English 1B

13 April 2023

George W. Bush: Selfless Leader or Shameless Deceiver?

Many things have been said and done in response to the statements and decisions made in

office by then President George W. Bush. A topic that has been discussed extensively by both

supporters and critics alike has been his decision to initiate the War on Iraq, beginning in 2003.

Supporters of the war cite links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, which might connect

Saddam to the attacks on September 11, 2001, as well as the possibility of Iraq acquiring or

having acquired weapons of mass destruction, which would be a threat to many countries around

the world. Supporters also refer to Saddam’s human rights abuses, and lack of democracy in Iraq,

thus making it a just war. Those opposed to the war reference a lack of evidence in the

allegations put forth by Bush that Iraq did in fact have nuclear weapons, and that Saddam was at

all involved in the attacks on 9/11. In addition to disputing these claims, the opposition claims

Bush had motivation to control Iraq’s oil reserves as a major incentive, and that the war was

preventive as opposed to preemptive, that is, an attack made when there is an imminent threat

would be preemptive, whereas an attack made before a country can become a threat is

preventive.

The reality of the situation is that George W. Bush lied and misled the American people,

using both completely false and misconstrued information, mainly in his assertions that Saddam

Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction and that he had connections with al Qaeda;

using this information, he garnered support and waged an unnecessary war on Iraq. The result

was a devastating loss of human life, massive financial and economic repercussions, and a

breakdown in the credibility of the United States. The piece entitled “Oily Bush,” by Robert

Arneson, perfectly illustrates Bush’s War on Terror, despite originally intending to depict his

father.

George Bush had made the supposed connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda

within various speeches given in 2002. In a weekly radio address from the White House, on

September 28, Bush said on Iraq that "the regime has longstanding and continuing ties to

terrorist groups, and there are Al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq." Hardly more than a week later, on

October 7, Bush gave a speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center, claiming that “Iraq and al

Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade” (Franken). And as if that weren’t

enough, on October 14, just one week after his speech in Cincinnati, Bush hammered in his point

by saying, “I mentioned the fact that there is a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam

Hussein. The war on terror, Iraq is a part on the war on terror.” It is clear that Bush was drawing

a very direct line implicating Saddam Hussein as supporting al Qaeda.

Knowing this, it is ironic to see that on March 21, 2006 Bush denied ever drawing a

connection between Saddam and 9/11. He stated, "I don’t think we ever said — at least I know I

didn’t say that there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein.”

Bush had, in fact, connected the two, most notably in his letter to Congress on March 19, 2003,

the night before the start of the war, when he wrote that military force against Iraq was

“consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions

against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations,

or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on

September 11, 2001.” Bush’s statement on the 19 of March is “true” only on the technicality that

he did not verbally connect Saddam and 9/11, but doing so in the writing of an official document

shows motive, and can be taken as a statement from Bush. What he and his administration had

been doing was sneaky and deceptive, and the delivery of their information usually elicited a

response in favor of Saddam having played a part in the planning and delivery of attacks on 9/11.

There are such a plethora of conflicting statements from the Bush Administration, but even

George himself has dug himself into his own fair share of holes.

Bush and his administration having had such an abrupt change of heart may have been

brought on by the overwhelming lack of any evidence supporting any connection between

Saddam and al Qaeda, let alone Saddam and 9/11. In January of 2003, the CIA released a report

called Iraqi Support for Terrorism. The report’s content debunked any connection between

Saddam and al Qaeda, stating that their relationship was like “two independent actors trying to

exploit each other,” and that the CIA had “no credible information that Baghdad had

foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike.” A leaked British

intelligence report, released on February 5, 2003, came to the conclusion that there were “no

current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network" and brought up how Osama

bin Laden himself had called Iraq an “apostate regime” (Shane), reflecting how Saddam’s Ba’ath

party conflicted with bin Laden’s own radical Islamist beliefs. Later, when the reports on the

interrogation of Saddam Hussein were released in 2009, Saddam himself always upheld that he

never worked with al Qaeda because he feared that they would try to uproot his regime, and was

quoted as having called bin Laden a “zealot.” Saddam recognized that bin Laden was radical and

did not share the same religious viewpoints as him, and these fundamental religious differences

would prevent them from ever collaborating in any way, whether it had been planning attacks

against the United States, or any other country for that matter. But even despite their deep,

“cooperative” history, and their ability to work together as equals, there was a danger to America

that superseded any connection between these two parties.

