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“Part II - Intelligence, Intelligence, and Reality”
by CPL Jonathan R. Gill, USMC, OIF III-2 (December 2005), Al-Asad, Iraq

I still believe everything I wrote 20 months ago. I still believe that liberating Iraq was a right and noble thing to do, and that history will judge it as such. I still believe that Iraq may have had WMD’s, though I will present a new perspective on that in the following opinion. I still remember all the things I did and saw and experienced during 2003, and I now I am once again in this tumultuous country. While I didn’t especially want to come back here for “occupation”, after experiencing the much more exciting “invasion”, a duty is a duty and I will do mine.

First of all, I should tell you that my duties this time around are very different than the first time. I have very little contact with the Iraqi civilians. In fact, the only contact I’ve had has been here on base, when we shipped in all the Iraqi poll workers for the Al-Anbar province for processing. The rest of my foreign contact here has been with employees that work on base, most of whom are not Iraqi. I have had the great privilege of staying here on the firm base, something that the first-timers sometimes resent, but for which I am quite grateful. Still, with my new duties, I get the opportunity to watch the news as you do, and keep up with the progress going on in this country.

Part of what prompted me to write this follow-up was an article I read recently, which I thought nailed a big issue right on the head. In my earlier opinion, I gave a great argument for the idea that Saddam either hid his WMD’s in the ground within Iraq, or moved them to an allied country for safekeeping (or money) during the six-month preparation period we gave him before invading (the time we spent trying to convince the UN and the world that he was as evil as he truly was). While I still think my argument on those points is valid, I present to you a new proposition: what if Saddam had indeed been rid of his WMD’s a while back, but still believed he had them? Before you dismiss this as illogical and a cop-out, hear me out. Before coming here this time around, we were given a class on “the Iraqi mind”, something that was both disheartening and confusing, but also enlightening. Essentially, the class taught us not only about the extremely emotional culture (which I mentioned the first time), but about the extremely fickle nature of their psyche. While I alluded to that in reference to propaganda the first time, I failed to truly realize how contradictory their own mind can become. In a very detailed explanation of this fact, the class instructor gave examples from an interrogation of a known bomber in custody. This Iraqi, by any of our logic, was as insane as they come. He stated in no less than three sentences that he loved the Americans, that he hated them and thought they should die, and that he loved them and was glad they were here. The craziest part was that he believed all three statements, and found no contradiction whatsoever. This is how much of their culture works. Being denied basic rights like life and liberty can create some interesting mental conditions. Man’s first instincts are survival, sustenance, safety, shelter. As Americans, we never have to worry about those, so the focus of our psyche is more on success, recreation, philosophy, and personal betterment (however one wants to interpret that). A culture that is forced to worry about the first four will look quite animal, quite insane to a culture that is focused more on the “amenities” of life. I remember just last week an Iraqi truck driver that applied his culture’s logic to a job he was being required to do. His truck needed to be searched, and to do so required him to remove a tarp from the load – quite an annoying task for one man. He complained that he could not do it, that he was “sick”. We knew he was not, and made him do it anyway. His belief was “because I really do not want to do this, I cannot.” In the U.S. Military, this is called “malingering”. In Iraq, this is extremely common. That which does not bring about personal gain, or especially (in all Arab cultures) that which makes one lose face is to be avoided at all costs. A man would rather lie bald-faced than to be dishonored in any way…and he will stick to his lie to his own personal harm.

Now, let us apply this “logical” way of thought to Saddam Hussein, the delusional, megalomaniac who ruled Iraq with an iron fist, who tried to rebuild Babylon to no avail (his bricks are crumbling after ten years, while Nebuchadnezzar’s still stand), who erected signs and propaganda in his honor wherever there was a free wall, who invaded Kuwait for oil, who used chemical weapons on his own people during the Iran-Iraq war and after the Gulf war. Let us examine this “poor soul” through enlightened eyes, all “military intelligence” aside. Use your own intelligence.

So as not to plagiarize the article that inspired this new idea, I will quote from it. The article appeared in the Marine Corps Times on December 12, 2005, by James Zumwalt, a retired Marine officer who writes often on foreign policy and defense issues. The title is “Saddam fooled himself and the West about whether Iraq possessed WMDs”. Here is what he says:

“Resolution of the debate between President Bush and his critics as to whether he knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 invasion turn on the question: When is a duck a duck? …A source outside the U. S. political system, close to Saddam while he was in power, has provided personal insight on the issue. What he shares is most revealing, providing an informed perspective to anyone interested in independently judging what reasonably was known. When the WMD investigation was initiated after Saddam’s fall, investigators received little cooperation from Iraqi government scientists most knowledgeable on the issue. Fear was a factor, as several scientists in a position to have known were found dead under suspicious circumstances. However, some officials were able to escape to less dangerous venues – as did the former head of Saddam’s nuclear centrifuge program, Mahdi Obeidi. In September 2004, Obeidi shared the following about Saddam’s WMD effort in a piece in the New York Times:

“Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait – there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a fear years – but was stopped in its tracks by UN weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted. During the 1990s, the inspectors discovered all the laboratories, machines and materials we had used in the nuclear program, and all were destroyed or otherwise incapacitated. By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden. … “So, how could the West have made such a mistaken assessment of the nuclear program before the invasion last year?… First, there was Saddam Hussein’s history. He had demonstrated his desire for nuclear weapons since the late 1970s…He had used chemical weapons against his own people and again Iran in the 1980s. After the 1991 war, he had tried to hide his programs in weapons of mass destruction for as long as possible… It would have been hard not to suspect him of trying to develop such weapons again… “The West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein’s mind…[He lived in a] fantasy world…[He kept the country’s Atomic Energy Commission alive but] staffed [it] with junior scientists involved in research totally unrelated to nuclear weapons, just so he could maintain the illusion in his mind that he had a nuclear program. Sort of like the emperor with no clothes, he fooled himself into thinking that he was armed and dangerous.”

