Neil Clark writes
Iraq is in turmoil - with ISIS controlling large areas of
the country - but the truth is that it's been in turmoil since the illegal 2003
invasion.
2013 was Iraq's bloodiest year since 2008, but as I wrote here members of the elite political class
and warmongers in the West weren't interested.
Iraq post-invasion had become the greatest non-news story of the modern era.
The people who could not stop talking about Iraq in 2002/3 and telling how much they cared about ordinary Iraqis were strangely silent.
Instead they were devoting their energies into propagandizing for another Middle Eastern military 'intervention', this time against Syria.
Now that Iraq is back in the western news headlines again, with calls for 'intervention' to counter ISIS, it's worth bearing in mind what the architects of the Iraq war and the cheerleaders for it said in the lead up and during the invasion about the 'threat' from Saddam's WMDs and how toppling a secular dictator would help the so-called 'war on terror' and bring peace and security to the region.
Do we really want to take these people's advice on what 'we' should do now in Iraq?
Up to a million people have been killed since the illegal invasion and as critics predicted at the time, the war led to enormous chaos and instability and boosted radical Islamic extremism.
By their own words, let the warmongers be damned.
WMDs
Iraq post-invasion had become the greatest non-news story of the modern era.
The people who could not stop talking about Iraq in 2002/3 and telling how much they cared about ordinary Iraqis were strangely silent.
Instead they were devoting their energies into propagandizing for another Middle Eastern military 'intervention', this time against Syria.
Now that Iraq is back in the western news headlines again, with calls for 'intervention' to counter ISIS, it's worth bearing in mind what the architects of the Iraq war and the cheerleaders for it said in the lead up and during the invasion about the 'threat' from Saddam's WMDs and how toppling a secular dictator would help the so-called 'war on terror' and bring peace and security to the region.
Do we really want to take these people's advice on what 'we' should do now in Iraq?
Up to a million people have been killed since the illegal invasion and as critics predicted at the time, the war led to enormous chaos and instability and boosted radical Islamic extremism.
By their own words, let the warmongers be damned.
WMDs
***
“He (Saddam)
is probably the most dangerous individual in the world today.
Interviewer: Capable of?
Capable of
anything. Capable of using weapons of mass destruction against the United
States, capable of launching other military maneuvers as soon as he thinks he
can get away with it...”
Richard Perle, chairman
of the Defense Policy Board, mid-October 2001
***
The threat is
very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community
but to Britain.
***
And every
indication we have is that he (Saddam) is pursuing, pursuing with abandon,
pursuing with every ounce of effort, the establishment of weapons of mass
destruction, including nuclear weapons.
Benjamin Netanyahu, (then
former Israeli Prime Minister) testifies to Congress, 12th September 2002
***
The document
discloses that his (Saddam's) military planning allows for some of the WMD to
be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.
Tony Blair foreword to the infamous 'dodgy dossier': 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Assessment
of the British Government, (24th September 2002
***
The evidence
produced in the Government's report shows clearly that Iraq is still pursuing
its weapons of mass destruction programme...The Government dossier confirms
that Iraq is self-sufficient in biological weapons and that the Iraq military
is ready to deploy these and chemical weapons at some 45 minutes' notice'
British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan-Smith, 24th
September 2002.s from 2nd Battalion, 7
***
***
The dictator
of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving.
***
For Churchill,
this apotheosis came in 1940; for Tony Blair, it will come when Iraq is
successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction are unearthed
from where they have been hidden by Saddam's henchmen."
Andrew Roberts, British
neo-con historian, February 2003.
***
He (Saddam)
claims to have no chemical or biological weapons, yet we know he continues to
hide biological and chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as
often as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential neighbourhoods
Donald Rumsfeld, US
Secretary of Defense, Press conference, 12th March 2003.
***
We are asked
now seriously to accept that in the last few years—contrary to all history,
contrary to all intelligence—Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those
weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.
Tony Blair, House of
Commons, 18th March 2003.
***
But if we
leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance
there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the
wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing
Saddam.
***
Saddam Hussein
is there- and he's a dictator and he has weapons of mass destruction and are
you going to do something about it or not?
William Kristol, neo-con
pundit, chair of The Project for the New American Century and editor of the
Weekly Standard, as quoted on BBC Panorama programme, The War Party, broadcast
May 2003. Commanding General 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force in the Kuwait desert, March 14, 2003 (Reuters)
And when the WMDs did not turn up?
***
Interviewer: Is it curious
to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the
country, they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction?
Not at
all...We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and
east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld, US
Defense Secretary, 30th March 2003
***
Before people
crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction I suggest they wait a
little bit. I remain confident they will be found.
Saddam and the war on terror
***
There can be
no victory in the war against terrorism if, at the end of it, Saddam Hussein is
still in power
Richard Perle, chairman
of the Defense Policy Board, mid-October 2001
***
Interviewer: If we go into
Iraq and we take down Hussein?
Then I think
it's over for the terrorists.
Richard Perle, chairman
of the Defense Policy Board, mid October 2001.
***
I have
certainly made up my mind, as indeed any sensible person would that the region
in the world, most of all the people of Iraq, would be in a far better position
without Saddam Hussein... It will be far better if he was not leading Iraq; the
whole of the world would be safer if that were the case.
Tony Blair, television
interview, May 2002.
***
If you take
out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous
positive reverberations on the region.
Benjamin Netanyahu,
addressing Congress, 12th September 2002.
***
We know that
Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade...We've
learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and
deadly gases.
George W. Bush, 7 October
2002.
***
Some have
argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against
terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to
winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I
said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists
themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of
terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction.
George W. Bush, 7th
October 2002.
***
The idea that
this action (war vs Iraq) would become a recruiting sergeant for others to come
to the colours of those who are "anti" any nation in the west is, I
am afraid, nonsense. The biggest recruiting sergeant of all has been
indecision, and the failure to take action to show that such resolve matters.
***
I feel no
doubt that he (Saddam) has stockpiled some of the most vile weapons known to
man. They include nuclear material. Saddam wants to dominate the Middle East,
he wants to terrorise the world.. I would lay my life savings in a bet that
information will emerge which proves Iraq helped al-Qaeda in the orchestration
of September 11.
Ex-SAS Major Peter Ratcliffe, in the
interview with the pro-war British newspaper The Sun, 4th April 2002.
Economic benefits of the war
***
The greatest
thing to come of this to the world economy, if you could put it that way, would
be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country.
The new Hitler
***
Saddam is no
Bismarck. He is more a Hitler. As his fate closed in, Hitler dreamt of terrible
weapons. Saddam has done more than dream. He already possesses biological
weaponry, including botulinum and anthrax. He does not yet have a missile
system which could deliver a biological attack, but hideous damage could be
inflicted by a single suicide agent with a suitcase.
***
A majority of
decent and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler and
that those who did were war-mongers..
Triumphalism
***
What a
wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion – one that will live in legend like
the fall of the Bastille, V-E Day, or the fall of the Berlin Wall..... All
those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his idea that
there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people – they will now have to
think again...Thank God for Tony Blair and those other European leaders who
defied the axis of complacency
William Shawcross, Wall
Street Journal, 10th April 2003 on the toppling of the statue of Saddam.
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