Perhaps the most dangerous part of the then President’s banter about Saddam Hussein

and 9/11, was that many Americans began to believe that Saddam was directly connected to and

responsible for the event. Assuming this to be true, suddenly a war against Iraq would be a war

against terror, and a defense of our own country, in the eyes of the general populace. If the War

on Iraq could take on the spin of being a just war, then by the power vested in us by God, we had

better fight it. Bush gained a rush of supporters for his War on Terror in this way, by linking

Saddam and 9/11. Many times in speeches he mentioned both Saddam and 9/11, but rarely did he

mention Osama bin Laden. In fact, according to The Christian Science Monitor, during a press

conference held on March 14, 2003, “Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times, and referred to

Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11.” Bush did

not mention Osama bin Laden even once in that entire press conference. In the entire year of

2003, bush mentioned Osama bin Laden four times, and each time was in response to a specific

question about bin Laden. It is clear that Bush was pushing a fabricated connection between

Saddam and the attacks. On April 29, 2007, in stark contrast to Bush’s insinuations, George

Tennet, the previous Director of the CIA, said, “We could never verify that there was any Iraqi

authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against

America, period.” Unfortunately, some Americans today still believe Saddam played a role in the

attacks of 9/11, despite the overpowering evidence against that falsehood. This shows how the

Bush Administration succeeded in altering people’s perceptions of the event with misinformation

and deception.

Another way of gathering support for the Iraq War, often used by George W. Bush, was

the threat of Saddam Hussein acquiring weapons of mass destruction. On September 12, 2002,

Bush said that “Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of

biological weapons.” Bush mentioned to the American people in his State of the Union Speech,

delivered on January 28, 2003, that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein

recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The significance of this statement

can be traced back to something Bush had said a few months earlier, that the Iraqis only needed

“an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball” to develop a nuclear

weapon within a year. A few months later, on March 18, Bush assured Americans that

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime

continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised” (Franken). Bush

continued remarks such as these to fuel support for his War on Terror, continuing to mention

similar statements in speeches throughout 2003. This is summed up in his response on April 24

to interrogations of Iraqi scientists, which found that Saddam may or may not have destroyed any

weapons he had, by saying, “perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we

will find them.” The administration continued to stubbornly hold onto their position that there

had to be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, basing all their certainty in faulty intelligence,

which they knew was flawed.

There should not have been much surprise, then, when no weapons of mass destruction

were discovered in Iraq. It was surprising, however, when George W. Bush said on May 29,

2003, that “we found the weapons of mass destruction." One can only imagine which weapons

Bush was speaking of. Taking the entire quote into context, Bush’s following statement was,

“We found biological laboratories.” It is of great interest, then, to see Bush’s response to the

allegations that there were never any weapons of mass destruction. On September 9, 2004,

George W. Bush acknowledged that he “recognize[d] we didn't find the stockpiles [of weapons]

we all thought were there.” It surely is embarrassing to think that a world leader would take false

or inconclusive evidence and use it as the grounds for an invasion of another country, and then

when all the stakes are finally against him, he yields and admits he was wrong. We the People of

the United States of America have had this distinct honor and privilege to be led by such an

individual.

It is comical in a way to see how on February 24, 2001, Bush’s own Secretary of State,

Colin Powell, said about UN sanctions of Iraq that Saddam Hussein “has not developed any

significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction,” and that “frankly they [the

sanctions] have worked.” More impressive is a report from March 2005, entitled the Commission

on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, an

excerpt of which follows:

We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its

pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major

intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's

inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors

in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how

much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a

matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude.

It is hard to argue with an official report written so bluntly. Luckily, the Bush administration was

smart enough to call off the search for weapons of mass destruction 2 months earlier, in January.

It was embarrassing enough that Bush has deceived the American people about these weapons,

but it would have been much more embarrassing to continue a search for something that was not

there, and after any intelligence that pointed to the presence of weapons had been reevaluated as

false.

It is easy to see why all this talk of weapons might cause a stir, if Iraq developed a

nuclear weapon, and it got into the hands of a terrorist organization, such as al Qaeda, there’s no

telling how it may be used against America or any other country. Luckily, we know Iraq had no

connection with al Qaeda, and that Saddam never acquired any enriched uranium, or built a

weapon of mass destruction, or even instituted a nuclear weapons program. There was an

incident where the United States secretly shipped 500 tons yellowcake uranium out of Iraq and

into Canada, and this is often cited as proof that Saddam had reinstituted his nuclear weapons

program and the Bush administration was right. The truth however, is much different,

yellowcake uranium is naturally occurring, non-weapons grade uranium, and was stored in Iraq

legally according to international law. The United Nations even knew about this stockpile of

concentrated, natural uranium. With Bush’s rallying call for his War on Terror losing credibility,

the true motives for the declaration of war on Iraq suddenly became more noteworthy.

