Question Seven: John Kerry is telling audiences that U.S. involvement in Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time. President Bush has continued to describe the war and subsequent occupation as a central front in the war on terrorism. Is war in Iraq connected to a war against terrorism?


More than 1,000 U. S. soldiers and many more Iraqi civilians have lost their lives since the inception of the war in Iraq. We would all like to believe that the loss of lives can be justified as serving a good cause, such as helping make us safer. However, if we put what we'd like to believe, and instead critically view the facts, it becomes clear that this war has nothing to do with combating terrorism or keeping the American people safe. Instead, it has diverted resources away from keeping us safe and away from a real fight against terrorism. As James Fallows, national correspondent for Atlantic magazine, writes in the October issue, "It's hard to find a counterterrorism specialist who thinks that the Iraq War has reduced rather than increased the threat to the United States.

The Bush administration operates under the adage that if a lie is repeated often enough, many people will believe it. So they just keep repeating that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and 9/11 - even though several films, including Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, have captured the President on video admitting that there was no connection. Early on, the administration displayed videos of supposed al-Qaeda training camps . . . until it turned out these camps were not in Iraq. Recently they haven’t even tried to offer any evidence.

Here are the important facts:

* None of the Sept. 11 hijackers was from Iraq. Fifteen were from Saudi Arabia. The rest were from Pakistan and Egypt.

* There is no evidence of a pre-9/11 link between the Islamic fundamentalist al-Qaeda and the secular regime of Saddam Hussein. Because the war is widely seen in the Islamic world as unjust and as evidence of U.S. imperial aims, many more recruits have recently been added to al-Qaeda and to the anti-American cause in general. The war has served to unite various sectors of the Islamic and Arab world that previously had been antagonistic toward each other.

* There is next to no credible evidence of any involvement, financial or otherwise, by Iraq in any terrorist plans against the United States before the Iraq war. Suicide bombings and other terrorist acts committed since the Iraq war began are a result of that war - not evidence of some prior connection.

Sen. Bob Graham (D., Fla.) was chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee during the aftermath of Sept. 11. In his new book, Intelligence Matters, he argues that the Iraq campaign has caused a continual diversion of resources away from the real fight against terrorism. Several key witnesses testified to the 9/11 committee that President Bush insisted that his aides dig up "information" implicating Iraq, and that he was not interested in contrary indicators. Graham asserts that he was told by Gen. Tommy Franks that as early as February 2002, important resources were being diverted away from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and quietly redeployed to Iraq. Graham also says that the administration blocked attempts to interview a Saudi national who had given extensive assistance to two of the hijackers when they lived in San Diego just before 9/11. Then, the White House insisted on keeping classified 27 pages of a report issued by a House-Senate intelligence panel detailing Saudi links to Sept. 11.

So far, more than $150 Billion has been spent for the war. Yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) remains a shoestring operation, with most of its $40 billion budget being not new money, but a consolidation of budgets of the various agencies under the umbrella. Little new money has been added to make our planes, trains, ports, chemical facilities, and urban centers safer. For what we spend in 10 days in Iraq, we could equip all U.S. airports with machines that screen baggage for explosives. Yet the Bush budget allocates only 32 hours' worth of money for the purpose! The President likes to be photographed with his arms around firefighters, yet such first responders remain drastically underpaid and ill equipped. Many first responders still lack radios that work on the same frequencies! The allocation to help firefighters prepare for terrorist attacks is less than 1.5 percent of what is needed. And the DHS has a hard time attracting intelligence analysts, partly because the agency cannot receive classified information on its computers because they are not yet secure!

A terrorist release of chemicals could potentially kill tens of thousands of people at one time. Recognizing that New Jersey has nine of the top 111 most vulnerable chemical plants, Sen. Jon Corzine (D., N.J.) introduced the Chemical Safety Act. This would have increased security for chemical production, storage, and transportation, as well as developed a plan to move away from use of the most noxious chemicals wherever possible. The bill died after intense lobbying by the petrochemical industry.

So what is the Iraq war really about? I remember back in the spring of 2001 being somewhat alarmed when I looked up the Web site for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). This organization was formed in 1997 to promote U.S. dominance of the world. Major players include Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Cheney. In 1998 they sent a letter to President Clinton advocating war in Iraq. One of their documents stated that their goal of hegemony would take a very long time to reach unless there was some catastrophic event along the lines of a Pearl Harbor. The implication is that such an event could achieve the goals much more quickly. Well, they got their event!

The instrumental people in the Bush administration all have heavy connections to large oil companies and weapons manufacturing. They have an interest in keeping our whole economy addicted to oil and in making sure that they have control over the major oil producing regions of the world. They probably figured Iraq would be the easiest place to start firming up their foothold in the area.

Here's what we should be doing to fight terrorism:

1. Stop supporting repressive, antidemocratic movements and leaders around the world. All our talk of liberation, freedom, and democracy rings hollow and hypocritical at best when people know that U.S. dollars and weapons are being used to kill those who are trying to improve wages, working conditions, and environmental laws that could cut into super-profits of U.S. corporations. The continuance of such foreign policy will only likely increase the number of people worldwide who would come to see some form of terrorism as their only possible method of resistance.

2. Increase resources for more security here at home. There will probably always be some people who will turn to terrorist tactics. Timothy McVeigh and the Atlanta Olympics bomber are examples. Securing our nation’s airports, trains, ports, mail, chemical facilities, and urban centers, and providing sufficient resources to first responders, must be priorities - not put on the back burner, as with the policies of the current administration.