Shades of Iran-Contra
The White House's rush to war with Iraq featured some of the same power
abuses and even the same personnel as the Iran-Contra scandal. But this time
the effort to evade checks and balances came from the top.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal



April 22, 2004 | "History? We won't know," President Bush tells Bob
Woodward. "We'll all be dead." But Woodward's "Plan of Attack," outlining
the administration's shadowy rush to war with Iraq, moves the past from the
shadows. The serious constitutional issues and governmental abuses, the
methods and the continuity of some key personnel, evoke memories of the
mostly forgotten Reagan administration Iran-Contra scandal.

Iran-Contra involved a network of aides outsourcing U.S. foreign policy like
a separate government to circumvent the separation of powers, by selling
missiles to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. The Iraq war was not
conceived by aides but by the president and his war Cabinet in an apparent
effort to evade constitutional checks and balances. In Iran-Contra, the NSC,
CIA and Pentagon were stealthily exploited from within; in Iraq, they were
abused from the top. When the Iran-Contra scandal was revealed, Reagan's
administration was placed into receivership by the old Republican
establishment. Neoconservatives and adventurers, criminal or not, were
purged, from Elliott Abrams to Richard Perle. Now they are at the center of
power, and they have pushed the likes of Colin Powell to the margins.

In the absence of congressional investigations and hearings, as the
Republican Congress acts to shield the executive branch in the spirit of
one-party government, books like Woodward's, and former counterterrorism
chief Richard Clarke's, have become the only countervailing instruments.

Woodward reports that in July 2002 Bush ordered the use of $700 million to
prepare for the invasion of Iraq, funds that had not been specifically
appropriated by the Congress, which alone holds that constitutional
authority. No adequate explanation has been offered for what, strictly
speaking, might well be an impeachable offense.

Woodward also reports that the battle plan was unfurled for Prince Bandar
bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.: On its top it was stamped "TOP
SECRET--NOFORN"--"No Foreign," not to be seen by anyone but Americans with
the highest security clearance. Instructed by the president, Vice President
Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld briefed Bandar, who responded by
promising to lower oil prices just before the election. "Mum is the word,"
said Bandar. As we can now see, prices have skyrocketed, giving oil
producers windfall profits upfront, and ultimately exaggerating the
political effect of any subsequent drop in prices.

While Bandar was treated as a branch of government or ex officio member of
the war Cabinet, Secretary of State Colin Powell was carefully kept in the
dark. "Mr. President," National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice gently
suggests, "if you're getting to a place that you really think this might
happen, you need to call Colin in and talk to him." So after Bandar had been
told of the battle plan, Bush decided to inform his secretary of state, a
frequent squash-playing partner of the Saudi prince. After all, he was bound
to learn anyway. Powell had sought to warn Bush on Iraq: If you break it,
you own it. "Powell wasn't sure whether Bush had fully understood the
meaning and consequences of total ownership," Woodward writes.

"Time to put your war uniform on," says Bush. Powell snaps to attention.
Powell is obviously Woodward's source, just as he was a source for
Woodward's book on the Gulf War, "The Commanders."

"Plan of Attack" can be read as the first draft of Powell's memoir. Powell
believed that the government had been seized by what he called a "Gestapo
office" of neoconservatives directed at the top by Cheney and running as an
axis from the Pentagon to the vice president's office. "It was a separate
little government that was out there," writes Woodward, reflecting Powell's
view. Powell was appalled by the mangling of intelligence as Cheney and the
neocons made their case to an eager Bush and subsequently manipulated the
public.

But Powell had put on his uniform for his commander in chief. In the White
House, his capitulation was greeted with a combination of glee and scorn as
the "Powell buy-in." Powell would make the case before the world at the
United Nations. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, gives him
a 60-page brief that Powell dismisses as filled with "murky" intelligence.
Powell goes to CIA headquarters himself where he discovers that "he could no
longer trace anything because it had been 'masticated over in the White
House so that the exhibits didn't match the words.'" He hastily constructed
his own case, which turned out to be replete with falsehood.

Powell played the good soldier, not taking his qualms and knowledge to the
Congress or the American people. He had been promoted since the Nixon
administration by those who now surround Bush. Powell felt that this loyalty
overrode all else. The most popular man in the country, he never used his
inherent veto power to promote his position. On the contrary, he yielded to
his pride that his fame could not afford a break. Rather than fighting his
battles in earnest when it counted, before his army was put in harm's way,
he chose to settle scores by speaking with Woodward. Now, scrambling to
repair a reputation tattered by his previous passivity, he has stabbed his
patrons in the back. (Though since the book's release he has tried to deny
some of Woodward's reporting.)

While Powell's authority withers, Bush looks elsewhere for reflected
legitimacy. He tells Woodward that he is "frightened" and "scared" by
detailed questions. He admires Cheney, "a rock," for not needing to explain
in public. "That's why I love Cheney." Pointedly, Bush says, unlike Tony
Blair, "I haven't suffered doubt."

Asked if he seeks advice from his father, the former president, Bush says:
"He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher
Father that I appeal to."

A largely overlooked new book, "The Bushes," by Peter and Rochelle
Schweizer, two scholars at the conservative Hoover Institution, attempts to
be a glowing multigenerational saga. But its centerpiece is the tortuous
Shakespearean story of the father and his wastrel son. Even after the
younger Bush attains the presidency, the elder statesman frets. When the son
seeks to demonstrate by force of arms that he can exceed his father and
correct the error of his rejected presidency, the father once again is
consumed with anxiety and disapproval. Then the father's closest associate,
former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, openly writes an article
expressing his opposition before the war, which is widely interpreted as
expressing the senior Bush's views. The Schweizers quote George W. Bush
directly: "Scowcroft has become a pain in the ass in his old age."

Bush gazes upward for guidance, or turns to Cheney. Judgment Day may not
arrive before Election Day. Here on earth the old Republican establishment
that saved Reagan has become superannuated and powerless -- the "wrong
father." There is no one to intervene.