Lacking proof that Iraq was connected with either the September 11 attacks or the al Qaeda terrorist network that was allegedly responsible for coordinating the attacks, Bush told Americ
Trang 1diary Weinberger had given them to theLIBRARY
OF CONGRESS, with the requirement that no one could read them without his personal consent
Throughout Iran-Contra investigations, Wein-berger had repeatedly testified to Congress and the Tower Commission that he had argued against the arms-for-hostages scheme when it was discussed by White House officials Walsh did not make Weinberger’s involvement an issue in the 1992 indictment Instead, he zeroed
in on Weinberger’s testimony under oath that
he had not kept notes or a personal diary during the arms sale period The discovery of the notes
in the Library of Congress suggested that Weinberger had presented false testimony
On June 19, 1992, Weinberger pleaded not guilty to all five felony charges Judge Thomas F
Hogan set a tentative trial date of November 2,
1992, one day before the presidential election
This timing raised the question of whether Weinberger’s trial would cause political embar-rassment for President George H W Bush, who was campaigning againstBILL CLINTON Four days before the election, Walsh announced a new indictment against Weinberger It centered on a note that had been written by Weinberger about
a 1986 White House meeting and that seemed
to contradict Bush’s claim that asVICE PRESIDENT
he had not been involved in the arms-for-hostages decision making Senate Republicans, angered by the indictment, asked the Justice Department to name an independent counsel to investigate whether the Clinton campaign had been behind the indictment Attorney General WILLIAM P.BARRdenied the request
The case progressed no further In a surprise reprieve on Christmas Eve, 1992, President Bush pardoned Weinberger and five others implicated
in the Iran-Contra Affair The pardon cited Weinberger’s record of public and military service, his recent ill health, and a desire to put Iran-Contra to rest Bush also pardoned former assistant secretary of state Elliot Abrams; former CIA officials Clair George, Duane Clarridge, and Alan Fiers; and former national security adviser McFarlane Bush deemed all six men patriots and said their prosecution represented not law en-forcement but the “criminalization of policy differences,” essentially repeating his long-standing argument that Iran-Contra was really a case where Democrats had pursued a political witch-hunt to punish Republican officials over disagreements on foreign policy (Grant of Exec CLEMENCY, Procla-mation No 6518, 57 Fed Reg 62,145)
Reaction to the pardons divided along party lines, with Republicans hailing Bush and Democrats criticizing him Walsh accused Bush
of furthering a cover-up and thwarting judicial process He had long maintained that top Reagan administration officials had engaged in
a cover-up to protect their president Now, he promised, Bush would become the subject of his remaining investigation
Bush’s only testimony had taken place in a January 1988 videotaped deposition An unset-tled question was why Bush’s personal diaries were withheld from prosecutors for six years; their existence was only disclosed to the independent counsel’s office following the
1992 presidential election Throughout 1993, Walsh sought to interview the former president but was blocked by Bush’s attorneys Bush consistently insisted on placing limits on any interview Walsh refused those limits, com-plained that Bush was stalling the investigation, and ultimately abandoned the attempt to ques-tion Bush
Walsh also chose, in 1993, not to indict another high-ranking Reagan administration official, former attorney generalEDWIN MEESEIII
In 1986 Meese said that Reagan did not know about the arms sales to Iran Walsh contended that the statement was false, but admitted that building a criminal case against Meese would have been difficult: too much time had passed and could therefore have bolstered memory loss
as a defense
On August 6, 1992, after six-and-a-half years and $35.7 million, Walsh concluded the Iran-Contra investigation and submitted his final report to the special court that had appointed him By 1993 the Iran-Contra Affair seemed over, in one sense The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS on crimes that may have been committed during it had expired, and no further prosecution would be forthcoming However, additional revelations followed as historians sifted through emerging evidence, notably in the memoirs of key participants The lessons of the affair continued to be debated Some said that Iran-Contra exposed a pattern
of zealous disregard, by the EXECUTIVE BRANCH,
of legislative constraint on foreign policy, that dated back to the VIETNAM WAR Others took the view held by the Reagan and Bush administrations: namely, that nothing terrible had happened
Trang 2FURTHER READINGS
Walsh, Lawrence E 1993 Final Report of the Independent
Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office Available online at http://
www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/; website home page:
http://www.fas.org (accessed August 2, 2009).
——— 1998 Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and
Cover-Up New York: Norton.
Wolf, Julie “The Iran-Contra Affair.” PBS People & Events.
Available online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/
reagan/peopleevents/pande08.html; website home page:
http://www.pbs.org (accessed September 5, 2009).
