Lies the government told you (35 page)

“Grave and Gathering” Deceit

President George W. Bush’s use of deception to trick Congress and the American people into authorizing the Iraq War should go down as one of the deadliest, yet most creative marketing jobs in the history of the world.
¹⁰
The Bush Administration’s goal, from the beginning of its stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, was to go to war with Iraq. Paul O’Neill, President Bush’s first treasury secretary, who attended the first meeting of Bush’s National Security Council on January 30th 2001, stated, “Ten days in, and it was about Iraq.” According to O’Neill, “From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country. And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was all about finding
a way to do it
.”

There’s certainly nothing wrong with “building a case”; lawyers do it all the time. When advocating, it is important for attorneys to highlight arguments that help their clients, while trying to downplay arguments that hurt them. Lawyers, under no circumstances, are permitted
to lie
to get their way. For some reason, however, we do not hold politicians and presidents to this standard. George W. Bush realized this, and capitalized.

Before September 11th 2001, George W. Bush saw Saddam Hussein as a threat to Middle Eastern and American security, yet did not overtly seek war with Iraq. Even after 9/11, on September 16th 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on
Meet the Press
that “Saddam Hussein’s bottled up at this point.” According to Cheney, there was no evidence linking Iraq to the terrorism and 9/11.

The attacks of September 11th 2001, provided President Bush with an advantage, in that there was overwhelming support for any and all counterterrorism plans put forth by the government. At the time, President Bush was revered and recorded astronomical approval ratings. Yet, public support for a war with Iraq was lacking. In November 2001, 74 percent of Americans favored ousting Saddam Hussein. By the end of Summer 2002, however, only a bare majority of Americans still supported regime change in Iraq. What is striking, though, is that more than 80 percent of Americans believed Iraq supported terrorist organizations poised to attack the United States. Better than 90 percent of Americans believed Iraq possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction. A majority of Americans, contrary to Cheney’s statement made a year earlier, believed that Saddam was linked to the 9/11 attacks.

Americans felt this way about Iraq becausethe Bush Administration conducted an intense campaign to “educate” (lie to) the American public about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. In December 2001, Cheney returned to
Meet the Press
and suggested that Saddam Hussein did, in fact, play a role in 9/11. In early 2002, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was calling for a serious response to regimes that seek to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Cheney declared that Iraq officials had “a robust set of programs to develop their own weapons of mass destruction,” and that “we know [Saddam] has been actively and aggressively doing everything he can to enhance his capabilities.” Cheney also continued to discuss Saddam’s relationship with the terrorists.

In Summer 2002, Bush created the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a committee set up to coordinate marketing the war to the public. In August 2002, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville, Tennessee, Cheney stated that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt
he is amassing them to use
against our friends, against our allies,
against us
” (emphasis added). Later, on September 8th 2002, Condoleezza Rice stated the following at the United Nations: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

The message was clear: Saddam had WMDs, he could use them at any moment, and he was friends with the terrorists. To any American, this was frightening. Might Saddam’s WMDs have been the same shipments that the
U.S. sold to him
in 1986 so as to help him defeat Iran in the Iran-Iraq War? If so, the sales were orchestrated by then-and-future Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

In September 2002, the Bush Administration took its marketing campaign to the next level. On September 12th 2002, at the United Nations, Bush reminded the UN that Saddam brutalized his own people and disregarded UN Security Council resolutions. Bush also threw in a few lies, so as not to veer from the theme of his presidency. He stated that Iraq posed a “grave and gathering danger,” was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and supported terrorism. According to Bush, if the UN did not control Iraq, the United States would dispel the threat militarily.

A little over a week later, on September 20th 2002, Bush called a meeting of the Republican governors at the White House to promote war with Iraq. Bush went through all the usual talking points but also emphasized the importance of promoting liberty, individual freedom, and democracy around the world. According to Bush, “Afghanistan and Iraq will lead [the Middle East] to democracy. They are going to be the catalyst to change the Middle East and the world.” There is nothing wrong with promoting liberty and individual freedom; in fact, it is encouraged. However, the idea that a country, through the use of military force, can coercively install freedom in a region that had never been exposed to democracy is misguided. Yet, it was clear that Bush wanted to be the first president to deliver freedom to the
Middle East and fix a broken region.

Bush, however, did not promote his grand ideas directly to the American people. Instead, Bush continued instilling fear in us and warning of the grave threat that Saddam posed to American security. For example, in a speech in Houston, Texas, on September 27th 2002, Bush stated that Saddam was
“the guy who tried to kill my dad
,” a former American president. Bush knew that scaring us into going to war with Iraq with statements like these would be much more effective than trying to tell us that installing democracy in Iraq would somehow work and also spill over to the rest of the Middle East.

By late October 2002, Bush’s marketing plan was coming to a close. Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing the president to use military force in Iraq. President Bush, however, continued to plug the war by telling more and more lies. This wasn’t a problem for the Bush administration, however, so long as it created more and more fear. In December 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that Iraq sought to import yellowcake uranium from Niger. In his State of the Union Address on January 28th 2003, Bush reiterated Powell’s claim, stating that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein has recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

These claims, however, had been proven false long before the administration sought to pass them off as true. The Niger story was based on forged documents, and an investigation done by the Bush administration in March 2002 indicated that Saddam was
not
looking to purchase uranium from Africa. Apparently, the administration felt that every little bit of lying would be worth it in the long run.

