The Wrong War

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/o...>

The most compelling aspects of Richard Clarke’s take on
the world have less to do with the question of whether
the Bush administration could somehow have prevented the
Sept. 11 attacks and much more with the administration’s
folly of responding to the attacks by launching a war on
Iraq.

The United States had been the victim of a sneak attack
worse than the attack at Pearl Harbor. It was an act of
war, and the administration had a moral obligation (not
to mention the backing of the entire country and most of
the world) to hunt down and eradicate the forces
responsible.

(I walked past the vacant acreage of the World Trade
Center site the other day. It was a bitterly cold
morning, and the wind slicing across the mournful
landscape intensified the memories of the violence and
horror - the unspeakable agony of the thousands lost and
injured, and the grief of a traumatized city brought
temporarily to its knees.)

Mr. Clarke, President Bush’s former counterterrorism
chief, writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that
despite clear evidence the attacks had been the work of
Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, top administration
officials focused almost immediately on the object of
their obsession, Iraq.

He remembers taking a short break for a bite to eat and
a shower, then returning to the White House very early
on the morning of Sept. 12. He writes:

"I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining
what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities
were. . . . Instead, I walked into a series of
discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that
we were talking about something other than getting Al
Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain
that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take
advantage of this national tragedy to promote their
agenda about Iraq."

Soon would come the now-famous encounter between Mr.
Clarke and President Bush in the White House Situation
Room. According to Mr. Clarke: "[The president] grabbed
a few of us and closed the door to the conference room.
’Look,’ he told us, ’I know you have a lot to do and all
. . . but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back
over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See
if he’s linked in any way.’ "

"I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it
showed. ’But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.’

" ’I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved.
Just look. I want to know any shred. . . .’ "

The president wanted war with Iraq, and ultimately he
would have his war. The drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq
in the aftermath of the Qaeda attack was as incessant as
it was bizarre. Mr. Clarke told "60 Minutes" that an
attack on Iraq under those circumstances was comparable
to President Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, deciding to
invade Mexico "instead of going to war with Japan."

The U.S. never pursued Al Qaeda with the focus, tenacity
and resources it would expend - and continues to expend
– on Iraq. The war against Iraq was sold the way a
butcher would sell rotten meat - as something that was
good for us. The administration and its apologists went
out of their way to create the false impression that
Saddam and Iraq were somehow involved in the Sept. 11
attacks, and that he was an imminent threat to the U.S.

Condoleezza Rice went on television to say with a
straight face, "We don’t want the smoking gun to be a
mushroom cloud."

With the first anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and
Osama bin Laden still at large, George Shultz, a former
secretary of state (and longtime Bechtel Corporation
biggie) ratcheted up his rant for war with Iraq in an
Op-Ed article in The Washington Post. The headline said:
"Act Now: The Danger Is Immediate."

Mr. Shultz wrote: "[Saddam] has relentlessly amassed
weapons of mass destruction and continues their
development." Insisting that the threat was imminent, he
said, "When the risk is not hundreds of people killed in
a conventional attack but tens or hundreds of thousands
killed by chemical, biological or nuclear attack, the
time factor is even more compelling."

Richard Clarke has been consistently right on the facts,
and the White House and its apologists consistently
wrong. Which is why the White House is waging such a
ferocious and unconscionable campaign of character
assassination against Mr. Clarke.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com