Pre-9/11 Plans for Iraq: Crazy Conspiracy or Fact?

Liberals, anti-war types, and even some conservatives are called 'crazy conspiracy theorists' when they refer to the pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion. What do you think? Are they right, or was the Iraq War a foregone conclusion when Bush chose his cabinet?

This is a letter to Clinton from 1998:

PNAC letters sent to President Bill Clinton

We have plans for invading every country. That's normal.

Saying that when 9/11 happened Rumsfeld was quoted on seeking a Iraqi link and was looking for plans to attack Iraq..
Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11 - CBS News

In his book, Against All Enemies, former national security adviser Richard Clark makes the case that the Bush administration did in fact have a plan for Iraq, and 9/11 provided a handy cover. It's a substantial case, as he was in the middle of things at the time. He said he argued forcefully for resources to be devoted to fighting terrorist organizations, and not be diverted to Iraq, but was unsuccessful. The Bush administration was apparently attentive to some leading neo-con thinkers at the time, including the Project for a New American Century. This doctrine allowed for preemptive war, and the disregard of the UN and international law.

I think that some sort of conflict with Iraq was inevitable for any person taking the presidency. I think that it is more likely with Bush than with someone else, however; Clinton bombed the hell out of Iraq.

One of the things George W. Bush campaigned on during the 2000 presidential campaign was his intention to drive Saddam Hussein out of Iraq, and establish a democratic government. It came as no great shock to me when, after 9/11, he saw the perfect opportunity to bootstrap his determination to eliminate Hussein after the American people supported his intervention with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The problem was that (in my opinion), because Bush knew he was going to invade Iraq even before he sent the first wave of troops to Afghanistan, he purposely sent only half the troops that would normally be sent for a fast, heavy, immediate mission success because he was holding back more than half the available troops and firepower for his planned Iraq invasion.

That led to the fiasco at Tora Bora, which should have been the end of both Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, and the demolition of both groups. Instead, with the reduced American presence, Afghan troops sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda were used to shore up the perimeter. Unsurprisingly, these jihadist sympathizers allowed the enemy to breach the perimeter and disappear into Pakistan, all because our standard military doctrine of using "overwhelming force" was dismissed in order to hold back for an invasion that had not even been discussed with or approved by congress.

We all know what happened then. Instead being in and out of Afghanistan within 6 months with an honest "mission accomplished", we ended up in a quagmire in both Afghanistan and Iraq lasting over a decade, which will continue to haunt the US and bleed our treasury dry for the foreseeable future, even as both countries are currently engaged in reestablishing Extremist Rule, and Iraq is... as so many of us predicted... breaking itself via civil war into three sectarian "countries."

I firmly believe that the clandestine plans of the Bush administration to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein at any cost has led to a humanitarian and financial disaster that will haunt the USA for decades and decades to come.

Bush Cheney and Rumsfeld had their war all planned out waiting for a reason to invade.

mpg said:

We have plans for invading every country. That's normal.

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Sure, but there's a clear distinction between "having plans that can be pulled off the shelf" & "pulling that plan off the shelf and start plotting."

Jango said:

Sure, but there's a clear distinction between "having plans that can be pulled off the shelf" & "pulling that plan off the shelf and start plotting."

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Not only that, but using America's reaction to 9/11 as the catalyst...

Amadeus said:

Liberals, anti-war types, and even some conservatives are called 'crazy conspiracy theorists' when they refer to the pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion. What do you think? Are they right, or was the Iraq War a foregone conclusion when Bush chose his cabinet?

This is a letter to Clinton from 1998:

PNAC letters sent to President Bill Clinton

Click to expand...

It was certainly a contingency plan. History 101.

Wesley Clark.

mpg said:

We have plans for invading every country. That's normal.

Click to expand...

This is true. It got out back when Bush was still President we had plans to invade Canada and some people freaked. From what understand the entire world is divided into regions like Central Command, Southern Command, etc. Each of those commands plan and train for any eventuality and in case hostilities break out the US has already planed and rehearsed our response.

Smeagol said:

This is true. It got out back when Bush was still President we had plans to invade Canada and some people freaked. From what understand the entire world is divided into regions like Central Command, Southern Command, etc. Each of those commands plan and train for any eventuality and in case hostilities break out the US has already planed and rehearsed our response.

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The problem is that Bush surrounded himself with people who wanted the Iraq invasion and actively pushed for it across two presidents. And to quote the PNAC manifesto:

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor"

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Amadeus said:

Liberals, anti-war types, and even some conservatives are called 'crazy conspiracy theorists' when they refer to the pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion. What do you think? Are they right, or was the Iraq War a foregone conclusion when Bush chose his cabinet?

This is a letter to Clinton from 1998:

PNAC letters sent to President Bill Clinton

Click to expand...

