Although generally described as a “deception”, without a doubt it deserves to be included here - Operation Bodyguard - a conspiracy involving thousands of people - and it worked! Imagine that!
Moderator Warning
Jim’s Son, political jabs are not permitted in General Questions. Since you’ve received previous moderator notes on this subject, I am making this one an Official Warning. Do not do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Blowing up the Maine in Havana harbour touching off a war with Spain. Manufacture of Gulf of Tonkin incident which resulted in the deaths of at least 50,000 US soldiers and maybe a million southeast Asians. The assassination of John F. Kennedy. Take your pick.
[Moderating]
Although this could end up in Great Debates, I’m going to leave this here for the present. Let’s keep this discussion as factual as possible, and refrain from excessive political commentary.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
How about the Manhatten project that developed the atom bomb?
It’s not exactly a conspiracy*, but it sure was a very well-kept secret --involving 130 thousand people for 4 years.
*i.e there wasn’t any intentional deception,or spreading false information, etc, to mislead the enemy
For WWII conspiracies, I think you’d have to go with Operation Fortitude, the fake invasion of German-held France at the Pas de Calais. Fake army (but real commander, no less that Patton), fake radio traffic, fake plans, resulting in large numbers of German forces held back from Normandy because German command believed Normandy wasn’t the real invasion but just a diversionary feint to make way for the “real” attack at Calais.
The Lincoln assassination was part of a larger conspiracy.
Arguably the bigger conspiracy in Iraq was the Iraqi conspiracy to pretend they had WMD when they’d given them up. Tragically, the US and Britain were aware of this–they had developed two key sources before the war, including the head of the Iraqi secret service, who told the CIA and MI6 that Saddam was bluffing to keep Iran among others at bay. But Blair and Bush/Cheney chose to put their stock in other intelligence. Anyway, the Iraqi conspiracy “worked”–so well that it precipitated an invasion, and there are still people like Cheney who insist that Iraq did have WMD.
The debate continues as to the anti-FDR “Business Plot” of 1933:
The conspiracy to kill Hitler was pretty big:
Operation Mincemeat was an elaborate scheme to deceive the Nazis as to the invasion of Sicily:
I wouldn’t call that a conspiracy, since there was no crime involved. On the other hand, the Final Solution was a crime and a massive conspiracy.
Darn, I just came here to post that. I mean, this is basically a real life supervillain speech:
It’s Blake’s link. I just fixed it for him, he re-posted the name in the url slot.
Well, there was the usual amount of wartime secrecy & code names. For example, plutonium was code-named “copper” by the scientists working on the project, so that foreign agents and their superiors wouldn’t wonder why this obscure metal was suddenly so important. If scientists needed actual copper during the project, they apparently had to call it “honest-to-god copper”.
“Honest-to-god copper”?
Really?
Amazing.
Are you serious? Have you not read one. single. thing. on the history of the leadup to the Iraq war? Even the most die hard apologists for the Bush administration will concede it was an epic clusterfuck at this point. Saddam’s general nastiness would not have gotten more than an earnest “too bad, so sad” from other “allies” without the willfully manipulated corrupted intelligence that was being sold as solid gold proof of imminent WMD catastrophe.
If you are going to be taken seriously you need some better ammo. Your arguments are lazy and embarrassingly bad. Just plain limp wristedly weak. Seriously, if you want to play cowboy up with some better quality positional arguments.
Iraq is complicated, but I also don’t know that I can really feel it is a conspiracy. There’s a lot we’ll never know, but I think in general what happened was elements within the administration wanted to go to war with Iraq. I think different elements had different reasons for this desire:
Cheney: Felt it was to the geopolitical interest of the United States for various reasons. Cheney was also a big advocate of the “1%” argument, that even if there was only a 1% chance Iraq had WMDs that they might sell to terrorists, that risk was too great.
Bush: I think Bush wanted to go into Iraq because Cheney convinced him of the 1% argument and because of his “bleeding heart Christianity.” Bush ran on a platform of compassionate conservatism and I think on some levels he was very bleeding heart in many ways, I think Bush was genuinely concerned about the human rights abuses in Iraq.
Other Neocons (Wolfowitz et al.): Basically wanted to get into some nation building and create a democratic ally of the United States in a mostly hostile region.
If you notice, pretty much none of these reasons on their own would probably be compelling enough for the American people. Most Americans are not interested in nation building nor are they concerned with the plight of Iraqis suffering under the Hussein family. Americans are concerned about their own security, but if you brought out the “1%” argument publicly I think it’s too nuanced for most Americans to get behind.
I think that it was decided to focus on WMD because it would be the most effective domestic political argument and had the greatest likelihood of getting UN allies on board. I think to that ends, the administration essentially filtered out intelligence that didn’t “make their case”, but I don’t think there was an elaborate conspiracy. In any intelligence gathering there is going to be tons of noise, legitimately, about all kinds of different things. I think the administration genuinely believed Iraq had WMDs but I don’t think they were willing to release any contradictory intelligence because of fears it would undermine the cohesiveness of their argument. Additionally an argument can be made that the concept of “exculpatory evidence” is only for criminal trials, this wasn’t a trial before a court of law. You can further argue it is the job of the administration to interpret the intelligence it receives, and if that means it involves ignoring evidence that goes against their desires while supporting evidence that aligns with their preconceptions–well, that’s the prerogative of the administration. It is the kind of thing that can cause political backlash if it ever gets out (and it did), but it isn’t technically illegal, nor is it technically a conspiracy or a plot. I don’t think there was a top-down plan to do any of this, I think that all of the different ways intelligence could come in, there were people who supported the invasion whose desks this intelligence passed over and they were not prone to credibly believing any reports doubting the existence of WMDs in Iraq.