IRAQ WAR
The Iraq War involved the invasion and
subsequent occupation of Iraq by U.S and
U.N forces beginning in March 2003
The Iraq War, also known as Operation Iraqi
Freedom, involved the invasion of Iraq by
multinational forces along with the subsequent
occupation of the country by U.S and other
UNITED NATIONS(UN) forces In many ways, the
conflict was a continuation of the first Gulf War,
which took place in 1990 and 1991 The Iraq
War resulted in the overthrow of Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein, who was executed in 2006
The hostilities in Iraq followed extensive
efforts by the UN to disarm Iraq through
dip-lomatic means Efforts of the UN broke down,
though, as U.S and British military forces crossed
into Iraq during March 2003 These military
forces represented a coalition of nations seeking
to enforce UN resolutions that required Iraq to
disarm itself by destroying and accounting for its
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION(WMDs)
Diplomacy Gives Way to Force
as a Means of Disarming Iraq
The original Persian Gulf War began when Iraq
invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990 In response,
the UN Security Council passed Resolution 678,
authorizing the UN to use force to remove Iraqi
forces from Kuwait and restore peace to the
region The Resolution gave Iraq until January
15, 1991, to comply When Saddam Hussein
allowed the deadline to pass without removing
his forces, the United States led an international
coalition of more than 90 nations in a six-week
war—dubbed “Operation Desert Storm” by
President GEORGE H W BUSH—that liberated
Kuwait from Iraqi occupation
Fighting ended on March 1, 1991, and two
days later, Iraq accepted UN Resolution 687,
which set out the conditions of ceasefire
Specifically, Resolution 687 imposed continuing
obligations on Iraq to eliminate its WMDs, which were defined to include all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons Resolution
687 suspended but did not terminate the authority to use force under Resolution 678 A material breach of Resolution 687 would revive the authority to use force under Resolution 678
Working with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN Security Coun-cil established the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in April 1991 to ensure that Iraq eliminated all of its WMDs and undertook no efforts to later develop or acquire such weapons
Iraq cooperated in part with UN inspections efforts until 1996, when Iraq began to block inspections at what it deemed“sensitive military sites,” including certain presidential palaces A year later, Iraq demanded that UN inspectors leave the country, claiming that some of the inspectors were U.S and British spies By 1998, all UNCOMS inspectors had been withdrawn from Iraq In 1999, the UN created the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to replace UNSCOM, but Iraq declined to allow inspections by the new body either
For the next two and a half years, the ongoing problems with the Iraq weapons inspection took
a backseat to the impeachment proceedings against President BILL CLINTON and the 2000 presidential election between GEORGE W BUSH and AL GORE However, the Iraq situation was revisited after September 11, 2001, when more than 3,000 people died in terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C
Lacking proof that Iraq was connected with either the September 11 attacks or the al Qaeda terrorist network that was allegedly responsible for coordinating the attacks, Bush told Americans
in November 2001 that force would be used to disarm Iraq and remove Saddam from power if the Iraqi president did not allow the UN to resume its inspections for WMDs Anti-U.S
terrorists had proven their willingness to use WMDs to kill Americans, the president argued, and Saddam had proven his capacity to manu-facture WMDs So while there may have been no conclusive proof establishing a link between al Qaeda and Saddam, Bush said that his duties as president prevented him from waiting to protect Americans from“another September 11.”
On January 29, 2002, Bush stepped up the rhetoric in his State of the Union address,
Trang 3identifying Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as members of the“axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” The president told Congress that he “would not wait on events while dangers gather,” suggesting that he was contemplating pre-emptive strikes against those nations armed with WMDs Secretary of State Colin Powell persuaded the president that if Saddam was to be disarmed, it was best to do so with the backing of the international commu-nity The UN Security Council, Powell said, was ready to force Iraq to accept weapons inspectors for the first time since 1998 Bush pressed his case for resumed inspections before the UN on September 12, 2002
Two months later, on November 8, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution
1441, which declared that Iraq was in material noncompliance with Resolution 687, but gave Iraq a final opportunity to abide by its disarma-ment obligations The resolution warned of
“serious consequences” were Iraq again to be found in material breech of its disarmament obligations, but left undefined what that term meant Iraq accepted the UN resolution and delivered a 12,000-page declaration of its weap-ons programs in December 2002 After reviewing the report, Hans Blix, executive chairman of UNMOVIC, told the Security Council that the declaration“is essentially a reorganized version”
of information Iraq provided UNSCOM in 1997 and that it“is not enough to create confidence”
that Iraq had destroyed its WMDs
On January 27, 2003, Blix again appeared before the Security Council, this time to report that after 60 days of UN inspections Iraq
“appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today” of demands that
