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The officially sanctioned conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 set a dangerous precedent.
It was April 9, 2009, and Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense in the Bush administration and one of the chief architects of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, had come to Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
He came to Section 60, the portion of Arlington where American soldiers who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan lay buried, as the most prominent guest at a small ceremony to mark the day six years earlier when the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square had been pulled down. Wolfowitz and other Iraq war hawks had decided that April 9 should be commemorated as “Iraq Liberation Day.”
The 2009 celebration was organized and hosted by Viola Drath, a former journalist, longtime socialite, and, at 89, a tireless networker on Washington’s cocktail circuit.
She was now married to her second husband, Albrecht Muth, who claimed to be a general in the Iraqi Army. He wore his uniform to public events around Washington and possessed a certificate of his appointment signed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Using her Washington connections, Drath had managed to attract a smattering of VIPs to Section 60 for the Iraq Liberation Day ceremony, including both Wolfowitz and Iraq’s ambassador to the United States at the time, Samir Shakir M. Sumaida’ie.
Two years after that celebration in Section 60, Drath was found dead in her Georgetown townhouse. She had been strangled. Her husband, Muth, the supposed Iraqi general, was arrested for her murder. The certificate of his appointment as an Iraqi general was found to be a forgery; in Drath’s townhouse, police discovered a receipt from a Washington print shop where he had created the official-looking document. Muth was later convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Two decades after the March 19, 2003, U.S. invasion of Iraq, it is still difficult to peel back all the layers of deceit that enveloped the war. Some were thin and nearly transparent, like the fabricated generalship of Albrecht Muth. Others were enormously consequential, like the false assertion, peddled by the White House, the CIA, and the American press, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. There was also much self-deceit, like the notion confidently shared by the war’s most ardent supporters that April 9 would forever be remembered as Iraq Liberation Day.
But one piece of deceit and disinformation stands out. Along with other official lies, it morphed into a lasting conspiracy theory that set a dangerous precedent and helped pave the way for the rise of Donald Trump: the assertion by the Bush White House that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.
There was never any evidence that it was true, and the Bush administration knew it had nothing to support the claims. Yet the White House began to push the theory almost immediately after the September 11 attacks; President George W. Bush and his advisers saw the Saddam–9/11 connection as the silver bullet that could guarantee public support for an invasion of Iraq.
The Bush team pushed the false notion with such unrelenting ferocity during the 18 months between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion that most Americans were soon convinced. Efforts by the press to debunk it made little difference. It was a powerful piece of disinformation that became so deeply embedded in the American consciousness that it was nearly impossible to dislodge.
The Bush White House was so successful that two years after 9/11, polls showed that nearly 70 percent of Americans believed that Saddam was involved in the attacks on New York and Washington. By 2007, despite the administration’s failure to find proof of the connection over the previous six years, polls revealed that one-third of Americans still believed it.
The equally specious argument that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction never enjoyed such a powerful hold on the American imagination as the belief that the war in Iraq could be justified as payback for 9/11.
As with any good propaganda campaign, the Bush team was careful and lawyerly in making its case. In his public statements, Bush himself never explicitly said Saddam was responsible for 9/11; but he constantly used language in speeches and other public statements linking Saddam with terrorism, and he talked more broadly about connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda-style militancy. The Bush team did a masterful job of making it difficult for the public to distinguish between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. The public got the message that 9/11 and Iraq were inextricably linked.
The Bush White House kept pushing the false narrative surrounding a Saddam–9/11 connection despite resistance from the Central Intelligence Agency, where some officials were quietly furious at these dubious claims. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, some CIA officials, speaking anonymously, told reporters that the intelligence didn’t support the White House notion of a Saddam–9/11 connection.
The battle between the Bush White House and the CIA over the intelligence on Saddam’s connections to 9/11 and terrorism consumed much of the 18-month interregnum between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion and turned increasingly bitter after Vice President Dick Cheney personally visited CIA headquarters and, along with his aides, began to pressure analysts to agree to the White House position. But the battle was waged almost entirely behind the scenes; it would surface only through occasional anonymous leaks to the press from CIA officials, accusing the administration of politicizing the intelligence, and conversely through statements from Iraq hawks close to the administration complaining about CIA intransigence.
The agency’s stance was badly weakened when CIA Director George Tenet refused to publicly engage in the battle, or even to criticize the Bush White House for pushing the Iraq–Al Qaeda link. At the time, Tenet’s hold on his job was fragile, and he believed he owed Bush for not firing him after the intelligence failures related to 9/11 prompted many critics to call for his ouster. In fact, there were several instances when CIA officials, speaking on background without attribution, would discuss the lack of an Iraq–Al Qaeda connection with reporters, only to see Tenet then publicly deny that there was any disagreement between the White House and the CIA, including when he was questioned by Congress. Tenet’s actions thus left CIA dissenters badly exposed to political pressure.
In the years since the U.S. invasion, this secret war between the White House and CIA over evidence of Iraq–Al Qaeda links has largely been lost to history, overshadowed by the subsequent debacle over intelligence on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, and by the failure of the war itself. But the 2002 White House–CIA fight over Iraq–Al Qaeda intelligence nonetheless wreaked lasting damage, creating a model for Trump in how to build conspiracy theories around intelligence reporting.
Rather than concede that the CIA analysts might be right that there was no proof of Saddam–9/11, Iraq–Al Qaeda connections, the Bush team created a rival intelligence unit of their own to hunt for the evidence they claimed the CIA was ignoring. A two-man intelligence team, handpicked by Iraq hawk Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy and one of Wolfowitz’s lieutenants, set up shop in the Pentagon and began scouring raw intelligence for signs of a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
The amateurish effort was linked to Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative close to Wolfowitz, and a longtime critic of the CIA. Perle told me at the time that he thought the “people working on the Persian Gulf at the CIA are pathetic,” and that “they went to battle stations every time someone pointed to contrary evidence.”
Feith’s Pentagon team never proved their case. But the Bush White House became convinced they had found their silver bullet when they obtained a report claiming that Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague just months before the September 11 attacks.
Before long, the “Prague meeting” became the central piece of evidence used by the Bush team in their push for war. It seemed to provide the long-sought missing link between Saddam and 9/11. For the Bush White House, it was the perfect intelligence report.
The problem was that the meeting never happened. Yet the Bush White House kept peddling the story.
