Ann Wright's Testimony for the Washington State Senate on Impeachment Bill

TESTIMONY
By Retired US Army Reserve Colonel and US Diplomat Ann Wright

FOR THE WASHINGTON STATE SENATE HEARING CALLING FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES TO INVESTIGATE AND CONSIDER HEARINGS ON EVIDENCE THAT COULD LEAD TO THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH AND VICE-PRESIDENT RICHARD B. CHENEY

FEBRUARY 29, 2007

My name is Mary A. (Ann) Wright. I am a twenty-nine year US Army veteran having served 13 years on active duty and 16 years in the reserves. I retired as a Colonel. I also served 16 years in the U.S. diplomatic corps representing the US government in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. I helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December, 2001. I served as Deputy Chief of Mission, or Deputy Ambassador in four countries. I was given the US Department of State’s Award for Heroism for my role in the 1997 evacuation of 2500 persons from the civil war in Sierra Leone. I served during crisis periods in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

In March, 2003, after thirty-five years of military and diplomatic service to the United States, I resigned from the US diplomatic corps in opposition to President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard B. Cheney’s decision to wage war on Iraq, a decision that violated international and domestic law and which I believe is an impeachable offense.

After serving over a period of thirty five years in eight US presidential administrations beginning with Lyndon Johnson, it is a sad and tragic duty and responsibility to provide testimony in the Washington State Senate hearings calling for the Congress of the United States to investigate and consider holding hearings on evidence that could lead to the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard B. Cheney.

I admire the courage of members of the Washington State Senate to conduct these hearings that may lead to the impeachment of the President and the Vice-President of the United States. I know this action is taken with the highest degree of responsibility and concern for our country. I know members of the Washington State Senate have come under intense pressure from their US Congressional delegation not to hold this hearing as if the hearing itself would somehow jeopardize the ability of the democratic Congress to reach out to moderate Republicans on other issues, including strategies to end the war on Iraq.

I admire the courage of members of the Washington Senate to recognize that we the people have a say in the destiny of our country. We the people say we want the war ended and we want accountability of those who began the war based on untruths. This hearing should be seen as a warning to any other President and Vice-President who take the nation to war based on lies.

War of Aggression, Crimes Against Peace

As a diplomat and a military officer who taught the Geneva Conventions, the Laws of Land Warfare and the Nuremburg Principles at US military schools, I firmly believe the order of the President of the United States George W. Bush to the US military to invade and occupy Iraq, an oil-rich, Arab, Muslim country that had not attacked the United States initiated a war of aggression and a “crime against peace,” which is a violation of international law.

A “crime against peace” under the Nuremberg Principles was established as a result of World War II and under which the international community held accountable German and Japanese military and civilian officials for waging wars of aggression. A “crime against peace” consists of the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances.”

Nuremberg Principle III states that “The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.”

The U.S. military codified the crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes in US Army Field Manual FM 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare which states that any person, whether a member of the armed forces or a civilian, who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible and liable to punishment. Such offenses in connection with war comprise:

a. Crimes against peace
b. Crimes against humanity
c. War crimes.

Downing Street Memoranda Details Bush Administration’s Contact with British Government in 2002 concerning war on Iraq

The Downing Street memos, a series of ten memoranda written by senior members of the British government March through June, 2002, detail meetings members of the Bush administration had with British officials concerning the need for regime change in Iraq. The Downing Street memos provide critical information in our understanding on how the Bush administration misled our country in to war:

--the concern of the UK government in as early as March, 2002 about the lack of a legal basis for a war against Iraq;

--the acknowledgement that without a legal basis for war, military actions against Iraq would be termed illegal and therefore criminal acts of aggression;

-- the unlawful “fixing” of intelligence to create the conditions necessary to justify the war;

--the Bush policy of provocation of the Iraqi to elicit a response that could be used as a rationale for war;

--the provocative, unnecessary and therefore illegal bombing which resulted in the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians;

--the lack of a strategy to deal with post-war Iraq.

The British government officials said that there was no legal basis for initiating a war with Iraq. They also said the intelligence would have to be “fixed” in order to have a legal basis for the war.