it disarm In particular, Blix said that Iraq had failed to demonstrate it had destroyed 10,000 liters of anthrax, 40,000 liters of botulinum, hundreds of liters of ricin, hundreds of tons of mustard gas, and thousands of tons of the VX nerve agent, all of which Iraq possessed in 1998 kicked out the UN weapons inspectors
A week later, Powell presented the Council with satellite photos and other so-called evi-dence demonstrating what he claimed were secret efforts at developing WMDs However, any momentum Powell might have gained by his presentation was undercut when Blix reported on February 14 that Iraq had increased its cooperation with the UN On March 1, Blix
told the Security Council that Iraq had begun destroying 100 AI Samoud 2 missiles that violated the UN-established range for surface missiles
Encouraged by what appeared to be height-ened Iraqi cooperation, Russia and France, two permanent members of the Security Council, vowed to veto any new resolution that would expressly authorize the use of force to disarm Iraq Germany, which in February had assumed the chairmanship of the Security Council in its role as a rotating, non-permanent member, opposed the use of military force All three countries, along with peace activists around the world, urged the United States to allow the inspections to continue for several months before considering military action
The United States, though, was not similarly encouraged U.S officials charged that Iraq’s latest efforts were meaningless tokens of coop-eration aimed at deceiving the UN and keeping Saddam in power On March 17, Bush delivered
a prime-time address in which he said that time had run out for Iraq Bush said he was prepared
to go to war with Iraq without a new UN resolution authorizing him to do so, suggesting that he already had UN authorization under Resolutions 1441, 687, and 678 Independent of
UN authority, Bush stressed that he was authorized to use force by his constitutional powers and obligations to protect the American people as PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and commander in chief of the armed forces Bush gave Saddam and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq
or face “the full force and might” of the U.S military“at a time of our choosing.”
In the pre-dawn hours of March 20, 2003, U.S and British military forces commenced
“Operation Iraqi Freedom,” purporting to disarm Iraq of WMDs, removing Saddam from power, and liberating the people of Iraq Approximately
40 countries supported the military campaign, according to White House sources Three weeks later, U.S troops reached the Iraqi capital of Baghdad
The Demise of Saddam Hussein
By April 2003, much of the world watched live coverage via satellite of U.S and coalition forces assisting Iraqi citizens to pull down a huge statue
of Saddam Hussein that had dominated Bagh-dad’s central square for decades Photographs of the symbolic gesture appeared on the front pages
Trang 4of newspapers around the globe By the end of the
day, nearly every statue of Iraq’s tyrannical leader
had been removed, dismembered, defaced, or
destroyed by a rowdy group of jubilant Iraqis
Thousands took to the streets cheering, while
others burned and looted government buildings
associated with Saddam’s regime
The jubilation seemed short-lived, quickly
turning to anarchy Downtown Baghdad was
nearly gutted by looting and burning Several
Iraqis took advantage of the chaos to commit
robberies and carry out revenge killings against
fellow Iraqis The MURDER rate in Baghdad
jumped to 20 times its average This took place
in the presence of UN coalition troops who had
taken over control of the capital
One year later, in April 2004, the jury was still
out as to how much life had actually improved for
Iraqi citizens Many polls indicated that the
majority was satisfied to see the end of Saddam’s
control But anti-coalition, anti-American
senti-ments were on the rise as frustration over
on-and-off-again utilities, high unemployment, and
warring among internal factions all took their
toll Moreover, violence from Iraqi insurgents
had actually escalated as the June 30, 2004,
deadline for transfer of governmental control
from the United Nations’ Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) to the Iraqi people drew near In
addition to military casualties, there was a
palpable increase in the use of suicide bombings
and sniper attacks on civilian contractors or
others perceived to be assisting the coalition In
May 2004 alone, the car bombing of the leader of
the Iraqi Governing Council, as well as the
beheading of an American contractor a few days
earlier, served as somber reminders of the
uncertain road ahead
Almost a year earlier, on July 13, 2003, the
25-member Iraqi Governing Council, which
had the power to appoint ministers and approve
the budget for 2004, met for the first time to
discuss the future of Iraq following the demise
of Saddam’s Baath regime In the interim, the
United Nations had designated the CPA as the
lawful government of Iraq until such time as
Iraq was politically and socially stable enough to
accept sovereignty All involved remained
focused on the dual objectives of searching for
weapons of mass destruction and rebuilding a
strong and stable Iraq
On July 22, 2003, Saddam’s sons, Uday and
Qusay, were shot and killed by coalition troops
in a gun battle at their Mosul hideout The hunt for Saddam himself seemed to dominate the news of the war A $25 million reward and all of the CIA’s finest intelligence failed to find him, but alleged sightings of Saddam were common throughout the country Finally, in December
2003, an Iraqi official in U.S custody buckled under interrogation and blurted out Saddam’s whereabouts Within twenty-four hours, U.S
Special Forces had closed in on a farmhouse south of Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, and began looking for a hidden bunker or underground facility U.S forces arrested Saddam after finding him hiding in a hole stocked with various supplies and $750,000 in U.S currency Saddam was removed to a cell in Baghdad for interro-gation by theCENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
