Aa
"War Criminals Shouldn’t Be Honored":
Rutgers Students Nix Condoleezza Rice from Commencement Speech
Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has withdrawn as commencement speaker at Rutgers University following protests by faculty and students over her role in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Rutgers faculty had circulated a petition decrying the role Rice played in "efforts to mislead the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Last week, Rutgers students occupied a campus building in a call for the invitation to be withdrawn. In a statement this weekend, Rice said her appearance "has become a distraction." We discuss the "No Rice Campaign" with Rutgers University student protester Carmelo Cintrón Vivas and Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
cont@
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/5/war_criminals_shouldnt_be_honored_rutgers
Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has withdrawn as commencement speaker at Rutgers University following protests by faculty and students over her role in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Rutgers faculty had circulated a petition decrying the role Rice played in "efforts to mislead the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Last week, Rutgers students occupied a campus building in a call for the invitation to be withdrawn. In a statement this weekend, Rice said her appearance "has become a distraction." We discuss the "No Rice Campaign" with Rutgers University student protester Carmelo Cintrón Vivas and Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
cont@
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/5/war_criminals_shouldnt_be_honored_rutgers
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/12/bush200712
Good read.
Good read.
"Hussein was not the benevolent leader you are making him up to be. "
I never said nor did I ever intimate that Saddam was a benevolent leader.
Did you simply make that up?
I said the Iraqis were better off before the Iraq War. I said that the Middle East was more stable and I said that the US was better off before the Iraq War.
You stated: "Didn't we prop Hussein up as leader of that country? Then, like we normally do when we prop someone up, we have to go take him out. So, we do that and then we pull out before we can prop up another leader.... "
So that is your analysis/defense of the Iraq War?
Yikes! I expected better from you.
I never said nor did I ever intimate that Saddam was a benevolent leader.
Did you simply make that up?
I said the Iraqis were better off before the Iraq War. I said that the Middle East was more stable and I said that the US was better off before the Iraq War.
You stated: "Didn't we prop Hussein up as leader of that country? Then, like we normally do when we prop someone up, we have to go take him out. So, we do that and then we pull out before we can prop up another leader.... "
So that is your analysis/defense of the Iraq War?
Yikes! I expected better from you.
" Iraq is worse off now and so is the Middle East and so is the USA...... because of the Iraq War."
So very very true and so many more people and countries hate us because of it. Whatever happened to diplomacy? Isn't that what diplomats are supposed to do??
So very very true and so many more people and countries hate us because of it. Whatever happened to diplomacy? Isn't that what diplomats are supposed to do??
As much as I dislike Saddam and everything he stood for, it would appear in hindsight that he was the glue holding the region together. Since he is gone, things have really deteriorated.
I am not making him out to be a benevolent leader. Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say.
I am not making him out to be a benevolent leader. Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say.
I don't know about not addressing the core issue. In fact, I think I totally address the core issue. Didn't we prop Hussein up as leader of that country? Then, like we normally do when we prop someone up, we have to go take him out. So, we do that and then we pull out before we can prop up another leader....
Hussein was not the benevolent leader you are making him up to be. The problem is we didn't get a benevolent being in there in time, and now you get what you have there.
Hussein was not the benevolent leader you are making him up to be. The problem is we didn't get a benevolent being in there in time, and now you get what you have there.
Very clever response........but it doesn't address the core issue which is - Iraq is worse off now and so is the Middle East and so is the USA...... because of the Iraq War.
You wanted us out, were out... have a coke and a smile.
Iraq's house of cards
By Zaid al-Ali
Published: May 2, 2014
{..... Maliki and his inner circle have also exacerbated security risks through a series of elementary mistakes, including subjecting thousands of innocent young men to unjustified detention and allowing corruption to get so out of hand that it has now seriously impacted the capacity of the security sector. Military units and police throughout the country now either stand aside or actively participate as local mafias force businesses to pay protection money.
Security forces in the capital are still forced to use fake bomb detectors simply so that the government (which was responsible for buying the devices) can save face. The result is that the number of security-related deaths has roughly tripled over the past year, as car bombs continue to rip through army units and civilian areas with ruthless efficiency. Meanwhile, armed confrontations between gunmen and government forces have become more frequent.
Security has deteriorated so terribly that Iraq is now once again at risk of splitting apart. Many areas of the country are now out of the government's control: Large swaths of the western province of Anbar are in open rebellion; security forces have essentially given up trying to control parts of the northern province of Nineveh, which has become a major financial hub for terrorist organizations; and the eastern province of Diyala has witnessed another round of brutal bloodletting as militias and government forces shell civilian areas.
The state's army and police have revealed themselves to be little more than a paper tiger. They are very willing to arrest and torture the innocent and defenseless, but are essentially powerless to control the actions of powerful militias that are now running riot throughout the country. With security forces incapable of facing the threat, Shiite militias have actually begun providing instructions to the military — sometimes even replacing them in battle altogether. These developments have exposed Maliki's strongman image as the house of cards it always was.
The prime minister's supporters regularly refer admiringly to his capacity for survival, but it is precisely Maliki's stubborn insistence that he should remain in control of government that has hindered the provision of services. Hospitals are in such a poor state that Iraqi doctors would never imagine turning to one of their colleagues for treatment; they travel to any number of capitals in the region for even minor ailments.
Electricity production has improved only slightly, to the extent that summers and winters are still invariably punctuated by daily power cuts, some of which can last for days. Rather than trying to resolve these problems, Maliki has allowed a grotesque form of nepotism to gnaw away at the state's bureaucracy, marginalizing the few competent officials who survived Baath Party rule and Iraq's wars.
These failures also have served to prevent alternatives to the status quo from emerging. Maliki's greatest success may have been creating the impression that he is indispensable — that the state will collapse if the man in charge is removed. The truth is that what makes Maliki and his clique indispensable is their willingness to burn the whole house down to protect their positions.
In fact, many competent politicians are far better placed than Maliki and his inner circle to guide the country to a better place. Iraq does not lack competent administrators or politicians — it merely lacks the democratic traditions that would allow them to play a greater role in revitalizing its moribund government.
Several names come immediately to mind: Mohammed Allawi, a former communications minister who resigned in protest when Maliki kept appointing incompetent party loyalists to his ministry; Ali Allawi, a former defense and finance minister who left government in 2006 in disgust at the corruption; Adel Abdul Mahdi, a respected politician who could have sufficient backing to form a government; and Ali Dwai, a governor of a southern province who is renowned for his effectiveness in very difficult circumstances.
While Maliki may want observers to fear that his departure would cause a security deterioration, the truth is that life in Iraq is already becoming more desperate by the day — in large part because of the toxic role that Maliki has been playing. Sectarian relations have worsened considerably, and the general population is terrified of a renewed conflict.