The battle to stop the White House from using the Saddam–9/11 connection to justify war with Iraq exhausted battered CIA officials and analysts. The fight so weakened the CIA that by the fall of 2002, Tenet and his top lieutenants were relieved when the Bush team finally began to switch the focus of its argument for war to Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Tenet was so intimidated by the fallout from the fight over the intelligence on connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda that he was eager to cooperate with the White House on WMD. After all, there were plenty of old intelligence reports, dating back to the 1990s when United Nations weapons inspectors had been in Iraq, that strongly suggested Saddam had WMD. There was even a sense of guilt that still ran through the CIA over the fact that, at the time of the Gulf War in 1991, the agency had failed to detect evidence of Iraq’s fledgling nuclear weapons program. That the CIA had almost no new intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs since at least 1998, when U.N. weapons inspectors had been withdrawn from Iraq, was largely ignored by Tenet and most senior CIA officials; they didn’t want to admit that they had been dependent on the U.N. To account for a gap of at least five years in much of the intelligence reporting on Iraqi WMD programs, the CIA assumed the worst: that the weapons programs detected in the 1990s had only grown stronger and more dangerous.
Whenever intelligence was collected that countered this narrative, CIA officials discredited the sources or simply ignored it. In 2002, for example, the CIA sent more than 30 Iraqi American relatives of Iraqi weapons scientists back to Iraq to secretly ask about the status of Saddam’s WMD programs. All the relatives reported back to the CIA that their relatives had said that the WMD programs had long since been ended. The CIA simply ignored those reports.
By contrast, any new nugget of information suggesting that Iraq still had WMD was treated like gold dust inside the CIA. Ambitious analysts quickly learned that the fastest way to get ahead was to write reports proving the existence of Iraqi WMD programs. Their reports would be quickly given to Tenet, who would loudly praise the reporting and then rush it to the White House — which would then leak it to the press. The result was a constant stream of stories about aluminum tubes, mobile bioweapons laboratories, and nerve gas produced and shared with terrorists.
Dissent within the CIA over the WMD intelligence was much weaker than it had been on the Saddam–9/11 connection. Now, the hardy few critics of the intelligence were not only fighting the White House, but also their own management, which was fully on board with WMD. Whenever they were confronted by the few CIA skeptics who noted that the intelligence on WMD was thin, Tenet and his lieutenants would say that they “would find it when we get there” — after the invasion. And Tenet and his aides would point to Saddam’s refusal to meet Bush’s demands to allow Western weapons inspectors back into Iraq. That had to be proof that he was still hiding covert WMD programs; they never allowed for the possibility that Saddam was bluffing and didn’t want to admit his own weakness.
The CIA’s utter failure on WMD intelligence ultimately cost Tenet his job and poisoned American attitudes toward the war in Iraq. Yet the Bush administration’s persistence in pushing the obviously false narrative of a connection between Saddam and 9/11 may have had more lasting consequences for American politics. Bush set a precedent by officially sanctioning a conspiracy theory. His White House had engaged in a bitter battle with intelligence analysts, who Bush’s lieutenants and most ardent supporters saw as the enemy, to disseminate that conspiracy theory.
Donald Trump followed that model when he sought to convince Americans that he had won the 2020 presidential election, but that dark forces — including a “deep state” inside the U.S. intelligence community — had rigged the outcome to make Joe Biden president.
George W. Bush helped lay the groundwork for Trump to engage in conspiracy theories and spread them from the Oval Office. There is a direct line from the Prague meeting to “Stop the Steal,” and from March 19, 2003, to January 6, 2021.
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An explosion caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia on Saturday, damaging a key supply artery for the Kremlin's faltering war effort in southern Ukraine. (photo: Reuters)
Ten days later, workers at an oil-pumping station in Novozybkov, a small town in Russia’s Bryansk region, found a small bomb that officials said was probably dropped from a drone. Later that day, in Rostov-on-Don, a building of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, exploded in flames — the latest in a string of mysterious fires across western Russia.
More than a year after President Vladimir Putin unleashed his invasion, Russia’s war in Ukraine is also being fought on Russian soil, and Moscow is scrambling to protect its borders. The war Putin expected to win quickly now encroaches daily on the lives of Russian citizens, with frequent reports of fires, drone attacks and shelling.
Ukraine and its citizens, of course, are bearing the overwhelming brunt of suffering in the war. More than 8,000 civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations. Millions are displaced; whole cities have been reduced to rubble.
But the longer the onslaught drags on, the more real it becomes for Russians, especially those living in border regions. Putin had hoped to shield his citizens — even from the word “war,” by calling it a “special military operation.” Now, he has ordered a tightening of border security — not in the four Ukrainian regions he claims, illegally, to have annexed — but along the internationally recognized border with Russia itself. Air defense systems are being deployed in Moscow and other locations.
Ukraine says its military is operating only in its own territory. Privately, however, officials have acknowledged a Ukrainian role in some dramatic strikes, including an explosion on the Crimean Bridge in October. In the case of the FSB fire in Rostov, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted, “Ukraine doesn’t interfere, but watches with pleasure.”
Drone strikes
In the early months of the invasion, only sites very close to the Russia-Ukraine border were targeted by drone strikes, mainly ammunition depots and fuel tanks. Over time, the reach of these strikes has grown longer and longer, approaching Moscow.
Late last month, a military drone attempted to strike a gas compression station, a key part of the region’s energy grid, in Kolomna, about 50 miles south of the Kremlin, according to senior Russian officials.
Images of the drone posted to social media indicate it was a Ukrainian-made UJ-22, produced by Ukrjet, with a claimed flying range of 800 kilometers, or about 500 miles. The attack was unsuccessful. The drone brushed treetops and fell a few yards from the station’s fence. Still, it came alarmingly close to Russia’s capital.
In December, Ukrainian drones carried out a double strike on the Saratov Engels-2 air base, which houses Russia’s strategic nuclear bombers.
There have been at least 27 publicly reported drone attacks on high-value targets in Russia, primarily military bases, airfields and energy facilities. In some cases, drones crashed or were shot down before reaching their targets. At least three drones crashed near Astrakhan, a city close to the Caspian Sea near where Russia fires missiles into Ukraine.
A drone hit Dyagilevo airfield in Ryazan in December, and another exploded in October near Shaikovka airfield in the Kaluga region, which hosts the 52nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment.
