August 12, 2003 © New York University. All Rights Reserved. Is 'Wargate' More Serious Than Watergate? By Malcolm K. Savidge, MP Global Beat Syndicate (KRT) LONDON —Is Wargate more serious than Watergate? When I suggested in the Financial Times in early June that allegations over Iraq were potentially graver than Watergate, I was surprised at the international media attention that followed. Soon after I reiterated the point on NBC Nightly News and again on CNN, I was pleased to see that former counsel to President Richard Nixon John Dean said much the same thing. As the key Watergate witness, he is uniquely qualified to draw such comparisons. Though we had not consulted, we both were of the mind that if congress and the American people were misled into war in Iraq, it would be far more serious than bugging Democratic Party headquarters, and would surely qualify as a "high crime" and grounds for impeachment. The central question is whether the intelligence on which the United States and Britain went to war was mistaken or misrepresented. For instance, there is the assertion, widely believed by Americans, that Saddam Hussin was somehow connected to the Sept. 11 attacks or al-Qaeda. Lately, the reference in President Bush's State of the Union address to Britain's claims about Iraqi uranium from Niger is under scrutiny. President Bush's claim in Cincinnati that Iraq had a growing fleet of aerial vehicles for biological and chemical attacks targeting the United States, is even less credible. Was Saddam so insane as to be unaware that his missiles with ranges of a few hundred kilometers would not reach the United States? In his web article, "Missing Weapons of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About the Reason for War an Impeachable Offense," John Dean catalogs a range of other questionable presidential assertions. Added to those are the even more extreme claims by many in, or working closely with the administration about Saddam's capabilities and intentions. What we need is rigorous inquiry into the validity of these claims, the relative reliability of intelligence from established agencies, such as the CIA and DIA, and the specially created and ideologically driven "Cabal" at the Office of Special Plans. Allegations of political pressure also warrant investigation. What is certain is that influential members of the administration and top advisors had been advocating war with Iraq for years. In 1996, Richard Perle chaired a working group that included Douglas Feith, and which advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that removing Saddam Hussein was central to larger policy designed to retain all Israeli occupied territories. In January and February 1998, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage and John Bolton were among the signatories of open letters to President Clinton urging Saddam's removal. The first letter came from the "Project for the New American Century" and among the reasons it gave were Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the safety of U.S. troops in the region and allies like Israel, and oil. In September 2000, "The Project" published "Rebuilding America's Defenses," which suggested that conquest of Iraq would satisfy a U.S. strategic interest that "transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Serious study of the pronouncements of neo-conservative politicians and think tanks in recent years, together with publications like "The Weekly Standard" and accounts like "Bush at War" creates the impression that invasion of Iraq had become an obsession for a wide variety of reasons. This is wholly consistent with Paul Wolfowitz's comments to "Vanity Fair" that for bureaucratic reasons "we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destructionÉ[that] everyone could agree on." In the full transcript of the interview, Wolfowitz includes as a reason for regime change "the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people." Though Saddam's internal atrocities are now increasingly being used to justify the war, they are scarcely mentioned in most of the neo-conservative arguments leading up to it, and Wolfowitz himself even states that "by itself" it would not warrant risking American lives. With the one agreed reason for war, prior to conflict, Donald Rumsfeld has now told Congress that there was no "dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder." He claimed, "We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11." This should be compared with Condoleeza Rice's revelation to "The New Yorker" on April 1, 2002, "that she had called together senior staff people of the National Security Council and asked them to think seriously about Ôhow do you capitalize on these opportunities' to fundamentally change American doctrine, and the shape of the world, in the wake of September 11." If that atrocity is being used to promote a pre-determined conservative agenda then there are greater causes for concern, because Iraq would set a precedent for more pre-emptive wars. If the United States is to launch warsÑnot in response to aggression, but to perceived threats based on questionable intelligenceÑwe ought to consider the enormous consequences. For example, the unity of the initial international coalition against terrorism may be further fractured, and such conflicts may not merely be a distraction from the campaign against terrorism but actually provoke terrorism. Indeed, rather than preventing the proliferation of WMD, pre-emptive war doctrine may promote it. Serious questions need to be asked now about Wargate, before embarking on a course liable to reduce U.S. security and the safety of the world. ABOUT THE WRITER Malcolm K Savidge is MP for Aberdeen North (Labour), and Convener of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Security and Non-Proliferation. © 2000 New York University. All Rights Reserved. The Global Beat Syndicate, a service of New York University's Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, provides editors with commentary and perspective articles on critical global issues from contributors around the world. For more information, check out http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/. Home | About | Archives | Advisors | Staff