New Iraqi Government but Continued Hostilities
The official end of the occupation occurred on June 28, 2004, with the handover of govern-mental authority from the occupying forces to the new Iraqi interim government, headed by interim prime minister Iyad Allawi The hand-over was conducted two days ahead of schedule and in a secret location, in order to deter insurgent attacks
Insurgency continued to be a major prob-lem for coalition forces These insurgents were responsible for guerilla actions in the form of constant roadside and car bombings, assassina-tions of government officials, and SABOTAGE of infrastructure They were also responsible for conventional military attacks and managed to seize police stations and entire towns When coalition forces counterattacked, the insurgents were often able to melt into the population
On September 15, 2004, U.N secretary general Kofi Annan declared the war in Iraq illegal and in violation of the U.N Charter The United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia issued strong rebuttals to Annan’s declaration, but much of the world’s opinion was aligned with the U.N By December 1, though, the Bush administration announced that it would increase troop levels to 150,000 by the middle of January
2005 The troop increase coincided with a rise in resistance from insurgents
Saddam Tried and Executed
Saddam’s trial for crimes against humanity began in October 2005 He had previously been formally charged by the Iraqi Special Tribunal
Trang 5More specific charges related to crimes against the residents of Dujayl in 1982 In that incident,
he allegedly ordered the murder of 148 people, the torture of women and children, and the illegal arrest of several hundred others He was also accused of mass murders in Kurdistan-Iraq
in 1987 and 1988 and in the Shi’I south in 1991
However, he was convicted of the Dujayl crimes before being tried for the latter crimes
Saddam was found guilty on November 5,
2006, and was sentenced to be hanged He appealed both convictions, but the convictions were affirmed, and he was executed on Decem-ber 30, 2006
Democrats Demand Policy Change
Democrats took control of Congress through the November 2006 elections, and immediately leaders in the DEMOCRATIC PARTY demanded
Should Bush Administration Officials Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
Few will ever forget the images of the
aftermath of the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001, which in many ways
defined the first decade of the 2000s One
of the results of the attack was a major
change in U.S policy The United States
adopted a tough style that called for a
significant increase in foreign engagement
As the decade closed and President
GEORGE W BUSHleft office, many
remem-bered other appalling images and stories
of atrocities committed by those
ostensi-bly charged with protecting U.S interests
abroad Some of these events involved
random acts of violence, such as theRAPE
al-Janabi in 2004 by five U.S soldiers
Other incidents appeared to be less
random Within a year of the invasion of
Iraq, stories emerged about prisoner
abuse occurring at the Abu Ghraib
prison in Baghdad Hundreds of images
released to the public showed soldiers
posing next to and mocking naked Iraqi
detainees Other pictures were more
atrocious, showing what appeared to be
gang rapes of Iraqi women held at the
prison U.S soldiers were also accused of
beating detainees to death
The atrocities at Abu Ghraib were
not without consequence A total of
eleven members of the military were
charged for their roles in the incidents,
though none was charged with murder
The highest ranking official charged with
a crime was Lieutenant Colonel Steven L
Jordan, who was accused of abusing detainees“by subjecting them to forced nudity and intimidation by military working dogs.” He was also accused of lying about his knowledge of this abuse
In August 2007, though, Jordan was acquitted of most charges, though he was convicted of disobeying an order not to discuss an investigation into the allega-tions Jordan later received a reprimand for this incident
With Jordan’s ACQUITTAL, no high-ranking officer faced any significant pun-ishment for the atrocities at Abu Ghraig
Colonel Thomas M Pappas, a military intelligence officer who ran the facility, received an administrative punishment and a fine for authorizing the use of dogs during interrogations Former brigadier general Janis Karpinski, commander of the military police, also received administra-tive punishment and a demotion
Democrats and even some Repub-licans were critical of the Bush adminis-tration’s handling of the Abu Ghraib incident, with several officials calling for the resignation of then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld (who eventu-ally resigned in December 2006) Rums-feld took responsibility for what he referred to as acts of abuse and offered
an apology to the people of Iraq
However, he refused to refer to the incidents as acts of torture
The public became further outraged with news about the alleged torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba Officials with the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists at the facility Waterboarding involves strapping a suspect down, plac-ing a cloth over the suspect’s face, and pouring water over the suspect’s face The technique, which dates back as far at the Spanish Inquisition, creates the sensation of drowning Beginning in
2007, Congress held hearings regarding use of waterboarding, and several experts testified that the method is nothing short