The attacks have not caused widespread damage to military assets but serve to demoralize Russian forces, according to Ian Matveev, a Russian military analyst.
“When you have a drone that carries small explosives, it is unlikely to do much physical damage, but it’s a big reputational blow,” Matveev said.
The second main type of attack, Matveev said, primarily has targeted military warehouses and ammunition depots near the Ukrainian border, aiming to deplete Russian supplies.
Energy targets are of less value, he said. “The efficacy of targeting oil warehouses is probably the lowest, as Russia is a giant oil producer and it’s not possible to significantly disrupt the supplies,” Matveev said. “But you still can create local crises by targeting sites storing fuel that is urgently needed in that location.”
Air defenses
The two successful strikes at the Engels-2 airfield in December appear to have greatly alarmed the Russian leadership. Since then, Russia has deployed new air defenses to protect Moscow.
In recent months, air defense systems such as the Pantsir-S1 and S-400 were lifted with heavy cranes and perched on rooftops or placed in city parks. Analysts noted that three systems in central Moscow — on the roofs of the Defense Ministry, the local Interior Ministry headquarters and a business center — effectively form a dome over the Kremlin.
“Moscow probably has the densest air defense coverage of any city on Earth,” said Dara Massicot, a senior researcher at Rand Corp.
Beginning around mid-January, similar systems were spotted farther out in the capital.
Before the invasion, residents of a housing complex on the edge of Losiny Ostrov National Park enjoyed serene views of a forest stretching for several miles east. But in January, residents woke up to the sight of several air defense systems nestled in a clearing between a dog run and a creek.
Alarmed residents complained to the authorities, who responded by citing national security needs, reported the Insider, a Russian investigative outlet.
Placing such missile systems so close to residential areas can be dangerous, Matveev said, noting that the missiles can fly off course or detonate accidentally.
“Each has a warhead and is fueled,” he said. “Imagine if there is a fire, then what kind of blast is going to happen within the city limits.”
New fortifications
Since the invasion started, Russian authorities have reported more than 300 strikes involving shelling, artillery or missiles in Russian border villages and towns, and at least 40 casualties, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).
Some villages have been evacuated, several schools in the area have switched to online classes, and government social media pages are often flooded with pleas from unsettled residents asking to protect them from hostilities.
Local officials have blamed these attacks on Ukraine, but many happen in remote areas and there is little video evidence, making it impossible to verify the Russian claims.
Such reports, however, have been leveraged by local authorities to demand patriotic support for the war and to justify initiatives such as digging trenches and building “dragon teeth” — cement pyramids meant to stop an enemy’s ground attack — along the entire recognized border with Ukraine.
The Belgorod region, one of the main staging grounds for Russian forces, began installing fortifications as early as April 2022. The fortifications have been rebranded as the “zasechnaya line,” a medieval term referring to a line of reinforcements created on the southern borders of the Russian Tsardom in the 16th and 17th centuries to protect it from attacks of the Crimean Khanate.
Two other border regions — Kursk and Bryansk — began construction in the fall after a series of Russian military defeats. In a mini-documentary produced by a local state-financed TV station, Bryansk governor Alexander Bogomaz said the Defense Ministry had ordered digging to start in early December.
The cost of the fortifications is high. The Belgorod region alone spent about $132 million on the project. But military experts and even some pro-war Russian commentators agree that they are largely useless, because there is virtually no chance Ukrainian forces will launch a ground attack on Russian territory.
In recent weeks, Russia has also been actively placing similar fortifications in occupied Crimea and other territories it holds in southern Ukraine, which may suggest Moscow is afraid of losing them.
“I tend to view these things as like kind of a road map of their anxiety and what they’re worried about,” said Massicot, the Rand analyst.
Satellite imagery of two narrow land bridges to Crimea from mainland Ukraine shows recently built defenses in Armiansk and Medvedivka . “The Russian military seems to understand they may have to defend Crimea in the near future,” Matveev said.
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A protester kicks a tear gas canister fired by police during protests on Sunday, May 31, 2020, in Philadelphia. (photo: Matt Rourke/AP)
The city’s agreement with the group of over 300 activists and residents also includes a half-million award to the Bread & Roses Community Fund.
The Kenney administration’s response to the racial justice protests and turmoil that erupted in Philadelphia following the murder of George Floyd and others elicited wide criticism, and quite a few civil rights lawsuits. Four of these suits have now led to a monumental payout — and a major policy change that will “demilitarize” the Philadelphia Police Department.
Plaintiffs joined attorneys and community organizers Monday morning outside the Paul Robeson House to describe the settlement agreement. It includes:
- $9.25 million in damages to more 343 people impacted
- A $500k to $600k award for a grantmaking fund to be run by Bread … Roses Community Fund, an independent fiscal sponsor for Philly grassroots movements that’s been around since the early 1970s.
- Policy changes that include the Philadelphia Police Department disengaging from a federal program known as LESO/1033, which allows local law enforcement to receive military equipment from the Department of Defense. More than 8,000 state and municipal agencies currently participate in the program.
- Twice-a-year meetings between the PPD commissioner and community members from West Philly, so they can give feedback and voice concerns.
“The pain and trauma caused by a legacy of systemic racism and police brutality against Black and brown Philadelphians is immeasurable,” said Mayor Jim Kenney in a statement. “While this is just one step in the direction toward reconciliation, we hope this settlement will provide some healing from the harm experienced by people in their neighborhoods in West Philadelphia and during demonstrations on I-676 in 2020.”
The city has previously issued a series of reports and communications on the chain of command and decision making process during those days of protest and unrest.
What was in the complaint?
The plaintiffs of one of the four civil rights lawsuits involved in the settlement focused their complaint on the events that took place on and around 52nd and Market Street on May 31. On that day, in that neighborhood, police used rubber bullets and tear gas in residential areas.
The tear gassing of protestors on I-676 drew an immediate apology from Kenney, but that wasn’t the case for West Philly, which he called a “totally different situation” per the complaint. Kenney did apologize to West Philadelphians specifically in late 2020.
Included in the complaint were the following claims and points:
- Kenney authorized the use of non-lethal munition, but didn’t ensure that the police wouldn’t use those capabilities in “an aggressive and unlawful manner.”
- Described police attacks on residents, protestors, bystanders, and legal observers “without provocation,” undertaken with the use of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets. The focus of these alleged attacks was also an issue of concern.