A change at the country's helm is needed precisely in order to restore the possibility of an improvement in the country's direction; with Maliki, that possibility does not exist. For Iraqis to place their trust in the possibility that he might change his style of governance after eight years in power would be borderline suicidal.
There is in fact a serious possibility that Maliki will not obtain sufficient popular support to retain his position. His electoral popularity peaked at around 24 percent of the vote in 2010, when many Iraqis still believed in his nonsectarian and strongman credentials. However, Iraq's complex and dysfunctional parliamentary system has allowed him to negotiate his survival.
This election season, Maliki's fortunes will necessarily decline from the previous poll — the only questions are by how much and how his electoral rivals will react. After the votes are counted, Iraq's future will depend on its leaders' ability to form a post-election alliance without the country's most corrosive elements at its helm.}
http://www.stripes.com/opinion/iraq-s-house-of-cards-1.281035
By Zaid al-Ali
Published: May 2, 2014
{..... Maliki and his inner circle have also exacerbated security risks through a series of elementary mistakes, including subjecting thousands of innocent young men to unjustified detention and allowing corruption to get so out of hand that it has now seriously impacted the capacity of the security sector. Military units and police throughout the country now either stand aside or actively participate as local mafias force businesses to pay protection money.
Security forces in the capital are still forced to use fake bomb detectors simply so that the government (which was responsible for buying the devices) can save face. The result is that the number of security-related deaths has roughly tripled over the past year, as car bombs continue to rip through army units and civilian areas with ruthless efficiency. Meanwhile, armed confrontations between gunmen and government forces have become more frequent.
Security has deteriorated so terribly that Iraq is now once again at risk of splitting apart. Many areas of the country are now out of the government's control: Large swaths of the western province of Anbar are in open rebellion; security forces have essentially given up trying to control parts of the northern province of Nineveh, which has become a major financial hub for terrorist organizations; and the eastern province of Diyala has witnessed another round of brutal bloodletting as militias and government forces shell civilian areas.
The state's army and police have revealed themselves to be little more than a paper tiger. They are very willing to arrest and torture the innocent and defenseless, but are essentially powerless to control the actions of powerful militias that are now running riot throughout the country. With security forces incapable of facing the threat, Shiite militias have actually begun providing instructions to the military — sometimes even replacing them in battle altogether. These developments have exposed Maliki's strongman image as the house of cards it always was.
The prime minister's supporters regularly refer admiringly to his capacity for survival, but it is precisely Maliki's stubborn insistence that he should remain in control of government that has hindered the provision of services. Hospitals are in such a poor state that Iraqi doctors would never imagine turning to one of their colleagues for treatment; they travel to any number of capitals in the region for even minor ailments.
Electricity production has improved only slightly, to the extent that summers and winters are still invariably punctuated by daily power cuts, some of which can last for days. Rather than trying to resolve these problems, Maliki has allowed a grotesque form of nepotism to gnaw away at the state's bureaucracy, marginalizing the few competent officials who survived Baath Party rule and Iraq's wars.
These failures also have served to prevent alternatives to the status quo from emerging. Maliki's greatest success may have been creating the impression that he is indispensable — that the state will collapse if the man in charge is removed. The truth is that what makes Maliki and his clique indispensable is their willingness to burn the whole house down to protect their positions.
In fact, many competent politicians are far better placed than Maliki and his inner circle to guide the country to a better place. Iraq does not lack competent administrators or politicians — it merely lacks the democratic traditions that would allow them to play a greater role in revitalizing its moribund government.
Several names come immediately to mind: Mohammed Allawi, a former communications minister who resigned in protest when Maliki kept appointing incompetent party loyalists to his ministry; Ali Allawi, a former defense and finance minister who left government in 2006 in disgust at the corruption; Adel Abdul Mahdi, a respected politician who could have sufficient backing to form a government; and Ali Dwai, a governor of a southern province who is renowned for his effectiveness in very difficult circumstances.
While Maliki may want observers to fear that his departure would cause a security deterioration, the truth is that life in Iraq is already becoming more desperate by the day — in large part because of the toxic role that Maliki has been playing. Sectarian relations have worsened considerably, and the general population is terrified of a renewed conflict.
A change at the country's helm is needed precisely in order to restore the possibility of an improvement in the country's direction; with Maliki, that possibility does not exist. For Iraqis to place their trust in the possibility that he might change his style of governance after eight years in power would be borderline suicidal.
There is in fact a serious possibility that Maliki will not obtain sufficient popular support to retain his position. His electoral popularity peaked at around 24 percent of the vote in 2010, when many Iraqis still believed in his nonsectarian and strongman credentials. However, Iraq's complex and dysfunctional parliamentary system has allowed him to negotiate his survival.
This election season, Maliki's fortunes will necessarily decline from the previous poll — the only questions are by how much and how his electoral rivals will react. After the votes are counted, Iraq's future will depend on its leaders' ability to form a post-election alliance without the country's most corrosive elements at its helm.}
http://www.stripes.com/opinion/iraq-s-house-of-cards-1.281035
You don't have to be a genius to see the stupidity in the article you posted Brice. It's patently clear to anyone who has paid attention to the Iraq situation.
"To the contrary, Iraqis now have a chance, denied them under Saddam, to forge a new society, as Germany and Japan did after World War II."
Yeah, and how has that "new society" been working out for the Iraqis?
Iraq, three years after U.S. withdrawal
Things are not going well
By Frances Weaver | May 10, 2014
{How bad is the situation?
It's extremely grim. When U.S. soldiers withdrew in 2011, President Obama boasted they were "leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq." Three years later, the country is under the thumb of an authoritarian ruler, riddled with corruption, and trapped in horrific sectarian violence. Nearly every day, mammoth explosions rock the capital, Baghdad, and other cities, tearing apart restaurants, public markets, and government buildings; in April alone, 750 Iraqis were killed in bombings or in the fighting between government forces and a formidable Sunni extremist insurgency. If the increasingly authoritarian Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki manages to secure victory in April 30's parliamentary elections — the results of which will not be known for weeks — it could ignite a full-fledged civil war. "We were happy when the old dictator went," said Ramadi resident Faleh Shahooth, referring to the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein. "But democracy has brought a new dictator. If the election produces the same thieves again, then it's time for revolution."
What kind of leader is al-Maliki?
