NEVER FORGET IT: BAD = Bush ADministration
“The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.”
- George W. Bush, Oct. 7, 2002
The problem with the above statement: it was a complete and utter lie. There never were any poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons in Iraq. Of all the dictators in the world, Bush had to pick Saddam Hussein. “After all, he (Saddam) was the guy who tried to kill my Dad,” he told one reporter in 2003. As if that reason justified sending thousands of our own Americans off to die?
There are a dozen other dictators who need to be put in place, a dozen other places where democracy perhaps needs to be “spread,” but Bush picked Iraq. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has killed 70,000 and continues to enslave women and children, yet the BAD didn’t go there. Kim Jong II of North Korea holds Freedom House’s worst score for political rights and civil liberties for the 33rd straight year and has even admitted to having weapons of mass destruction, yet the BAD didn’t want to go there. The sexist and radical Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia promotes Wahhabism, which is an extreme form of Islam practiced by terrorists from Saudi Arabia like the ones who attacked us on 9/11, yet the BAD didn’t attack there. Instead, we saw Abdullah and Bush holding hands when the Prince came to vacation at the Crawford ranch.
So why did the United States attack Iraq? Just remember every time you fill up your gas tank, as costly as it now is, that this raping of your wallet is why the BAD attacked Iraq. Oil is the reason and it is more than quite evident.
We have heard too many stories of Saddam’s terror on his own people, yet no one tells us that these same people who Saddam killed were radical terrorists on a mission to kill innocent civilians and start a civil war— the very thing Bush has accomplished. In reality, Saddam did the same exact thing that Bush said he was doing— fighting terrorism. There is also no proof that Saddam gassed as many as the BAD claim, but if he did, it was with weapons we gave him in the 80’s. There is, however, proof that the United States killed over 500,000 Iraqi women and children by repetitive bombing and imposed sanctions from 1991-2001. There is also solid proof that another 40,000 + civilians were killed by the United States in the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. But let’s assume Saddam did in fact kill his own people; he wouldn’t be the first. The United States slaughtered thousands of innocent Native Americans, millions of Japanese in the unnecessary demolition of two civilian cities in Japan, and millions in Southeast Asia in Korea and Vietnam. Hey, our government has even killed our own too. Remember when four students were killed in 1970 at Kent State University? Remember ten days later at Jackson State College where two more students were gunned down by police? How about all of the minorities who have been killed due to police brutality? How about all of the racial lynchings down in the south? How about the fact that the United States is one of the only civilized nations in the world that still uses the death penalty? Saddam Hussein was certainly not innocent, but neither are we.
LIES
In January 2003, Bush stood before Congress and delivered his State of the Union Address to the American people. He solemnly broke the news to us how Iraq was in possession of “26,000 liters of Anthrax; 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons of serin, mustard and VX gas; mobile biological weapons labs and stations; and uranium obtained from Niger to build nuclear weapons of mass destruction.” Bush also informed us of the bad news of how the Middle East nation of Iraq had connections to terrorism and Al Qaeda. Over two years later in spring of 2005 with U.S. soldiers still dying in Iraq, the United States government hung up their boots, quit their search for weapons, and went home deserting the troops. The search for weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism was over. The results: ZERO!
“Hussein has in fact reinstated nuclear weapons.” Cheney
“We know for a fact there are weapons there.” Fleischer
“There clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq.” Rice
Of course, some members of the BAD even mixed up their stories and tried to defend their stance:
“I don’t know anybody who I could think of who has contended that the Iraqis have nuclear weapons.” Rumsfeld
The BAD had lied again. The world knows it now, many of us knew it then, yet Bush still won’t admit it and say he’s sorry. Most of us know now that he lied, but how many lies did he and his administration tell? And what were the reasons behind them? Let’s first look at some of the most notorious ones:
LIE: “The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.”
-President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati
LIE: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
-President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, State of the Union
LIE: “We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
-VP Cheney on March 16, 2003 on Meet the Press
LIE: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons...And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes.”
-President Bush on September 26, 2002
LIE: “[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade.”
-CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002
LIE: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.”
-President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002
LIE: “We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States.”
-President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002
LIE: “We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they’re weaponized...”
-President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a radio address
LIE: “Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agents. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.”
-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council
LIE: “We know where they [Iraq’s WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.”
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press
LIE: “Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq, which the UN prohibited.”
-President Bush in Poland, June 1, 2003
These lies could go on for pages but I won’t waste your time. You get the point. You have…
INTELLIGENCE
“It is somewhat puzzling that you have 100% certainty about WMD’s existence and 0 certainty of where they are.”
- Hans Blix
Bush: “That intelligence was good sound intelligence.”
Rumsfeld: “The intelligence we were operating off of was correct.”
The truth— The administration used circumstantial evidence from the late eighties and early nineties.
Old Information = New Conclusions!
So let’s just forget about Dan Rather and the papers someone else handed him. Pushing their bogus African-Uranium theory, this administration used FORGED documents to go to WAR. Dates didn’t match the days of the week, French words were misspelled in a document written in French, and a document that was supposed to be new was signed by a Niger official who left office 10 years ago.
Bush and his administration have not apologized, but they have insinuated that there were some “problems with intelligence.” Ok, let’s assume for just a moment that I am wrong, along with the CIA, FBI, and other government officials as well as many other governments from around the world who believe the BAD lied for political and financial gain. Let’s forget about the proof of their connections to the oil industry and Halliburton and all of their profits. Let’s forget about the facts and pretend for a moment the BAD was right. Let’s pretend Bush went into Iraq because he really thought there were WMD and links to terrorism? Now what does that say? This would mean that there was indeed a major intelligence failure.
Wait! Wasn’t 9/11 a major intelligence failure also? Even after 9/11, more than two years later, the administration was still botching up intelligence? If this is the case then we’re in big trouble. Either way— lies or failed intelligence— the administration is at fault. But I guess blaming the failed intelligence on federal employees and other governments is better than blaming yourself and the oil and defense corporations that pressured you to go to war in the first place.
