Statement by Tom Andrews
On the One-Year Anniversary of the Invasion and
Occupation of Iraq

A year has passed since the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Has it been an inspiring success for Iraq and a devastating setback to terrorists, as the president today claimed? Or, has it been a disaster built upon a deception that we must never allow to be repeated? Let’s examine the historical record. Last year, the Bush administration told the public that by this time:

• We would have disarmed Iraq, destroyed all those large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and persuaded other, unfriendly would-be proliferators to reverse course before it was too late;
• American troops – the same ones that were greeted with flowers and parades – would have come home;
• The relative cost of rebuilding Iraq – “$1.7 billion” - would have been self-financed by Iraqi oil that would by now be generating between $50 and $100 billion in revenue;
• Democracy in Iraq would be flourishing as Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds worked together in a federal system;
• The Iraqi economy, privatized and open to Western investment would have taken off;
• The rest of the Middle East, awed and inspired by this spectacle, would have cast off their own profoundly undemocratic, repressive regimes;
• And, of course, we would have struck a decisive blow in the war against terrorism.

A combination of deceit, self-deception and blatant manipulation of the American people and our allies around the world created this fairy tale. What is the reality?

• The first truth is that the war “to disarm Iraq” was unnecessary. It had already been disarmed by years of international inspections that were scorned, dismissed and sabotaged by the Bush administration. Despite the administration’s claims of absolute certainty about massive stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, there were none, nor even a program to produce them. It had not rebuilt its nuclear weapons program. It was not a “grave and growing threat” to the region and the world.
• 574 US soldiers are dead and thousands more have been seriously wounded, many of them permanently disabled. 100 allied troops and as many as ten thousand innocent Iraqis are also dead.
• The costs of reconstructing Iraq projected by some budget analysts - $60-$95 billion – a figure rebuked and dismissed by the administration - turned out to be correct. So far, the cost to taxpayers through this fiscal year is $137 billion.
• Over 100,000 US men and women in uniform remain in Iraq under perilous conditions. Iraqi citizens live in daily fear of muggings, rapes and kidnappings. As ongoing attacks show, the US has failed to provide sufficient security to ensure a smooth transfer of authority to Iraq officials by July.
• The Iraq invasion has bitterly polarized the world against the United States. We are no longer trusted by the friendliest of world leaders. Only yesterday, the president of Poland complained publicly: “we were misled with the information on weapons of mass destruction.” Citizens of countries that are our longest and staunchest allies now see the United States as a threat to a secure and just world.
• Of course we all hope for the best and felt encouraged when the Governing Council (unrepresentative as it may be) approved an interim constitution and dismayed when conflicts arose anew among various groups that threaten its validity. But no one can honestly say yet if good will come from this war by the emergence of an Iraq that provides political freedoms and personal security for its people or whether the lives lost and ruined will have been squandered by a descent into chronic political and economic insecurity or even civil war.
• The Administration meticulously planned for military invasion from its first days in office, but didn’t give serious thought to the occupation until it was upon it. And once it was, the Administration largely persisted in its unilateral, militaristic approach. It resisted giving the UN political authority, it relied on heavy-handed military engagements and devalued military police, civilian administrators, and aid workers who spoke the language. One year after the US military invasion, the administration has yet to present a real plan for building and sustaining democracy in Iraq.
• In violation of international law governing occupying powers, the United States is seeking to sell off segments of the Iraqi economy to outside investors.

The president has today gone to great lengths to convey the idea that our attack on Iraq struck a mighty blow against international terrorism. Of course, we are all glad that Saddam Hussein is behind bars, but the fact remains he didn’t have a connection to global terrorism. As attacks in Spain unfortunately demonstrate, Al Qaeda and its network of terror remain a grave danger. According to the Institute for International and Strategic Studies the war on Iraq has increased the recruiting power and morale of Al Qaeda. According to Jessica Stern of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government we are, in fact, inspiring terrorism: “The Bush administration didn’t seem to have anticipated the extent to which terrorists would be drawn into Iraq and the extent to which they would be inspired by our occupation to attack elsewhere.” We have turned a Bush administration fiction that Iraq was a witch’s brew of terrorism into a reality. Iraq has suffered more than 50 suicide bombings since August, resulting in more than 550 deaths and 1500 injuries. The number of Al Qaeda attacks in the world has increased since September 11.

The US led invasion of Iraq has proven to be a disaster built on a deception. It is imperative that the president and his administration be held accountable for the systematic deceptions and distortions that led us to war. It is also imperative that we never again allow our sons and daughters in uniform to be sacrificed for a fiction in an unnecessary war of choice. Congress has a responsibility to censure the president for its deception. We all have a responsibility to do everything in our power to bury the Bush Doctrine of unilateralism and pre-emptive war in Iraq.