of torture Members of the Bush admin-istration, including formerVICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney, defended the use of the method, claiming that its use had led to a great deal of valuable information Although Bush attempted to distance himself with the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, members of his administration had provided the legal justification for the torture techniques In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Bush ad-ministration officials wanted greater powers to investigate, capture, and inter-rogate suspected terrorists Within two weeks of the attacks, attorneys with the Office of Legal Counsel began writing memoranda expressing opinions about certain courses of action The first of
Trang 6changes in U.S policy in Iraq U.S secretary of
defense Donald Rumsfeld had long downplayed
the magnitude of problems in Iraq, and critics
charged the U.S forces in Iraq were too small to
accomplish the military’s mission Democrats
and other critics began to demand for a
timetable to withdraw forces
Earlier in 2006, Congress had appointed a
ten-member Iraq Study Group, which was
charged with assessing the situation in Iraq
and with making policy recommendations The group was co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker (a Republican) and former representative Lee H Hamilton (a Democrat)
The Iraq Study Group released its reports on December 6, 2006 Its conclusion, in part, was:
“The Iraqi government should accelerate as-suming responsibility for Iraqi security by increasing the number and quality of Iraqi Army brigades While this process is under way,
these memos concluded that a proposed
amendment to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (50 U.S.C.A §§ 1801 et
seq.) would not violate the FOURTH
One month later, another memo
con-cluded that the president had authority
under the Constitution and federal
statutes to deploy the military to attack
terrorists operating within the borders of
the United States
In 2002 and 2003, the Office of Legal
Counsel wrote more memos focusing on
the legality of detaining suspected
terror-ists On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a
memo declaring that the third Geneva
Convention, which prescribes treatment
of prisoners of war, did not apply to
suspected members of the Taliban or the
terrorist organization al-Qaeda Another
memo written in June 2002 concluded
that the military could legally detain U.S
citizens, even though a federal statute
specifically prohibits such DETENTION
unless the detention is done pursuant to
an act of Congress This memo concluded
that the president’s authority as
com-mander in chief was enough to provide
legal justification for these detentions
On March 14, 2003, a memo entitled
“Military Interrogation of Alien
Unlaw-ful Combatants Held Outside the United
States” concluded that neither the FIFTH
the Constitution extended rights toALIEN
United States The conclusions reached
in this memo allegedly justified the use of
waterboarding as an interrogation
tech-nique by the CIA
Several of these memos were written
by a staff member named John Yoo, who
later became a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley
Another significant official involved with these memos was Jay Bybee, who later became a judge with the Ninth CIRCUIT
came to be known as the Bybee Memo, which described“enhanced interrogation techniques” that are widely considered to
be methods of torture Former attorney general and White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez drafted a memo that argued, in part, that the Geneva Conven-tion was largely outdated
As these memos became public knowledge in 2008 and 2009, some critics demanded punishment to those who authorized the torture techniques and other WAR CRIMES Joe Klein of Time Magazine wrote that Bush’s authorization
of the February 2002 torture memo
“was his single most callous and despica-ble act It stands at the heart of the national embarrassment that was his presidency.”
In April 2008 theJUSTICE DEPARTMENT began a probe into the background behind Yoo’s memo of March 14, 2003
According to Senator Sheldon White-house (D-RI), an outspoken critic of the interrogations,“The abject failure of legal scholarship in the Office of Legal Coun-sel’s analysis of torture suggests that what mattered was not that the reasoning was sound, or that the research was compre-hensive, but that it delivered what the Bush administration wanted.”
Calls for prosecutions of Bush admin-istration officials heated up in 2009, especially once President BARACK OBAMA decided to declassify the memos In late April 2009, Obama said he was open
to prosecuting those who provided the authority for the interrogation methods, saying that the U.S lost “our moral bearings” in using the tactics
Although some legal scholars sug-gested that the lawyers who drafted the opinions could be subject to prosecution, few believed that this would be a likely result Prosecutors would have to show that these Justice Department officials had intentionally misstated the law against torture, which would be difficult
to prove Moreover, as Tom Malinowski, Washington director of HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, told the Los Angeles Times, “Once you begin a serious discussion of crimi-nal prosecution, the question quickly becomes: Why PROSECUTE those in the middle of the chain of command but not those who made the ultimate decisions at the top?”
Despite the likelihood that no official will be charged with a war crime, some officials may still pay the price for providing the reasoning that justified the torture For instance, the Justice Department’s Office of PROFESSIONAL RE-SPONSIBILITYhas investigated Yoo, Bybee, and other lawyers involved in the memos Moreover, members of Con-gress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have not ruled out the possibility that Bybee could be impeached from his position on the Ninth Circuit
FURTHER READINGS Klein, Joe 2009 “The Bush Administration’s Most Despicable Act ” Time January 8 Savage, David G., and Josh Meyer 2009.