- Contrary to PPD claims that police action was solely focused on preventing looting, that “military style armored vehicles” were used for “indiscriminate” attacks in nearby residential areas. The use of pepper spray was singled out as being utilized outside of the bounds set by PPD directives.
- That various officers said the n-word and other racial slurs throughout these events were also put forward by petitioners. The plaintiffs in the case said none of their actions on that day warranted the response from police.
- That other sites of protest in the city didn’t deal with similar police responses, including looting in Center CIty on May 30, and reports of the same in Port Richmond, Kensington, and Fishtown on May 31 and June 1.
In all, the plaintiffs alleged a violation of their 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendment rights, regarding retaliation to constitutionally protected speech, excessive force, and discriminatory policing respectively.
Attorneys also described the arrest of plaintiff Anthony Smith as unlawful and included the violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and charges of battery and assault as additional causes of legal action.
How did the city explain what happened?
The Controller’s Office issued a report in early 2021, focused on the limited planning that took place before May 30 and in the days that followed, and the use of tear gas on I-676, in West Philly, and in Kensington.
In interviews for the report, Commissioner Outlaw stated that she and Kenney had discussed the use of tear gas before May 31, which the mayor wanted to avoid in all except the most extreme circumstance. Still, Kenney gave Outlaw the okay to authorize the use of tear gas, which hadn’t been used in the city since the MOVE bombing in 1985 — things went awry from there.
Concerning May 31, the report detailed the looting of the Foot Locker near 52nd Street and Chestnut, where bricks were thrown at police officers by the crowd assembled there at the time. An inspector whose nose was broken by a brick requested tear gas be used, which Outlaw authorized.
The report states that Outlaw thought she was authorizing use of tear gas at the site of the Foot Locker, but the SWAT team on the scene went further than that. The SWAT team’s own account of events details the use of tear gas at 52 and Arch, near Malcolm X Park, between Market and Spruce — including side streets where no activity was taking place — and 52nd and Walnut.
SWAT’s account and videos used in the city’s investigation align with the accounts of the plaintiffs at multiple points, without including any mention of the use of racial slurs.
One sentence from the Controller’s Office report lays it out: “Witnesses interviewed noted that the CS gas and rubber bullets were deployed not only along Market Street, but also down side streets where no protest or any improper activity occurred; those side streets intersected with Market Street and flowed through the residential section of the neighborhood.”
How did the West Philly suit end up in settlement 3 years later?
Over the course of the 2.5 years the West Philly case was active, the city filed multiple requests to delay their response to the complaint.
The case was referred to Magistrate Judge David R. Strawbridge for a settlement conference on March 10, 2021, after a joint letter from the plaintiffs was filed a week earlier.
After the case moved to settlement negotiations, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, already representing plaintiffs in the case, got involved — as they have with similar cases from around the country — by sending the city a letter suggesting the implementation of a model consent decree and suite of police policy reforms.
The city didn’t respond to the LDF’s suggestions, but denied a suite of reforms suggested by plaintiffs later on.
Court records show that plaintiffs met with Phillly’s Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at the time, Nefertiri Sickout, in the latter half of 2021. Per court filings, they met to discuss:
- A potential proposal for PPD to monitor extremism and white supremacy among officers
- The enforcement of PPD directives 8.11 and 10.2, which address racial bias and use of force respectively
- The damages matrix being forwarded by the plaintiffs
Negotiations continued for about a year, with the final settlement conferences taking place last December.
Who are the plaintiffs in the West Philly case?
The West Philly case involved 20 plaintiffs who were represented by Abolitionist Law Center, the Legal Defense Fund, and Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg … Lin. The mix of activists, observers, residents, and protesters involved in the suit, based on their accounts in the complaint include:
- Bedjy Jeanty — A protestor whose shoulder was dislocated by a rubber bullet.
- Anthony Smith — A former public school teacher and activist who the suit claims was wrongfully arrested and detained by PPD for roughly eight hours. Smith is facing federal charges stemming from the 2020 protests, which led to other Philly activists starting up a defense campaign.
- Joseph Moyer — A West Philly resident shot in the back by a less-than-lethal projectile.
- Ketty Richard — A protester who heard PPD members use racial slurs as she was tear gassed.
- Marie Johnson — A resident who lives near 52nd and Chancellor, who watched police armored vehicles from her porch, saw PPD shoot rubber bullets at neighbors from her block, and was tear gassed.
- Ryan Bing — A protester who was tear gassed and hit by a less-than-lethal round.
- Shahidah Mubarak-Hadi — A West Philly resident who was at home when she saw tear gas coming through her open windows, which affected her and her sons, three and six years old at the time.
- Amelia Carter — A resident who was observing what was taking place, and was tear gassed multiple times.
- Christina Garcés — A Temple medical student who went to 52nd Street to provide aid to anyone who needed it. She dealt with “burns, cuts, and active bleeding,” recommended that some affected go to the emergency room, and witnessed the targeting of street medics. She saw the looting of a liquor store near 49th and Baltimore, where police were not present.
- Marquis Ransom — A protester who was tear gassed.
- Cora Isom — An area resident who was tear gassed and took shelter in the house of another plaintiff, Catherine Heite.
- Catherine Heite — An area resident with some medical training, who was present with a helmet and buckets of water to diffuse tear gas canisters. She was shot with rubber bullets twice, and saw three young girls hiding under a cardboard box to avoid police munitions.
- Emily Neil — A freelance journalist at the time (who now works at WHYY), who was taking pictures of the scene. As she documented the scene a nearby protester told passing SWAT officers he was recording. They opened fire on Neil and the man with rubber bullets. Neil was struck twice, once in the head which led to eight stitches on her forehead.
- Judith Palmer — An area resident who was present as a bystander. She was shot by a rubber bullet, though no one around her was engaged in disruptive activity, per the complaint.
- Sahar Sadeghi — An area resident on the scene as a bystander, who was pepper sprayed without provoking such a response from police officers.
- Anthony James — A Philadelphian riding his bike by the scene, who stopped to view what was going on and was pepper sprayed.
- Sergio Cea — An activist who was on the scene observing police actions, and was pepper sprayed. Cea is political director of Reclaim Philadelphia, a progressive political organization.
- Johana Rahman — An area resident and trained street medic who was directing people to a makeshift medic station. Rahman, an asthmatic, began to hyperventilate when she was tear gassed.
