The Bush obsession with Iraq

It is becoming more and more clear that the Bush administration started off in February 2001 with a plan to invade Iraq. That desire has become the central focus - in fact the obsession - of the Bush administration and of the national Republican Party. This is an effort to trace that obsession.
The Beginning

Bush administration before 9/11

The diversion into Afghanistan

The pivot back to Iraq

The failure in Iraq and the failure to justify the pivot to America

What's left in Iraq, America?

The Beginning

Where the idea of invading Iraq started is not clear, but here is a speculation. The Republicans had a real problem after 1989 when the USSR collapsed and Communism ceased to exist as a threat to America. Without a threat to America, how do Republicans get elected? How do defense contractors get new defense contracts? How do the Army, Navy and Air Force continue to justify spending more money on "defense" than all the nations in the rest of the world put together?

Saddam Hussein provided a partial answer in 1991 when he invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. He presented a threat to America's oil supplies and to George H. W. Bush's personal friends in Saudi Arabia, so very quickly Bush 41 organized an army sent it to Saudi Arabia, and used it to decisively defeat the Iraqi military in his 100 hour war. But he won too quickly, and it was over so that Bill Clinton could take advantage of Bush 41's lack of awareness of domestic American problems, together with Ross Perot's entry into the race, and get elected as President. This, of course, infuriated the conservatives. They understand that government is the responsibility of the elite, which incorporates Republicans and movement conservatives while automatically excluding Democrats.

The Project for the New American Century came up with a solution to the lack of an enemy for Republicans to rail against. Their 1998 Open letter to President Clinton on Iraq provided the framework for the Bush 43 administration's obsession with attacking Iraq. It immediately became the centerpiece of the Bush 43 administration as soon as he and Dick Cheney were sworn in.

Bush administration before 9/11

In my post Incompetent conservative Bush failed to prevent 9/11 I offer evidence that the Bush administration ignored the terrorist threat prior to 9/11. My speculation is that this was intentional. A terrorist attack on the American homeland could be used to justify an attack on Iraq, a nation whose military we had previously defeated easily and who was in much less capable military shape by 2001.

The diversion into Afghanistan

Osama bin Laden acted as they expected and attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Again it is speculation, but it seems likely the George W. Bush never expected Osama's attack to be so spectacularly successful. But it did provide the PR hook on which to hang an attack on Iraq. Many of us recall that Bush was immediately ready to attack Iraq, and had to be almost literally forced to attack Afghanistan, the actual source of the terrorists who committed 9/11. Sec. Def. Rumsfeld refused to send sufficient troops to Afghanistan to properly do the job, very probably because he wanted to use them in Iraq which was the central focus of the Bush administration. The escape of Osama bin Laden was one result of that penury.

The pivot back to Iraq

Digby then points to the next stage of attacking Iraq:

The Iraq-Al Qaeda link was cultivated through hundreds of the 935 false statements the Bush Administration made in the run-up to war. Without it, there would be no pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq, no case made to the public that both wars represented the same fight against terrorism.
[Highlighting mine - Editor WTF-o]

That pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq had been an unplanned for problem. They had expected the terrorist attack on America, together with Saddam's clearly bad reputation, to be sufficient to justify an immediate attack on Iraq. They hadn't planned on Afghanistan as a central focus of the war. But planning has not been their long suite, as demonstrate by the lack of a plan for the occupation for Iraq and the lack of a plan to get Turkey to cooperate with the northern prong of the invasion of Iraq. [Keep in mind that diplomacy is not planned in the Pentagon, and it was the responsibility of the White House to get the Turks to cooperate with the invasion. That didn't happen either.]

Ultimately it is going to be the failure of the Bush administration to show any connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorists that damns the whole project. That's why the new report that Military finds no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda is still being fought by Bush apparatchiks like Doug Feith.

The failure in Iraq and the failure to justify the pivot to America

That failure to effectively lay the blame for 9/11 on Saddam is a disaster for the Republicans, second only to their military and political failure in the conduct of the occupation. There was no real reason (outside PNAC fantasies) to attack Iraq, so the conservatives had to develop a public relations ploy. It looks more and more likely that permitting 9/11 to happen was that public relations ploy. When the American public unexpectedly directed their anger at al Qaeda, the Taliban and Afghanistan instead of Iraq, it started going South on the Bush administration.

They have spent the time since then scrambling to justify the war and occupation of Iraq while covering up their complicity in causing 9/11 by such things as first resisting the 9/11 Commission and then, when that failed, by getting Condi Rice's deputy, Philip Zelikow, appointed executive director of the 9/11 Commission so that he could derail it.

What's left in Iraq, America?

As long as the Bush administration remains in power they can continue to conceal the true level of their total incompetence and failure. Their failures are legion, and run across the board of government. But it should be clear that attacking Iraq was the prime goal of the Bush administration on their first day in office, and Iraq will have totally absorbed their efforts until the last day Bush and Cheney remain in office. Nothing else has mattered to them for over seven years so far, and if they can get McCain elected President the focus on Iraq will continue for another four years.

That is why the Bush 43 Presidency is the greatest failed Presidency in American history. The entire American federal government has been totally focused on some strange unneeded and unachievable fantasy in Iraq since day one of the Bush Presidency in January 2001. There has been no success, just a series of greater or lesser failures, and there is not any prospect of real improvement either for America or for Iraq.

As soon as a Democrat takes office as President, the next step is going to be for both the congressional Republican Party and the media in general to take up the cry "Don't investigate all this. It is over. Why destroy lives and careers?" but such cries need to be ignored. They are just one step in the Republican effort to regain office and do to America again what they have done during the last decade.

This won't be over until investigators open the crypt of the Republican undead and put a stake though their heart, but one thing is clear. The Bush 43 administration has had the invasion of Iraq as its central focus from before George W. Bush took office. It will remain the central focus of the Presidency after he leaves, eight years later. The invasion and occupation started without honest reasons given to the American public or the world. Terrorism and revenge for 9/11 was presented as the reason, but obviously was merely an excuse for what had been decided well before 9/11. As of 2009 the occupation of Iraq will continue to drain resources without any purpose beyond trying to clean up the mess created by the invasion itself.

That's the legacy of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the conservative movement.