that Hussein had maintained "the framework for a weapons of mass destruction program that could be quickly activated once sanctions were lifted" and that such a program, while worrisome, did not immediately endanger the United States. Zinni raised the issue that Bush might have purposefully misled the public and not shared with it the true reason for the war: "If there's a strategic decision for taking down Iraq, if it's the so-called neoconservative idea that taking apart Iraq and creating a model democracy, or whatever it is, will change the equation in the Middle East, then make the [public] case based on that strategic decision....! think it's a flawed--like the domino theory—it's a flawed strategic thought or concept....But if that's the reason for going in, that's the case the American people

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Washington—a city of denials, spin, and political calculations. They may speak English there, but most citizens still need an interpreter to undei ways and meanings the Washington edi Nation magazine, h years analyzing the pursuing the lies th of the nation's capit novelist, biographei television and radio commentator who i decipher and scrutii Washington. In his dispatches, h the day-by-day poli policy battles under Capitol, the White r think tanks, and th< studios. With an inf unconventional per: holds the politicians policymakers and p accountable and rei important facts and go uncovered elsew Watch for David Co forthcoming The Lit W. Bush: Mastering of Deception, due o Crown Publishers tr September.

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THE SHOCK OF THE NEW

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acknowledgment was made of the previous administration's determination, announced fifteen months earlier, that unnamed senior Iranian officials were under investigation for their roles in the killing of Americans at Khobar Towers. The occasion for these remarks was the removal of Hani el-Sayegh, the suspected Khobar conspirator, to Saudi Arabia. In making the announcement, Attorney General Janet Reno said that the United States had not determined whether the bombing was carried out at the instigation of the Iranian government.3 The United States decided to comply with a Saudi request for custody of the suspect, because once el-Sayegh reneged on his plea agreement, the Justice Department did not have enough evidence to try him. (Powell's only reference to Afghanistan deplored their treatment of women.) The administration's early posture vis-a-vis Iran must have come as a shock to Louis Freeh, who, Elsa Walsh wrote in The New Yorker, was still focused so intently on the Khobar case that he "poured [into it] not only enormous investigative resources but also soul." According to Walsh, Freeh did not believe that President Clinton would make the hard decision to indict Iranian officials for the Khobar bombing; therefore he decided to wait for the next administration to press ahead with the case and, presumably, make those indictments. (Freeh was evidently not troubled by the position of the Justice Department attorneys in the case, f who felt they had no admissible evidence to use for such charges.) Freeh announced that he would retire in June, saying that Khobar was his "only . unfinished piece of business."4 After the New Yorker article appeared, Freeh was summoned to Condoleezza Rice's West Wing office. The buzz in thecorridors ot the Did Executive Office Building was that he was given a tongue-lashing, the essence of whichwas that the FBI director did p'Hrnab' frmgri j" l ll-'y" On June 22,2001, a few days before the fifth anniversary of the bombing of Khobar Towers, the Justice Department announced the indictment of thirteen Saudis and one unidentified Lebanese. The charges contained references to unnamed Iranian officials who were said to have assisted Saudi Hezbollah, although they were not indicted. Attorney General