- Isa Richardson — An organizer with Philly for REAL Justice, who was working as a street medic. Richardson was tear gassed.
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A desperate mother searches for her two children after they disappeared amid a gigantic fire at an illegal petrol station in central Baghdad. The Iraq war began in March 2003 with a U.S.-led invasion. (photo: Moises Saman/Magnum Photos)
Today is the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. We should never forget and never forgive the architects of that evil war.
What happened on March 20, 2003 wasn’t a “mistake.” It wasn’t well-intentioned but “unwise.” It was a calculated, premeditated crime perpetrated on a massive scale. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in a war premised on transparently nonsensical lies.
The Human Toll
By the time President George W. Bush ordered the invasion, I’d spent months marching in antiwar protests and sitting in organizing meetings in church basements. On February 15, 2003, the Greater Lansing Network Against the War in Iraq brought four thousand people out to the streets of my hometown, marching from the union building at Michigan State University (MSU) to the steps of the state capitol in Lansing. It was one small part of the largest coordinated protests in human history. Between six and ten million people turned out in six hundred cities around the world to tell the war planners “no.”
They didn’t listen. And in the coming months and years, more than four thousand Americans came home in flag-draped coffins. One of those coffins held the body of a kid with whom I went to high school. He was seventeen when he joined the Army. Four years too young to go to one of the bars crammed with MSU students on Friday and Saturday nights in East Lansing. Eight years too young to rent a car. And a year too young to be eligible to vote for any of the politicians who decided to throw his life away on a cruel and stupid “war of choice.”
We had friends in common, but he and I didn’t hang out, so I have no idea what his motives were for enlisting. But I have to imagine the recruiters told him the usual things about how the US military exists to “defend freedom.” Instead, he died on the other side of the world in the process of imposing an occupation bitterly resented by the vast majority of Iraqis.
The consequences for ordinary Iraqis dwarfed the “Coalition” casualties. According to an estimate published this month by the Watson Institute at Brown University, since the invasion between 550,000 and 580,000 people died in Iraq and then Syria when the chaos spread there — and “several times as many may have died due to indirect causes such as preventable diseases.” In addition, more than seven million people fled the two countries, and another eight million became “internal refugees.”
David Frum Rewrites History
In a speech the year before the invasion, Bush castigated Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as “the axis of evil.” The idea that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which fought a long and bloody war through the 1980s, were part of an “axis” was already bizarre before you threw in North Korea — but this was the height of America’s post-9/11 jingoistic fervor, and Bush’s rhetoric didn’t have to make sense for a huge portion of the country to nod along.
The author of that speech, David Frum, might have slunk away from public life in shame after the catastrophic consequences of Bush’s wars in the Middle East became clear — if he were capable of shame. Instead, he’s the author of a piece released last week in the Atlantic under the jaw-dropping headline, “The Iraq War Reconsidered.”
In it, Frum admits that the war went badly and grants that it may perhaps have been pragmatically “unwise” — even as he insists the US didn’t act with “unprovoked aggression,” argues that it might have been worse to leave Hussein in power, and bristles at any comparison between Iraq and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Above all, he seems to regret that the debacle in Iraq dampened public enthusiasm for new wars elsewhere:
The belief that America could be a force for good in the world sadly and wrongly dimmed. Memories of Iraq became a powerful resource for extremists and authoritarians who wanted to push democracies aside and leave the world to the autocrats.
Frum says the Iraq invasion wasn’t “unprovoked aggression” because the first Gulf War in 1990–91 was “clearly legitimate” given Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and Iraq hadn’t complied with the conditions of the cease-fire. But if Frum were serious about this argument, he would also have to maintain that if some other power had bombed US cities after, say, the US invasion of Grenada or the US invasion of Panama, this would have been “clearly legitimate” — and any US violations of the subsequent cease-fire would been grounds for the cluster bombing, invasion, and long-term occupation of the entire country.
Does David Frum really think that? Does anyone think that?
A War Based on Absurd Lies
At the time, Bush and his cronies didn’t say, “We’re going to invade Iraq because there were some cease-fire violations from the war that ended twelve years ago, and that’s all the justification we need.” They knew no one would have accepted such a rationale. Instead, they asserted that (a) Saddam Hussein had “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and (b) the Iraqi dictator, who’d long brutally repressed local Islamists, was going to magically decide to share these “WMDs” with his mortal enemies in al-Qaeda. Bush administration officials argued that this theoretical possibility of WMDs falling in al-Qaeda’s hands was too terrifying for anyone to wait for real evidence. The “smoking gun,” Vice President Dick Cheney infamously said, could be a “mushroom cloud” over a US city.
All of this is nonsensical in the same way as Vladimir Putin’s claim that he invaded Ukraine to “demilitarize and denazify” that country. Even if there had been any reason to believe (a), the absurdity of (b) would have made it irrelevant.
David Frum claims to have been shocked that there were no WMDs in Iraq. And it’s true that much of what the Bush administration said about WMDs later turned out to be based on deliberate distortion. But even at the time, the evidence presented to the public was paper thin.
I can remember arguing about this with the professor in my political science class in 2002. The professor — a fairly liberal Democrat — told us that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was at least working on nuclear weapons. When I asked how he could possibly know that, he referred to the president’s many confident statements. Surely all these assertions were based on information Bush was getting from the intelligence agencies.
I didn’t buy it. If definitive evidence existed, why weren’t they sharing it — the way that, for example, John F. Kennedy’s administration showed the whole world surveillance pictures of Soviet missile sites in Cuba in 1962?
The closest we got was Secretary of State Colin Powell waving around a vial of anthrax at the United Nations as he made wild claims about the Iraqi threat. I watched Powell’s speech with a group of antiwar students at my college, and I remember at one point he shared intercepted Iraqi communications that vaguely referred to “trucks” and Powell asserted as if it were the only possible interpretation that the trucks in question were mobile chemical weapons labs. I was amazed that anyone anywhere was taking this stuff seriously.
Never Forget
That skepticism didn’t make me unique. Again: six to ten million of us marched in antiwar protests that February. The global antiwar movement was absolutely correct — and no one who was on the wrong side in 2003 should be allowed to forget it. Not shameless ghouls like David Frum, not the politicians in both parties who voted for the war because they were afraid of looking weak, and not all the oh-so-clever centrist pundits who ran cover for the Bush administration on their blogs or in New York Times op-eds.