“Prosecuting ‘Torture Memo’ Authors Called a ‘Real Stretch.’” Los Angeles Times April 23.
Trang 7and to facilitate it, the United States should significantly increase the number of U.S
military personnel, including combat troops, imbedded in and supporting Iraqi Army units
As these actions proceed, U.S combat forces could begin to move out of Iraq.” Conservatives who supported the war effort were critical of the report upon its release
Rumsfeld resigned at the end of 2006 Early
in 2007 Bush announced that he was sending more than 21,000 additional troops to battle an increase in insurgency that had begun late in
2006 By the spring 2007, violence in Iraq had decreased significantly In May 2007 Congress approved legislation that funded the war in Iraq but established deadlines for troop withdrawal
Bush vetoed this legislation
By 2008 Bush announced that Iraq was returning to a normal, thanks in part to the U.S
military’s efforts to increase security In No-vember 2008, following the election of President BARACK OBAMA, the Iraqi government approved a resolution calling for the United States to end its military presence in Iraq by 2011 In February
2009, Obama announced that the United States would withdraw combat forces within an 18-month window
Failed Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction
On January 12, 2005, the Bush administration announced that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had ended, without any such weapons having been found The announce-ment coincided with several reports calling into question the data on which Bush had based his allegations in 2002 about Iraq’s attempts to obtain materials to create WMDs
As Bush prepared to leave office in Decem-ber 2008, he acknowledged that one of his
biggest disappointments was the “intelligence failure in Iraq,” referring specifically to the data used as the basis for the decision to go to war with Saddam
FURTHER READINGS Falk, Richard A 2008 The Costs of War: International Law, the U.N., and World Order after Iraq New York: Routledge Iraq Study Group 2006 Iraq Study Group Report Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Jaques, Richard B., ed 2006 Issues in International Law Newport, R.I.: Naval War College.
CROSS REFERENCE War on Terrorism.
vIREDELL, JAMES James Iredell was one of the original U.S Supreme Court justices appointed by GEORGE WASHINGTON
Iredell was born October 5, 1751, in Lewes, England At age 17 he began working in his family’s MERCANTILEbusiness in North Carolina and also undertook the study of law He was licensed to practice law in 1771 In the next few years, he became active in the Revolutionary cause, arguing that the colonies not separate from England and advocating in his writings that the conflict be resolved through RECONCILIA-TIONrather than war In 1776 he was appointed
to a commission to draft and revise the laws for the governance of North Carolina A year later
he served as a judge on the state superior court, and from 1779 to 1781 he was state attorney general In 1787 he codified and revised the statutes of North Carolina, a process that resulted in the publication of Iredell’s Revisal four years later
A staunch supporter of the Constitutional Convention, Iredell led North Carolina in the movement for ratification through a series of
James Iredell 1751–1799
1751 Born,
Lewes,
England
❖
1775–83 American Revolution
1768 Began working
in his family's mercantile business
in North Carolina
1776 Helped revise North Carolina's laws of governance;
Declaration of Independence signed in Philadelphia
1787–91 Codified and revised North Carolina statutes, which resulted in
Iredell's Revisal
1790 Appointed as one of the original justices to serve on the U.S Supreme Court
1799 Died, Edenton, North Carolina
1771 Licensed to practice law
◆
1798 Authored opinion in
Calder v.
Bull
◆
1777 Served on North Carolina Superior Court
1779–81 Served as attorney general of North Carolina
1793 Wrote dissent in
Chisholm v.
Georgia
Trang 8acclaimed and well-publicized floor debates and
speeches In 1790 he drew the attention of
President Washington, who appointed him to
the newly formed U.S Supreme Court At age
38, Iredell was the youngest of the original
justices
In addition to hearing cases before the entire
Supreme Court, the justices at that time
presided overCIRCUIT COURTsessions throughout
the United States, which required them to travel
extensively to hear arguments Iredell was
assigned to the Southern Circuit and quickly
developed a reputation as an exceptional jurist
with respect toCONSTITUTIONAL LAW matters He
wrote a number of notable opinions, including
a dissent in CHISHOLM V.GEORGIA, 2 U.S (Dall.)