In power since 2006, al-Maliki secured re-election in 2010 by promising to form a national "unity" government with his rivals from the Sunni minority, who had previously governed Iraq under Saddam's Ba'athist regime. But within days of America's withdrawal, al-Maliki instigated a brutal crackdown on Sunnis from his vice president downward, purging the Iraqi National Intelligence Service and the government of sectarian rivals. Tens of thousands of political prisoners now wallow in Iraq's jails, while al-Maliki — who has declared himself commander in chief — has built up a series of intelligence files on his political opponents, ready to "call them out," in his words, if they dare criticize him. "Maliki could have been a historic figure," said former Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi. "The Shiites supported him; he had the support of the Sunnis and the Kurds." Instead, he has alienated large swaths of the population, and opened the door to a resurgence of Islamic militants. Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), an al Qaeda–affiliated organization, are now firmly in control of Anbar province, the hard-won western Sunni heartland where some 1,300 U.S. soldiers lost their lives. ISIS is also waging war in neighboring Syria as part of a wider regional Sunni-Shiite struggle.
What about corruption?
It's blatant and widespread. In fact, al-Maliki's government has become a symbol of bribery and theft, with corrupt politicians siphoning off millions of dollars' worth of oil revenues from within the comfort of Baghdad's Green Zone. Abdul-Mahdi estimates that almost $220 billion has been allocated in the last few years to some 6,000 shady government projects, and another $70 billion in government loans has been handed out without being repaid. "The corruption is unbelievable," says political scientist Ghassan al-Atiyyah. "You can't get a job in the army or the government unless you pay; you can't even get out of prison unless you pay." That, combined with a dire lack of public services — including constant electricity shortages — has led to the sense that the overall standard of life in Iraq has only deteriorated since Saddam was toppled.
Are women at least better off?
Their political situation has improved: Under Iraq's postwar constitution, women are guaranteed 25 percent of the seats in parliament. But as conservative Shiite forces have gained a foothold within the government, the average female Iraqi has found herself with fewer rights than under Saddam. More than a quarter of women over the age of 12 in Iraq are illiterate; only 14 percent are either working or actively seeking employment. Perhaps the greatest symbol of Iraqi women's plight today is the Jaafari Personal Status Law, draft legislation approved by Iraq's Council of Ministers in February that lowers the marriage age for girls to 9, forbids women from leaving their homes without their husbands' consent, and legalizes marital rape. "This law means humiliation for women and for Iraqis in general," said female legislator Safia al-Suhail. "It shows that we are going backwards."
Will the elections change anything?
That all depends on who wins. If al-Maliki gets a plurality of votes and remains prime minister, more division and bloodshed are inevitable. He has already insisted he will use all his "energy and effort" to keep his fellow Shiites in full control, and spurn a "unity" coalition government with his Sunni and Kurdish rivals. Having painted himself as a heroic fighter against the Sunni "terrorists," al-Maliki enjoys significant support among the Shiite population, but is widely loathed among Sunnis, who see him as a despot and Iranian stooge. Backroom negotiations to select a prime minister are expected to take months, during which time al-Maliki is likely to use his considerable influence over Iraq's judiciary to get his desired result. "If we know anything about Prime Minister Maliki," said Ahmed Ali, an Iraq analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, "it's that he doesn't retreat easily."
The Kurdish success story
One part of Iraq has proved a surprising exception to the country's grim norm: the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which lies 200 miles north of Baghdad. Kurdish Iraq is largely peaceful, prosperous, democratic, and secular. Corruption exists, but at a tolerable level: "In Kurdistan, the leaders steal about 20 percent," a Kurdish local told The New Yorker, "but 80 percent makes it to the people. In Baghdad, the percentages are reversed." Although already effectively independent from Iraq's central government, the Kurdish regional government has until this point eschewed formal independence in order to capitalize on Baghdad's oil revenues. But having apparently discovered its own huge oil reserves, the regional government is increasingly considering splitting with its violent southern neighbors. "We are talking about a culture of life," said Fuad Hussein, the Kurdish prime minister's chief of staff. "They are busy with a culture of death."}
http://theweek.com/article/index/261272/iraq-three-years-after-us-withdrawal
"To the contrary, Iraqis now have a chance, denied them under Saddam, to forge a new society, as Germany and Japan did after World War II."
Yeah, and how has that "new society" been working out for the Iraqis?
Iraq, three years after U.S. withdrawal
Things are not going well
By Frances Weaver | May 10, 2014
{How bad is the situation?
It's extremely grim. When U.S. soldiers withdrew in 2011, President Obama boasted they were "leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq." Three years later, the country is under the thumb of an authoritarian ruler, riddled with corruption, and trapped in horrific sectarian violence. Nearly every day, mammoth explosions rock the capital, Baghdad, and other cities, tearing apart restaurants, public markets, and government buildings; in April alone, 750 Iraqis were killed in bombings or in the fighting between government forces and a formidable Sunni extremist insurgency. If the increasingly authoritarian Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki manages to secure victory in April 30's parliamentary elections — the results of which will not be known for weeks — it could ignite a full-fledged civil war. "We were happy when the old dictator went," said Ramadi resident Faleh Shahooth, referring to the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein. "But democracy has brought a new dictator. If the election produces the same thieves again, then it's time for revolution."
What kind of leader is al-Maliki?
In power since 2006, al-Maliki secured re-election in 2010 by promising to form a national "unity" government with his rivals from the Sunni minority, who had previously governed Iraq under Saddam's Ba'athist regime. But within days of America's withdrawal, al-Maliki instigated a brutal crackdown on Sunnis from his vice president downward, purging the Iraqi National Intelligence Service and the government of sectarian rivals. Tens of thousands of political prisoners now wallow in Iraq's jails, while al-Maliki — who has declared himself commander in chief — has built up a series of intelligence files on his political opponents, ready to "call them out," in his words, if they dare criticize him. "Maliki could have been a historic figure," said former Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi. "The Shiites supported him; he had the support of the Sunnis and the Kurds." Instead, he has alienated large swaths of the population, and opened the door to a resurgence of Islamic militants. Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), an al Qaeda–affiliated organization, are now firmly in control of Anbar province, the hard-won western Sunni heartland where some 1,300 U.S. soldiers lost their lives. ISIS is also waging war in neighboring Syria as part of a wider regional Sunni-Shiite struggle.
What about corruption?
It's blatant and widespread. In fact, al-Maliki's government has become a symbol of bribery and theft, with corrupt politicians siphoning off millions of dollars' worth of oil revenues from within the comfort of Baghdad's Green Zone. Abdul-Mahdi estimates that almost $220 billion has been allocated in the last few years to some 6,000 shady government projects, and another $70 billion in government loans has been handed out without being repaid. "The corruption is unbelievable," says political scientist Ghassan al-Atiyyah. "You can't get a job in the army or the government unless you pay; you can't even get out of prison unless you pay." That, combined with a dire lack of public services — including constant electricity shortages — has led to the sense that the overall standard of life in Iraq has only deteriorated since Saddam was toppled.
