from: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner

“The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.” – Harry Truman, as quoted in Plain Speaking : An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman (1974) by Merle Miller, p. 26.

Senator Lieberman, Secretary of State Clinton, and former UN Ambassador John Bolton have resumed rhetoric of a United States attack upon Iran. As my other articles have demonstrated, that rhetoric is false and intentional propaganda attempting to justify another US War of Aggression. We should understand that the rhetoric for war with Iraq was also known to be false at the time it was told. The following is from my brief, “War with Iraq and Afghanistan, rhetoric for war with Iran.” http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/41708

Please use this information in any way helpful to build a brighter future.

Additional Evidence of Intent for War and not Disarmament: The Downing Street Memos are British government documents leaked to their press in May 2005 from the head of British Intelligence (equivalent to the US Director of the CIA) reporting in July 2002 that the Bush administration had already committed to war with Iraq:

“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record.” [1]

The Manning Memo is a record of a meeting between President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair on January 31, 2003 by Blair’s National Security Advisor, Tony Manning. The memo states that President Bush informed Blair that war with Iraq would begin in March whether or not WMD were found. Bush also discussed how to provoke Saddam into beginning the war.[2]

In August 2008, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Ron Suskind’s book became public: The Way of the World. Suskind interviewed the CIA’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations, Robert Richer, who in a taped interview said that the White House ordered Richer to forge a document that linked Saddam Hussein to the attacks of 9/11 and work to create nuclear weapons.[3] The document was leaked to the press in December 2003 for the purpose of creating public support for the war. The person’s signature on the letter in question is former Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, a CIA double agent who reported to the Bush and Blair administrations in January 2003 that Saddam had no WMD but was afraid for this to be known because of his fear of attack from Iran. Curiously, the US paid Habbush $5 million and resettled his family to Jordan. Suskind reports the reason for this act was to pay Habbush for his silence because his testimony would have both proven the letter as a forgery and informed world opinion that the US and UK invaded Iraq with all evidence that Saddam had no WMD.[4]

In August 2008, Scott Ritter, a former Marine Corps intelligence specialist and a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, wrote that Iraq scientists and weapons technicians testified to him that they were being paid by the US military to keep silent about their knowledge that Iraq had no WMD prior to the war. These Iraqis also report that their lives are in danger for telling the truth on this issue.[5]

This isn’t just the Republicans. President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership have not communicated the above to the American public. Both parties’ leadership are complicit in these atrocities.

Because US government “leaders” lied about their strongest arguments for a “defensive” war against Iraq, it would be reasonable that US government leaders have lied in the past concerning Iraq. Let’s look.

The US and Iraq: The History You Didn’t Know: Saddam Hussein was a vicious dictator who should have never ruled a nation. However, according to a dozen former US diplomats, US intelligence officials, and British scholars, Saddam was supported by the US beginning in 1959. The US CIA authorized Saddam to assassinate Iraq’s dictator, Abd al-Karim Qasim, who had recently withdrew from the pro-US Baghdad Pact and initiated friendly relations with the Soviet Union.[6] The assassination failed, but another succeeded in 1963. Saddam rose in power, and became dictator in 1979. Saddam had US support to invade Iran in a War of Aggression from 1980 to 1988, including supplying him with biological and chemical weapons.[7] When Saddam invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, US cooperation with him was suspended. The UN Security Council voted in favor of military action to remove Iraq from Kuwait.

US Congressional and public opinion to support any UN military force was divided. President George H.W. Bush spoke for US support of the war, emphasizing two areas of evidence. One was testimony from a 15-year-old girl named Nayirah to Congress in October, 1990. Nayirah claimed to be a refugee and hospital volunteer of the maternity ward of Al Adan hospital in Kuwait City; stating she witnessed Iraqi soldiers steal the incubators and leave 312 infants to die on the cold hospital floor.[8] The second was that US satellite photos showed Iraqi forces massing for attack on the Saudi Arabian border in September, 1990 with 250,000 troops and 1,500 tanks. The President and those who supported war spoke publicly of Iraqi cruelty and the need to protect the innocent people of Saudi Arabia. Public opinion gradually shifted in favor for war. The Congressional vote passed by 52-47 in the Senate and 250-183 in the House on January 12, 1991.[9]

We now know that Nayirah lied about her identity; she was the daughter of Kuwait Ambassador to the United States and member of the Kuwait royal family, Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah. Nayirah had no connection to the hospital and was coached on how to give her testimony by the US public relations firm Hill and Knowlton.[10] The only reasonable explanation I can see that the Bush Senior administration was not lying about this evidence for war is if it never occurred to anyone in leadership to verify the accuracy of this girl’s testimony. This is not likely. And remember, George H.W. Bush was the Director of the CIA, an agency responsible for working with accurate and contrived information.

When a reporter purchased commercially available satellite photos of the region at the time claimed to show massive Iraqi troop build-up and submitted them to experts for analysis, US troop presence was visible on the Saudi side of the border but there was no evidence of Iraqi troops. The Kuwaiti Air Base seemed deserted in the photos. When the reporter queried Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (now Vice President) about the satellite photos, she was told, “Trust us.” The alleged US satellite photos have never been released for reasons of “national security.”[11]

The US planning and execution of war in Iraq included the War Crime of targeting Iraq’s water system, which is expressly forbidden by the Geneva Convention for the protection of the civilian population. The documents proving the planning are from the US Defense Intelligence Agency, and state their understanding that destroying water sanitation would result in the deaths of thousands of civilians. After the US destroyed Iraq’s water purification plants, one of the documents planned propaganda to blame Saddam for not supplying clean water in Iraq.[12] The UN reported that this US War Crime and preventing Iraq from importing essential supplies caused the deaths of over one million Iraqis, most of them children.[13]