None of these people were making an innocent mistake. They were throwing in their lot with conspirators openly planning to destroy a society on the other side of the world — killing hundreds of thousands at minimum in the process — in a war that was based on barely coherent nonsense. A war that was very good for the shareholders at Halliburton and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and bad for nearly everyone else.
This isn’t a “live-and-learn” situation.
The invasion of Iraq wasn’t a “mistake.”
It was a crime.
And it’s unforgivable.
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Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
ALSO SEE: Trump Is Bracing for His Arrest. What Happens Next?
Grand jury investigating ex-president over hush money payment to an adult film star appears poised to complete its work soon
Over the weekend, Trump claimed without any evidence that he would be arrested on Tuesday, with his representatives later saying he was citing media reports and leaks. There was no indication that prediction would come true, though the grand jury appeared to take an important step forward by hearing on Monday from a witness favourable to Trump, presumably so prosecutors could ensure the panel had a chance to consider any testimony that could be remotely seen as exculpatory.
The next steps in a grand jury process shrouded in secrecy remain unclear, and it is uncertain if additional witnesses might be summoned. But a city mindful of the riot by Trump loyalists at the US Capitol more than two years ago took steps to gird itself for any violence that could accompany the unprecedented prosecution of a former president, while fellow Republicans considering the 2024 presidential nomination sized up how an indictment might upend the race.
The testimony from Robert Costello, a lawyer with close ties to numerous key Trump aides, appeared to be a final opportunity for allies of the former president to steer the grand jury away from an indictment. He was invited by prosecutors to appear after saying that he had information to undercut the credibility of Michael Cohen, a former lawyer and fixer for Trump who later turned against him and then became a key witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation.
Costello had provided Cohen with legal services several years ago after Cohen himself became entangled in the federal investigation into the hush money payments. In a news conference after his grand jury appearance, Costello told reporters that he had come forward because he did not believe Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal crimes and served time in prison, could be trusted.
“If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, then so be it,” Costello said. “But Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence.”
Responding to Costello’s claims on MSNBC later Monday, Cohen said Costello was never his lawyer and “he lacks any sense of veracity”.
There were no clear signs that Costello’s testimony had affected the course of the investigation. Cohen had been available for over two hours in case prosecutors wanted him to rebut Costello’s testimony but was told he was not needed, his attorney said on Monday.
The testimony came two days after Trump said he expected to face criminal charges and urged supporters to protest against his possible arrest. In a series of social media posts through the weekend, the Republican former president criticised the New York investigation, directing particularly hostile rhetoric towards the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.
New York officials have been monitoring online chatter of threats of varying specificity, and even as portable metal barricades were dropped off to safeguard streets and sidewalks, there were no immediate signs that Trump’s calls for protests were being heeded.
Costello briefly acted as a legal adviser to Cohen after the FBI raided Cohen’s home and apartment in 2018. At the time, Cohen was being investigated for tax evasion and for payments he helped orchestrate in 2016 to buy the silence of two women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Trump.
For several months, it was unclear whether Cohen, a longtime lawyer and fixer for the Trump Organization who once boasted that he would “take a bullet” for his boss, would remain loyal to the president.
Cohen ultimately decided to plead guilty in connection with the payments to the adult actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal, which he said were directed by Trump. Since then, he has been a vociferous Trump critic, testifying before Congress and then to the Manhattan grand jury.
Trump, who has denied having sex with either woman, has called Cohen a liar. Costello broke with Cohen before he pleaded guilty, after it became clear he was no longer in Trump’s camp.
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Iowa governor Kim Reynolds introduces a fellow Republican, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, in Des Moines, March 10. (photo: Rachel Mummey/WP)
Even as teens draped in rainbow flags crowded into the Capitol rotunda chanting “We say gay” on March 8, Iowa lawmakers quickly passed three bills related to gay and transgender rights, culminating with a measure to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth that is awaiting Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’s signature.
The votes were not only emphatic but were also a sharp reversal for the state: Iowa has veered so far to the right in recent years that its political landscape is virtually unrecognizable from the centrist place that chose Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and was one of the earliest states in the country to affirm same-sex marriage. A joke among statehouse reporters is that Iowa is becoming the “Florida of the North” — without the beaches.
“This isn’t the Iowa I know,” said Lee Schott, pastor of Valley United Methodist Church in West Des Moines, who called herself “progressive” politically. She was standing outside the House chamber on a recent weekday, hoping to lobby Republican legislators against the transgender bills — and not having much luck.
A Republican-led Iowa “used to mean welcoming immigrants, helping refugees, supporting our great public school system,” Schott said. “It doesn’t mean any of those things now. It’s ‘anti’ those things now.”
During last year’s midterm elections, Iowa bucked the national trend and delivered a commanding victory for Republicans — reelecting Reynolds, flipping the one remaining House seat held by Democrats, winning all statewide offices save one and widening GOP majorities in both the state House and Senate.
Political analysts in the state say that Iowa’s swing has solidified over the past seven years as reliably Democratic working-class voters abandoned the party in favor of Donald Trump’s message, and the state’s large percentage of independent voters also moved toward the Republicans.
Asked about the flurry of “anti-LGBTQ legislation” in a recent news conference, Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley — the grandson of the state’s long-serving Republican U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley — said the Iowa lawmakers were acting with “common sense.”
“We laid out in session very early on some of these bills being part of our priority list,” Grassley said. “A lot of the bills we are working on, we’re taking concerns from Iowans across the state and trying to figure out how we have best policies.”
Reynolds, who was reelected to her second full term in November with Trump’s endorsement, has helped drive the state’s rightward tilt, shifting to focus on culture-war issues, gun rights and limits on abortion access. Critics accuse her of using her agenda to burnish her conservative credentials for the national stage in 2024, although she has so far said she has no intention of leaving Iowa.
At a February appearance at a raucous town hall co-sponsored by Moms for Liberty — the Florida-based group that has campaigned for book bans across the country — Reynolds celebrated her school choice victory and portrayed herself both as a grandma of 11 and a warrior against the “radical left.”
“They think patriotism is racist and pornographic library books are education,” Reynolds said, speaking over shouting protesters and supporters chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” “They believe that the content of our character is less important than the color of our skin. They believe that children should be encouraged to pick their gender and the parents, well, they’re just in the way.”
