The Political Chase

Congress Started Iraq War Not Bush

In an interview with Charlie Rose a few days ago, Karl Rove said Congress was responsible for staring the war in Iraq, not George Bush. After all these years, I thought George Bush and Dick Cheney could not get the war started fast enough, and to learn last night Congress is responsible…well, I’m just dumfounded. (Short video here. Full video here.)

KARL ROVE:  One of the untold stories about the war is why did the United States Congress, the United States Senate vote on the Iraq War Resolution in the Fall of 2002?

CHARLIE ROSE:  Why?

KARL ROVE:  This administration was opposed to it. I’m going to talk about that in my book.

CHARLIE ROSE:  Well tell me, give me…

KARL ROVE:  No I’m not going to…

CHARLIE ROSE:  Come on - give it to me…give me something.

KARL ROVE:  No.

CHARLIE ROSE:  Give me something.

KARL ROVE:  No. I just did. I just told you the administration was opposed to voting on it in the Fall of 2002.

CHARLIE ROSE: Because?

KARL ROVE:  Because we didn’t think it belonged within the confines of the election. There was an election coming up in a matter of weeks. We thought it made it too political. We wanted it outside the confines of it. It seemed to make things move too fast. There were things that needed to be done to bring along allies and potential allies abroad.

Karl Rove is absolutely correct that the White House was concerned about the potential impact the prelude to war might have on the elections, but their concern was just the opposite of what Karl stated in the interview. Instead, the White House desperately wanted to put war with Iraq at the forefront of the 2002 election. They made all kinds of public statements heralding the war, established unconstitutional plans to invade Iraq as quickly as possible if Congress did not approve the war, and pressured Congress to pass the resolutions to invade Iraq.

First, this is straight from the White House.

President Bush in a September 24, 2002 photo-op with the Cabinet* in the Cabinet Room:

Thanks for coming. We just had a very productive Cabinet meeting. We realize there’s little time left in — before the Senate and the House goes home, but we’re optimistic a lot can get done before now and then. Congress must act now to pass a resolution which will hold Saddam Hussein to account for a decade of defiance.

President Bush from the Rose Garden* on October 2, 2002

Today I’m joined by leaders of the House and the Senate from both political parties to show our unity of purpose in confronting a gathering threat to the security of America and to the future of peace.

I want to thank [Hastert and Gephardt] for…building bipartisan support on this vital issue. I also want to thank [Warner, Lieberman, McCain and Bayh] for introducing this resolution which we’ve agreed to on the floor of the Senate this morning.

President Bush from the Roosevelt Room*, October 10, 2002 (emphasis in original)

President Bush Pleased with House Vote on Iraq Resolution

I would like to thank the members of the House of Representatives, just as I thanked Speaker Hastert and Leader Gephardt a few minutes ago, for the very strong bipartisan vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq if it becomes necessary.

I’m also pleased with the progress being made in the Senate, and I look forward to a final vote soon.

In August 2002, the White House had Timothy Flannigan, then head of the Office of Legal Counsel, to issue a legal opinion giving President Bush the authority to invade Iraq without the approval of Congress. (Charlie Savage, Takeover, pp. 156-157). If Congress didn’t pass the resolution the White House, especially Dick Cheney, was prepared to move forward without Congressional approval.

Savage further writes:

When Congress returned in September [2002] for a few last weeks...before the mid-term election, administration officials abruptly demanded that Congress immediately approve a hypothetical invasion of Iraq, just in case Bush later decided that diplomacy had failed and war was necessary…At the same time, administration officials escalated  alarming rhetoric about the threat posed by Iraq, warning that “the smoking gun” for Iraq’s alleged weapons programs and its alleged links to Al Qaeda could come in the form of a “mushroom cloud.”

Note: This sudden surge had been crafted by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which had been secretly formed in August 2002 to coordinate a strategy for coming confrontation with Iraq. Its members included Andrew Card, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, and Stephen Hadley.

The proposed hurry up vote on the eve of the first election since 9/11 presented a win-win scenario for the White House: If Democrats voiced caution or skepticism about the proposed war resolution, then the GOP could portray them as weak on terrorism ahead of the election, and if Democrats supported the bill, then the Bush-Cheney administration would fortify its powers by eliminating even the suggestion that it might later need to ask for permission to launch any war against Iraq.

Book stores and libraries will have to put Karl Rove’s book in the fiction section.

* - pdf