Time to sweep away secrecy and corruption

Jim Mullins
Sun Sentinel
Nov. 25, 2006

"A Utopian adventure headed for disaster" headlined one of five articles published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that I wrote four years ago, opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That it is a disaster is unquestionable, as the voters have decided. Whether the electorate understands the utopian ideology of the neocon proponents of the Iraqi war, as contrasted to the realists who opposed it, is open to debate.

The question that needs to be examined by Congress -- the justification for the Iraqi invasion, a war of choice on a secular police state with little or no history of terrorism -- must look at its ideological underpinnings and not confine its probe to the strategy or tactics employed by the Bush administration.

Accountability needs to be shared with the neocons whose long-held ideology of dominance and control of the world's resources crossed paths with an uncurious president with little knowledge of world affairs and historic events, but a burning ambition for a legacy as a great wartime leader and commander in chief.

The utopian advisers who posited the war in moral terms have deserted the sinking ship. They take no blame for their cheerleading, but put it all on President Bush and Defense Department incompetence in waging a war based on neocon premises. Their cynical advocacy for the war and private disdain for the president's intelligence, plus their later condemnation of him as incompetent, show their lack of principle.

Richard Perle, adviser to Bush's transition group, prophesied before the war, "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform." Yet earlier he said that "the first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other, that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much." Now he states that Bush's leadership is suffering from "devastating dysfunction."

David Frum, Bush speechwriter who inserted the "Axis of Hatred " -- upgraded to "Axis of Evil" -- in the 2002 State of the Union address, later described Bush as a man who "had a poor memory for facts and figures" and "he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."

Kenneth Adelman said, "I believe liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he castigates Bush and his national security officials for turning out to be "the most incompetent group in the post-[Cold] War era."

Blame for the Iraqi debacle must also be placed on those neocons in Bush officialdom who actively pushed a hardline U.S. foreign policy of world dominance through maintenance of unchallenged military power applied pre-emptively and unilaterally against any perceived threat to us, our allies or friends. This ideology found no support in previous administrations, but became a 2002 policy directive under President Bush.

Leading proponents of this policy, Paul Wolfowitz (of "greeted with flowers," "dealing with a country that really can finance its own reconstruction" and "Iraq is swimming in oil" fame), second in command at the Defense Department, and Douglas Feith, in third place as director of the Office of Special Plans (who orchestrated Ahmed Chalabi's lying informants and cherry-picked evidence), have quietly sneacked away, leaving their former boss, Donald Rumsfeld, to shoulder the blame.

Six days before the election, President Bush said he would keep Rumsfeld on until the end of his term. His steely resolve melted in the reality of the House and Senate electoral losses.

Robert Gates, as his successor, brings back memories of his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandals and prodding of CIA analysts to show an expanding Soviet economy and military power when both were imploding. Sound familiar?

Bush's attempt to revive the bipartisan rejection of John Bolton as U.N. representative and that of five unqualified federal judges is more of the same disregard for reality that brought on the Iraqi disaster.

The American people should demand that the Democrats be the new broom that sweeps away the fog of secrecy, corruption and evasion of constitutional principles that stain the people's White House.