White House Lies: A Brief History

The White House's selective use of intelligence information to provide a reason for war in Iraq stems in significant measure from the capture of the Bush administration by elements with their own foreign policy agenda. For the grouping associated with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the issue of Iraq's weaponry provided a public rationale for an invasion carried out for other aims. A false case on Iraq's weaponry was broadcast to the world in Secretary of State Colin Powell's now infamous UN Security Council presentation of February 5, 2003.

While this situation may make the information manipulation in the run-up to the Iraq war seem sui generis , the Bush administration is, unfortunately, not far out of line with American practice. Other administrations engaging in military intervention have given a public explanation that varied from the actual reason. The public explanations were typically unfounded in fact.

In my book The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II (Prometheus Books 1992), I recount each instance of military intervention abroad by the United States from World War II to the date of publication. In a few instances, the military action was covert, hence the administration gave no explanation. For those interventions that were not covert, I recite the reason as officially stated. Then I explain why that reason was not the actual reason.

Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada because, he said, US students studying at a medical school there were in imminent danger from an anti-US leadership. Yet State Department personnel had been in close contact with the Grenadan leadership and knew the students were not at risk. When Norman Schwarzkopf's troops hit the beaches in Grenada, no one had told them the location of the students they were supposed to rescue, even though State Department personnel had been interviewing the students for several days, trying to convince them they needed to be saved.

When confronted by the press for not knowing where the students were located, Schwarzkopf called it an "intelligence failure." But it did not take much intelligence to know where the students were. The Pentagon could have asked their parents. The State Department in fact knew.

President Bush is trying the same ploy today. He has ordered an inquiry into "intelligence failures" over Iraq, while the real problem was that the administration was not straightforward about its reasons for invading Iraq.

Saving endangered Americans has been a frequent pretext for military intervention. Lyndon Johnson used it when he sent Marines into the Dominican Republic in 1966. He said that US nationals resident in the Dominican Republic were at risk in a civil conflict then underway. Johnson was really concerned that the "wrong side" might win the civil conflict. Most of the US nationals who wanted to leave the Dominican Republic had already done so before the Marines landed. The Marines were hard pressed to find anyone to evacuate.

George H.W. Bush dusted off this rationale to invade Panama in 1989. He said that U.S. nationals were being attacked by Panama's army. There had been a few isolated attacks on Americans. The one Bush highlighted was a checkpoint incident near Panama's equivalent of the Pentagon. Four US army officers stopped at the checkpoint and apparently became alarmed when Panamanian soldiers pointed weapons at them. Panama's version was that the US officers fired first. The US version was that the driver started the car to get away, at which point a Panamanian soldier fired. One of the US officers was killed as the car moved away from the checkpoint. Regardless of whose version of the incident was accurate, this was not an episode that bespoke generalized attacks on US nationals.

Perhaps the best-remembered instance of fabricating evidence for war was Lyndon Johnson's conjuring up of an attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin off the Vietnamese coast in 1964. Johnson told Congress that the United States needed to become involved militarily in Vietnam because North Vietnamese patrol boats had shot at the destroyer. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution became the major Congressional authorization for our involvement in the Vietnam war.

One destroyer had, to be sure, reported to Washington it had been fired upon, but the destroyer's commander almost immediately sent a follow-up message saying that the report of an attack had been in error. A crew member had apparently misinterpreted sonar reflections of the destroyer's own rudder as an incoming torpedo. But Johnson took the withdrawn report of an attack to the UN Security Council and to Congress, using it there to get funding to fight in Vietnam.

Johnson perhaps was taking a cue from Texas history. James Polk got Congress to declare war on Mexico in 1846, telling it that Mexico had invaded US territory and "shed American blood on the American soil." There had been a skirmish, just north of the Rio Grande River, but Texas, recently acquired by the United States, had its southern border at the Nueces River, which parallels the Rio Grande 150 miles northeast of it. Polk wanted to expand south to the Rio Grande, but Mexico still controlled the territory up to the Nueces. The territory between the Rio Grande and the Nueces was hardly "American soil." It was the US forces who were fighting beyond their borders.

William McKinley declared war on Spain in 1898, under the slogan, "Remember the Maine ." An explosion had destroyed the USS Maine in Havana harbor, resulting in the deaths of 266 seamen. McKinley asked the US Navy to conduct an inquiry. The Navy concluded that the explosion was the result of an attack, although it could not identify the attacker. The assumption was that Spain was responsible.

The Spanish government conducted its own inquiry and concluded that there had been no attack, but that the explosion was from spontaneous combustion of materials on board the Maine. The explosion occurred in sight of on-shore eyewitnesses, none of whom saw any disturbance in the water or any suspect vessel. In 1976 the US Navy asked Admiral Hyman Rickover to conduct a new inquiry into the explosion that destroyed the Maine . Rickover concluded that the Spanish inquiry panel had been correct.

The UN Charter era introduced a new element. The Charter posited that war is illegal, unless in self-defense. Initiating war on fabricated reasons puts the United States in violation of the Charter, and of the rights of other states.

The presidents who have engaged in sleight-of-hand may have thought they were acting in the national interest, even as they recited dubious facts to the public. It is helpful to have a reason that puts the potential enemy state in the wrong, a reason that can make soldiers willing to fight, and make their parents willing to send their offspring into battle.

The US military personnel who invaded Iraq thought they were depriving Iraq of weaponry that Iraq might have used against the United States. Their parents thought their children were protecting the United States, just like the parents of the soldiers James Polk sent against Mexico, or the soldiers William McKinley sent against Spain.