Are women at least better off?
Their political situation has improved: Under Iraq's postwar constitution, women are guaranteed 25 percent of the seats in parliament. But as conservative Shiite forces have gained a foothold within the government, the average female Iraqi has found herself with fewer rights than under Saddam. More than a quarter of women over the age of 12 in Iraq are illiterate; only 14 percent are either working or actively seeking employment. Perhaps the greatest symbol of Iraqi women's plight today is the Jaafari Personal Status Law, draft legislation approved by Iraq's Council of Ministers in February that lowers the marriage age for girls to 9, forbids women from leaving their homes without their husbands' consent, and legalizes marital rape. "This law means humiliation for women and for Iraqis in general," said female legislator Safia al-Suhail. "It shows that we are going backwards."
Will the elections change anything?
That all depends on who wins. If al-Maliki gets a plurality of votes and remains prime minister, more division and bloodshed are inevitable. He has already insisted he will use all his "energy and effort" to keep his fellow Shiites in full control, and spurn a "unity" coalition government with his Sunni and Kurdish rivals. Having painted himself as a heroic fighter against the Sunni "terrorists," al-Maliki enjoys significant support among the Shiite population, but is widely loathed among Sunnis, who see him as a despot and Iranian stooge. Backroom negotiations to select a prime minister are expected to take months, during which time al-Maliki is likely to use his considerable influence over Iraq's judiciary to get his desired result. "If we know anything about Prime Minister Maliki," said Ahmed Ali, an Iraq analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, "it's that he doesn't retreat easily."
The Kurdish success story
One part of Iraq has proved a surprising exception to the country's grim norm: the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which lies 200 miles north of Baghdad. Kurdish Iraq is largely peaceful, prosperous, democratic, and secular. Corruption exists, but at a tolerable level: "In Kurdistan, the leaders steal about 20 percent," a Kurdish local told The New Yorker, "but 80 percent makes it to the people. In Baghdad, the percentages are reversed." Although already effectively independent from Iraq's central government, the Kurdish regional government has until this point eschewed formal independence in order to capitalize on Baghdad's oil revenues. But having apparently discovered its own huge oil reserves, the regional government is increasingly considering splitting with its violent southern neighbors. "We are talking about a culture of life," said Fuad Hussein, the Kurdish prime minister's chief of staff. "They are busy with a culture of death."}
http://theweek.com/article/index/261272/iraq-three-years-after-us-withdrawal
I wouldn't have expected anything else coming out of your mouth. Of course its the stupidest article you've read in a while... of course. It doesn't fit your mode of operation, so it just has to be stupid. Any opposing point of view is stupid... we understand.
The folks around here understand you. We know how smart you are. If we forget, you are there quick, fast and in a hurry to try to remind us...
The folks around here understand you. We know how smart you are. If we forget, you are there quick, fast and in a hurry to try to remind us...
The B word.
oh boy.
oh boy.
That is the stupidest article I've seen in quite a while.
It isn't just Iraq that is worse off - we totally destabilized the entire Middle Eat with that war.
At first I understood you to be saying that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and suggesting that was justification for going to war.
Well, what about all the other bad guys in power? Should we invade their countries too?
Someone wrote that he knew for a fact that we knew for a fact that Iraq had NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. He said this was true because had we actually believed that Saddam had WMDs we would have never invaded Iraq. And, after I thought about that I tend to agree with him. We have never invaded anyone with WMDs and we really have never even talked about it. At the time of the Iraq invasion I kept think about North Korea and wondering why no on saw Kim Jong-il as more of a threat than Saddam. NK has nothing but weapons. At least Iraq had oil to protect and to safeguard but Kim Jong-il had nothing at all to lose. It didn't make sense then and it still doesn't make any real sense. WMDs were never the reason we went to war.
It isn't just Iraq that is worse off - we totally destabilized the entire Middle Eat with that war.
At first I understood you to be saying that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and suggesting that was justification for going to war.
Well, what about all the other bad guys in power? Should we invade their countries too?
Someone wrote that he knew for a fact that we knew for a fact that Iraq had NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. He said this was true because had we actually believed that Saddam had WMDs we would have never invaded Iraq. And, after I thought about that I tend to agree with him. We have never invaded anyone with WMDs and we really have never even talked about it. At the time of the Iraq invasion I kept think about North Korea and wondering why no on saw Kim Jong-il as more of a threat than Saddam. NK has nothing but weapons. At least Iraq had oil to protect and to safeguard but Kim Jong-il had nothing at all to lose. It didn't make sense then and it still doesn't make any real sense. WMDs were never the reason we went to war.
People made the connection between 9/11 and Saddam. Bush never did that and Cheany made a round about mention of it. Yet Susan Rice went on program after program and told the lie that the Bengahazi attacks was from an internet video. Yet silence from you on that.
Boom!
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/iraq-war-was-justified
Overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 achieved important American strategic objectives. Our broad international coalition accomplished its military mission with low casualties and great speed, sending an unmistakable signal of power and determination throughout the Middle East and around the world. Despite all the criticism of what happened after Saddam's defeat, these facts are indisputable.
Nonetheless, relentless hostility by the war's opponents now threaten to overwhelm, in the public mind, the clear merits of eliminating Iraq's Ba'athist dictatorship. Leaving the critics unanswered, combined with the utterly erroneous policy conclusions they have derived, will only lead to more serious problems down the road. Let us consider a few of the prevailing myths:
1. Iraq is worse off now than under Saddam. This charge could come only from people with a propensity to admire totalitarianism. Iraq has certainly gone through a hard decade, and its future is far from secure, but that uncertainty derives from long-standing historical tensions and animosities among its major confessional and ethnic groups which were suppressed under Saddam. One might as well pine for Stalin or Tito. Iraq's inherent defects as an artificial nation may yet bring it to grief, but not because of the US-led invasion. To the contrary, Iraqis now have a chance, denied them under Saddam, to forge a new society, as Germany and Japan did after World War II. But we didn't wage war after Pearl Harbor to do nation-building for our enemies. And, in any event, the issue was never about making life better for Iraqis, but about ensuring a safer world for America and its allies.
2. Wars to impose democracy invariably fail. This generalization, whether true or not, is fundamentally irrelevant to Iraq. While President George W Bush and others sought to justify military action after Saddam's downfall as helping to spread democracy, such arguments played no measurable role in the decision to end Saddam's regime. Obviously, most administration officials expected the Ba'ath party would be replaced by representative government, but that was not the motive, should not have been, and will not be in future interventions.