The July 23, 2002 Downing Street memo records the legal advice from the UK’s Attorney General and the Foreign Office’s Legal Advisor that a desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action. The UK Attorney General said there were three possible legal grounds for military action: self-defense, humanitarian intervention or United Nations Security Council authorization; none of the grounds were present. Seven months later in March, 2003, the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, succumbed to political pressure and changed his legal opinion to agree with Tony Blair and the Bush administration that war could proceed without meeting any of the three criteria.

British Diplomat Resigns Calling War on Iraq a War of Aggression, A Crime Against Peace

However, Goldsmith’s deputy, Elisabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy legal counsel of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the equivalent of the US State Department resigned in March, 2003, in opposition to British participation in the war on Iraq. Wilmshurst submitted her letter of resignation, calling the impending attack on Iraq, a country that had not attacked either the United States or the United Kingdom, an act of aggression, a crime against war and hence a war crime.

Spikes of Provocation

Under the guise of the ten year old no-fly zones over Iraq, the Bush administration intentionally violated international legal law by carefully orchestrated provocations that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians. The Downing Street memos provide information on provocative actions the Bush administration took against the Iraqi government to force the government to respond so the administration could justify military action. According to the Downing Street memos, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld called the provocations “spikes in activity” by US government agencies. These “spikes” included the resumption in bombing of targets in Iraq. In March 2002 no bombs were dropped on the south of Iraq but in April ten tons were dropped and increased to 54.6 tons in September, 2002, alone. No one knows how many innocent Iraqi civilians were killed by the resumption in bombing-a resumption for the sole purpose of inciting retaliation that could be used to justify an otherwise unjustifiable war. (www.hansard.org is the UK website where answers to Parliamentary questions are found, including the information on tons of bombs dropped in 2002.) But the Iraqi government did not respond to the dramatic increase in bombing. We do not know yet what other types of “spikes of activity” or more accurately “spikes of provocation” the White House ordered the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct to provoke the Iraqi government. Having been in the US military for 29 years and in the special operations field, particularly in the areas of psychological operations and civil reconstruction, I can assure you, the US military has a vast “on the shelf” storehouse of ideas and activities that could be used to create political, economic and security instability in any country.

Now that we know through the Downing Street memos that conducting “spikes of provocation” was a tactic of the Bush administration, we can go back in the records and find other incidents in Iraq in 2002 that, under the cover of dealing with activities in the no-fly zones and UN sanctions on Iraq, were purposeful, provocative events intended to force the Iraqi regime to respond militarily.

US Congressional investigation of whether these “spikes of activity” constitute criminal action by the Bush administration is warranted.

Untruths: Weapons of Mass Destruction

We know how that President Bush and Vice-President Cheney pressured intelligence agencies to provide assessments with careful caveats on weapons of mass destruction possessed by the Iraqi government, assessments they could use to frighten the American people and persuade the US Congress that Iraqi WMD were a threat to the United States. The scare tactics used by the Bush administration, to include Secretary of State Colin Powell’s briefing to the United Nations Security Council in which he knew the information provided on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was weak at best, the continued pronouncements of “smoking guns” and “not to wait for the mushroom cloud” to take action were calculated statements to discourage and eliminate dissent from the administration’s goal of regime change in Iraq.

In March, 2003, the United Nations weapons inspectors had not concluded their inspections of sites identified by US intelligence agencies. But President Bush decided not to wait for the completion of inspections and directed that US military operations begin in Iraq.

The administration’s claim that America and the world was in imminent danger from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction did not ring true to me from my military and diplomatic experience. There were no claims at that time that Iraq was a center for terrorists, particularly those terrorists connected with the September 11 tragedies.

The administration made the claim that the US must have a doctrine of preemptive strike. That doctrine would have made sense in Afghanistan with its Al Qaeda bases and the links of Al Qaeda to past bombings, but the doctrine rang dangerously hollow with Iraq and dangerously arrogant and aggressive to the Arab and Muslim world.

Preemptive strike is a concept that once used by any power, opens the door of its use to all comers—thereby jeopardizing and making the world more dangerous rather than safer.

