A longer stroll down memory lane

These are from Lexis Nexis searches, so I can't provide links. Sorry about that.

These excerpts--and there are plenty more like them--leave little question that some of the hawks in the Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq immediately after 9/11. But the articles at the time suggest that they want to invade Iraq AND Afghanistan, not that they want to invade Iraq instead of Afghanistan. And when I re-read the Guardian article I linked to in the last post, that's a perfectly plausible interpretation of the British ambassador's remarks.

As far as timing--I'd say we had decided on war with Taliban (unless they unexpectedly turned on bin Laden) by September 20 at the absolute latest. That's when Bush delivered his ultimatum in front of a joint session of Congress. And presumably they decided some time before he made his speech.

Blair also seems to have met with Bush on that date, so that's probably when the conversation in which Bush promises to postpone Iraq "for another day" occurred.

Here goes:

"Bush's advisers split on scope of retaliation", New York Times, 9/20/01.

Some senior administration officials, led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, are pressing for the earliest and broadest military campaign against not only the Osama bin Laden network in Afghanistan, but also against other suspected terrorist bases in Iraq and in Lebanon's Bekaa region.

These officials are seeking to include Iraq on the target list with the aim of toppling President Saddam Hussein, a step long advocated by conservatives who support Mr. Bush.

A number of conservatives circulated a new letter today calling on the president to "make a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power" even if he cannot be linked to the terrorists who struck New York and Washington last week....

On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney seemed to ally himself with Secretary Powell's view when he said in a televised interview that the administration did not have evidence linking Saddam Hussein to last week's attacks.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was said to have joined the consensus position of leaving Iraq and other targets out of initial plans. "Rumsfeld for whatever reason has decided that Iraq can wait," one official said, adding that "he hasn't given up on it."....

Mr. Wolfowitz has been more "concerned about bombing Iraq than bombing Afghanistan," one senior administration official said.

"AFTER THE ATTACK; MILITARY OPTIONS," Los Angeles Times, 9/21/01

During strategy sessions since last week's attack, Wolfowitz has lobbied passionately for widening the mission to include an aggressive campaign to finally bring down the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the sources say--despite certain opposition from allies and world powers such as Russia and China.

"Iraq is unfinished business, and this is an opportunity to finish it. He and others in the Pentagon have long had a vendetta about getting rid of Saddam and they believe that irrespective of what happened on Sept. 11, he has to be removed," said a source familiar with the debate who asked to remain anonymous. "They think now's the moment to push for it again."

"Hussein should be suspect, some say," Chicago Tribune, 9/28/01.

As the United States builds its case and battle plan against Osama bin Laden, a small but influential core of policymakers and analysts is pointing toward a second potential suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks--Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Members of the group, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, base their suspicions partly on the work of Middle East scholar Laurie Mylroie, whose investigation of trial evidence in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center concluded that the plot's mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, was an Iraqi intelligence agent.

UPDATE:
The New York Times article above says "A number of conservatives circulated a new letter today calling on the president to "make a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power" even if he cannot be linked to the terrorists who struck New York and Washington last week."

I went looking for that letter, and I think I found it. On Project for a New American Century's website, naturally. Here's the section on Iraq. It sounds as if they're calling for Bush to pursue essentially the same strategy in Iraq as we did arming the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan:

We agree with Secretary of State Powell’s recent statement that Saddam Hussein “is one of the leading terrorists on the face of the Earth….” It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a “safe zone” in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.

Presumably "the Iraqi opposition" would translate in practice to "Ahmed Chalabi and the INC."

It's a weird collection of signatories--from Gary Bauer to Leon Wieseltier--but the only administration official I recognized was Richard Perle, and they make no effort to explain why or how failure to disarm Saddam would be a decisive surrender to the terrorists. So, probably a less important document than the Times story led me to believe.

Comments

[von]

Katherine . . . fix the block text . . . I'm getting squishe-ed-er-ghaaaaaaaa

;-)

[von]

Thanks. Good reporting (again).

[p mac]

Katharine-

One last observation. The administration explicitly did not pursue "the earliest and broadest military campaign against not only the Osama bin Laden network in Afghanistan, but also against other suspected terrorist bases in Iraq and in Lebanon's Bekaa region."

This has recently been in the news, that Ansar-al-Islam was left in place in disputed kurdish territory, because wiping them out would have meant less rationale to invade Iraq. (This decision meant that we didn't roll them up when they were confined to a few square miles, and are now hunting them down while they are terrorizing the rest of Iraq.

And reading riverbend, it's pretty clear that the Iraqis resent this peculiar ordering of priorities.

They pursued the earliest and broadest campaign against Saddam and the Baathists. But not against stateless terrorists in Iraq, much less the Bekaa valley.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"This has recently been in the news, that Ansar-al-Islam was left in place in disputed kurdish territory, because wiping them out would have meant less rationale to invade Iraq."

You do remember the leftist denials that Ansar-al-Islam was Al Qaeda at the time, right? Don't make me waste time looking up guardian articles. Surely you read them at the time.