As far as the specific details of the link, nothing would surprise when it comes to our current utter dependency to petroleum. Under the current arrangement, an arrangement I believe is not in our best interest on multiple fronts, access to the free flow of a single commodity is essential to our economic life. Because its an oligopoly (a legal monopoly,) having as much of the world's oil reserves in as many US friendly hands as possibly is a type of economic life-support. This arrangement has gone on so long many Americans cannot see just how dangerous this situation is even after our history of marriages of convenience to homicidal dictators, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the first war with Iraq, the requirement of no-fly zones, the imposition of sanctions that reportedly cost 500,000 innocent children their lives due to no access to medicine and the huge black-eye that gave us in the region, repeated terrorist attacks on US targets mostly overseas upon our navy and embassies, 9/11 and the second war in Iraq. All this while all oil sold world-wide is first scalped similar to concert tickets by the Oil Futures Market with the ability to buy it all up before its pumped out of the ground and then control how much the refineries can have access to and of course after they've added their exorbitant markup. But even before that, a band of dictators conspire to maximize the amount of money they can extract from the American people through creating additional artificial scarcity. IMHO the saddest thing of all is we spend into the trillions supporting this system just in military protections and the status quo and temporary efforts to prime the pump in advancing other transportation options get labeled "communist" or too expensive. To some the best solution is instead of breaking the crack addition of petroleum dependency, we can just build our own crack houses in our own neighbors instead of having to interact with dangerous neighborhoods, a strategy that maintains this crack's central role in the global economy most of the same dangerous arrangements, just slightly differently.

Amadeus said:

Liberals, anti-war types, and even some conservatives are called 'crazy conspiracy theorists' when they refer to the pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion. What do you think? Are they right, or was the Iraq War a foregone conclusion when Bush chose his cabinet?

This is a letter to Clinton from 1998:

PNAC letters sent to President Bill Clinton

Click to expand...

You have a couple of questions here that have to be address...

Was War with Iraq a foregone conclussion when Bush chose his cabinet? No. If it was we would've gone in there day one. Even if one's ASSUMPTION is they absolutely WANTED War in Iraq, the fact they did not do it until there was reasonable jusitification for going into Iraq suggests they weren't going to simply just invade without some kind of reason. As such, it would be incorrect to say it was a foregone conclussion as it hinged on other things happening.

Was there likely pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion? Absolutely. I would hope there would be, both internally and in terms of outside policy think tanks. You have a generally volatile region in the middle east tied to a vest national intereset in terms of energy production. You have a leader who we've previously had negative interactions with who had repeatedly and continually bucked against and outright violated sanctions placed upon his country and who was routinely attempting to project himself as still potentially capable of posing a thread. NOT having strategic plans in place would be foolish and irresponsible.

Amadeus said:

Liberals, anti-war types, and even some conservatives are called 'crazy conspiracy theorists' when they refer to the pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion. What do you think? Are they right, or was the Iraq War a foregone conclusion when Bush chose his cabinet?

This is a letter to Clinton from 1998:

PNAC letters sent to President Bill Clinton

Click to expand...

There is a vast difference between pointing out that there was a concerted and widespread body of opinion in favor of ousting Saddam Hussein prior to 9/11, hell it was codified during the Clinton administration with the Iraq Liberation Act--and believing that the Bush Administration came to power with the intention of invading Iraq. The former is fact, the latter is unsupported conspiracy theory.

DiAnna said:

One of the things George W. Bush campaigned on during the 2000 presidential campaign was his intention to drive Saddam Hussein out of Iraq, and establish a democratic government. It came as no great shock to me when, after 9/11, he saw the perfect opportunity to bootstrap his determination to eliminate Hussein after the American people supported his intervention with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The problem was that (in my opinion), because Bush knew he was going to invade Iraq even before he sent the first wave of troops to Afghanistan, he purposely sent only half the troops that would normally be sent for a fast, heavy, immediate mission success because he was holding back more than half the available troops and firepower for his planned Iraq invasion.

That led to the fiasco at Tora Bora, which should have been the end of both Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, and the demolition of both groups. Instead, with the reduced American presence, Afghan troops sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda were used to shore up the perimeter. Unsurprisingly, these jihadist sympathizers allowed the enemy to breach the perimeter and disappear into Pakistan, all because our standard military doctrine of using "overwhelming force" was dismissed in order to hold back for an invasion that had not even been discussed with or approved by congress.

We all know what happened then. Instead being in and out of Afghanistan within 6 months with an honest "mission accomplished", we ended up in a quagmire in both Afghanistan and Iraq lasting over a decade, which will continue to haunt the US and bleed our treasury dry for the foreseeable future, even as both countries are currently engaged in reestablishing Extremist Rule, and Iraq is... as so many of us predicted... breaking itself via civil war into three sectarian "countries."

I firmly believe that the clandestine plans of the Bush administration to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein at any cost has led to a humanitarian and financial disaster that will haunt the USA for decades and decades to come.

