Excerpt: The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq

Editor's Note: From the enormous bait-and-switch operation that, within hours after the collapse of the World Trade Center, tried to link Al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein, to the clumsy attempts by the U.S. military to pacify, reconstruct and democratize a complex Muslim nation on the other side of the world, AlterNet's new book -- jointly published by Seven Stories Press and Akashic Books -- razes the house of cards upon which our foreign policy has been built since 9/11. The excerpt presented here, taken from pages 47-52, attempts to provide readers with an overview of Saddam Hussein's real and imagined relationships with terrorists.

"If the only problem the United States had with Saddam Hussein's regime were its involvement with terrorism, our problems would be relatively mild. On the grand list of state sponsors of terrorism, Iraq is pretty far down -- well below Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and others."

–From The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq by Kenneth M. Pollack, published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2002

According to the logic of those who supported the Iraq invasion, it was a no-brainer that it would make the world safer from the threat of terrorism, since the White House said Iraq was a "state sponsor" of terrorism with "links to Al Qaeda."

On the surface, this theory seemed reasonable: If a state with the resources and ruthlessness of Hussein's Iraq teamed up with a gang of zealots with the range and training of Al Qaeda, they could be a very destructive tandem. Since Hussein and Bin Laden played in the same sandbox and both despised the United States for humiliations real or perceived, would it be so strange for them to team up like a duo of super-villains seeking world domination for their own evil ends?

Well, yes, actually, it would be strange. Exceedingly so. As with many of the scary-sounding accusations Bush and his counselors threw out about Iraq, this one conveniently side-stepped any facts or analysis that would undermine a world view in which Hussein was the New Hitler. The administration never explained what it meant that Iraq had sponsored terrorism. Against who? When? For what motive? How much? How effectively?

The reality had long been that the Iraqi dictator's forays into sponsoring or undertaking terrorist acts were constrained by a completely different set of motivations and limitations than those facing Al Qaeda. Despite its ties to Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is mobile, decentralized, and supported by a far-flung network of impassioned fundamentalists willing to die for a cause, or pay for it. Hussein's regime, in contrast, was immobile, centralized, and supported by his political and economic control of Iraq.

These differences were enormously relevant when considering if Hussein really posed a serious terror threat to the United States or even Israel. For example, consider again that Bush quote: "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." Faced with "could" and "might" assertions like this, the press rarely if ever took a hard look at whether they even made sense, much less were based on hard evidence. For example, it would have been worthwhile in this case to ask what Hussein would stand to gain from such a strategy. If they had, many of them would have likely come to the same conclusion as Pollack, who supported preemptive war with Iraq but didn't buy the terrorism angle.

"Saddam has never given WMD to terrorists (at least to our knowledge) for the same reasons he has distanced himself from international terrorist groups in general," wrote Pollack in The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. And, "If he is uncomfortable with foreign terrorist groups because he cannot be certain how they will act and how their actions will affect his own security, this point is ten times more salient when weapons of mass destruction are involved. If Saddam were ever tied to a WMD terrorist attack, the targeted country would look to extract a fearful vengeance from him."