In invading Iraq itself, Bush started an offensive that would cost hundreds of thousands

of human lives. The Iraq Body Count project began in 2003 to achieve an accurate number for

the casualties and deaths of the War on Iraq. Their official report spanning from March 2003 to

March 2005 showed that in the first two years alone, 24,685 civilians lost their lives in Iraq, and

42,500 more were injured. 64% of all these deaths and injuries were caused by American

airstrikes (Iraq Body Count). The War on Iraq has taken a huge toll on both sides, but Bush made

no effort to remove American troops from Iraq, even when it became publicly known that there

were no weapons of mass destruction, and we had finally given up the search for them. His

mission no longer became a mission searching for weapons of mass destruction, but one of

“nation-building” and “democracy.” Suddenly America had become the country that invaded

other countries, creating conflict that would lead to thousands upon thousands of deaths, for the

purpose of restructuring a government and setting in place a democratic governing system, a

country that others will think twice before supporting (Adam).

Returning to the painting introduced at the start of this paper, Arneson’s “Oily Bush” is

the perfect representation for Bush, a portrait which can summarize his two terms in office and

powerfully depict his decision to go to war. The painting is seen to display the face of Bush’s

father smothered and dripping with oil, with a large, open mouthed smile, looking bizarrely

happy. This is no doubt a reference to how the first Gulf War was about petroleum, but no doubt

it can be used as just as an effective argument when it comes to George Bush Jr. Many opposed

to the War on Iraq claim that it was started to secure the oil fields in Iraq, as relations with Saudi

Arabia were beginning to become strained. Losing one of our biggest oil suppliers would be

devastating to our economy, and we needed a safety net to fall back against, after all, Iraq

produces roughly 2.5 million barrels of oil per day (Christopher). Ever since the decision to

initiate the War on Iraq, we have seen a strong, skyrocketing increase in the price of petroleum.

This is because whenever there is a conflict or crisis, “future availability of oil is in doubt and

traders attach an uncertainty or ‘war premium’ to their ask price” (Looney). At the end of 2002,

oil prices “had been pushed up by 40% over the year,” and “profits in the fourth quarter soared

50%” (BBC News). To put this into perspective, because of the War on Iraq, petroleum in that

particular region became much more difficult to acquire, driving up the prices of oil, and in turn,

driving up the profits of big oil companies like British Petroleum and ExxonMobil. This would

benefit the Bush Administration because Bush, as well as many of his administration buddies,

had and still have assets tied into various big oil companies, who provide massive amounts of

funding for the campaigns of various political figures, including Bush and his associates. It is

troubling when one thinks about how convenient it was for Bush and his administration to

initiate the War on Terror, and one can only conclude that there is a strong possibility the war

was waged based upon strong special interests. It is also upsetting to think about the cost of war,

to which both involved parties would have to pay into. This concept is illustrated in the painting

and represented by the dropping of bombs in the background of the piece.

Behind the figure of Bush Sr. in “Oily Bush,” a torrent of bombs with the label “USA”

are falling all around, which is a reference not only to our eagerness as a country to go to war if

we have a “just cause,” but also to our carelessness and underestimation of civilian casualties

that occur when we target our enemies. Too often we are led on by the idea that our munitions

have become reliable and more accurate than ever before, and to this extent, they are “safe.” The

cold truth is that there are always civilian casualties when a bomb is dropped, and many times it

seems like this is not taken completely into consideration. America was striking at military

targets, but it was still injuring massive amounts of people in Iraq. The destruction that can only

be implied by the dropping of the bombs in the painting foreshadowed another disaster which

was to come after the beginning of the war.

Soon after the start of the War on Iraq, our country saw a time of economic downturn,

and entered a recession. This was due in large part to the fraudulent practices of large investment

companies, but that will not be discussed here; the War on Terror did still have a profound effect

on the American economy between the years Bush was still in office. An enormous amount of

debt has been accrued due to the cost of the war; some estimates place the total price of the war

at over $1 trillion (Bilmes). When Bush entered office in 2001, the national debt stood at $5.7

trillion, but by the time he was ready to leave office in 2008, the debt of the United States nearly

doubled to $10.7 trillion (Treasury Department). This shows an irresponsible mismanagement of

money in regard to the Iraq War, and should have been taken into consideration as an important

reason not to preemptively strike Iraq and begin a war which had outlasted Bush’s own

Presidency.

It has been shown without a shadow of a doubt that all of the most crucial reasons the

Bush Administration had for invading Iraq do not hold water. Saddam had no connections to al

Qaeda, and no connection to 9/11. He also did not reinstitute his nuclear weapons program, nor

did he develop weapons of mass destruction of any kind, chemical, biological, or nuclear. In

reality, it seems as if Iraq had been absolutely no threat to the United States. Had these facts been

communicated in a truthful and straightforward way, there is no doubt in my mind that the vast

majority of Americans would not have been in favor of the War on Iraq from its inception, and

we would not be dealing with the repercussions of George W. Bush’s irresponsible and selfish

actions.

Works Cited

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