“Obeidi’s revelations raise an interesting question: If Saddam acted as if he had WMDs because he believed, however illogically, that he possessed them, how can we fault our own intelligence agencies and the president from arriving at a similar conclusion? After all, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, one would not be unreasonable in concluding it was a duck – even if such a conclusion later turned out to be inaccurate. “The debate about what the president knew or did not know should have ended long ago on the basis of Obeidi’s personal insights of Saddam – a man who proved so capable of fooling the world that he even fooled himself.” [Marine Corps Times, Sept 12, 2005]

To Bush’s critics, who are many, it seems that they were lied to. A lie comes from someone who knows the truth but tells an untruth. So, say the critics, if Bush did not know for certain, then it was at the very best a mistake. But if a mistake is something that was done wrong, we have not done that either. From before the invasion, Bush has done so many things right: he exhausted diplomatic venues, spending time convincing the UN to act, all the while giving Saddam an unfair preparation time; he invaded with full force, a lesson that we learned well from losing defensive wars in Korea and Viet Nam, and from winning an offensive one in 1991; he pulled well over half the troops out after the initial invasion (that was the point at which he made his much-criticized pronouncement of the “end of combat operations”), and he has continued to decrease the number of troops, while the country is rebuilt politically, socially, economically, and militarily. Even in 1945, Germany was not allowed to rebuild militarily for many years, but the Bush administration understands this culture much better – that these people only know you are serious when you use force. That may seem a bold statement, but it’s true, and I have seen it.

Aside from history, when Germany and Japan were rebuilt following the US’s victories, we should judge Iraq at face value. Yes, dozens of U.S. troops are killed every month we are here operating. While that number may be higher than it was in Germany in 1945-47, it does not negate the existence of continued resistance from the Hitler faithful. There are very few of Hussein’s faithful left in operation, but there are still terrorists (a majority of whom are not even Iraqi), and the people who listen to them. The battle is less flesh and blood than it is for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. While this seems a shallow statement to a critic, if a critic were brave enough to visit this country, they would see far more than they as a captive audience of the ratings-hungry American media. As a seeker of the truth, they would discover more than they ever will as a bandwagon Bush-hater. They would discover a country that is much further into its rebuilding process than Germany and Japan were by 1947. They would discover schools, businesses, electricity, technology, jobs, immigration and emigration, religious freedoms, and a democratic system that has so far held no less than three free and successful elections – two for elected officials and one for the ratification of a constitution (even the U.S. Constitution took more than two years to be ratified and put into effect). I was astonished at how hushed the media has become at the results of this latest election. For the first time, I saw the words “a quiet Iraq, a successful election” on the screen of MSNBC! I don’t know which is more historic: a successful free election in Iraq, or the admission of the news media that the situation in Iraq might actually be improving. Media magnates everywhere had a new topic of discussion: “Why was the violence level on election day so low?”, and “Could this really be the start of a new Iraq?” It’s likely there was more violence in the U.S. on election day (and the day after) in November 2004 than there was here this week. I can say this because I worked the polls in the U.S., and I was involved in the poll work here as well.

So, what have we learned? It’s true we entered Iraq on the basis of finding WMD’s, as well as relating the matter to the War on Terror. It’s true that we have only found evidences of an abandoned or cloak-and-dagger nuclear program, but that is better than constantly having to wonder if America’s biggest enemy in the Middle East is any closer to having weapons that could harm us. We know that if he had, he could have either used them or sold them to those that would. We know that these people could easily attack on U.S. soil, as they did on September 11, 2001. We ought to realize that both Iraq and America are more secure for deposing Saddam Hussein and his terrorist-training Baath Party (I personally witnessed these training facilities and handbooks in 2003, as well as the Baath members themselves). We ought to realize that the news media is a private entity, existing primarily to make money, not to objectively inform the people. We ought also to realize that even if a news network tries to be objective, the airtime limitations cause an automatic bias by what they choose to cover and not cover.

Hopefully, we have learned something about the Iraqi culture that we did not know before. Hopefully, we have learned that everyone’s opinion, while we are entitled to them, can only be based on limited information. Hopefully, the next time you criticize the war and President Bush, you will understand at least a little more about Saddam, Iraq, and WMDs. Hopefully, you will understand that progress takes time, that 2,000 (Iraq) is far less than 65,000 (Viet Nam), and has bought Iraq and the U.S. far more than we got from Viet Nam.

Hopefully, you understand a little more about intelligence, intelligence, and reality.



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