The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  57 Taguba, “Preface to ‘Broken Laws, Broken Lives.’ ”

  58 Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 5.

  59 Linda Greenhouse, “Justices, 5–4, Back Detainee Appeals for Guantánamo,” New York Times, June 13, 2008.

  60 Patrick Sawer, “Yard Fury over Bush Visit,” London Evening Standard, October 11, 2003.

  61 Sidney Blumenthal, “Dick Cheney Was Never a ‘Grown Up’: A Hard Look at How One Man Changed the Face of Neoconservatism,” April 14, 2008, www.salon.com/2008/04/14/cheney_10/.

  62 Alan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), 447.

  63 James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 80.

  64 Sam Tanenhaus, “Bush’s Brain Trust,” Vanity Fair, July 2003, 169.

  65 Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 72.

  66 Ibid., 85–86.

  67 Ibid., 129.

  68 Elaina Sciolino and Patrick E. Tyler, “A National Challenge: Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, October 12, 2001.

  69 Daniel Eisenberg, “We’re Taking Him Out,” Time, May 5, 2005, www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,235395,00.html.

  70 Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 23, 189–191; Lloyd C. Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present (New York: New Press, 2008), 134–135, 202–203.

  71 Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies: Operation “Iraqi Freedom” and After (New York: Nation Books, 2004), 8.

  72 Peter Bergen, “Armchair Provocateur: Laurie Mylroie: The Neocons’ Favorite Conspiracy Theorist,” Washington Monthly, December 2003, www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.bergen.html.

  73 Meet the Press, September 14, 2003.

  74 Jeff Stein, “Spy Talk,” Washington Post, May 25, 2010.

  75 Jack Fairweather and Anton La Guardia, “Chalabi Stands by Faulty Intelligence That Toppled Saddam’s Regime,” Daily Telegraph (London), February 19, 2004.

  76 Seymour Hersh, “Selective Intelligence,” New Yorker, May 6, 2003.

  77 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 486.

  78 David E. Sanger, “Threats and Responses: The President’s Speech,” New York Times, October 8, 2002.

  79 “In Cheney’s Words: The Administration Case for Removing Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, August 27, 2002.

  80 Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad, 153–154.

  81 Todd S. Purdum and New York Times staff, A Time of Our Choosing: America’s War in Iraq (New York: Henry Holt, 2003), 37.

  82 Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown, 2006), 3.

  83 “Scott Ritter: Facts Needed Before Iraqi Attack,” http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/07/17/saddam.ritter.cnna/.

  84 Kinzer, Overthrow, 294.

  85 Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 40–41.

  86 Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad, 141–143, 154.

  87 Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004), 156–157.

  88 Lloyd C. Gardner, “Present at the Culmination: An Empire of Righteousness?,” in The New American Empire: A 21st Century Teach-in on U.S. Foreign Policy, ed. Lloyd C. Gardner and Marilyn B. Young (New York: New Press, 2005), 3.

  89 Rajiv Chadrasekaran, “Baghdad Delivers Weapons Data to U.N.,” Washington Post, December 8, 2002; Kinzer, Overthrow, 295; Chalmers A. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (London: Verso, 2004), 224.

  90 John Barry, Howard Fineman, Jonathan Adams, Tara Pepper, William Underhill, and Michael Isikoff, “Periscope,” Newsweek, March 3, 2003.

  91 Walter Pincus, “U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms,” Washington Post, March 16, 2003.

  92 Anthony H. Cordesman, Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East: Regional Trends, National Forces, Warfighting Capabilities, Delivery Options, and Weapons Effects (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2002), 17–19, 22, 27–31, 37–40, 53–59, 90–94, 98–103.

  93 Paul Krugman, “Things to Come,” New York Times, March 18, 2003.

  94 Frederik Logevall, “Anatomy of an Unnecessary War,” in The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment, ed. Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 110.