3. Bush lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Ridiculous. Anyone who has ever served in the US government knows how hard it is to keep anything secret, including our most vital national-security information. The idea that a conspiracy to lie about Saddam's WMD capabilities could, to this day, have kept its machinations secret, in whole or in part, smacks of paranoia.
America and its allies, especially the UK, believed, for example, that Iraq had stocks of chemical weapons not because of espionage, but because of Saddam's own 1991 declarations concerning such weapons pursuant to the Security Council's cease-fire resolution. Iraq claimed it had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction, but refused to provide UN weapons inspectors any information to corroborate those claims. Virtually every objective observer concluded that Iraq was lying about destroying its chemical weapons, and therefore still had large and threatening capabilities. You can search the record in vain for major voices claiming, before the 2003 war, that Iraq didn't have chemical weapons.
The fact is that Saddam Hussein, with or without actual WMD, was a strategic threat to peace and security in the Middle East and globally. Once free of UN economic sanctions and weapons inspectors, which 10 years ago he was very close to achieving, he would have immediately returned to ambitious WMD programs.
4. US military intervention was far more aggressive than was necessary. Not at all. The most cogent criticism of the 2003 action against Saddam is that it was required because we failed in 1991 to pursue our interests to their appropriate conclusion. Had we liberated Kuwait and then marched to Baghdad to overthrow Saddam, the world might have been spared considerable agony, and Iraq would actually have had a greater chance to build a peaceful, democratic society before the rise of al-Qaida and Islamic radicalism took their toll. We can obviously never know the truth, but the lesson for Washington is not to stop short just because of criticism from the international chattering classes.
Ironically, the more accurate criticism of US policy is essentially the opposite of the left's conventional wisdom: our inconstancy has too often caused us to stop short before achieving objectives that were both desirable and obtainable. In Iraq, for example, twice in just 10 years, we had to mobilize international coalitions and powerful military forces to deal with the same basic threat, namely Saddam's unrestrained aggressiveness toward his neighbors. Similarly in Afghanistan, after helping the mujahedeen force a humiliating Soviet withdrawal and contribute to the USSR's collapse, we turned away in the 1990's and Taliban took power. After overthrowing the Taliban-al Qaida clique ruling Afghanistan, we are poised to turn away again, with every prospect of Taliban returning to power. And in Iran, we have watched the nuclear threat grow for twenty years while missing repeated opportunities to do something about it.
5. Iran is more powerful today than if Saddam been left in power. This variation on the previous myth ignores the reality America confronted in 2003. Had Saddam been removed in 1991, the threat of Iran's influence might have been mooted before Tehran's nuclear threat grew to its present level of menace. After Saddam's overthrow, the United States should have turned its attention to the regimes in Iran and Syria. Had we encouraged internal opposition to topple both Assad and the ayatollahs ten years ago, much as if we had removed Saddam in 1991, the Middle East environment today would indeed be very different.
If Obama has his way in Washington's ongoing policy and budgetary debates, America will be withdrawing around the world and reducing its military capacity. This is what opponents of the 2003 Iraq war have long professed to want. If they actually get their wishes, it won't be long before they start complaining about it. You heard it here first.
Overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 achieved important American strategic objectives. Our broad international coalition accomplished its military mission with low casualties and great speed, sending an unmistakable signal of power and determination throughout the Middle East and around the world. Despite all the criticism of what happened after Saddam's defeat, these facts are indisputable.
Nonetheless, relentless hostility by the war's opponents now threaten to overwhelm, in the public mind, the clear merits of eliminating Iraq's Ba'athist dictatorship. Leaving the critics unanswered, combined with the utterly erroneous policy conclusions they have derived, will only lead to more serious problems down the road. Let us consider a few of the prevailing myths:
1. Iraq is worse off now than under Saddam. This charge could come only from people with a propensity to admire totalitarianism. Iraq has certainly gone through a hard decade, and its future is far from secure, but that uncertainty derives from long-standing historical tensions and animosities among its major confessional and ethnic groups which were suppressed under Saddam. One might as well pine for Stalin or Tito. Iraq's inherent defects as an artificial nation may yet bring it to grief, but not because of the US-led invasion. To the contrary, Iraqis now have a chance, denied them under Saddam, to forge a new society, as Germany and Japan did after World War II. But we didn't wage war after Pearl Harbor to do nation-building for our enemies. And, in any event, the issue was never about making life better for Iraqis, but about ensuring a safer world for America and its allies.
2. Wars to impose democracy invariably fail. This generalization, whether true or not, is fundamentally irrelevant to Iraq. While President George W Bush and others sought to justify military action after Saddam's downfall as helping to spread democracy, such arguments played no measurable role in the decision to end Saddam's regime. Obviously, most administration officials expected the Ba'ath party would be replaced by representative government, but that was not the motive, should not have been, and will not be in future interventions.
3. Bush lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Ridiculous. Anyone who has ever served in the US government knows how hard it is to keep anything secret, including our most vital national-security information. The idea that a conspiracy to lie about Saddam's WMD capabilities could, to this day, have kept its machinations secret, in whole or in part, smacks of paranoia.
America and its allies, especially the UK, believed, for example, that Iraq had stocks of chemical weapons not because of espionage, but because of Saddam's own 1991 declarations concerning such weapons pursuant to the Security Council's cease-fire resolution. Iraq claimed it had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction, but refused to provide UN weapons inspectors any information to corroborate those claims. Virtually every objective observer concluded that Iraq was lying about destroying its chemical weapons, and therefore still had large and threatening capabilities. You can search the record in vain for major voices claiming, before the 2003 war, that Iraq didn't have chemical weapons.
The fact is that Saddam Hussein, with or without actual WMD, was a strategic threat to peace and security in the Middle East and globally. Once free of UN economic sanctions and weapons inspectors, which 10 years ago he was very close to achieving, he would have immediately returned to ambitious WMD programs.
4. US military intervention was far more aggressive than was necessary. Not at all. The most cogent criticism of the 2003 action against Saddam is that it was required because we failed in 1991 to pursue our interests to their appropriate conclusion. Had we liberated Kuwait and then marched to Baghdad to overthrow Saddam, the world might have been spared considerable agony, and Iraq would actually have had a greater chance to build a peaceful, democratic society before the rise of al-Qaida and Islamic radicalism took their toll. We can obviously never know the truth, but the lesson for Washington is not to stop short just because of criticism from the international chattering classes.
