Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Scott Ritter
30 October 2007
opinion
Harare — Dont worry, the White House is telling us. The world's most powerful leader was simply making a rhetorical point.
At a White House Press conference two weeks back, just in case you haven't heard, (United States) President (George W.) Bush informed the American people that he had told world leaders "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon".
World War III? That is certainly some rhetorical point, especially coming from the man singularly most capable of making such an event reality. Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are busy writing jokes, but the president's reference to Armageddon, no matter how cavalierly uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming context.
Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response to a reporter's question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles Bush. So, in a way, this makes what the president said even more disturbing, since we now have an insight into the vision, and related terminology, which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of George W. Bush. When I was a weapons inspector with the United Nations, there was a jostling that took place at the end of each day, when decisions needed to be made and authorisation documents needed to be signed.
In an environment of competing agendas, each of us who championed a position sought to be the "last man in", namely the person who got to imprint the executive chairman (our decision maker) with the final point of view for the day. Failure to do so could find an inspection or point of investigation sidetracked for days or weeks after the executive chairman became distracted by a competing vision.
I understand the concept of "imprinting", and have seen it in action. What is clear from the president's remarks is that, far from an innocent rhetorical fumble, his words, and the context in which he employed them, are a clear indication of the imprinting which is taking place behind the scenes at the White House. If the president mentions World War III in the context of Iran's nuclear programme, one can be certain that this is the very sort of discussion that is taking place in the Oval Office.
A critical question, therefore, is who was the last person to "imprint" the president prior to his public allusion to World War III? During his Press conference, Bush noted that he awaited the opportunity to confer with his Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following their recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. So clearly the president hadn't been imprinted recently by either of the principal players in the formulation of defence and foreign policy. The suspects, then, are quickly whittled down to three: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney, and God.
Hadley is a long-established neo-conservative thinker who has, for the most part, operated "in the shadows" when it comes to the formulation of Iran policy in the Bush administration. In 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then the deputy national security adviser) instituted what has been referred to as the "Hadley Rules", a corollary of which is that no move will be made which alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal enemy of the United States.
These "rules" shut down every effort undertaken by Iran to seek a moderation of relations between it and the United States, and prohibited American policymakers from responding favourably to Iranian offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaeda; they also blocked the grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic diplomatic initiative, including a normalisation of relations with Israel. The Hadley Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious manner, with the National Security Council becoming involved in the muzzling of former Bush administration officials who are speaking out on the issue of Iran.
Hadley is blocking Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security Council, from publishing an opinion-editorial piece critical of the Bush administration on the grounds that any insight into the machinations of policymaking (or lack thereof) somehow strengthens Iran's hand. Leverett's article would simply underscore the fact that the Bush administration has spurned every opportunity to improve relations with Iran while deliberately exaggerating the threat to US interests posed by the Iranian theocracy.
The silencing of informed critics is in keeping with Hadley's deliberate policy obfuscation. There is still no official policy in place within the administration concerning Iran. While a more sober-minded national security bureaucracy works to marginalise the hawkish posturing of the neo-cons, the administration has decided that the best policy is, in fact, no policy, which is a policy decision in its own right. Hadley has foregone the normal procedures of governance, in which decisions impacting the nation are written down, using official channels, and made subject to review and oversight by those legally and constitutionally mandated and obligated to do so.
A policy of no policy results in secret policy, which means, according to Hadley himself, the Bush administration simply does whatever it wants to, regardless. In the case of Iran, this means pushing for regime change in Teheran at any cost, even if it means World War III.
But Hadley is simply a facilitator; bureaucratic "grease" to ease policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet of a national security infrastructure increasingly kept in the dark about the true intent of the Bush administration when it comes to Iran. With the Department of State and the Pentagon now considered unfriendly ground by the remaining hard-core neo-conservative thinkers still in power, policy formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice President Cheney and the constitutionally nebulous "Office of the Vice President".
Cheney and his cohorts have constructed a never-never land of oversight deniability, claiming immunity from both executive and legislative checks and balances. With an unchallenged ability to classify anything and everything as secret, and then claim that there is no authority inherent in government to oversee that which has been thus classified, the Office of the Vice President has transformed itself into a free republic's worst nightmare, assuming Caesar-like dictatorial authority over almost every aspect of American national security policy at home and abroad.
From torture to illegal wiretapping, to arms control (or lack of it) to Iran, Dick Cheney is the undisputed centre of policy power in America today. While there are some who will claim that in this time of post-9/11 crisis such a process of bureaucratic streamlining is essential for the common good, the reality is far different.
It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this has never been truer than in the case of Cheney. What Cheney is doing behind his shield of secrecy can be simply defined: planning and implementing a pre-emptive war of aggression. During the Nuremberg tribunal in the aftermath of World War II, the chief American prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Today, we have a vice president who articulates publicly about global conflict, and who speaks in not-so-veiled language about a looming Armageddon. If there is such a future for America and the world, let one thing be certain: World War III, as postulated by Dick Cheney, would be an elective war, and not a conflict of tragic necessity. This makes the crime even greater. Sadly, Judge Jackson's words are but an empty shell. The global community lacks a legally binding definition of what constitutes a war of aggression, or even an act of aggression.
But that isn't the point. America should never find itself in a position where it is being judged by the global community regarding the legality of its actions. Judge Jackson established a precedent of jurisprudence concerning aggression based upon American principles and values, something the international community endorsed. The fact that current American indifference to the rule of law prevents the international community from certifying a definition of criminality when it comes to aggression, whether it be passed as "war" or simply an "act", does not change the fact that the Bush administration, in the person of Dick Cheney, is actively engaged in the committing of the "supreme (war) crime", which makes Cheney the supreme war criminal.
If the world is not empowered to judge him as such, then let the mantle of judgment fall to the American people. Through their elected representatives in Congress, they should not only bring this reign of unrestrained abuse of power to an end, but ensure that such abuse never again is attempted by an American official by holding to account, to the full extent of the law, those who have trampled on the Constitution of the United States and the ideals and principles it enshrines.
l Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. This is part on an article that was first published on TruthDig.com
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