  95 John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 242–243. A broad range of Jewish groups jumped onto the prowar bandwagon. AIPAC continued to support the war vociferously even when most Americans, including most Jewish Americans, had turned against it. In 2007, Democratic Representative Jim Moran of Virginia noted, “Jewish Americans, as a voting bloc and as an influence on American foreign policy, are overwhelmingly opposed to the war. There is no ethnic group as opposed to the war as much as Jewish Americans. But, AIPAC is the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning.” In fact, Gallup reported that year, based on thirteen polls taken since 2005, that 77 percent of American Jews opposed the war compared to 52 percent of all Americans. AIPAC’s former Director of Foreign Policy Issues Steven Rosen bragged that he could deliver the votes of seventy senators on any issue. “Representative Jim Moran on the Power of AIPAC,” Tikkun, September–October 2007, 76; Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, 240–243. Jeffrey Goldberg, “Real Insiders: A Pro-Israel Lobby and an F.B.I. Sting,” New Yorker, July 4, 2005, www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/04/050704fa_fact#ixzz1LilbqLAj.

  96 Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, 238–240.

  97 “President’s State of the Union Message to Congress and the Nation,” New York Times, January 29, 2003.

  98 Paul R. Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, March–April 2006, 24.

  99 Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine, 191.

  100 Karen DeYoung, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 439.

  101 “Powell’s Address, Presenting ‘Deeply Troubling’ Evidence on Iraq,” New York Times, February 6, 2003.

  102 “Colin Powell on Iraq, Race, and Hurricane Relief,” 20/20, September 8, 2005, http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Politics/story?id=1105979.

  103 Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington: DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 158; Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, “Curveball: How US Was Duped by Iraqi Fantasist Looking to Topple Saddam,” Guardian (London), February 16, 2011; Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad, 157.

  104 Nicholas D. Kristof, “Cloaks and Daggers,” New York Times, June 6, 2003, 33.

  105 DeYoung, Soldier, 450–451.

  106 For a full account of the Katharine Gun affair, see Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion (Sausalito, CA: PoliPointPress, 2008).

  107 Colum Lynch, “U.S. Pushed Allies on Iraq, Diplomat Writes,” Washington Post, March 23, 2008.

  108 Steven R. Weisman, “U.S. Set to Demand That Allies Agree Iraq Is Defying U.N.,” New York Times, January 23, 2003.

  109 Thomas L. Friedman, “Vote France off the Island,” New York Times, February 9, 2003.

  110 Toby Harnden, “Gerhard Schroeder Accuses George W. Bush of ‘Not Telling Truth’ in Memoirs,” Telegraph (London), November 10, 2010.

  111 Don Van Natta, Jr., “Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says,” New York Times, March 27, 2006.

  112 Matthew Yglesias, “Democrats and the World,” in In Search of Progressive
America, ed. Michael Kazin with Frans Becker and Menno Hurenkamp (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 13.

  113 David Barstow, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” New York Times, April 20, 2008; “Instruments of War: Transcript,” April 25, 2008, www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/04/25/01.

  114 Daniel Okrent, “The Public Editor: Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?,” New York Times, May 30, 2004.

  115 John Barry, “Beyond Baghdad: Expanding Target List,” Newsweek, August 18, 2002.

  116 Norman Podhoretz, “In Praise of the Bush Doctrine,” Commentary, September 2002, 19.

  117 Linda Diebel, “Bush Doctrinaires,” Toronto Star, April 13, 2003.

  118 Wesley K. Clark, Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), 130.

  119 Robert Dreyfuss, “Just the Beginning: Is Iraq the Opening Salvo in a War to Remake the World?,” American Prospect, April 1, 2003, 26.

  120 Barbara Slavin, “Iraq a Harsh Climate to Try to Grow Democracy,” USA Today, November 11, 2002.

  121 G. John Ikenberry, “America’s Imperial Ambition,” Foreign Affairs, September–October 2002, 49–50.

  122 Michael Hirsh, “Hawks, Doves and Dubya,” Newsweek, September 2, 2002, 25.

  123 Anthony Zinni, “Comments of Gen. Anthony Zinni (ret.) During a Speech before the Florida Economic Club, August 23, 2002,” www.npr.org/programs/morning/zinni.html.

