Description of project
This project is a grassroots investigation which seeks to determine the true reasons behind the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. Implicit in this inquiry is the question of whether or not top US officials purposefully made misleading statements about intelligence on Iraq in order to secure public support. The scope of this project is broad and intends not to overlook the involvement of non-governmental and private interests in building the erroneous case for war.
Reason for this investigation
On January 24, 2004, David Kay, the Central Intelligence Agency’s chief weapons inspector who had headed the post-invasion effort to locate Iraq’s alleged arsenal of banned weapons, told the New York Times in an interview that the US had been mistaken in its allegation that Iraq possessed significant amounts of weapons of mass destruction before the war. “I’m personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction,” he explained. “I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990s.” But the claim that Iraq had illicit arms had been a major part of the administration’s case for war. Ten months earlier, on March 21, 2003, immediately after the official “liberation” of Iraq began, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer made it clear in a press briefing that Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction had necessitated the use of military force. “Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly,” he told reporters. “This was the reason that the President felt so strongly that we needed to take military action to disarm Saddam Hussein, since he would not do it himself.”
Another charge that had been put forth by the Bush administration was that Saddam Hussein’s regime had ties to al-Qaeda. This claim was important because some critics had argued that Iraq would never use weapons of mass destruction against the US for the simple reason that such an attack would virtually guarantee a violent end to the Ba’ath regime. But if Saddam Hussein was allied with a network of terrorists, hawks argued, he might secretly provide them with biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons to use in an attack against the US. Twelve months after the American-led coalition began its invasion, no evidence has surfaced indicating collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Knight Ridder Newspapers reported in early March 2004, “The Bush administration’s claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda … appears to have been based on even less solid intelligence than the administration’s claims that Iraq had hidden stocks of chemical and biological weapons.”
The issue of whether or not members of the administration intentionally misled the public is not a trivial one. In the 12-month period following the beginning of the US-led regime change operation, tens of thousands of lives have been ruined. More than 650 coalition soldiers have lost their lives and upwards of 14,000 have been evacuated because of their injuries. These men and women had been told by US leaders repeatedly in the lead-up to war that they would be going to Iraq to “defend freedom.” In Iraq, the theater of liberation, the casualty list is staggering. According to the website, iraqbodycount.net, more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, including many women, children, and elderly. And these numbers increase on a daily basis. There are no authoritative figures on the number of Iraqi soldiers that have perished, but one report by The Guardian estimated that the number was between 13,500 and 45,000.
But the human costs of this war go beyond the casualty statistics. The appropriation of taxpayers’ funds to finance the war has meant that these resources are unavailable for other uses. According to costofwar.org, the intervention in Iraq has cost US taxpayers more than $100 billion in actual current expenditures and future interest payments. The website notes that this same amount could have been used to enroll almost 11 million children in Head Start, provide over 32 million children with healthcare, hire nearly 1.5 million new public school teachers, provide almost 2 million college students with four-year scholarships, or build more than 1 million new housing units.
But ultimately, a full accounting of the consequences of the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq is incalculable once one attempts to consider its indirect and less obvious effects, including the impact of depleted uranium, increased sympathy for militant resistance in the Middle East, increased economic instability, damaged international relations, increased reliance of US economy on the weapons industry, the precedent of a unilateral preemptive military intervention and increased resentment of the US among foreigners—to name a few.
People wishing to support this effort may contribute financially to the Center for Cooperative Research or take part in the investigation.
Praises for the Project
From the acknowledgements of House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger
“The Center for Cooperative Research is another valuable Internet tool. Because I made a practice of citing original sources, it does not appear in my notes nearly as often as it might. However, its timelines about 911 and related issues often helped me find exactly what I was looking for. I highly recommend it to anyone doing research on 9/11 and I encourage its support.”
From an email written by Craig Unger to Cooperative Research
“The Center for Cooperative Research’s website… played a key role in my research for House of Bush, House of Saud.… [I]t was especially valuable in helping me build a counternarrative to the official history being put out by the Bush Administration. I recommend it highly to anyone doing research on 9/11 or related foreign policy issues.”
From the acknowledgements of Cover-Up by Peter Lance
“As mentioned throughout, I was blessed in this state of my research with access to Paul Thompson’s remarkable timelines from the Center for Cooperative Research each citation in that database is supported by a news story from the mainstream media.… Any research, reporter, or scholar with an interest in the war on terror would consider the Cooperative Research timelines a bonanza of open source information.”
From the acknowledgements of 911 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions by David Ray Griffin
“[M]y greatest dependence was on Paul Thompson’s timeline… [at the Center for Cooperative Research’s website]”
Danny Schechter, author and filmmaker
“The Cooperative Research site has been very valuable to my work as editor of Mediachannel.org and someone who writes about the 911 issues.”