Reynolds, 63, the former lieutenant governor, was elevated to governor in 2017 when business-oriented conservative Terry Branstad was named Trump’s ambassador to China.
A prime example of her activist approach is seen in education measures. She had long pushed for a school voucher program as the centerpiece of her agenda as governor. But two earlier bills failed to make it out of the Iowa House, over objections of Republicans whose constituents have no access to private schools in rural areas and where consolidation remains a constant threat. About 40 percent of Iowa counties have no accredited nonpublic schools, according to a state report.
So last year Reynolds took matters into her own hands, supporting a half-dozen primary opponents of recalcitrant Republicans, including the chairman of the House’s education committee, Dustin Hite, who, along with others, lost to a more conservative candidate.
With a new school-choice-friendly majority in place, an expanded version of the legislation passed easily in January. When fully implemented, it will allow all Iowa families to use taxpayer-funded “education savings accounts” for private school tuition, costing the state $345 million a year, according to a state analysis.
Such interference by a sitting governor was “unprecedented” in Iowa, said Melissa Peterson, the legislative and policy director for the Iowa State Education Association.
“That’s a red flag when your head of government is primarying her own party. It is an indication that the ideologies are becoming more extreme,” said Kelly Shaw, the former nonpartisan mayor of the town of Indianola who now teaches political science at Iowa State University. “The governor has effectively removed her opposition, and that is pretty extraordinary.”
Reynolds declined to be interviewed.
Iowa, with its “first in the nation” political caucuses, was long a high-profile early stop for presidential hopefuls glad-handing for votes and noshing on fried pickles at the state fair.
The state of 3.2 million has had a higher percentage of White and rural residents than the rest of the country, but it was nonetheless a reliable barometer of the national political mood through the Obama elections. Then in 2016, the voters who formerly sided with Democrats as well as independents shifted to Trump.
In 2020, Trump won 56 percent of independent voters and Biden 37 percent, according to an analysis by Timothy M. Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, compared with Obama’s 58 percent versus Mitt Romney’s 36 percent in 2012.
J. Ann Selzer, the president of Iowa’s best-known public opinion research company, said that while voter registration in the state has historically been split by thirds between Democrats, Republicans and “no party” voters, Republicans are more likely to vote than others. In the 2022 midterm elections, for example, she estimates that 42 percent of registered Republicans voted versus 34 percent of registered Democrats and 24 percent of “no party” voters.
Experts say Democrats have struggled not only to get out the vote but also to attract popular candidates and match Republican fundraising. The party also lacks a national standard-bearer like former senator Tom Harkin, who retired in 2015, analysts said, or a deep bench of inspiring younger politicians.
The party’s fortunes took an embarrassingly public dive in 2020, when the Democratic presidential caucus was marred by a software failure and a days-long delay in announcing the results.
“The Democratic Party seems highly ineffective right now,” said Mark Kende, a constitutional law professor at Drake University in Des Moines. “We botched the last caucus completely, which suggests a level of disorganization that is troubling, and there are no real leaders, no statesmanlike figure leading the party like Tom Harkin.”
That contributed to the Democratic National Committee’s recent move to end Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus status in lieu of holding early primaries in more diverse states such as South Carolina. That decision has not been finalized, but the DNC has indicated that Iowa will be punished if the state party tries to hold its vote as usual along with the Republicans, who have not changed their calendar.
While Obama’s message of “hope and change” once resonated with working-class Democrats — and the state’s independents — the Democrats’ current struggle to focus their message on the economy amid culture war noise has put off some centrist voters, analysts say. Reynolds was able to capitalize on this during her campaign against Democrat Deirdre DeJear, who is Black, running an ad that featured a different Black female lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), calling for defunding the police; Democrats called Reynolds’s ad misleading and “racist.”
Republicans suggest that Democrats have simply forgotten how to talk to their down-to-earth Iowa brethren, particularly on LGBTQ issues.
“My own personal feeling is that we’re moving from a purple [state] because the message the Democrats are using is not the message the average Iowans want to hear,” said state Rep. John H. Wills (R), who helped shepherd the governor’s school choice bill through the legislature. “I think in general Iowans support all Iowans but not teaching those types of things in third grade and having underage people doing transition surgeries and taking hormone blockers. We’re trying to be supportive of all Iowans but the other side is happy to promote the most egregious, far-left agenda and that is where we are at.”
So far this year, many of the bills that have drawn the most attention have been aimed at the LGBTQ community — a total of 29, according to a tally by One Iowa Action, the statewide LGBTQ equality organization. About 12 are still in process, including proposals to prohibit spending on diversity and inclusion offices in state universities and to allow health-care providers to refuse care on the basis of religious beliefs. The House has passed a bill that would prohibit the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Two bills, one that limits bathroom use in schools to “biological sex,” and a curriculum and school library measure that removes the requirement to teach students about HIV, are awaiting the governor’s signature.
A March poll by Selzer’s firm for the Des Moines Register found that a majority of Iowa adults favor bills that would ban public schools from teaching about gender identity (54 percent) and instruction on sexual orientation (also 54 percent) in kindergarten through sixth grade, and that a slightly smaller majority — 52 percent — support a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth including puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgeries.
“From about 2019 until this year, attacks on LGBTQ Iowans have been exponentially increasing,” said Keenan Crow, One Iowa Action’s director of policy and advocacy. “I believe it’s primarily because of the governor and her shifting priorities. It seems for whatever reason, she wants Iowa to be more like Florida.”
But Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of the Family Leader, a social-conservative organization in Iowa, said that parents across the political spectrum in Iowa are still angry over pandemic measures, and concerned about transgender youth using bathrooms that don’t match their sex as determined at birth and library books perceived as too sexual or adult for certain age groups.
“When you talk to parents, and I talk to a lot of parents not just who are conservative but liberal as well, they still believe a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl and there is a restroom to use and a restroom not to use,” Vander Plaats said. “It’s common sense.”
The measures mimic bills passed in other states like Florida, Crow noted, but stand in contrast to the state’s deeply held tradition of being on the forefront of civil rights. Iowa was the first state to desegregate schools in 1868, amended its civil rights law to protect sexual orientation and gender identity in 2007 and legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, only the third state in the nation to do so.
Legislators this year proposed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, which did not make it past the legislature’s winnowing process and would have been unconstitutional in any case, Drake law professor Kende said, given the federal protection granted in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court case legalizing same-sex marriage.