Further, probably the biggest thing that helped sell the public on WMD in Iraq was the behavior of Saddam Hussein himself. To this day I don’t really get why he remained obstinate and obstructive to the UN inspectors up to the end. Even when he’d say he was ready to comply 100% he’d engage in bush league type stuff by “delaying” inspectors access to key facilities and things of that nature. It’s essentially like me walking into a police department with an ultra-realistic toy gun and brandishing it towards everyone–it’s extremely foolish to act like you have a weapon you don’t actually have. Since I don’t think Hussein was in on the conspiracy, and since I think his performance was key to getting public support even if there was a conspiracy it wasn’t really that effective by itself, it required Hussein’s active participation.
Finally, I don’t know that it would really make sense to have a conspiracy about this. It would have been a tougher sell to the American people without WMD, but the truth of the matter is Congress was essentially going to rubber stamp the AUMF. If Bush hadn’t presented the WMD argument I still think the “rubber stamp” Congress would have approved the AUMF, so if it was a conspiracy it wasn’t a conspiracy that got us into a war–I think the war would have happened because Congress was not interested in exercising its real Constitutional oversight authority over getting into military conflicts. Now, support for the AUMF may have been weaker in Congress, but as long as it was still going to pass I think the final vote would be massively in favor of the AUMF. For something that is basically a type of DoW (but not technically a DoW), once you have a majority in favor of it even most of the House and Senate members who have moral opposition to it are still going to vote for it–simply because a resolution that is going to pass anyway you don’t want to be one of the guys who voted “against” an American war effort in a war that was going to happen anyway. That’s why I think it got like 92 votes in the Senate, for example. While Obama took political advantage of opposing it, the only person who I remember vocally opposing it at the time, at least in the national media, was Sen. Byrd (D-WV) and he basically had one of the safest seats in the Senate and no real reason not to just say whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.
The lack of WMD argument esp. before the UN would have made the “coalition of the willing” much smaller. It would not have stopped the war, though. I think that the UK would have been with us either way, and the UK was our only real material ally in the Iraq campaign. So even without the WMD argument I don’t think much would have changed.
(For the record I think the Iraq war was a positive for the Iraqi people in the long term, much the same way such incidents as Germany’s defeat in WWII was better for Germany in the long run, even if it did result in 8+ million dead Germans; but from a realpolitik perspective I have never felt it was too our material benefit.)
We went to war in Iraq because Congress in the wake of 9/11 was unwilling to perform serious oversight. A few lone Senators stood up against the AUMF but by and large the legislature was too afraid of the political ramifications of opposing a popular President–even though public support for the war was mixed even from the beginning. Once America was in the war the UK followed because Tony Blair had taken the position that it was to the UK’s interests to do whatever America wanted (and since the British PM is essentially an elected dictator it was unlikely anyone could stop him unless they wanted to risk forcing a new election.)
Blaming the “manipulated” WMD intelligence for the war just isn’t accurate. You can blame it for duping the “people” but the reason we actually got into the war is the legislature of two great powers failed to oppose executives who were essentially hell bent on the affair.
I sincerely disagree. While there were many players in the mix the central pivot a lot of the decision making turned on was the dire, imminent, “OMG he’s got WMD’s and is going to use them” threat. Without that case being presented as a rock solid fact a lot of the other vortexs swirling around that wanted us in Iraq would have had no solid purchase. Without the WMD threat being made real there would not have been sufficient support (at multiple levels) to justify the invasion of Iraq.
The manipulated WMD intelligence was the key to it all coming together.
I disagree, the massive rubber stamp from Congress was key to any of it working. There had actually been lots of news articles and leaked evidence suggesting Saddam might not have WMD, not to mention the head UN inspector came out and publicly asserted there was no reason to invade, that Iraq did not have WMD and etc.
The closest we ever came to having a real public debate about the intelligence evidence was when Colin Powell gave his presentation to the UN. Bush did not lay out very specific evidence to the American people, it was vague and would have been easily contested by a Congress who wanted to do so–keep in mind Congress can hold hearings on whatever it wants and can even subpoena intelligence reports if they really want (this might result in executive privilege being asserted or etc, though.) Congress did not do any of this. There was no “case” made before Congress, there was a State of the Union address condemning Iraq for a few different things and a presentation before the UN on WMD, but since there was never any real formal “WMD proof exposition” before Congress, and Congress was voting for the AUMF anyway any “conspiracy” cannot be said to have been what allowed the war.
I’ve never fully understood why Americans always give Congress a pass for letting the President do whatever they want. Sure, you can condemn the President for doing things you disagree with–and should, but checks and balances exist for a reason. Most of the majorly objectionable things done by Presidents are approved by Congress. I remember during the Vietnam War the Presidency was the focus of most of the ire, which might be appropriate. But I never understood why Congress always gets off scot free, they can stop wars from happening and they can end wars that are currently going on–they just never choose to do so.
Tobacco companies’ manipulation of nicotine and other additives to cigarettes, their in-depth studies of addiction, marketing (particularly to children), and legislative influence has probably killed more people, ruined more lives and cost more money than Iraq.