You may have heard criticism in the US mainstream media of UN officials in Iraq’s “Oil for Food” program.[14] What isn’t discussed is that the agency of the UN managing this program that diverted funds to Saddam was the UN Security Council. A principle member of the Security Council is the US.[15] Another guilty party was Chevron, who paid a $25 million fine in response to being charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.[16]

Under the Clinton administration in 1998, the US demanded that weapons inspectors have complete access to Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces while prominent US political leaders were calling for Saddam’s assassination.[17] Hussein refused. Despite the US Chief Weapons Inspector declaring that Iraq was disarmed, Clinton removed weapons inspectors and bombed Iraq.[18] This act of war was without authorization from the UN Security Council. Since then, Hillary Clinton has lied at every opportunity regarding this history, including in her presidential campaign, by saying that Saddam “threw out the inspectors.”

Additional useful history is the testimony of General Smedley Buter, who was the most decorated Marine in US History. Upon his retirement, General Butler wrote the book, War is a Racket, which powerfully communicates to the American public that political and media rhetoric for war often masks the real incentives: massive profits for our most powerful corporations. Follow the below link for a two-page summary in General Butler’s own words.[19]

Bill Moyers, President Lyndon Johnson’s former Press Secretary and exemplary journalist with over thirty career Emmy awards, documented much of this evidence in his televised 1986 work, The Secret Government.[20] Turner Broadcasting produced and aired a 1998 documentary, Secrets of the CIA, which highlights further evidence.[21]

US Department of Defense complicity for war profit has strong evidence. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld publicly acknowledged that his department had “lost” over $2.3 trillion, extending back through the Clinton administration.[22] To date, our government has not investigated. This is an astounding amount of money; equating to $23,000 “lost” per US household. The American public is being used as slave laborers, being propagandized to forfeit trillions of our dollars to a political and economic oligarchy. This danger was foreseen by George Washington, who warned us at his farewell address:

“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion…
In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.” – George Washington, Farewell Address, an open letter to the American public published on September 19, 1796.

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[1] Downing Street Memo homepage: http://downingstreetmemo.com/ , After Downing Street. Text of Downing Street Memo. May 26, 2005: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1 , and Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_street_memo.
[2] Alternet. Prados, J. Bush’s Paper Trail Grows. April 4, 2006: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/34421/?page=1 .
[3] The Raw Story. Byrne, J. Tape: top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery. Aug. 8, 2008: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Tape_Top_CIA_officer_confesses_order_0808.html .
[4] 9/11 Blogger. Suskind, R. Smoking gun? Or smoking mushroom cloud? Aug. 7, 2008: http://www.911blogger.com/node/17025 . For an interview of Suskind by John Stewart on the Daily Show from Aug. 11, 2008: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=178985&title=ron-suskind .
[5] Truthdig. Ritter, S. “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” Aug. 11, 2008: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page4/20080811_where_are_the_weapons_of_mass_destruction/ .
[6] Information Clearing House. Sale, R. Exclusive: Sadda Was Key in Early CIA Plot. April 11, 2003: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2849.htm .
[7] Project Censored. Nouveaux, D. & Steiner, J. 5: U.S. Weapons mass Destruction Linked to the Deaths of a Half-Million Children. Top 25 Censored Stories for 1999: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/5-u-s-weapons-mass-destruction-linked-to-the-deaths-of-a-half-million-... .
[8] Video of her testimony: Barry Zweiker: Gulf War lies – conspiracy to gain support. Feb. 24, 2006: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=nayirah&hl=en&sitesearch=#q=gulf%20war&hl=en&sitesearch=&start=10 .
[9] BBC on this day. 1991: US Congress votes for war in Iraq. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/12/newsid_4534000/4534588.stm .
[10] The Christian Science Monitor. Peterson, S. In war, some facts less factual. Sept. 6, 2002: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html .
[11] Project Censored. #6 1991 top 25 censored stories. No evidence of Iraqi threat to Saudi Arabia: http://www.projectcensored.org/static/1991/1991-story6.htm , and Iraqwar.org. Utley, J.B. Questions about the supposed Iraqi threat to Saudi Arabia in 1990 – aerial photos were never released! http://www.iraqwar.org/bush.htm .
[12] Project Censored. Nagy, J. #5 in top 25 censored stories for 2003: U.S. intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water system: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/5-us-intentionally-destroyed-iraqs-water-system/ .
[13] CNN. Iraq condemns embargo on 9th anniversary. Aug. 6, 1999: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9908/06/iraq.sanctions/ .
[14] Such as, FOX News. Unraveling the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal. Sept. 25, 2004: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,133484,00.html .
[15] Project Censored. McNamara, R. & Murrell, D. #6 in top 25 censored stories for 2006: The real oil for food scam: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/6-the-real-oil-for-food-scam/ .
[16] News Sophisticate. Chevron’s treasonous oil for food scandal. Nov. 15, 2007: http://newssophisticate.blogspot.com/2007/11/chevrons-treasonous-un-oil-for-food.html .
[17] CommonDreams. Zunes, S. Hillary Clinton again lies about Iraq. Feb. 2, 2008: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/02/6802/ .
[18] CommonDreams. Ritter, S. See Hillary run (from her husband’s past on Iraq). March 3, 2007: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0303-23.htm .
[19] Butler, S. War is a Racket. 1935. Two-page summary from Wanttoknow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/warcoverup .
[20] Summary and links from Wanttoknow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/050423secretgovernment .
[21] Summary and links from Wanttoknow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/051130ciasecrets .
[22] Summary of mainstream news reports at Wanttoknow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/corruptiongovernmentmilitary .