  124 George C. Wilson, “Cheney Believes Gorbachev Sincere,” Washington Post, April 5, 1989.

  125 Phil McCombs, “The Unsettling Calm of Dick Cheney,” Washington Post, April 3, 1991.

  126 Robert H. Swansbrough, Test by Fire: The War Presidency of George W. Bush (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 27; James E. Westheider, Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 29–30.

  127 Colin L. Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 148.

  128 Stephen J. Whitfield, “Still the Best Catch There Is: Joseph Heller’s Catch 22,” in Rethinking Cold War Culture, ed. Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 188.

  129 Ross Goldberg and Sam Kahn, “Bolton’s Conservative Ideology Has Roots in Yale Experience,” Yale Daily News, April 28, 2005.

  130 Paul D. Colford, The Rush Limbaugh Story: Talent on Loan from God (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 14–20; Whitfield, “Still the Best Catch There Is,” 188.

  131 Craig Glenday, ed. Guinness World Records 2010: Thousands of New Records in the Book of the Decade! (New York: Bantam, 2010), 47.

  132 Robert J. Samuelson, “The Gulf of World Opinion,” Washington Post, March 27, 2003.

  133 Michael Dobbs, “Persuasion: Why Success Requires More than Victory,” Washington Post, March 30, 2003.

  134 Nicholas D. Kristof, “Flogging the French,” New York Times, January 31, 2003.

  135 Samuelson, “The Gulf of World Opinion.”

  136 Harlan K. Ullman and James Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: NDU Press, 1996), www.au.af.mil/AU/AWC/AWCGATE/ndu/shocknawe.

  137 Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004), 64.

  138 Donald Rumsfeld, “Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 30, 2003,” www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=382.

  139 Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad, 170; John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 397–398.

  140 Richard Perle, “Next Stop, Iraq: Remarks of the Hon. Richard Perle at the FPRI Annual Dinner,” November 14, 2001, www.fpri.org/transcripts/annualdinner.20011114.perle.nextstopiraq.html.

  141 Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, The War over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), vii–viii, 124.

  142 Robert Fisk, “American Billions Keep Arab Regimes Sweet,” Independent (London), March 2, 2003.

  143 Doug Struck, “Citing Iraq, N. Korea Signals Hard Line on Weapons Issue,” Washington Post, March 30, 2003.

  144 Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad, 223.

  145 Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: Penguin, 2007), 463.

  146 Robert Dreyfuss, “The Thirty-Year Itch,” Mother Jones, March–April 2003, http://motherjones.com/politics/2003/03/thirty-year-itch?page=2.

  147 Congressional Record, Proceedings and Debates of the 108th Congress, First Session, April 3, 2003, 8544.

  148 Dreyfuss, “The Thirty-Year Itch.”

  149 “Report on Prewar Intelligence Assessments About Postwar Iraq,” Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, 110th Cong., May 25, 2007, 27, 57, http://intelligence.senate.gov/11076.pdf.

  150 Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung, “Analysts’ Warnings of Iraq Chaos Detailed,” Washington Post, May 26, 2007.

  151 Roger Strother, “Post-Saddam Iraq: The War Game,” November 4, 2006, National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB207/index.htm.

  152 Nicholas D. Kristof, “War and Wisdom,” New York Times, February 7, 2003.

  153 Michael F. Scheuer, “Tenet Tries to Shift the Blame. Don’t Buy It,” Washington Post, April 29, 2007.

  154 Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 83.

  155 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 292.

  156 “Bin Laden: Goal Is to Bankrupt U.S.,” November 1, 2004, http://articles.cnn.com/2004-11-01/world/binladen.tape_1_al-jazeera-qaeda-bin?_s=PM:WORLD.

