Game of Chicken

This past Sunday, the Times of London reported that US and UK air forces were bombing the shit out of Iraq in 2002, hoping to bait them into a provocation to start the war. In other words, not only had Bush drawn up war plans, he and his allies were already fighting the war before declaring it.

Nice, huh?

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation was designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war.

Meanwhile, the indomitable John Conyers continues to ask questions:

"If true, these assertions indicate that not only had our nation secretly and perhaps illegally agreed to go to war by the summer of 2002, but that we had gone on to take specific and tangible military actions before asking Congress or the United Nations for authority," the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee pens.

This time, however, the congressman demands more than answers. In his letter, Conyers will request all computer files relating to questions surrounding the planning stages of the Iraq war.

"In connection with all of the above questions, please provide me with any memorandum, notes, minutes, documents, phone and other records, e-mails, computer files (including back-up records) or other material of any kind or nature concerning or relating thereto in the possession or accessible by the Department of Defense," he writes.

He'll get nowhere with this, of course (we can't even get the names of the energy officials Cheney met with 4 years ago), but this kind of stuff shows an arrogance, a dismissal of any challenge to power that I think Americans smell coming a mile away. The bungling of this war, and the subterfuges used to get us into it, will remain on this Administration like a foul stench throughout this next term.

It doesn't matter if the deluded Vice President claims that "the insurgency is in the last throes" and that major combat will end by 2009 (this in a month of at least 77 US casualties, the largest of the year). Saying "we're winning" doesn't make it true, any more than saying "Saddam has WMD" made it true. The truth appears to be: war as a foregone conclusion before Congressional approval; trashing of postwar plans based on canards that "we'll be greeted with flowers"; not enough troops on the ground and shortages filling the regiments at home; looting and chaos leading to a dug-in insurgency network; almost inevitable civil war. Those are the freedom-hating facts. Wishing won't change them.

Once again, I'll mention Downing Street Memo as an excellent place to learn about this travesty and see what you can do to help raise awareness.