419, 1 L Ed 440 (1793), in which he argued
that only a constitutional provision could
SUPERSEDEthe common-law principle that a state
cannot be sued by a citizen from another state
Iredell maintained that the states were sovereign
and did not owe their origins to the federal
government Iredell’s view of states’ rights
would prevail in Congress’s subsequent
adop-tion of theELEVENTH AMENDMENT
Iredell also authored Calder v Bull, 3 U.S
(Dall.) 386, 1 L Ed 648 (1798), in which he
argued that a legislative act unauthorized by or
in violation of the Constitution was void and
that the courts were responsible for determining
an act’s status in that regard This principle of
JUDICIAL REVIEW would be amplified five years
later in the landmark decision MARBURY V
MADISON, 5 U.S (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L Ed 60
(1803), which held that the courts were indeed
ultimately responsible for deciding the validity
of laws passed by the legislative branch of
government
The strain of the travel required to cover his
circuit, in addition to the heavy caseload of the
Supreme Court, eventually took its toll on
Iredell’s health He died at his home in North
Carolina in 1799, less than ten years after
ascending to the High Court
vIRELAND, PATRICIA
Patricia Ireland is an attorney and social activist
who became the ninth president of theNATIONAL
ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN(NOW) on December
15, 1991; she served as president for ten years,
leaving in 2001 due to term limits Ireland took
over the presidency just as NOW was beginning
to feel a shift in its ranks and the United States was experiencing a renewed interest in the feminist movement
Ireland was born October 19, 1945, in Oak Park, Illinois She grew up on a farm in Valparaiso, Indiana, where her family raised honeybees She is the younger of two daughters
of James Ireland and Joan Filipek (older sister Kathy was killed in a horseback riding accident when Ireland was five years old) Ireland’s father, a metallurgical engineer, taught her to be passionate about her profession Her mother was a volunteer counselor with Planned Parent-hood who became the first director of the local chapter She was Ireland’s social activist role model
Ireland entered DePauw University when she was 16, but became pregnant and was forced to travel to Japan to obtain a legal ABORTION She then married and transferred to the University of Tennessee, where she obtained
a degree in German in 1966 Her first marriage lasted only a short time She later began work as
a graduate student and German teacher, but she quickly became bored with teaching She and her second husband, artist James Humble, moved to Miami, where she became a flight attendant for Pan American World Airways
Working as a flight attendant was a pivotal experience for Ireland She discovered that her employee HEALTH INSURANCE plan would not cover her husband’s dental expenses, even though it did pay such expenses for the wives
of male employees Ireland consulted Dade
James Iredell ENGRAVING BY ALBERT ROSENTHAL.
COLLECTION OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
MUST FOR EVER AFTERWARDS SPEAK FOR ITSELF, AND COMMIT THE CHARACTER OF THE WRITER, IN LASTING COLORS, EITHER OF
NEUTRAL INSIGNIFICANCE, TO
WELL AS TO THE PRESENT.
—J AMES I REDELL
Trang 9County NOW for advice It referred her to the LABOR DEPARTMENT, the EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION (EEOC), and the flight attendants’ union As a result of Ireland’s challenge, the insurance policy was amended
Her characteristic good humor is evident in her comments on the experience: “The vice-president of the labor task force at Dade County NOW is now the dean of women lawmakers in the Florida legislature I am the president of NOW And Pan am is bankrupt.”
Taking on Pan Am’s discriminatory insur-ance plan whet Ireland’s appetite for more knowledge of the law She enrolled in the law school at Florida State University while con-tinuing to work as a flight attendant Ireland began to notice that if she introduced herself
as a flight attendant, people had little to say to her, but if she introduced herself as a law student, they were eager to discuss complex legal issues and current events The denigration
of work traditionally done by women offended her growing feminist sensibilities.“My brain was the same, my ideas were just as worthy or unworthy, but there was a tremendous difference
in the way that people perceived and treated me,” she said “I think traditional women’s work is undervalued—teaching, health care, social work That was part of the experience that made me want to be an activist.”
Ireland earned her law degree from the University of Miami, where she had transferred from Florida State, in 1975 She both served on the school’s LAW REVIEW and the Lawyer of the Americas (now the University of Miami Inter-American Law Review) and did PRO BONO work for Dade County NOW After graduation, she practiced corporate law for 12 years, continued working for Dade County NOW, and helped corporate clients formulate AFFIRMATIVE ACTION programs
Ireland’s work in the women’s rights move-ment expanded during her years as an attorney
In 1983, she became the chair of Florida NOW’s lesbian rights task force In 1985 she managed Eleanor C Smeal’s successful campaign for the presidency of NOW, and in 1987 she was elected NOW’s executiveVICE PRESIDENT, a post she held until May 1991, when she became acting president following the illness of Molly Yard
On December 15, 1991, Ireland was officially named NOW’s ninth president
As NOW’s top officer, Ireland was charged with pursuing the group’s four priority issues:
Patricia Ireland.
AP IMAGES
Patricia Ireland 1945–
❖
◆
◆
◆
◆
◆
◆
◆
1991–2001 Served as president of NOW
1996 What Women Want, an autobiography
of Ireland and NOW, published
1991 Elected president
of NOW
1987 Elected executive vice president
of NOW
1983 Became chair of Florida NOW’s lesbian rights task force
1985 Managed Eleanor Smeal’s successful campaign for NOW presidency
◆
2003 Appointed CEO
of YWCA; fired six months later
1975 Earned J.D from University of Miami Law School; entered private practice 1967–75 Worked as
flight attendant
1973 Roe v Wade
legalized abortion
in U.S.