Ironically, the more accurate criticism of US policy is essentially the opposite of the left's conventional wisdom: our inconstancy has too often caused us to stop short before achieving objectives that were both desirable and obtainable. In Iraq, for example, twice in just 10 years, we had to mobilize international coalitions and powerful military forces to deal with the same basic threat, namely Saddam's unrestrained aggressiveness toward his neighbors. Similarly in Afghanistan, after helping the mujahedeen force a humiliating Soviet withdrawal and contribute to the USSR's collapse, we turned away in the 1990's and Taliban took power. After overthrowing the Taliban-al Qaida clique ruling Afghanistan, we are poised to turn away again, with every prospect of Taliban returning to power. And in Iran, we have watched the nuclear threat grow for twenty years while missing repeated opportunities to do something about it.
5. Iran is more powerful today than if Saddam been left in power. This variation on the previous myth ignores the reality America confronted in 2003. Had Saddam been removed in 1991, the threat of Iran's influence might have been mooted before Tehran's nuclear threat grew to its present level of menace. After Saddam's overthrow, the United States should have turned its attention to the regimes in Iran and Syria. Had we encouraged internal opposition to topple both Assad and the ayatollahs ten years ago, much as if we had removed Saddam in 1991, the Middle East environment today would indeed be very different.
If Obama has his way in Washington's ongoing policy and budgetary debates, America will be withdrawing around the world and reducing its military capacity. This is what opponents of the 2003 Iraq war have long professed to want. If they actually get their wishes, it won't be long before they start complaining about it. You heard it here first.
Its what you're eluding too. Saddam Hussein was a heck of a guy, right? He and his kid didn't kill people over soccer games, right? They were great, wonderful people. The down side to the Hussein regime was, if you were in any kind of opposition (or you screwed up on the soccer field) you end up dead.
That policy is so good we ought to adopt it here, wouldn't ya say? Have our leaders walking around killing random people, scaring everyone into compliance? Man, you're on to something there.
That policy is so good we ought to adopt it here, wouldn't ya say? Have our leaders walking around killing random people, scaring everyone into compliance? Man, you're on to something there.
And that's the best you got?
Yeah, we probably should have kept him and Gadhafi around. Great people when you really get down to it....
The Final Lie of the Iraq War
Thursday, 21 March 2013 10:00 By JP Sottile, Newsvandal | Op-Ed
Ten years.
Two trillion dollars.
One hundred and ninety thousand lives.
And forty-two percent.
That’s the percentage of Americans who do not believe the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq was a mistake. Even with what we knew then, it’s hard to figure that anyone would still endorse the invasion. Given what we know now, it’s a staggering and disheartening number.
But that’s not the half of it.
A closer look at a 10th Anniversary Gallup poll shows a disturbing trend. In 2008, sixty-three percent of Americans believed the invasion was a mistake. Now, with even more perspective and more information and more carnage and a growing human rights mess in Iraq, the percentage of Americans who think the invasion was wrong has dropped to fifty-three percent.
Fifty-three.
Put bluntly, since Obama first took the White House, more Americans have decided that the war was, in fact, a good idea.
How is this possible?
Although with little sense of irony or contrition, the mainstream media now openly debates the “failures” of Iraq: intelligence failures, a failure of planning, and a failure of oversight. New reports of “waste” and “fraud” only compound this sense of an epic failure. Of course, they stop short of criminality, accountability or complicity. To err is human, after all.
Some of the Neo-Con artists behind the grand pivot from 9/11 to Iraq now wax philosophical about the shortcomings of the big bait and switch. Prime moverPaul Wolfowitz told Fareed Zakaria that, although he really wasn’t an “architect,” he and the royal “they” failed to “understand the tenacity of Saddam’s regime.”
Yup, a little “failure” squirted past Paul’s dental dam of denial, although they remain firmly entrenched in the mouths of **** Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and the cohort of chickenhawks currently biding their time at the American Enterprise Institute.
While some Democrats talk about “failures,” none dare mention the word “lies.” Many who marched lock-step to the beat of a diffident drummer prefer to regard Iraq as a problem of misallocation. The politically-attuned song they sing is a little ditty called “The Bush Administration took its eye off the ball.” They say Team Bush should’ve kept swinging away at Afghanistan rather than taking batting practice on the beleaguered, oil and target-rich nation of Iraq.
But everyone agrees—Saddam is gone. Iraq and the world are better off. Amen.
That’s how Obama modulated his “anti-war” stance as he passed through the semi-permeable “national security” barrier between “us” and “them.” He de-emphasized the mistake and “officially ended” the US part of the war with assurances that the troops left “behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”
Obama’s kinder, gentler “narrative” of what America left behind is both soothing and reassuring to a nation conditioned to conflate support of the troops with support for an unjust war.
Rest assured, America gave Iraq the gift of democracy tied with a yellow ribbon.
Be comforted, because the world and the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam.
The equation couldn’t be simpler. In some ways, the debate ended the momentSaddam’s statue came down in that famous, well-orchestrated bit of stagecraft. Years of conflation built up America’s former ally and customer into a repository of evil. He killed his own people. He tortured his own people. He thumbed his nose at the UN and international law. He invaded other countries. His name was exhaled in the same breath as Hitler’s.
The evil and tyranny of Saddam—bronzed in that statue—ended the moment it fell.
That scene evolved into a persistent orthodoxy which set the baseline for future absolution. Freedom rang. The sacrifices of the troops were justified. Democracy won.
No matter what one can say about the waste, fraud, corruption, torture, death and criminality of the war—no one can argue that Iraq and the world are not better off with one less tyrant. Right?
Wrong.
It turns out that the world is not better off without Saddam. The Middle East is not better off. Most tragically, neither are the majority of the Iraqi people living in the lower two-thirds of that broken, obliterated nation.
The bad things about Saddam didn’t end with the invasion. In fact, the invading army made some of those worse and brought along a host of new problems: Shock and Awe bombing, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, Abu Ghraib, armed militias, Iranian interference, Blackwater, economic privatization and tens of thousands of civilian deaths that touched almost every household.
Even now, Iraqi ex-pats note that many Iraqis miss the days of Saddam. For them, it is a simple calculation: more safety, more wealth, more roads, more water, more electricity and more education. Women in particular were better off under Saddam’s secularist regime. On the eve of the original Gulf War, Saddam’s Iraq boasted one of the Arab world’s largest, best educated middle classes. It is long gone.
And so is the original case for invading, bombing and occupying an easy target of financial opportunity.
Most of the lies were blatant. All of the connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda were obviously manufactured. The WMDs never existed.
But Saddam is gone. And the whole world is better off. Amen.
The orthodoxy not only holds fast on this 10th Anniversary, it is gaining ground.
