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Iraq: First on the List, Invaded in 2003

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that Iraq was first on the list General Wesley Clark described, that the United States invaded it in March 2003, and that the public reasons given, weapons of mass destruction and an Iraq–al-Qaeda alliance, were false. STRONG that removing Saddam Hussein was an Israeli strategic objective written down in 1982 and 1996 and carried into the Pentagon by the same people.

In one paragraph​

"Starting with Iraq." That is how the Pentagon memo began, as Clark told it. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Removing its government had been an Israeli strategic goal on paper for twenty years: the 1982 Yinon essay called Iraq "guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets," and the 1996 Clean Break paper written for Benjamin Netanyahu called removing Saddam "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." In 2001 the authors of that paper held Pentagon jobs. In March 2003 the United States invaded. The war cost "4,431 Americans dead. $2.1 trillion spent" (@danksterintel on X, March 4, 2026). In 2026 Iraq is being named as the staging ground for the last war on the list, Iran.

What Clark was told about Iraq​

Clark, on Democracy Now, March 2, 2007: "About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. ... He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." ... So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq."" (Democracy Now, March 2, 2007).

Clark had said it in public since 2003. Al Jazeera reported on September 22, 2003 that Clark "says the White House devised a five-year plan after the 9/11 strikes to attack seven majority-Muslim countries," Iraq first, and that officials moved against Iraq "even though there was no evidence of Iraqi sponsorship of 9/11 whatsoever" (Al Jazeera, September 22, 2003). That week he called the war "a major blunder" and said "There was never an imminent threat" (New York Times, September 20, 2003). He had told Congress in 2002: "if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn't be Iraq, it should be Iran."

The same week inside the government: on the afternoon of 9/11 Rumsfeld's notes read "judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time—Not just UBL ... go massive—sweep it all up—Things related and not." On September 12 he called Iraq a "principal target of the first round." On September 15 at Camp David, Wolfowitz pressed to hit Iraq even before Afghanistan. On September 20, PNAC told President Bush to remove Saddam "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack" (see PNAC). An officer then at U.S. Central Command says that "within a couple of months of 9/11, our entire J2 was put to work on 5 countries to invade," five of Clark's seven (@ColonelTowner on X, October 12, 2025).

Why Iraq was first: the Israeli objective​

  • 1982. Oded Yinon, in a World Zionist Organization journal: Iraq's "dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria," and "three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul." The same month Haaretz's military correspondent, Ze'ev Schiff, called Iraq's breakup into Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish parts the "best" outcome for Israel. See the Yinon essay's key passages.
  • 1996. A Clean Break, for Netanyahu: "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." Its authors were Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, among others. See A Clean Break.
  • 1998. PNAC's letter to President Clinton, signed by Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and fifteen others, named "our friends and allies like Israel" among the reasons to remove Saddam. Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act that year.
  • April and September 2002. Netanyahu spoke to U.S. senators on April 10, 2002 and testified to a House committee on September 12, 2002, before Congress voted to authorize force: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region" (House hearing transcript, govinfo).
  • 2002–2003. AIPAC's executive director counted "quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq" as a success. Haaretz reported that senior Israeli officers and Sharon's aides envisioned "a domino effect, with the fall of Saddam Hussein followed by that of Israel's other enemies" (see the Israel connection).

In February 2026 Tucker Carlson told the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, that everybody who served in Iraq had put boots on the ground for Israel. Huckabee: "Did not." Carlson: "Where did we get the information about the weapons of mass destruction that wasn't real?" (Tucker Carlson Network on X, February 20, 2026, about 825,000 views).

How the case was built, and what was false​

  • Iraq and al-Qaeda. A Pentagon policy office run by Feith pushed a "mature symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda to senior leaders. The Pentagon's Inspector General found in 2007 that this was "inappropriate" and "not fully supported." Interrogations of Saddam and seized documents later "confirmed the former Iraqi regime had no links with Al-Qaeda" (AFP via Daily News Egypt, April 2007). See the Inspector General's report.
  • Uranium from Niger. The documents claiming Iraq sought uranium from Niger "were obvious forgeries"; the IAEA judged them forged (Stefan Simanowitz on X, January 31, 2023).
  • Weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Colin Powell mentioned WMD 17 times in his February 5, 2003 U.N. speech. In 2004 he said: "It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate & wrong & in some cases deliberately misleading" (Stefan Simanowitz on X, February 6, 2023). As of late September 2003, Clark wrote, "no weapons of mass destruction had been found" (New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003).
  • The record of statements. Congressman Henry Waxman's "Iraq on the Record" collected "237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq," counting only statements "misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time" (beSpacific). The Center for Public Integrity counted hundreds of false statements that "were part of an orchestrated campaign."
  • The U.N. vote. On January 31, 2003 an NSA official, Frank Koza, asked Britain's GCHQ for help bugging six U.N. Security Council members, Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan, whose votes were needed. Translator Katharine Gun leaked the email; the charges against her collapsed in February 2004 (@ArturNadol7566 on X, June 29, 2026).

The cost​

The invasion "took 177,000 troops, months of staging, and faced a country of 25 million people," and "still took eight years and cost 4,500 American lives before withdrawal" (The Macro Ledger on X, March 26, 2026). Iraq Body Count estimates about 185,000 to 208,000 civilian deaths through 2020; broader estimates run from 600,000 to more than a million (Rob Schneider on X, June 22, 2025). A Marine who fought in Ramadi in 2006 and 2007 wrote of "numerous American casualties on behalf of Iraqis" (letter posted by Scott Horton, December 28, 2023). Economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated the war's cost at $3 trillion.

Iraq in 2026: the staging ground for Iran​

The first country on the list has become the base for the last.

  • The Wall Street Journal reported, as relayed by journalist Max Blumenthal, that "Israel built a secret military post in Iraq to support its campaign against Iran" (WSJ, May 9, 2026, as cited on the seven-country scorecard).
  • One widely read analyst wrote in June 2026: "Iraq is the only country suitable to stage ground ops against Iran," predicting "some kind of combined US-Kurdish-Iraqi invasion of Iran from Iraq," with the "US contributing 50k (already there)" (@TOzgokmen on X, June 28, 2026, about 628,000 views). That is his prediction.
  • Comparing the two wars, the same Macro Ledger post noted that Iran has 88 million people and "the Zagros mountain range along its entire western border," and quoted Responsible Statecraft: for troops ordered into a ground operation, "it lands somewhere between a suicide mission and a self-imposed hostage crisis."

Iraq showed what the list costs American families. Iran is where it ends. See Iran.

Status: Wesley Clark is alive. Benjamin Netanyahu is alive. Douglas Feith is alive. Paul Wolfowitz is alive. Mike Huckabee is alive. Katharine Gun is alive. Saddam Hussein is deceased (2006). Colin Powell is deceased (2021). Donald Rumsfeld is deceased (2021). Nothing on this page states that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t34__v397.md through t34__v408.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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