  157 Aram Roston, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi (New York: Nation Books, 2008), 252–253, 255–256; Gardner, Long Road to Baghdad, 205.

  158 Eli Lake, “Chalabi Aide Tied to Shi’ite Terrorists,” Washington Times, August 28, 2009.

  159 “Interview with Andrew Natsios, Administrator for the US Agency for International Development, with Ted Koppel, Nightline, ABC News, 23 April 2003 on the Costs of Iraqi Reconstruction,” www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq/koppel.htm.

  160 Bruno Coppieters and Boris Kashnikov, “Right Intentions,” in Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases, ed. Bruno Coppieters and Nick Fotion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 94.

  161 Eric Schmitt, “2 U.S. Officials Liken Guerrillas to Renegade Postwar Nazi Units,” New York Times, August 23, 2003.

  162 James Risen and David Johnston, “Bin Laden Is Seen with Aide on Tape,” New York Times, September 11, 2003.

  163 For a discussion of U.S. privatization plans, see Dower, Cultures of War, 411–416.

  164 Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 432–436.

  165 Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Ties to GOP Trumped Know-how Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq,” Washington Post, September 17, 2006.

  166 “‘Gates of Hell’ Are Open in Iraq, Warns Arab League Chief,” Agence France Presse, September 19, 2004.

  167 Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2008), 59–60.

  168 James Risen, “U.S. Splits Controversial Contractor’s Iraq Work 3 Ways, but Costs May Soar,” New York Times, May 24, 2008; Robert O’Harrow, Jr., “Halliburton Is a Handy Target for Democrats,” Washington Post, September 18, 2004.

  169 Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank, “Cheney Dismisses Critic with Obscenity,” Washington Post, June 25, 2004.

  170 James Risen, “Electrical Risks Worse than Said at Bases in Iraq,” New York Times, July 18, 2008.

  171 Robert F. Worth, “Blast Destroys Shrine in Iraq, Setting Off Sectarian Fury,” New York Times, February 22, 2006.

  172 Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad, 245.

  173 Dana Priest
and Dana Milbank, “President Defends Allegation on Iraq,” Washington Post, July 15, 2003.

  174 Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004, 44, 51.

  175 Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray, and Jeremy A. Murphy, “The War as We Saw It,” New York Times, August 19, 2007.

  176 Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).

  177 Iraq: No Let-up in the Humanitarian Crisis (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 2008), 3.

  178 Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2010 Results,” www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results.

  179 Liz Sly, “In Iraq, Ex-Foe Is New Friend: Historic Visit by Iran Leader Showcases Ties,” Chicago Tribune, March 3, 2008.

  180 Gareth Porter, “Burnt Offering,” American Prospect, May 25, 2006, www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11539.

  181 Philip Giraldi, “Deep Background: In Case of Emergency, Nuke Iran; Give Tenet Another Medal; Iraq’s Police Brutality,” American Conservative, August 1, 2005, www.amconmag.com/article/2005/aug/01/00027/.

  182 “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” National Intelligence Estimate, November 2007, www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf, 6.

  183 James Risen and Judith Miller, “A Nation Challenged,” New York Times, October 29, 2001; Tim Reid, “We’ll Bomb You to Stone Age, US Told Pakistan,” Times (London), September 22, 2006, www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article647188.ece.

  184 Celia W. Dugger, “The World: Unthinkable,” New York Times, June 2, 2002.

  185 Roger D. Hodge, “Weekly Review,” Harper’s Magazine, January 15, 2002.

  186 Hersh, Chain of Command, 291, 312; Statement of Leonard Weiss, Ph.D., to the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation, “The A. Q. Khan Network: Case Closed?: Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Terrorism of the Committee on International Relations,” 109th Cong., 2nd Sess., May 25, 2006, 10; John Lancaster and Kamran Khan, “President Won’t Submit to Nuclear Inspections,” Washington Post, February 6, 2004.