Therein is the final lie that masquerades as absolution for this young century’s greatest crime.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15248-the-final-lie-of-the-iraq-war
Thursday, 21 March 2013 10:00 By JP Sottile, Newsvandal | Op-Ed
Ten years.
Two trillion dollars.
One hundred and ninety thousand lives.
And forty-two percent.
That’s the percentage of Americans who do not believe the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq was a mistake. Even with what we knew then, it’s hard to figure that anyone would still endorse the invasion. Given what we know now, it’s a staggering and disheartening number.
But that’s not the half of it.
A closer look at a 10th Anniversary Gallup poll shows a disturbing trend. In 2008, sixty-three percent of Americans believed the invasion was a mistake. Now, with even more perspective and more information and more carnage and a growing human rights mess in Iraq, the percentage of Americans who think the invasion was wrong has dropped to fifty-three percent.
Fifty-three.
Put bluntly, since Obama first took the White House, more Americans have decided that the war was, in fact, a good idea.
How is this possible?
Although with little sense of irony or contrition, the mainstream media now openly debates the “failures” of Iraq: intelligence failures, a failure of planning, and a failure of oversight. New reports of “waste” and “fraud” only compound this sense of an epic failure. Of course, they stop short of criminality, accountability or complicity. To err is human, after all.
Some of the Neo-Con artists behind the grand pivot from 9/11 to Iraq now wax philosophical about the shortcomings of the big bait and switch. Prime moverPaul Wolfowitz told Fareed Zakaria that, although he really wasn’t an “architect,” he and the royal “they” failed to “understand the tenacity of Saddam’s regime.”
Yup, a little “failure” squirted past Paul’s dental dam of denial, although they remain firmly entrenched in the mouths of **** Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and the cohort of chickenhawks currently biding their time at the American Enterprise Institute.
While some Democrats talk about “failures,” none dare mention the word “lies.” Many who marched lock-step to the beat of a diffident drummer prefer to regard Iraq as a problem of misallocation. The politically-attuned song they sing is a little ditty called “The Bush Administration took its eye off the ball.” They say Team Bush should’ve kept swinging away at Afghanistan rather than taking batting practice on the beleaguered, oil and target-rich nation of Iraq.
But everyone agrees—Saddam is gone. Iraq and the world are better off. Amen.
That’s how Obama modulated his “anti-war” stance as he passed through the semi-permeable “national security” barrier between “us” and “them.” He de-emphasized the mistake and “officially ended” the US part of the war with assurances that the troops left “behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”
Obama’s kinder, gentler “narrative” of what America left behind is both soothing and reassuring to a nation conditioned to conflate support of the troops with support for an unjust war.
Rest assured, America gave Iraq the gift of democracy tied with a yellow ribbon.
Be comforted, because the world and the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam.
The equation couldn’t be simpler. In some ways, the debate ended the momentSaddam’s statue came down in that famous, well-orchestrated bit of stagecraft. Years of conflation built up America’s former ally and customer into a repository of evil. He killed his own people. He tortured his own people. He thumbed his nose at the UN and international law. He invaded other countries. His name was exhaled in the same breath as Hitler’s.
The evil and tyranny of Saddam—bronzed in that statue—ended the moment it fell.
That scene evolved into a persistent orthodoxy which set the baseline for future absolution. Freedom rang. The sacrifices of the troops were justified. Democracy won.
No matter what one can say about the waste, fraud, corruption, torture, death and criminality of the war—no one can argue that Iraq and the world are not better off with one less tyrant. Right?
Wrong.
It turns out that the world is not better off without Saddam. The Middle East is not better off. Most tragically, neither are the majority of the Iraqi people living in the lower two-thirds of that broken, obliterated nation.
The bad things about Saddam didn’t end with the invasion. In fact, the invading army made some of those worse and brought along a host of new problems: Shock and Awe bombing, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, Abu Ghraib, armed militias, Iranian interference, Blackwater, economic privatization and tens of thousands of civilian deaths that touched almost every household.
Even now, Iraqi ex-pats note that many Iraqis miss the days of Saddam. For them, it is a simple calculation: more safety, more wealth, more roads, more water, more electricity and more education. Women in particular were better off under Saddam’s secularist regime. On the eve of the original Gulf War, Saddam’s Iraq boasted one of the Arab world’s largest, best educated middle classes. It is long gone.
And so is the original case for invading, bombing and occupying an easy target of financial opportunity.
Most of the lies were blatant. All of the connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda were obviously manufactured. The WMDs never existed.
But Saddam is gone. And the whole world is better off. Amen.
The orthodoxy not only holds fast on this 10th Anniversary, it is gaining ground.
Therein is the final lie that masquerades as absolution for this young century’s greatest crime.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15248-the-final-lie-of-the-iraq-war
9/11 and Iraq: The War’s Greatest Lie
John Glaser, March 18, 2013
{....Other lies were told to this effect. Two months after the 9/11 attacks, on December 9, 2001, **** Cheney went on Meet the Press and, when asked by Tim Russert whether “Iraq was involved in September 11,” mentioned a “report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that [9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”
In fact, the CIA had told Cheney this report was false a day before his Meet the Press appearance. In a briefing that was sent to the White House Situation Room, the CIA concluded that “11 September 2001 hijacker Mohamed Atta did not travel to the Czech Republic on 31 May 2000.” Cheney cited it anyways.
Two years later, on September 14, 2003, Cheney appeared once again on Meet the Press. Russert asked him if he was “surprised” by the fact that “69 percent” of Americans believe Saddam “was involved in the September 11 attacks.”
“I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection,” Cheney said. “With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it.” In reality, it had been conclusively discredited years earlier.
As Paul Pillar, former CIA analyst and National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote in his recent book: “The supposed alliance between Saddam’s regime and al-Qa’ida clearly did not drive the Bush administration’s decision to launch the war [in Iraq] because the administration was receiving no indications that any such alliance existed,” adding that “this fact did not stop the administration from nonetheless promoting publicly the notion of such an alliance.”
By August 2003, after another year that included the most intensive selling of the war, more than two-thirds of Americans thought Saddam had been involved in 9/11. Some of this belief was due to innuendo such as the vice president’s repeated references to a phantom meeting in Prague between an Iraqi and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. It was due mostly to the administration’s rhetorical drumbeat that repeatedly mentioned Iraq, 9/11, and “war on terror” in the same breath.
Pillar is right: the Saddam-Qaeda connection did not drive the Bush administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq. But it did drive the administration’s propaganda campaign to generate public support for the war.
