Lies And Deceptions Come Easy For The Republicans – OpEd

George W. Bush’s Administration sold us the war against Iraq when it had no proof that the Saddam Hossein’s regime had “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). After invasion and occupation of the land, years of search found no WMD. Absolutely nothing! It was a gigantic lie manufactured by Bush (USA) and Blair (UK).

In the meantime, nearly half a million Iraqis had to die in one of the most sadistic wars of history in which the USA and her partners showed their real ugliness with everything – their wanton killing of innocent civilians, their ill-treatment of the occupied people, let alone the prisoners, their savage bombing of places of worship, business centers, schools, hospitals, heritage sites, museums and even the drinking and sewage system. What the real civilized world (outside the impostors in the White House and the 10 Downing Street) saw were savagery, war crimes, unfathomable carnage and destruction. As a matter of fact anything that the trigger-happy occupying forces liked to take an aim at was considered a fair game. Thus, not even a toddler’s life was safe under Bush-Blair’s occupation, and surely not the lives of genuine journalists (e.g., from Al Jazeera) who wanted to report the ugly facts from the harm’s way. They were all kosher to the Judeo-Christian soldiers and their unremorseful masters leading us down the path to what the late Gen. William E. Odom called “the worst strategic disaster in our history”.

The justification for the war was sold by the Bush administration not only through its own neocon planners within the administration – many of whom sold to the altar of Zionism and Israel years ago – and supporters within the Congress (i.e., the ‘Amen Corner’), plus the CIA, the Pentagon, and the pro-Israeli pundits (like Bill Kristol) and think-tanks (led by disingenuous guys like Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney, Jr. and many others) but also by the ‘embedded’ journalists and talk-show hosts. None of the big news media questioned the narratives of the War Party.

It was politically incorrect to dissent with the sinister Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Powell agenda to destroy and demolish Iraq. Rather than investigating their false narratives for the war the so-called free-press shamelessly chose to be its mouthpiece! It was no accident that 70 percent of the Americans believed that the Iraqi despot was behind the 9/11 tragedy – to the point that, even after this myth had been debunked 33 percent of Americans in 2007 still believed it. Not only that, they even believed that Iraq had WMD and that the Bush administration was entirely justified in launching an invasion.

The ‘War Party’ and their boss in the White House fancied in the typical Pharaonic way that the might was right and that no one would ever dare question their tall tales leading up to the invasion of Iraq (condemned by the UN Secretary General as an illegal war), which had cost the American people trillions of dollars; and surely no one from the Republican Party!

But now with the presidential election looming in the horizon and the campaigns getting ever nastier, the gloves of the aspirants are coming out to reveal their dirty and bloody hands. Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, in his latest debate accused Bush Jr., the 43rd president, of lying and feeding misinformation that led to the costly war and unleashing the ISIS. Jeb Bush precariously tried to defend his older brother’s flawed image in the debate.
Some Republican voters are naturally upset about such finger-pointing against one of their very own in which they are asked to choose between the truth and the lie. They want Trump to ease off, esp. given the fact that he himself endorsed the Iraq War in his radio interview with Howard Stern back in 2002.

Many Americans have very short memories though; 2003 seems too distant a past to them. They need to be reminded of the hard facts leading to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In his State of the Union Address on Jan. 29, 2002, Bush Jr. called Iraq part of an “axis of evil,” and vowed that the U.S. “will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”

The next day, on January 30, 2002, the CIA. published an unclassified report to Congress that stated, “Baghdad may be attempting to acquire materials that could aid in reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program.” A week later, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the House International Relations Committee, “With respect to the nuclear program, there is no doubt that the Iraqis are pursuing it.”

Talking about Saddam Hussein, on August 7, 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney said, “What we know now, from various sources, is that he… continues to pursue a nuclear weapon.” On September 8, 2002, Cheney told a TV interviewer, “We do know, with absolute certainty, that [Saddam] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.”

Although there was no confirmed intelligence, on September 14, 2002 President Bush said, “Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear-weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.” Later Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the UK, would parrot such an unfounded assertion. On September 22, 2002, Blair claimed that he was convinced new sources of intelligence from inside Iraq provide “persuasive and overwhelming” evidence that Saddam Hussein was reassembling and expanding his weapons programme. He told his cabinet colleagues: “Saddam is developing his weapons programme and doing it as fast as he can.”

On September 26, 2002 Condi Rice, the national security adviser to President Bush, said, “There clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented; there clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there’s a relationship here.” She further said, “We know too that several of the (al Qaeda) detainees, in particular some high-ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to al Qaeda in chemical weapons development.” (CBS News)

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell made a presentation to the UN, attempting to prove that Iraq was evading the inspectors, continued to produce WMD’s, and was linked to al-Qaeda.

On March 16, 2003, talking about Saddam Hossein, Dick Cheney stated on Meet the Press:  “We know he’s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization. . . .  We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons.  And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong.”  It should be noted that a week earlier, on March 7, 2003, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes.

On March 19, 2003, Bush and Blair attack Iraq. And the rest is history! [Interested readers may like to read Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane’s collection: The Path of War Timeline.]

And yet, the war-lies continue. The Republican presidential hopefuls for the November 2016 election are all lying to their teeth. It is the hunting season for them to allure gullible voters! But if the voters continue to let them be duped, shame on them.