I was on the State Department team that opened our Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December, 2001 and spent almost four months there as the first political officer and later as the Deputy Chief of Mission. Sitting in the bunker of the US Embassy in Kabul in January 2002, I listened in disbelief when President Bush declared the US would be looking closely at the actions of today’s so called “Axis of Evil”, Iraq, Iran and North Korea—when the war in Afghanistan was far from over.

The Taliban had been routed from Kabul and other cities and the Al Qaeda bases had been blown apart, but we in Kabul knew that many more international military forces were needed all over the country to keep our new allies, the warlords, in check, while we and they continued to fight “remnants” of Al Qaeda and the Taliban--remnants that have proven to be much larger than had been anticipated.

We in the bunker at the Embassy in Kabul were astounded that the administration was threatening additional military campaigns when the operations in Afghanistan, operations that were a direct response to the perpetrators of September 11, were far from over.

One year later, as the drumbeat to war in Iraq reached a crescendo, when it was even more evident that we were a long way from defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban and stabilizing Afghanistan, the rationale of why we would jeopardize our commitment to free the world of Al Qaeda and Afghanistan of the Taliban by undertaking operations in Iraq was a mystery to us in Kabul.

Taking the country to war based on false pretenses must be investigated by the US Congress as an impeachable offense, a crime against peace.

Bush Administration Violated International Law by Not Providing for the Civilian Population

In addition to waging war in violation of international war, the actions of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney in not providing protection for the civilian population in Iraq must be investigated. Further, the political motives that interfered with military operational planning which resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American military personnel and placed the national security of our country at risk must be investigated.

Despite the urging of the British government, a post-war strategy for the protection of civilians was not developed by the Bush administration. The lack of planning for post-war Iraq resulted in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians and is a violation of the Law of Land Warfare that requires an occupying state provide security and reasonable access to water, sewage, electricity for the civilian population of the occupied state.

I knew from personal experience in Somalia and Afghanistan, the US would be involved in an intricate and expensive civil reconstruction program if we decided to invade and occupy a country as large and as culturally complex as Iraq.

It seemed obvious that it would be particularly difficult and expensive in a country that had for ten years been under a US sponsored UN embargo and therefore unable to maintain its relatively sophisticated urban infrastructure of water, electrical and sewage systems, plus the extensive oil pipelines and oil storage facilities. There would be much more infrastructure to fix in Iraq than in Afghanistan, and we were already having trouble getting the funds to fix Afghanistan.

Limiting Military Options for Political Purposes Which Resulted in Jeopardizing US National Security

Knowing that the US Congress and the American people would hesitate in their approval of the war on Iraq if they knew the large number of military personnel required to provide a level of security to protect infrastructure after combat operations, I strongly believe President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld put at risk our US military personnel by gutting the original plans developed by the US military Central Command by reducing troop levels to a dangerously low, but politically sellable number.

Former US Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki alerted the political leaders of the Department of Defense six months before the war began that the civilian-mandated operations plans for Iraq were woefully short on soldiers to do the missions required by the operations plan. Anyone who has ever been associated with combat operations knows that by the second day in those operations, many civil affairs and military police units are needed to handle the large number of civilians that the combat units find on the battlefield, battlefields that in this day are generally urban areas of a country. The large numbers of civil affairs and military police units needed to meet US obligations by international law were, purposefully and with premeditation by the Bush administration, not included in the plan.

Four years after the start of the Iraq war and five and one-half years after the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs Marine General Peter Pace this week stated that the continued deployments of military personnel to Iraq and Afghanistan has placed such stress on personnel and equipment that the military is in “distress.” Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker testified before the US Congress that the US Army is “broken” in terms of personnel and equipment from continued deployments. President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have required the US military to conduct missions on behalf of the country yet have not provided sufficient resources thereby placing at risk our long-term national security from actual, not made-up, threats.

US Congress should Investigate and Consider Hearings on Evidence that Could Lead to Impeachment

Based on the evidence presented in my testimony, based on my experiences as a military officer and diplomat, I strongly believe there are sufficient grounds on which the US Congress should investigate and consider hearings on evidence that could lead to the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard B. Cheney.