This was absolutely critical to the blank check that the vast majority of Americans gave to Bush and Cheney to go to war. Alleged WMDs, I think, could never have achieved the level of popular support for war crimes against Iraq on its own. The pain and indignation Americans felt after being attacked on 9/11 needed to be exploited for a war of choice as brazen as Iraq to gain support. And the record is clear that the Bush administration fostered this deception, employing torture and citing false intelligence to do so.
The record is clear, but the CIA is still trying to cover it up, as Marcy Wheeler has recently noted.
Many lies were told to justify the Iraq War. But none were as baseless and vital as this one. At the risk of joining the parade of idiots predicting “the judgement of history” on Iraq, I would anticipate the Saddam-Qaeda connection lie as the most important, far surpassing the more popularized WMD claims.}
http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/18/911-and-iraq-the-wars-greatest-lie/
John Glaser, March 18, 2013
{....Other lies were told to this effect. Two months after the 9/11 attacks, on December 9, 2001, **** Cheney went on Meet the Press and, when asked by Tim Russert whether “Iraq was involved in September 11,” mentioned a “report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that [9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”
In fact, the CIA had told Cheney this report was false a day before his Meet the Press appearance. In a briefing that was sent to the White House Situation Room, the CIA concluded that “11 September 2001 hijacker Mohamed Atta did not travel to the Czech Republic on 31 May 2000.” Cheney cited it anyways.
Two years later, on September 14, 2003, Cheney appeared once again on Meet the Press. Russert asked him if he was “surprised” by the fact that “69 percent” of Americans believe Saddam “was involved in the September 11 attacks.”
“I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection,” Cheney said. “With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it.” In reality, it had been conclusively discredited years earlier.
As Paul Pillar, former CIA analyst and National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote in his recent book: “The supposed alliance between Saddam’s regime and al-Qa’ida clearly did not drive the Bush administration’s decision to launch the war [in Iraq] because the administration was receiving no indications that any such alliance existed,” adding that “this fact did not stop the administration from nonetheless promoting publicly the notion of such an alliance.”
By August 2003, after another year that included the most intensive selling of the war, more than two-thirds of Americans thought Saddam had been involved in 9/11. Some of this belief was due to innuendo such as the vice president’s repeated references to a phantom meeting in Prague between an Iraqi and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. It was due mostly to the administration’s rhetorical drumbeat that repeatedly mentioned Iraq, 9/11, and “war on terror” in the same breath.
Pillar is right: the Saddam-Qaeda connection did not drive the Bush administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq. But it did drive the administration’s propaganda campaign to generate public support for the war.
This was absolutely critical to the blank check that the vast majority of Americans gave to Bush and Cheney to go to war. Alleged WMDs, I think, could never have achieved the level of popular support for war crimes against Iraq on its own. The pain and indignation Americans felt after being attacked on 9/11 needed to be exploited for a war of choice as brazen as Iraq to gain support. And the record is clear that the Bush administration fostered this deception, employing torture and citing false intelligence to do so.
The record is clear, but the CIA is still trying to cover it up, as Marcy Wheeler has recently noted.
Many lies were told to justify the Iraq War. But none were as baseless and vital as this one. At the risk of joining the parade of idiots predicting “the judgement of history” on Iraq, I would anticipate the Saddam-Qaeda connection lie as the most important, far surpassing the more popularized WMD claims.}
http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/18/911-and-iraq-the-wars-greatest-lie/
Didn't Saddam kill a million or so of his own people? How did he do that? It isn't happening anymore.... I'll thought and maybe dragged out, but the good news is we are still in Afghanistan after we were told pulling out would be one of the first things that was going to happen.... I think right behind closing GITMO. If the Big O keeps it up, its okay then? If its not, why no mention of it?
Any matter, if I had to choose to listen to Snooki v.s. (even) Biden or Obama, I would still choose those politi-sluts over Snooki.
Any matter, if I had to choose to listen to Snooki v.s. (even) Biden or Obama, I would still choose those politi-sluts over Snooki.
You are right and wrong. WMD's were found all though they were old. But intelligence from 6 other independent countries and the UN backed our intelligence. So again where is the lie?
I have friends who served in Iraq so it is no joke to me that we went there. But based on everything we knew they had WMD's in an active program. But remember Syria using some WMD's? The theory has been that Saddam shipped them to Syria before the invasion...holds credibility.
teko-you want to talk about tax payer funding...how about the tax payer funding Obamacare website that failed, state websites that failed, trips for Obama and his family all over the country. And how about the money now that Obama is doing fund raising? He went to Ft.Hood and then the same day went on a fund raising effort. Shame on him.
I have friends who served in Iraq so it is no joke to me that we went there. But based on everything we knew they had WMD's in an active program. But remember Syria using some WMD's? The theory has been that Saddam shipped them to Syria before the invasion...holds credibility.
teko-you want to talk about tax payer funding...how about the tax payer funding Obamacare website that failed, state websites that failed, trips for Obama and his family all over the country. And how about the money now that Obama is doing fund raising? He went to Ft.Hood and then the same day went on a fund raising effort. Shame on him.
Hitler is no joke to people like me who remember the old folk with tattoos from the prison camps. They showed them to me so that we would never forget what horror was perpetrated by the Nazis.
As much as I don't care for many of our politicians, none of them, none, are in the same league as Hitler~ thank goodness !
As much as I don't care for many of our politicians, none of them, none, are in the same league as Hitler~ thank goodness !
Evidently those faculty and students think so as well. Everytime someone mentions benghazi, I think to myself. Where is all the outrage for all those people that died in Iraq? But no, no outrage there! Instead they defend THAT administration to the hilt. And Cheney and Bush are allededly guilty of war crimes for the torture. And speaking of benghazi, I hear they are now using it to fund raise, and have already spent billions on this thus far and with this new special committee, were talking much much more. So it seems we the taxpayer are funding their latest political agenda?
My point that I was trying to make above, was that back in the day, we sat and gave someone their 20 minutes whether we liked em or not. But thinking about this further, it has come to my attention that these students? Yes, these students, are very involved in politics, regardless of how many times ya hear they dont vote or partake. I think this proves that theory wrong.
And yes, I remember when el said that, and I too think he lost any and all credibility after that statement. Like the one where he claims he is part black but dissing them all the time? Yep, sorry dude! Out of your mouth, not mine.
My point that I was trying to make above, was that back in the day, we sat and gave someone their 20 minutes whether we liked em or not. But thinking about this further, it has come to my attention that these students? Yes, these students, are very involved in politics, regardless of how many times ya hear they dont vote or partake. I think this proves that theory wrong.
And yes, I remember when el said that, and I too think he lost any and all credibility after that statement. Like the one where he claims he is part black but dissing them all the time? Yep, sorry dude! Out of your mouth, not mine.
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