Since the U.S. occupation began one year ago on April 9, 2003 (when U.S. troops helped topple a statue of Saddam Hussein), the administration has refused to speak honestly about the situation on the ground. Less than 24 hours after Saddam's statue came down, and as Bush went on Iraqi television pontificating about liberation, Iraq started its downward spiral: looters ransacked Baghdad; a suicide bomber injured four American marines at a military checkpoint; and in the clearest sign of things to come, followers of a young, anti-American Shiite leader named Moktada al-Sadr allegedly stabbed and killed a Shiite cleric working with U.S. forces. Al-Sadr is, of course, the head of the Mahdi Army, which took up arms last week and handed U.S. forces their bloodiest week since the occupation began, killing 46 American soldiers in seven days. Not even half over, April 2004 is already the deadliest month for American forces since the war began, with 83 soldiers killed, 560 wounded, and two missing.
George Bush's response to the insurgency--an insurgency sparked on March 28 of this year when al-Sadr's paper, Al Hawza, was shut down by the Americans--was to write it off as "intimidation by thugs and assassins," calling al-Sadr and his 3,000 troops "enemies of democracy." Al-Sadr is no friend of democracy, of course, but it was Paul Bremmer who sparked this crisis by shutting down a newspaper.
To help Stranger readers keep tabs on the accuracy of Bush's version of events, we present this look back on a year's worth of the administration's spin. It paints a picture of a president drifting further and further away from reality. --Josh Feit
"We will not impose any form of government on Iraq. We will help Iraq to build a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. "
--President Bush, April 16, 2003
On April 15, Shiites--Iraq's majority at 60 percent of the population--boycott U.S.-sponsored meetings of Iraqi religious and political leaders. Close by, in Nasiriya, thousands of Shiites protest the meetings, chanting, "No, no United States."
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"We will be here as long as it takes." --Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, April 21, 2003
On April 21, retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Jay Garner arrives in Baghdad as the civil administrator responsible for the reconstruction of Iraq. On the same day, 2,000 Shiites stage an anti-U.S. demonstration. Garner is replaced on May 12.
"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." --President Bush (aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln), May 1, 2003
On the same day, U.S. soldiers stationed at a school in Falluja are injured in a grenade attack.
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"Spain has been a strong partner in the war against terror and has stood with a coalition to liberate the people of Iraq. I want to thank [Jose Maria Aznar] for Spain's diplomatic support before the conflict and for the use of Spanish air space and bases." --President Bush at a White House reception for Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, May 6, 2003
Earlier in the week, Spain's daily, El Mundo, runs a cartoon in which Bush says to a smiling Aznar: "And if you support me again when we attack Syria, we will also include the Socialist Party on the list of terrorist groups?" Aznar is ousted by the Socialist opposition less than a year later on March 14, when the Socialists call for pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq.
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"We are not here as a colonial power. We are here to turn over power to the Iraqi people as quickly as possible." --L. Paul Bremer III, U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, May 12, 2003
A pending U.S. resolution to the UN Security Council, giving the "provisional authorities" full power over Iraq and exclusive rights to oil revenues, riles former Iraqi allies. "President Bush said he wanted to liberate Iraq, not occupy Iraq, and that was the basis for our supporting military action," one Iraqi who took part in leadership consultations told the New York Times on May 12. "This puts all the political leadership in a very difficult situation and gives fuel to all those extremists who said the U.S. had a secret agenda to occupy Iraq and exploit its oil resources."
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"There will be no militias inside of Iraq." --Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of allied land forces in Iraq, May 23, 2003
In a tense meeting on May 24, the deputy head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, a Shiite group, told the U.S. military leadership he would not disarm the Shiite Badr Brigade and that anyway the Americans should be leaving soon. He said the Badr Brigade had more than 10,000 armed soldiers in Iraq.
"The Iraqi people have a foundation on which to build the peace." --Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, May 27, 2003
According to Larry Sampler, a reconstruction expert from USAID's Asia and Near East bureau, the postwar electric capacity in Iraq is about 1,800 megawatts. Pre-war capacity was 5,500 megawatts. "There is no electric power available in southern central Iraq," Sampler said. "The water supply for Iraq is provided by pumps that are electrically powered. The water sanitation equipment is run by electric power."
