Kept Secret For 17 Years: Intel Memo Warned Bush's Iraq Invasion To Create "Perfect Storm"
A newly declassified US intelligence memo has been unearthed this week and featured in a bombshell Wall Street Journal report. It proves that the year prior to the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq the White House was expressly warned in great detail of all that could and would go wrong in the regime change war's aftermath, including the Sunni-Shia sectarian chaos and proxy war with Iran that would define Iraq and the whole region for years following. And crucially, it reveals that seven months before the US invasion of Iraq, American intelligence officials understood that Osama bin Laden was likely "alive and well and hiding in northwest Pakistan" — important given that a key Bush admin claim to sell the war was that Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were "in league" against the United States. The July 2002 memo was authored by William Burns, then serving as assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, and though clearly dismissed by the Bush neocons making the case for war, proved prescient on many levels. "Following are some very quick and informal thoughts on how events before, during and after an effort to overthrow the regime in Baghdad could unravel if we're not careful, intersecting to create a 'perfect storm' for American interests," Burns wrote in the memo, classified 'Secret' and sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The classified memo's existence was first brought to the public's attention through Knight Ridder's reporting in July 2003, which sought to reveal at the time there were pockets of dissenting voices in the State Department and intelligence community pushing back against the absurd White House claim that the whole operation would be a "cakewalk" and US troops would be greeted as "liberators". And there's Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous declaration that the military effort would take “weeks rather than months.”Now, sixteen years after the start of the war the ''"perfect storm" intel briefing has been made public in fully redacted form and it affirms, as the WSJ reports, '''"Diplomats accurately forecast many setbacks: sectarian violence, attacks on U.S. troops, Iranian intervention and long road to structural change."' Out of this came the rise of ISIS and the continued unleashing of regime change and sectarian chaos on neighboring Syria. The ten page memo outlines a litany of catastrophic doom and gloom scenarios resulting from the invasion which would destabilize not only Iraq, but unleash sectarian hell on the entire region.
Here are but a handful of the memo's many warnings which later proved right on target, as summarized by the military reporting website Task & Purpose: ran increasing aid to anti-American groups in both Iraq and Afghanistan because it feared being "next on US hit list."
Security in Iraq collapsing following regime change because Iraqi troops and police would be too afraid to patrol while Iraqis aligned with the United States would prove to be inept.
U.S. troops coming under increasing attacks as they patrol both Shiite and Sunni cities. "If they intervene to stop disputes, they are perceived to have sided with one party or another in a tribal dispute, thus incurring the wrath of the opposing party."
Afghanistan's security situation simultaneously deteriorating, creating the need for more U.S. troops there.
"Carpetbaggers, bill collectors, expats and exiles," arriving in Iraq. "It will be a wild mix."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-15/secret-memo-forewarned-bushs-iraq-invasion-would-unleash-perfect-storm-sectarian