Published on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

More Damning than Downing Street
by Paul Rogat Loeb

It's bad enough that the Bush administration had so little
international support for the Iraqi war that their "coalition
of the willing" meant the U.S., Britain, and the equivalent
of a child's imaginary friends. It's even worse that, as the
Downing Street memo confirms, they had so little evidence of
real threats that they knew from the start that they were going
to have manufacture excuses to go to war. What's more damning
still is that they effectively began this war even before
the congressional vote.

With Congressman John Conyers about to hold hearings, coverage
of the Downing Street memo is finally beginning to leak into
the media. In contrast, we've heard almost nothing about the
degree to which this administration began actively fighting
the Iraq war well in advance of the March 2003 official attack
--before both the October 2002 US Congressional authorization
and the November United Nations resolution requiring that
Saddam Hussein open the country up to inspectors.

I follow Iraq pretty closely, but was taken aback when Charlie
Clements, now head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee,
described driving in a Baghdad neighborhood six months before
the war "and a building would just explode, hit by a missile
from 30,000 feet -'What is that building?'" Clements would ask.
"'Oh, that's a telephone exchange.'" Later, at a conference
at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base, Clements heard a U.S. General
boast "that he began taking out assets that could help in
resisting an invasion at least six months before war was
declared."

Earlier this month, Jeremy Scahill wrote a powerful piece
on The Nation's website, describing a huge air assault in
September 2002,
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0602-25.htm
[ Local Copy ]

"Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait
into Iraqi airspace," Scahill writes. "At least seven types
of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including
US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack
planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam
Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the
path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan.
Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command
and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary
Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense
systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's
ability to resist."

Why aren't we talking about this? As Scahill points out,
this was a month before the Congressional vote, and two
before the UN resolution. Supposedly part of enforcing
"no fly zones," the bombings were actually systematic
assaults on Iraq's capacity to defend itself. The US had
never declared war. Bush had no authorization, not even
a fig leaf. He was simply attacking another nation because
he'd decided to do so. This preemptive war preempted our
own Congress, as well as international law.

I don't think most Americans know these prewar attacks ever
happened, aside from those who've read Scahill's recent piece,
or heard him on Democracy Now. I recall no mainline media
coverage at the time, and little in the alternative press.
The bombings that destroyed Iraq's air defenses were under
the radar for both the American media and public.

If coverage of the Downing Street memo continues to increase,
I suspect the administration will try to dismiss it as mere
diplomatic talk, just inside baseball. But they weren't just
manipulating intelligence so they could attack no matter
how Saddam Hussein responded. They weren't only bribing
would-be allies into participation. They were fighting
a war they'd planned long before. They just didn't bother
to tell the American public.

Paul Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While:
A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books),
named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel
and American Book Association. See www.theimpossible.org

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