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"There was no debate about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction programs." --Donald Rumsfeld, June 24, 2003
UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations on June 23, 2003, criticizes the U.S. for insisting the weapons still exist when there's no evidence. "It is sort of puzzling I think that you can have 100 percent certainty about the weapons of mass destruction's existence, and zero certainty about where they are," he said.
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"There are some who feel the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." --President Bush, July 3, 2003
Less than a week later, on July 9, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tells the Senate Armed Services Committee the estimated military costs in Iraq have nearly doubled to $3.9 billion a month. In addition, the cost of operations in Afghanistan is now $900 million to $950 million monthly, Rumsfeld says.
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"The president did not knowingly say anything that we knew to be false. We wouldn't put anything knowingly in the speech that was false." --Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor to President Bush, speaking about the president's uranium claims in his January 28 State of the Union speech, July 11, 2003
On July 11, CIA director George Tenet apologizes for not taking flawed claims about Saddam trying to buy uranium from Niger out of Bush's State of the Union speech.
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"My own hope is that the UN will have a forceful desire to stay in Iraq." --L. Paul Bremer III, August 19, 2003
On August 19, a suicide bomber, in a cement truck full of explosives, drives into Iraq's UN headquarters, killing 20 people and wounding 100 others. The UN Staff Council's security committee asks UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan "to suspend all operations in Iraq and withdraw its staff." Annan does so.
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"The regime of Saddam Hussein built weapons of mass destruction. Our coalition has made sure that Iraq's former dictator will never again use weapons of mass destruction." --President Bush, September 23, 2003
On September 24, U.S. weapons inspector David Kay releases a draft report on his search for banned weapons of mass destruction, which Bush had cited as his primary reason for going to war. The report reveals that, after a four-month search, no such weapons have been found.
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"I don't think I did misjudge [Iraq's oil-producing capacity].... Their oil revenues will be contributing" to the cost of reconstruction." --Donald Rumsfeld, October 4, 2003
On October 5, U.S. government officials acknowledge they were aware before the war that Iraq's oil-producing capacity was not sufficient to pay for the nation's reconstruction. A secret task force appointed by the administration estimated Iraq's potential oil revenues at about $14 billion a year, rather than the $20 billion to $30 billion the administration had predicted.
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"It's a lot better than it was.... I am optimistic. We have made an enormous amount of progress here in six months.... [The attackers] pose no strategic threat to the coalition or to its forces." --L. Paul Bremer III, October 9, 2003
A suicide bomber crashes through the gates of a police station in Baghdad on October 9, killing at least 8 and wounding more than 40. That evening, two Americans and two Iraqis are killed in a confrontation outside the headquarters of anti-American Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr.
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"We continue to make progress on all of the initiatives to bring back security and stability to the country." --U.S. and allied-forces commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, October 15, 2003 -----
The week Gen. Sanchez makes his remarks, three suicide car bombs explode in Baghdad, killing 15 Iraqis. A report by the occupation authority reveals that attempts by insurgents to attack U.S. troops are becoming ever more coordinated and lethal, including an effort to down a C-130 transport plane with shoulder-fired missiles, a prison break, and an attempt to ambush an Iraqi governor.
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"I sense the American people understand this is a worthwhile investment." --Secretary of State Colin Powell, October 24, 2003
On October 24, a conference of donors to Iraqi reconstruction winds down in Madrid, with U.S. allies pledging only about $13 billion of the $36 billion in aid the Bush administration had requested. The lack of international support is expected to force the Bush administration to seek more money on top of the $165 billion the U.S. Congress had already approved.
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"We're moving ahead with our plan. We'll have rough days, such as we've had the last couple of days. But the overall thrust is in the right direction, and the good days outnumber the bad days, and that's the thing you need to keep in perspective." --L. Paul Bremer III, October 27, 2003
On Monday, October 27, a series of coordinated blasts--including a suicide attack on the Red Cross building in Baghdad--kills 34 people and wounds more than 200. Later that week, a pro-Saddam Hussein protest devolves into a gun battle between guerrillas and American troops. And on Sunday, guerrillas shoot down a U.S. helicopter outside Falluja, killing 16 soldiers; meanwhile, attackers elsewhere in Falluja bomb an American convoy and kill two civilian contractors.