On March 19th 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and quickly ousted Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration did not plan for the aftermath, or develop a strategy to leave Iraq. Bush claimed that the United States would deal with Iraq in a “logical way,” but his approach to Iraq was anything but logical. We are still in Iraq. More than 4,400 Americans are dead, and there have been over 650,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. More than 2,500,000 Iraqis have fled their country since the U.S. invasion and occupation began.

“Wrong, Terribly Wrong”

The American tragedies discussed in this chapter are not entirely the fault of the American people. We hire government officials expecting them to do the right thing. We
want
them to do the right thing. We also trust that the government has credible information at hand and takes threats to our freedom very seriously. Yet, this chapter shows that the government
constantly
lies to us in order to enter and initiate wars. This is a common government practice that we must recognize, and one that must be stopped. It is unacceptable that the government lies to us all the time, about everything. It is dangerous and criminal, however, that the government lies to us in order to send troops into harm’s way.

In
The New York Times
on July 7th 2009, Bob Herbert wrote an op-ed piece entitled “After the War Was Over,” in the wake of Robert McNamara’s death “at the ripe old age of 93.” McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and he assured Johnson that we had solid evidence of a North Vietnamese attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. He was wrong, and long after the war he admitted that he had been “wrong, terribly wrong” about Vietnam.

We were misled to enter the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II, the Vietnam War, and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We were “wrong, terribly wrong” about Vietnam and Iraq. Herbert pointed out that apologies after wars are over do not bring soldiers and civilians back to life, and stated his “utter contempt” for such apologies. Implicit in Herbert’s view was the necessity to put an end to the lying and to stop nonsensical and irrational wars before it is too late. In terms of war, deception and misinformation kill.

Lie #15
“We Don’t Torture”
¹

On June 26th 2003, President George W. Bush asserted, “The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example.” No surprise here; President Bush lied. The United States of America is not committed to the worldwide elimination of torture; rather, under Bush, it
supported, facilitated, and directly engaged in
torture. The United States has tortured people, and will continue to torture as long as Americans overlook and excuse the crimes committed by our government, and as long as Americans accept government deception on torture.

President George W. Bush’s administration used fear mongering to justify its torture policy and restrictions on the due process rights of persons it arrested. Under the cloak of “saving lives” and “dispelling grave threats,” our officials have repeatedly condoned policies that violate international conventions (treaties) regarding the treatment of prisoners, as well as the United States Constitution and federal and state statutory law.

This chapter discusses the Bush administration’s torture policy, but also explains how the federal government, during times of war, severely restricts the rights of all persons except those in the government.

Detention,
Habeas Corpus
, and the Supreme Court

The Latin phrase
habeas corpus
literally means “you have the body.” It is a legal action, usually called a “writ,” which means a “right,” through which an individual seeks relief from unlawful detention. The
habeas corpus
protection is directly guaranteed in the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2, provides that “[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The protection is also codified in the United States Code, under 28 U.S.C. §2242(a), which states the following: “Writs of
habeas corpus
may be granted by the Supreme Court, any justice thereof, the district courts and any circuit judge within their respective jurisdictions.” Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that the right to
habeas corpus
is derived from common law. According to Justice John Paul Stevens, “‘ . . .
habeas corpus
is . . . a writ antecedent to statute, throwing its root deep into the genius of our common law.’”
²
Indeed, the right to
habeas corpus
has been guaranteed to all persons in Western law since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

Since the right to be left alone, thus the right to be free from unlawful restraint, is a natural right,
habeas corpus
is essential to permit the vindication of that natural right: It permits the person who is suffering from the unlawful restraint to require the government that is restraining him to justify the lawfulness of the restraint to a neutral judge. Nevertheless, Congress and the Bush administration, after September 11th 2001, sought to restrict severely this fundamental right. It was up to the Supreme Court of the United States to reinstate it.

On June 28th 2004, the Supreme Court issued three decisions concerning the detention of so-called “enemy combatants.”
³
In the case of
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
,
⁴
local Afghan authorities had seized Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2001, and turned him over to the United States military. The military then transferred him to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Upon discerning that Hamdi was in fact an American citizen, the military moved Hamdi to the naval brig in Norfolk, Virginia, and designated him as an “illegal enemy combatant.” By giving him this title, the government saw fit to deny Hamdi due process or the assistance of counsel.

The government also believed it could detain Hamdi indefinitely. The military treated Hamdi poorly when holding him at Norfolk. Jack Goldsmith of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), upon visiting Norfolk, saw Hamdi curled up in a fetal position in his cell and commented that “it seemed unnecessary to hold a twenty-two-year-old foot soldier in a remote wing of a run-down prison in a tiny cell, isolated from almost all human contact.”
⁵
The Pentagon finally permitted Hamdi to communicate with a lawyer in December 2003, more than
two years
after he was initially incarcerated. He was not permitted to meet with his lawyer in person until February 2004.

Hamdi’s father managed to file suit on his son’s behalf in federal court in 2002. Judge Robert G. Doumar,
a United States District judge in the Eastern District of Virginia and a Reagan appointee who understands the Constitution, ruled that Hamdi, a United States citizen designated as an “enemy combatant,” was entitled to a lawyer, and that the government must put forth sufficient evidence validating his detention.
⁶
In his opinion, Judge Doumar offered a brilliant defense of liberty when he ruled: