Friday, September 04, 2015

Iraq War Based On gwb Lie Of "Disarming" Saddam When IAEA Officials Who Were There, On The Ground, Said Iraq Had No WMD

George W. Bush made 232 false statements about Iraq and former leader Saddam Hussein's possessing weapons of mass destruction, and 28 false statements about Iraq's links to al Qaeda according to a 1/22/2008 study by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism. In total the Bush Admin made 935 false statements in run-up to war.

According to the gwb administration, the purpose of the vote on the Iraq War Resolution was to pressure the UN and Iraq into getting inspectors back into the country. At least that's what Hillary Clinton has said when defending her vote on the matter.

Hillary, before voting, asked "If you are given this authority, will you put the inspectors in and permit them to finish their job". She was told that, YES, that was the goal. To show the UN and Iraq that the bush administration was serious, Congress needed to authorize war if the inspectors were not allowed back in (Hillary Clinton Never Supported the Bush/Cheney Invasion of Iraq).

Well, it worked. Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were allowed back into Iraq... and so bush, realizing that the threat worked, allowed the inspections to do their job and the UN to decide what to do if Iraq again balked and did not cooperate (as the UN charter stipulates).

No, wait... that isn't what happened at all. Saddam did drag his feet (as before) and not cooperate fully. Although the inspectors thought progress was still being made. None-the-less the bush administration (already having the Congressional authority it needed) launched an attack.

And the bush administration launched it's attack in spite of (1) telling members of Congress they were voting to get inspectors back in and that war would be a last resort, and (2) The UN charter saying "it is up to the council itself, and not individual members, to determine how the body's resolutions are to be enforced".

bush, in deciding to go ahead with the invasion despite the UN not voting for war, violated articles 33 and 39 of the Charter (33 says disputes are to be resolved peacefully and 39 says that the UN "decides what measures shall be taken" when the resolutions it makes are violated).

Because UN charter does not allow individual countries to act unilaterally a number of UN and IAEA officials condemned the US invasion of Iraq. (Condemned it, or pointed out why it was unnecessary).

Six UN & IAEA Officials Who Either Condemned US Invasion of Iraq Or Confirmed It Was Unnecessary

1. Kofi Annan: The UN Secretary-general from 1/1/1997 to 12/31/2006 said (in regards to the bush invasion of Iraq) "I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal". This, according to a statement made to the BBC in September 2004. According to spokesman Fred Eckhard this "has been the Secretary-General's longstanding view [because the UN charter] does not allow pre-emptive attacks".

2. Mohamed ElBaradei: The IAEA director from 1997 to 2009, in regards to bush's claim that Iraq had WMD and the invasion was needed to "disarm" Saddam, said, "deliberate deception [isn't] limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators" (this is a quote from his book Age of Deception).

3. Hans Blix: The former head of the IAEA (1981–1997) who was called back from retirement by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to lead United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and was in charge of looking for WMD in Iraq said that his inspectors "found no stockpiles of WMD and had made significant progress toward resolving open issues of disarmament". Iraq was not complying or having difficulty complying (because of misplaced stockpiles) but Mr. Blix was confident that everything would be resolved. The only thing that was needed was time ("a matter of months").

Furthermore Blix said that if "the inspections been allowed to continue, there would likely be a very different situation in Iraq today. As it was, America's preemptive, unilateral actions have bred more terrorism there and elsewhere". (For The Record, Yes, George W. Bush Did Help Create ISIS).

Although, according to Blix, US President george w. bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair did not act in bad faith, but only exhibited "a severe lack of critical thinking".

4. David Kay: The Chief weapons inspector said "I think there were stockpiles at the end of the first Gulf War and a combination of U.N. inspectors and unilateral Iraqi action got rid of them" when he resigned on 1/23/2004.

I should note, however that Kay defended the Bush administration, saying that even if Iraq did not have weapons stockpiles, this did not mean it wasn't dangerous. Was Iraq dangerous? Perhaps, but there are many countries with "dangerous" regimes, and the US isn't invading them all. That Kay also blamed "faulty intelligence gathering" for the prewar WMD conclusions (even though this is pure bullplop) explains why he defended the lying bush administration.

Although the conclusion of the Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq (that the bush Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent) wasn't released until 5/25/2007, so perhaps Kay's idiotic partisan statement is understandable? The US government had not yet confirmed that the bush administration blatantly lied. Even though the IAEA had.

But, and this is the important point, Kay knew Iraq had no WDM because he was one of those on the ground in Iraq who was looking for it (and did not find it). Thus confirming that the war was (if not illegal/based on a lie) unnecessary as per the bush administration reasons for waging it (to "disarm" Iraq).

5. Charles Dulfer: Dulfer, who replaced David Kay as Chief weapons inspector, said "it turns out that we were all wrong [and] I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarized chemical weapons there".

6. Scott Ritter: A United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, while not a participant in the 2002 inspections, has remarked that "since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed: 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capacity has been verifiably eliminated". The nuclear program was eliminated and there was no evidence Iraq had retained chemical or biological weapons according to Ritter.

The Republican-identifying Ritter who says he voted for gwb was later (in 2001 and 2010) accused of "soliciting minors for sex on the Internet" (the 2001 charges were dismissed and the 2010 charges resulted in a conviction). For this reason Ritter's critics discount his statements re Iraq having WMD. Obviously the two aren't connected, but still the crime he was convicted of calls his character into question. He desired sex with minors, so he obviously lied about finding no WMD (so say his critics... see SWTD #232 point "5A" for more info concerning what one specific critic said when I brought up Ritter's name in a discussion re the illegality of gwb's Iraq invasion).

**End list of 6 UN and IAEA Officials Who Either Condemned US Invasion of Iraq Or Confirmed It Was Unnecessary**

In regards to ex-preznit bush saying (on 3/19/20013, in an address to the American people notifying them of the beginning of the illegal invasion of Iraq), "my fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger"... we knew/know bush was lying and he knows/knew he lied/was lying.

How do we know for certain that bush lied? Mohamed ElBaradei told the Security Council (on 3/7/2003) via written report that the "UN inspections in Iraq worked". Please note that this report was delivered on 3/7/2003 and bush ordered the invasion on 3/19/2003. So bush said "invade to disarm" AFTER the head of the IAEA told the world that the inspections worked and that Iraq was already disarmed!

A fact that the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, as well as everyone at the IAEA (listed above) confirms (despite Kay going along with the "faulty intel" BS). My conclusion is that bush CLEARLY lied. And it was a blatant bold-faced lie.

This is something our own government concluded with a bi-partisan majority report issued by the Senate (on 6/5/2008) that said "the [bush] Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent".

Yet the bush apologists continue to lie... both about bush lying about Iraq having WMD (it was an "intelligence failure", they say), as well as Iraq having WMD. Iraq really did have WMD these liars/dumbshits say! Wikileaks documents prove Saddam had WMD!

Sorry, but no. bush claimed that we needed to invade to "disarm" Saddam, not that we needed to invade to clean up old, forgotten, buried and degraded chemical weapons. Which is what was actually claimed, and this was NOT what bush hyped (in order to scare the American people into accepting war). According to Wired's Noah Shachtman "Saddam's toxic arsenal [was] largely destroyed after the Gulf War". (WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs: No Evidence of Massive WMD Caches).

What we found after the invasion was "remnants". Remnants are what the Wikileaks documents revealed were found in Iraq post invasion. Would the American people have agreed to war over "remnants"? We all know the answer to that question is NO. Which is why bush ignored what the IAEA was telling him about Iraq having no WMD and lied about "disarming" Saddam.

Wikipedia notes that "In a White House Iraq Group meeting, chief Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson proposes the use of a smoking gun/mushroom cloud metaphor to sell the American public on the supposed nuclear dangers posed by Saddam Hussein".

The "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" metaphor was just one of the 935 false statements, (including 232 lies that bush himself disassembled) the administration used to SELL us the Iraq war. "Intelligence failure" my ass!

Video: Terrorist leader bush scares the shit out of Americans with BS about Iraq possessing nuclear weapons and using them to attack us. Clip from a 10/7/2002 TV address broadcast from Cincinnati's Museum Center at Union Terminal (0:07).

Notes
[1] From an 8/28/2011 discussion on the blog of Willis Hart: When I pointed out that HRC said the gwb WH told her a YES vote wasn't a vote for war, but a vote to pressure Iraq to agree to "complete, unlimited inspections", Willis Hart responded by saying, "My God, wd, what do you expect her to say, I screwed up? You know as well as I do that, if the war had gone better, the lady would have been patting herself on the back till the cows came home. She (and Kerry and Biden) knew exactly what they were voting for".

See also: SWTD #154: Intellectual Honesty Concerning ex-Preznit bush's WMD Lies (5/23/2013).

SWTD #312

22 comments:

  1. You WILL go to your grave Dervish WITHOUT seeing your hope that GWB is charged with war crimes realized.. But we anticipate your continued efforts to that end.

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  2. Yes, I remember that you are one of the dupes who believe the lie that Iraq was a "mistake". Unless you've changed your mind and decided to no longer believe the lie.

    In any case, I have no such hope. On 5/23/2013 I said "bush isn't going to face any consequences for his lying. History will even treat him better as the people who lived through his presidency die off and our collective memory fades".

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  3. Apparently you are reading comprehension challenged? In any case your opinion matters not to me.

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  4. What didn't I comprehend? Are you saying the characterization of the Iraq war as as "mistake" is wrong... Due to it actually being a deliberate deception?

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    Replies
    1. No, I'm saying the Iraq war was a mistake. There was no act of agression committed by S.H. and the action resulted in the further destabilization of the mid east. ISIS is an indirect cause, if not direct, of our invasion of Iraq.

      If you agree members of congress at the time as well as GWB should be tried for war crimes I might consider agreeing with you.

      Delete
    2. Are you forgetting that Willis lied about that? According to Willis, Thomas Ricks' book says Congress had access to the same intelligence as the White House, but Thomas Ricks, in a Meet the Press interview, said otherwise...

      Thomas Ricks: ...a political document that made the case for war the NIE of October ‘02 succeeded brilliantly. As a professional intelligence product it was shameful. But it did its job, which wasn’t really to assess Iraqi weapons programs but to sell a war. ... That document did not accurately reflect the information available inside the intelligence community.

      So... why the HELL would we try members of Congress for war crimes?????????????????????????????????????????

      Sorry, RN, but you've been duped. The Iraq war was NOT a "mistake". Willfully duped, too... apparently. That, or you're lying as well. I frankly have no idea. I don't know why you would do this, but neither do I know why Willis continues to lie.

      Or maybe you're just pulling my leg?

      Delete
    3. Nope, not duped at all. Case closed.
      . And yes, I kn ouu w you have no idea.

      Delete
    4. With respect to Contra O'Reilly's Mr. Hart? I am not allowed to post there. Guess I pointed out too many things so he became uncomfortable. That makes me an idiot in his view.

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    5. I provided a rationale re why members of Congress should not be charged with war crimes (according to Thomas Ricks' the NIE Congress got was a political document designed to sell the war), whereas you gave no rationale in support of your argument that they should (or that if gwb were charged, members of Congress should be too). That being the case, I will continue to believe that you've been duped. RN = dupe.

      Delete
    6. As for Willis, I may stop paying attention to him, as most of his posts receive zero comments. While I can't claim to be doing any better, it isn't because i'm banning people who were longtime readers/commenters as Willis has. I also have had zero people declare they are leaving, wheras this has happened to Willis twice. I haven't seen Jerry comment there in quite awhile either. dmarks seems to be the most loyal, and even he only comments on every 5th one or so.

      Delete
  5. Whilst strolling round the Harbor this morning about 11 am., I noticed this character shouting “Allah be praised” and “Death to all infidels” and suddenly he tripped and fell into the water.
    He was struggling to stay afloat because of all the explosives he was carrying.
    If he didn’t get help he would surely drown.
    Being a responsible American citizen, and abiding by the law of the land that requires you to help those in distress, I informed the Police, the Coast Guard, the Immigration Office and even the Fire Dept.
    It is now 4 p.m., the terrorist has drowned and none of the authorities have yet to respond.
    I’m starting to think that I wasted four stamps

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have seen zero news reports regarding this supposed incident.

      Delete
  6. Dervish Sanders, still fighting windmills.....

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  7. At least Dervish can put together more than 1 second read bites chuckleNuts.

    BTW, why don't you start a blog? Oh, that's right, you have nothing worthwhile to say.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Lester....I have zero interest in starting a blog...my time is better spent earning money and preparing for our move to Montana....my life is too full to spend hours flitting around from blog to blog...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for taking the time to flit to my blog, Rusty. Your input is appreciated.

      Delete
  9. And yet not one single word about the LIES of your front running presidential candidate ! Shocking! When the Clintons and their lik of cronies should be hauled before a federal grand jury and forced to testify. Moreover, there needs to be a special prosecutor with unlimited subpoena powers appointed to continue the investigation as it is unlikely that the Obama Administration, with its own pending scandals, is inclined to investigate lest the Clintons go nuclear in a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) attempt to prevent a constitutional crisis that would see an American president and high-ranking officials sent to jail as common criminals.
    At the very least, Hillary Clinton needs to withdraw from the presidential race. Whether or not the Clintons and their Clintonistas receive a presidential pardon and are allowed to keep their ill-gotten gains – to spare the country any anguish, of course – is yet to be seen. Let's hope that we never see the result of her ill ridden contempual behavior , and let's hope that we've seen the last of her in U.S. Public life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gwb wasn't prosecuted for real crimes, so I seriously doubt Obama or Hillary Clinton will be prosecuted for imaginary ones. The Congressional Republicans are trying, but every one of their investigations conclude no wrongdoing by BHO or HRC. Apparently (fake) fiscal conservatives like wasting taxpayer money harassing Democrats for trumped up imaginary "crimes".

      FYI, Hillary Clinton will not be harassed out of the race. I predict least interesting man's hopes will go unfulfilled and HRC will be our next president. Although I will be voting for Bernie Sanders in the primary, HRC is a decent second choice and I will definitely vote for her if she gets the nomination.

      Delete
  10. Some people like the Prick Face who writes this blog just can't seem to wake up to the fact that Bush!Cheney have been out of office for almost 8 years now. And that the scumbag in the Zovsl office just can't that's responsibility for his own actions, and his failed policies.
    But that's the way Liberal's think.

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    Replies
    1. However liberals think it's several levels above your own thinking.

      Delete

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