Jewish World Review August 17, 2004 / 30 Menachem-Av, 5764
Rich Lowry
And now it's Tommy Franks lied?
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"Bush lied" is still gospel for Bush
critics, even though it has become
such a tattered article of faith that it
is near total disintegration. The faithful
want to believe that President
Bush made up his charges about
Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities
in order to "mislead" the country
into war. The latest shredding of this
argument comes courtesy of Gen.
Tommy Franks' new book,
"American Soldier." (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
Perhaps the true believers should
amplify their charge to "Franks
lied," since he believed exactly the
same thing about Saddam as the
president. Actually, to be consistent,
the charge would also have to be
"important Arab leaders lied"
indeed, "most everyone with some
knowledge of Saddam's regime
lied," in a conspiracy so vast it
included war skeptics and everyone
up and down the chain of command
of the American military.
Franks recounts a meeting with
King Abdullah II of Jordan in
January 2003. Abdullah told Franks,
"General, from reliable intelligence
sources, I believe the Iraqis are hiding
chemical and biological
weapons." Perhaps Abdullah, an
opponent of Saddam, wanted to bait
us into invading Iraq and so presumably
"Abdullah lied."
Franks, however, heard the same
thing from skeptics about the U.S.
policy of toppling Saddam. Days
later Franks met with Hosni
Mubarak, president of Egypt.
Mubarak said: "Gen. Franks, you
must be very, very careful. We have
spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is
a madman. He has WMD biologicals,
actually and he will use
them on your troops."
Mubarak's warning illustrates how
Saddam's alleged possession of
WMD could be taken not just as a
reason for action, but as a caution
against it. Even though he supported
it, Franks worried that the initial U.S.
strike against what was thought to be
the compound where Saddam and
his sons were staying would precipitate
a retaliatory WMD strike. "We
had been receiving," Franks writes,
"increasingly urgent intelligence
reporting that Republican Guard
units in Baghdad had moved south to
the city of Al Kut and that they
had been issued mustard gas and an
unknown nerve agent." Franks put
U.S. forces in Kuwait on high alert.
Ah, but perhaps the high alert was
part of the ruse? If so, it was an
astoundingly elaborate one.
Saddam's potential use of WMD
haunted Franks during the entire military
operation. In their march into
Iraq, U.S. Marines discovered Iraqi
chemical-biological protection suits
and field-syringe injectors filled with
a nerve-gas antidote. The "Marines
lied?" Brig. Gen. Jeff Kimmons,
Franks' intelligence director, told
him that one communications intercept
from a Republican Guard commander
"may be the authorization
order to begin using WMD."
"Kimmons lied?" In the middle of
this blizzard of deception was
Tommy Franks. "I didn't know on
April 2 when our forces would be hit
by chemicals or biologicals," he
writes, "but I was certain it would be
soon."
This fear of WMD influenced
Franks' military planning. It prompted
him to emphasize speed:
Intelligence said Saddam's "troops
arrayed around Baghdad were holding
WMD, and we could expect them
to use those weapons as we closed
the noose on the capital unless we
got there before the Iraqis were
ready." Franks didn't mass 500,000
troops on Saddam's border in a rerun
of the first U.S. war on Saddam,
partly because he feared such troop
concentrations in Kuwait would be
vulnerable to WMD. If Franks distorted
his military plan around a lie
as the "Bush lied" true believers
must think he shouldn't have
retired with high praise, but been
court-martialed.
The real liar in all this, of course, is
Saddam Hussein, who didn't come
clean about his weapons programs in
what was likely an effort at strategic
deception to cow his opponents at
home and deter his enemies abroad.
Any moral opprobrium about the
Iraq War should attach to him, not
the men who tried their best to deal
responsibly with him and his regime
even if one of those men happens
to be a Republican president of the
United States.
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© 2004, King Features Syndicate
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