1961–73 Vietnam War
1963 Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique published
1966 Earned B.A.
from University of Tenn.; NOW founded
by Friedan and others
1950–53
Korean War
1945 Born,
Oak Park,
Ill.
2003–04 Served as campaign manager for Carol Moseley Braun
Trang 10protecting abortion rights; electing women to
political leadership positions; forming coalitions
with otherCIVIL RIGHTSorganizations; and
advo-cating for international women’s rights She
vowed to stir things up, and she did During
her years as president, Ireland developed and
implemented a number of programs, including
Project Stand Up for Women, an international
program designed to protect women who seek
abortion services and to combat anti-abortion
clinic blockades; Elect Women for a Change,
which provides experienced campaign support
for feminist candidates; and the Global Feminist
Program, which provides a forum for women
around the world to discuss relevant women’s
issues Ireland also served as legal counsel on
several NOW landmark cases, and was a major
organizer of such events as the 1993 March on
Washington for Gay, Lesbian, and Bi Civil Rights
Ireland’s tenure, however, was not without
detractors Specifically, questions arose as to
whether NOW, with Ireland at the helm,
represented the majority of U.S women, or
whether its focus had become too narrow Such
questions were prompted when NOW
an-nounced that lesbian rights would be one of
its top priorities At about the same time, the
Advocate, a gay and lesbian newspaper, revealed
that Ireland, while maintaining her
long-standing marriage to Humble, who lives in
Florida, also had a female companion with
whom she lived in Washington, D.C
Even NOW’s allies became concerned that
the organization would be perceived as a fringe
group that did not address the concerns of the
majority, and that support for NOW causes
would be eroded BETTY N.FRIEDAN, the group’s
founding president, accused NOW of failing to
address women’s current concerns, such as
juggling families and jobs Ireland, however,
maintained that NOW was on the right track
for carrying on the fight for women’s rights
“Someone has to raise the issues that make
people uncomfortable, the issues that other
people don’t want to talk about [I]t’s
healthy to be angry at the situation women
face So, yes, we may be militant and angry but
we’re also thoughtful and intelligent.”
In 2001, after ten years, Ireland stepped
down as president of NOW In 2003 she became
the CEO of the YWCA of the USA Some
conservative critics raised eyebrows over the
appointment She spent six controversial
months as president of the YWCA Traditional Christian groups objected to her using a nominally Christian organization as a platform
to advance feminist causes (the group’s initials stand for “Young Women’s Christian Associa-tion”), and the YWCA proved not to be as supportive of Ireland’s controversial stands as she might have liked.“We have the deepest admira-tion for Ms Ireland’s dedicaadmira-tion to women’s issues and social justice, but the YWCA has proved to be the wrong platform for her to advocate for these issues,” the YWCA’s board said when they fired Ireland that October
Ireland served as campaign manager for former Democratic senator Carol Moseley Braun’s short-lived 2004 presidential campaign, from November of 2003 until Moseley Braun withdrew from the race two months later
Ireland’s next stop was DontAmend.com, a web site and organization founded to lobby against a proposedCONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTto ban same-sex marriage She joined that group in March of 2004 and was immediately sent to Capitol Hill to address the SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEEabout the issue.“Equal marriage rights will be one of the most explosive issues of the 2004 elections,” said Ireland when she joined forces with DontAmend.com.“This is also an incredible opportunity to make a quantum leap forward, and for me, it’s an opportunity not to be missed.”
In addition to her professional duties, Ireland is a frequent contributor to periodicals, newspapers, and journals, and, in 1996, she released her autobiography, What Women Want Ireland is also a frequent guest speaker
at universities and withHUMAN RIGHTSgroups
FURTHER READINGS Ireland, Patricia 1996 What Women Want New York:
Dutton.
Resnik, Judith 2003 “Patricia Ireland: Women, Meeting (Again), in and beyond the United States ” In The Difference “Difference” Makes: Women and Leadership, edited by Deborah L Rhode Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford Univ Press.
CROSS REFERENCES Gay and Lesbian Rights; Sex Discrimination; Steinem, Gloria.
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES The existence of significant differences between a married couple that are so great and beyond resolution as to make the marriage unworkable, and for which the law permits a divorce
FOR MOST WOMEN, EQUALITY IS A BREAD-AND-BUTTER ISSUE.
PAID LESS ON THE JOB AND CHARGED MORE FOR EVERYTHING FROM DRY CLEANING TO INSURANCE.
—P ATRICIA I RELAND