How Biden’s Secret 2002 Meetings Led to
War in Iraq
By Jim Bronke
Truthout,
July 28, 2019
Sen. Joe Biden speaks to the press
after Senate luncheons, October 1, 2002.
Even though former Vice President Joe Biden’s favorability
has declined following
the first Democratic debate, he remains largely considered the
frontrunner by many mainstream media outlets and pundits for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
Early in the first debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders mentioned how
Biden had supported the Iraq War and that he had voted against
it. Biden responded that he now wanted to see the U.S. out of
Afghanistan. Yet Biden’s role was more sinister than that.
In 2002, Biden was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. Following 9/11, he conducted the “Hearings
to Examine Threats, Responses and Regional Considerations
Surrounding Iraq” on July 31 and August 1, 2002.
At the time, Biden classified the meeting as secret and did
not allow public review or attendance. The media largely did not
cover this meeting. With the exception of the late Sen. Paul
Wellstone (a committee member), the people invited to attend and
give a submission were not on record as being against the war.
Notably absent from the hearing was Scott Ritter, the former
United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.
In September 2002, Biden spoke before
the Senate and made a case for war against Iraq. He followed
that with a nearly one-hour Senate discourse supporting
the war on October 9, 2002. It was Biden’s inference in this
Senate presentation that suggested Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) threat in mainstream discourse.
When the transcript
of the September 2002 Senate meeting first
became available, I downloaded it. As someone who had worked on
weapons systems and had as high as a top-secret clearance, I had
experience with infrared missiles, inertial reference navigation
systems, global positioning systems and radar for use in both
military vehicles and ground-firing howitzers, as well as
conventional and nuclear missiles and bombs. I also had
unrestricted access to the classified library of the U.S. Navy
and knew of other proposals in the military by U.S. defense
industries. I figured that if there were to be anyone qualified
to assess a threat, I was certainly in the running.
So I downloaded the file in October 2002 and set about to
read the 275-page document word by word. I easily spent a couple
of weeks doing it. Review of the entire transcript revealed
there was no real evidence whatsoever that Iraq was a threat to
the U.S. or was in possession of WMDs. Shouldn’t we expect a
reference to satellite data, perhaps? Or discussions about
facilities that inspectors were being kept from? Or maybe
special nuclear sensors that had tripped?
Nothing in the transcript provided any evidence that Iraq was
a threat. It was all historical and conjecture about the meaning
of Saddam Hussein’s speeches. Nothing technical was even
mentioned that required my familiarity with weapon systems.
Instead, words and meeting dialogs that Hussein had with his
engineers were interpreted as evidence that he had WMD and that
his engineers were motivated to the extreme.
For example, Khidir Hamza, once Iraq’s leading nuclear
physicist, discussed posturing by Hussein regarding weapons
inspectors as validation of WMD. He also referred to Hussein’s
past experience with chemical weapons and alleged purchase of
radioactive materials. Hamza had retired from the Iraqi Atomic
Energy Commission in 1989 and left Iraq in 1994.
Biden conducted a secret meeting in which his star witness
hadn’t been in Iraq for eight years. He concluded Iraq was a
threat in spite of evidence to the contrary. The mainstream
media cooperated by not even reviewing the transcript of this
meeting at the time.
Can we trust someone in the White House who so irresponsibly
pushed the U.S. down the path for war and irreversibly tarred
our image on the world stage as a nation that did not follow the
rule of law?