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"Ninety-five percent of these attacks on the coalition forces are taking place in a very small part of the country. They are being conducted by a few thousand men, at most. And they pose no strategic threat to our operations here." --L. Paul Bremer III, November 16, 2003
On November 12, a bomb explodes at Italian police headquarters in Nasiriya, killing 17 Italians and at least 9 Iraqis and wounding more than 105 others. The bombing is a disturbing change from previous attacks, which had been concentrated in Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq.
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"We're going to watch--we're going to make sure that as we spend the money in Iraq, that it's spent well and spent wisely." --President Bush, December 12, 2003
President Bush makes this comment after news breaks that a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, which has received billions in no-bid contracts for Iraq reconstruction, has been charging the government $2.64 a gallon for Kuwaiti gasoline delivered to Iraq, about twice what other suppliers charge.
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"Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020 as the launching point for |missions beyond. The moon is home to abundant resources... that might be harvested and processed. We will then be ready to take the next steps: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond. Robotic missions will serve as trailblazers, the advance guard to the unknown." --President Bush, January 14, 2004
A powerful truck bomb explodes at the main gate of the American occupation headquarters on January 18 killing at least 20 people and wounding at least 60 others.
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"Already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day." --President Bush, State of the Union speech, January 20, 2004
Three days after Bush's speech, on January 23, Bush's chief weapons inspector, David Kay, resigns, telling Reuters news agency: "I don't think they existed. I don't think there was a large-scale [WMD] production program in the '90s."
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"On each one of my now many trips to Iraq, I see improvements." --Donald Rumsfeld during a visit to Baghdad, February 23, 2004
Three days later, on February 26, an Iraqi policeman is killed and seven Iraqi civilians are wounded when a bomb explodes in front of a restaurant in a neighborhood about 37 miles northeast of Baghdad. Two parked police vehicles are set on fire by the explosion along with neighboring shops.
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"We want to see if [Pakistan] can do a better job of apprehending [al Qaeda and] Taliban persons. We just want to see them do more of that." --Colin Powell, March 15, 2004
As Powell and the Bush administration lecture Pakistan about fighting Osama bin Laden, the Bush administration's own former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke (who, tellingly, resigned a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq), goes on 60 Minutes and says Bush's war in Iraq is off-point in the war against bin Laden and terrorism.
The Stranger news team is madly in love with Richard Clarke, and so we're quoting Clarke's March 21 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl at length:
Clarke: "Well, [immediately after 9/11] Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq. And we all said, 'But no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.' You know, invading Iraq, or bombing Iraq after we're attacked by somebody else--you know, it's akin to what Franklin Roosevelt did after Pearl Harbor. Instead of going to war with Japan, he said, 'Let's invade Mexico.' You know, it's very analogous."
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"The Marines are quite pleased with how things are going in Falluja, and they're looking forward to continuing the progress in establishing a safe and secure environment and rebuilding that province in Iraq." --Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy commander of operations and the chief military spokesperson in Baghdad, March 30, 2004
The following day, on Wednesday, March 31, five American soldiers are killed by a bomb northwest of Falluja. Hours later, crowds in Falluja burn and mutilate the bodies of four American contractors, then drag the remains through the streets, chanting, "Falluja is the graveyard of Americans."
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"It's been a tough week, let's be clear about that. But I still believe that most Iraqis are with us." --Colin Powell, April 9, 2004
Amid growing violence, even America's Iraqi supporters begin denouncing the U.S. occupation. One member of the American-sponsored Governing Council, Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, announced that he was suspending his membership. Adnan Pachachi, the former Iraqi foreign minister, who has been regarded by the Americans as one of their most trusted allies, announced on April 9, "We consider these operations by the Americans to be unacceptable and illegal."
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"On June 30, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands." --President Bush, news conference, April 13, 2004
Earlier the same day, UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan told reporters that violence in Iraq could imperil the June 30 deadline. "The kind of violence we're seeing on the ground is not conducive for that sort of political process and transition," said Annan.
Also, shortly before President Bush's news conference, NBC News reported that the bodies of four missing American civilian contractors were found, "in a shallow grave near the site of an explosion of a convoy." American officials had been directed to the mutilated bodies by an Iraqi who told the coalition authorities that "Americans were buried there."