But the proposal nonetheless sent a chill through many in the LGBTQ community.
Elinor A. Levin, a Democrat and Iowa City legislator who identifies as queer, said she decided to run for her state House seat last year because most of the people she knows in their 20s and 30s, “don’t see a future for themselves in Iowa.”
“They don’t see a career here or they don’t want to raise a family here or they themselves don’t feel welcome,” she said.
“The big surprise this session is how far some of this hurtful legislation is going,” Levin continued. “In the past some of these bills would never have gotten a subcommittee hearing, and now we’re passing these bills and trying to make them law. That’s incredibly frustrating and shortsighted in my opinion.”
Levin said that she was concerned that the bills would ultimately harm Iowa’s ability to retain college graduates or recruit highly skilled workers.
Iowa already has the 10th-worst “brain drain” in the country, according to an analysis of federal data by economists at the University of North Carolina, the W.E. Upjohn Institute, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago, which shows the percentage difference between the number of college graduates Iowa produces versus the number of college graduates living in the state at minus-34 points.
Ankeny resident and former state Democratic Party official Andrea Phillips, the mother of a transgender boy, Jaxx, age 14, said that she and her husband, Tom, a consultant, were beginning to discuss whether they should move from Iowa to somewhere more politically liberal in the Pacific Northwest. When they first moved to Iowa in 2009 after a decade of living overseas, she and her husband viewed the state as very centrist and supportive of civil liberties. That’s no longer the case, she said.
“With a lot of these bills, they’re solidifying the message to young kids, people my age, that they’re not normal, they shouldn’t be thinking these things, and if they voice them they’re going to get in trouble,” Jaxx Phillips added. “It’s very intimidating, and very dangerous.”
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A polar bear navigates the Arctic climes of Greenland. (photo: Keith Ladzinski/NatGeo)
"Without urgent, effective, and equitable mitigation and adaptation actions, climate change increasingly threatens ecosystems, biodiversity, and the livelihoods, health and wellbeing of current and future generations," according to the report, released Monday in Interlaken, Switzerland.
Reports by the IPCC are considered the planet's most authoritative assessments of the state of global warming, its consequences and the measures being taken to tackle it.
“Humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts – everything, everywhere, all at once.”
The report isn't all doom and gloom: It also said there are many feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now.
IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee said that "if we act now, we can still secure a livable sustainable future for all.”
'Hurtling down the road to ruin'
Environmental groups were quick to praise the report's findings:
“This is the stone-cold truth laid out in unassailable science by the world’s top climate experts," said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"We’re hurtling down the road to ruin and running out of time to change course," Bapna said. "We’re leaving the most vulnerable among us to pay a price they can’t afford for a crisis they didn’t cause. We’re condemning our children to a world of cascading disasters."
Kelly Trout, co-director of the environmental group Oil Change International, said, "The science is crystal-clear: We must take immediate action to phase out fossil fuels if we're to keep the 1.5 degree (Celsius) limit alive and stave off devastation to people and ecosystems worldwide.
"The IPCC has shown the fossil fuel phase-out must start now, and wind, solar, and energy efficiency are the keys this decade, not fossil-fuel-industry-favored techno-fixes like carbon capture and storage."
The report "underlines how important it is to not only accelerate climate action but to do it in a way that helps everyone in the world, not just those in the wealthiest countries and regions," said Christopher Trisos, a co-author and director of the Climate Risk Lab at the African Climate and Development Initiative.
What is the IPCC?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the U.N. body for assessing the science related to climate change, its consequences and adaptation and mitigation strategies. It provides periodic assessments to the leaders of its 195 member states.
This report is the culmination of an eight-year-long series of climate science papers, the sixth assessment since the IPCC was established in 1988. Over the past six years, hundreds of authors in three working groups reviewed thousands of academic papers with the latest science.
- August 2021: The release of the Working Group I report – a "code red for humanity" – said climate change is clearly human-caused and “unequivocal," made more precise and warmer forecasts than ever, and warned that some effects of global warming are already inevitable.
- February 2022: When Working Group II published its report, co-chair Hans-Otto Pörtner warned that "some parts of the planet will become uninhabitable." Many of the changes already seen are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years, the report said, and others already in motion – such as a rise in sea levels – may be irreversible.
- April 2022: Working Group III found average annual greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 to 2019 were higher than any decade on record and outlined how further temperature increases will multiply the risk of floods, storms, drought and heat waves. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the report revealed "a litany of broken climate promises."
- March 2023: This final product synthesizes key information from previous reports.
How much has the globe warmed?
Governments had agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) this century, ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). Top scientists say this is the level beyond which catastrophic changes could occur.
Yet temperatures have already increased by more than 1.1 C (2 degrees F) since pre-industrial times, resulting in measurable increases in disasters such as flash floods, prolonged droughts, more intense hurricanes and longer-burning wildfires – putting human lives in danger and costing governments hundreds of billions of dollars.
Global warming "has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world," the IPCC reported. "Every increment of warming results in rapidly escalating hazards. More intense heat waves, heavier rainfall and other weather extremes further increase risks for human health and ecosystems."
The key question facing the globe is whether the global average temperature increase, now warming at 0.2 degrees a decade, can be held to 1.5 degrees. Experts say that has become increasingly unlikely.
In January, federal scientists warned that 2024 could contend for the warmest year on record and that the 1.5-degree global average threshold could be reached in the 2030s.
The pathways that would have limited warming to 1.5 degrees called for emissions to peak before 2025 and begin dropping, but so far emissions have continued rising, although at a slower rate than before, World Resources Institute officials said this week.
"Without a very significant shift in the direction of travel very soon we’re likely to blow past 1.5 degrees early in the 2030s," said David Waskow, the Institute's international climate director.
A closing window of opportunity
Among the report's key findings:
- Human activities, principally through greenhouse emissions, have unequivocally caused global warming, driving widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere.
- Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a more livable and sustainable future for all.
- Deep, rapid and sustained mitigation and faster movement toward adaptation in this decade would reduce losses and damages and deliver many co-benefits, especially for air quality and health.
- Vulnerable communities that have contributed the least to current climate change are being disproportionately affected.
- Deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within about two decades.
- Current investment and funding for adaptation is insufficient, especially in developing countries.
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