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When did he do this? If anything the foreign policy tenor of his administration was a significant reversal of his campaign narrative. I only recall him making an oblique reference or two on Iraq during his debates with Al Gore largely as part of his platform of criticizing what was perceived to be the Clinton administrations penchant for 'nation building'. However both candidates were committed to the toppling of Saddam as they both endorsed the ILA. Neither advocated invasion or anything close to it so far as I know.

Give this video 20 seconds of your time. Then decide whether or not to watch the rest.

Zyphlin said:

You have a couple of questions here that have to be address...

Was War with Iraq a foregone conclussion when Bush chose his cabinet? No. If it was we would've gone in there day one. Even if one's ASSUMPTION is they absolutely WANTED War in Iraq, the fact they did not do it until there was reasonable jusitification for going into Iraq suggests they weren't going to simply just invade without some kind of reason. As such, it would be incorrect to say it was a foregone conclussion as it hinged on other things happening.

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I am often clumsy with my wording. You are correct.

Amadeus said:

Liberals, anti-war types, and even some conservatives are called 'crazy conspiracy theorists' when they refer to the pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion. What do you think? Are they right, or was the Iraq War a foregone conclusion when Bush chose his cabinet?

This is a letter to Clinton from 1998:

PNAC letters sent to President Bill Clinton

Click to expand...

Considering the fact even before Bush was president they have been saying Saddam has WMDs I would imagine that they would have Iraq invasion plans before 9-11.

I know this is hard for all the die hard anti-Bush retard conspiracy believing loons. But Bush did not invent the Iraq has WMDs claims, nor was it something only uttered by republicans.

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998.

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.



Washingtonpost.com: Iraq Special Report
Thursday, February 5, 1998; Page A01

Foreign leaders and diplomats may be urging restraint on the Clinton administration in the showdown with Iraq, but a growing chorus at home is calling for stronger measures than the air attacks currently being planned, with the objective of bringing down President Saddam Hussein.

Prominent members of the foreign policy establishment and some leading members of Congress say they are convinced that air attacks aimed at coercing the Iraqis into cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors would not succeed, and would result in too narrow a victory even if they did.

Instead, they argue, the United States should go beyond the objective of curtailing Iraqi weapons programs and adopt a far-reaching strategy aimed at replacing the Baghdad regime. Although they are far from consensus on what that strategy should be, a few openly advocate the possible use of U.S. ground forces, a much greater commitment than the options being pursued by the administration.

What is wrong with invading countries?

Zyphlin said:

You have a couple of questions here that have to be address...

Was War with Iraq a foregone conclussion when Bush chose his cabinet? No. If it was we would've gone in there day one. Even if one's ASSUMPTION is they absolutely WANTED War in Iraq, the fact they did not do it until there was reasonable jusitification for going into Iraq suggests they weren't going to simply just invade without some kind of reason. As such, it would be incorrect to say it was a foregone conclussion as it hinged on other things happening.

Click to expand...

I don't think it is reasonable to assume that the Bush administration would have considered an immediate invasion of Iraq. Iraq was on the ropes at the time, and more or less under control. Coming up with a rationale for a major military expedition, and the consequent lives and money lost, would have been, to say the least, been a very hard sell for Bush and this advisers.

In fact, they did not wait for a justifiable reason, but merely an excuse. The 9/11 attacks had nothing to do with Iraq. What 9/11 did do (not surprisingly) was elevate emotions, and generate a lot of negative sentiment for the Middle East and its causes. This was a cover, but in no way any effective means of dealing with the extremist organization that perpetrated the 9/11 attack.

The spin doctors of the Bush administration went to great lengths to try to subtly link Iraq with terrorism and 9/11, and sadly, the package was bought by many.

Zyphlin said:

Was there likely pre-9/11 plans for an Iraq Invasion? Absolutely. I would hope there would be, both internally and in terms of outside policy think tanks. You have a generally volatile region in the middle east tied to a vest national intereset in terms of energy production. You have a leader who we've previously had negative interactions with who had repeatedly and continually bucked against and outright violated sanctions placed upon his country and who was routinely attempting to project himself as still potentially capable of posing a thread. NOT having strategic plans in place would be foolish and irresponsible.

Click to expand...

All military plan for eventualities. This is not surprising. However, the situation in 2003 was this: an extremist organization had risen up, and perpetuated on of the worst terrorist incidents ever. In Iraq, a violent dictator had been brought to heal, isolated, sanctioned, military destroyed, and hanging on by a thread.

Which should have been the first priority? Get the criminals before they did something else crazy? Or invade a minimal third world country already under control? The answer to this will provide insight into the Bush administration, one which took considerable guidance from very extreme people, including radical fundamentalist Christians, and ultra-right think tanks, such as the Project for a New American Century.

Something to think about.