Can outsourcing tell us when Cheney and Bush decided to invade Iraq?

Now this is something different than I've seen before. There has been a great deal of discussion about the timing of the decision to go to war with Iraq. The Downing Street Memo is solid documentary evidence that Cheney and Bush had made the decision at the latest by mid-July 2002, some eight months before the invasion began in March of 2003. (See Mark Danner's The Secret Way to War (2006) or the Web site of AfterDowningStreet.org.)

It seems to me that any latter date for the decision within the administration is unlikely in the extreme later than that point. Of course, the disaster was still retrievable if the decision to invade had been reversed later. But it wasn't.

We've had indications that the decision could have been made earlier, as early as just after the 9/11 attacks or even before.

But here's one angle I've never seen mentioned before. The Sept/Oct number of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has an interview with Sergio Finardi, a man with an unusual specialty. He researches the worldwide transportation of arms shipments and hazardous waste, and co-founded the non-profit TransArms Research Center for the Logistics of Arms Transfers.

One of the things about which the Iraq War has made much of the public more aware is the large amount of outsourcing the Pentagon does of functions once performed by the military itself. Do I need to say that a substantial chuck of it goes to Halliburton?

Transportation is also partly outsourced. That means someone with the rare specialty of Finardi and the folks at TransArms can find out a lot about it from open sources. And they noticed something unusual back in March, 2002:

By monitoring the contract awards of the U.S. federal logistic agency, we knew in March 2002 that the decision to invade Iraq was already made. The first public mention of it was in a Bush speech in 2002 at West Point. The discussion in the United Nations occurred later that fall.

The logistic agency had the bid for several big ships to be deployed around Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean. The bid for this ship included the transport of hundreds and hundreds of ambulances. We wondered, what could be the purpose to send Diego Garcia hundreds and hundreds of ambulances? Are we sending one ambulance for each military guy there? This contract was awarded to Mersk in July 2002, for $600 million. Awarded means that the money is there and the company gets the money.

No matter what they were saying and no matter what they were discussing at the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction, the United States already had decided to go to Iraq. (my emphasis)

This is certainly a factor that should be considered when trying to pin down the date that Cheney and Bush had clearly decided to go to war.

The interview doesn't include anything about similar indications related to Iran, although the kind of air-intensive attack being contemplated there might not generate so clear an indication.

But Finardi does say this:

If the United States, Britain, and other allies are serious about a troop pullout in March 2008, for example, the bid should be issued now. I don’t see anything that is connected with this now in the transportation industry. Maybe in September or October they could start to make bids and then awards, but usually they plan these kinds of moves in advance. Coming back is a completely different business than going there. The logistic needs are different. The situation on the ground is not like it was one or two years ago. Some airports in Iraq are no longer available or are too dangerous for collecting troops or materials. I think the withdrawal from Iraq has yet to be planned.

Tags: iraq war, sergio finardi, transarms