Bush 1: CIA director. Bush 2: Iraq war. Jeb Bush: Presidential candidate. NY Times: Operation Mockingbird, Judith Miller, et.al.
Story: Bush was right, Iraq war justified.
Just clearing the decks for sonny boy, and what will come after.
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Iâd just like to point out that banner wasnât for the presidents visit or saying that the whole Iraq mission was accomplished. That banner was for some other specific mission that was finished with. I know it gets made fun of a lot, but itâs one of those things that is taken out of context.
IIRC everyone but Germany was on board with the intel. I mean officially, obviously there will be people who disagree within each government.
If it had worked out and Iraq was a peaceful democracy I would have had a Machiavellian out look that it was necessary. But in hindsight it was a cluster fuck that we shouldnât have gotten involved in.
One other reason I supported it was it gave the Al Qaeda (sp) and the Jihadist a battlefield other than here. If they wanted to kill Americans and Infidels it was much easier to get on a bus and head to Iraq. But now I think that fear was over blown.
Now I guess older and wiser I would prefer we stay out of it. I mean I would love to help out progressive, non radicals establish a free, democratic society. But it just isnât that simple. The ideals and cultures donât translate well. ISIS is a terrible, evil group of people. The Taliban was the same way. I mean just the lowest forms of life. The atrocities against people and women especially is appalling. But I think the people of that region need to get up and put an end to them.
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Iâm having a hard time seeing this as anything other than a cynical attempt to drum up support for military action against in Syria and such. Considering the timing of this this revelation, it suggests that the Iraq invasion was justified because of this purchase.
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Everyone who was located within the borders of the US, that is.
Looking at things from Central Europe, it was clear that the Bush administration wanted war. They had been âaccidentallyâ linking al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein since the fall of 2002. It was common knowledge that there was absolutely no basis to that claim, but that Bush had most Americans confused on the matter.
The official excuse for regime change kept changing, and Colin Powellâs speech at the UN basically convinced no one. Yes, Saddam kept cheating the inspectors. But he wasnât dangerous to anyone beyond the borders of Iraq.
Giving the UN teeth? Well, thatâs nice. By violating the UN charter (which bans âpreventiveâ wars), declaring the UN security council âirrelevantâ and starting an obviously illegal war? Good job. That really strengthened the UNâs position.
And France. And lots of other governments. And most experts. Donât forget that some governments went along only in order to exchange favors with the powerful and influential US government. They only needed to believe that supporting the US was in their interest, not that attacking Iraq was the right thing to do.
Public opinion in the EU was about 68% against (âthe invasion is unjustifiedâ). Spain, which provided troops, had 79% against, and Great Britain had 51% against.
Have a look at this German opinion piece from a few days before the invasion: »Kriegsgrund dringend gesucht« - DER SPIEGEL
I also heard the prediction that Iraq would turn into a quagmire of guerilla resistance and civil war more than once before the invasion happened.
Yes, America was lied to. But thatâs not really an excuse. The American people should have known. Almost everyone else did, so it wouldnât have been so hard.
P.S.: Can we please officially repeal Godwinâs Law? Iâd really like to draw some parallels on the subject of war propagandaâŠ
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The liberal joke floating around during the marketing campaign to push for war in Iraq was, âOf course Iraq has chemical weapons. We know because we still have the receipts.â
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Bad guy NSA spends billions reading your email. Good guy CIA spends millions getting rid of chemical weapons.
Also, having read the comments, the fact that these exist in no way validates claims of WMDs. It was well-established that Iraq was gassing the Kurds. These are not WMDs. These are Weapons of Marginal Terrorism at best.
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Thatâs going to be the narrative, huh. Never mind how, as Brainspore points out, it was an open secret that much of what youâve said was questionable to invented. Never mind how many people familiar with the situation called just how poorly it would go, right down to the power vacuum enabling more radical factions. Never mind how many critics had to be actively ignored, even let go, to make this disaster possible.
No, mistakes were made but hindsight is 20/20. We might have to admit it was a bad idea, but we donât have to admit anything about why it happened.
Yes, so it was said five years later. At the time, though, they juxtaposed it with a speech about the end of major combat operations. âThe War on Terror continues, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide.â âIn the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.â But we can forget that too, I suppose.
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If you really believe that then you either werenât paying attention or were actively dismissing the opinion of any person or government who didnât agree with the Bush administrationâs narrative.
For those who did buy the intel it was largely taken on faith, because few if any governments have an independent intelligence apparatus on par with the CIA. (âThey wouldnât flat-out lie to their own allies, right? Surely they must know something we donât!â)
We canât change the mistakes of the past, and Iâm glad you are at least willing to admit that the war in Iraq was a total clusterfuck. All Iâm asking is that next time someone questions whether a major military operation is a good idea give them the freakinâ benefit of the doubt.
(Hint: the next time is already happening.)
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Nope. I went over the Powell presentation in the Newspaper, saw that the evidence they were showing us was faked. I remember one pair of photos which were supposed to show new construction at an old chemical weapons plant. But comparing the shadows, the before and after pictures showed the same buildings, just different times of day. And that left me wondering why reporters werenât checking the presentatation after publishing it. I wrote a letter to the editor asking people to check for themselves, but it wasnât published. I suspected that the whole thing was faked to draw us into war. I suspected that if the Iraqi govât had old chemical weapons, they had probably degraded, gone missing, etc.
They didnât even need to fake the photos themselves, because they were vague enough to be open to interpretation. Weâre not exactly talking about âU2 spy plane photos of Russian ICBMs in Cubaâ quality images here. All they needed to do was present the most terrifying possible interpretation of those photos and add some captions to influence how we would see them. Errol Morris broke it down quite eloquently in his 2008 essay âPhotography as a Weapon.â
This is one of the slides Powell showed the UN to make a case for Iraq concealing a weapons program:
This is the same slide with different captions added on the left photo:
This is how most manipulation of intelligence works. Not with photoshopped images and fabricated reportsâthose kinds of deception can be exposed. More often itâs just highly selective interpretations of evidence that could support the case being made and immediate dismissal of any evidence that doesnât.
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Well I gave other reasons besides just the intel. Admittingly not necessarily great reasons, but that was my thoughts at the time.
But I would like to think Iâve learned something and agree that I donât want invest man power and weapons in the region. MAYBE an advisory roleâŠ
Actually, and this make me a commie in some circles, I think as a whole we should scale back our military. Not completely neuter it, but reduce it and force Europe to pick up their tab.
Basically we are supposed to be prepared to fight wars on two front is need be. We are the big back bone holding up all of NATO and act as a security blanket for Europe. When you compare the percentages of GNP spent on the military it is much smaller than us. Why? Because they know if the shit hits the fan the US will throw men and equipment their way.
People say to me. âWhen the zombies come, I am coming to your house because you have guns.â That is exactly what Europe and our other allies treat us like.
Iâd actually interpret it the other way. I donât think Europeâs military spending is low or unreasonable at all, especially for peacetime. If it seems that way itâs only because ours is ridiculously high even since we failed to heed Eisenhowerâs warnings about the Military-Industrial Complex.
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It also says the stuff in the shells was in remarkably good condition.
Iâm a chemist, I could explain why youâre not correct, if you like.
I for one, think ISIS did remarkably well, baiting us into a war, like a dozen years before they even existed!
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On the one hand, factually, you are not incorrect. But, the context of that photograph is not ONLY the one intended by the photographer
If the world worked that way, Bush would be able to travel overseas without fear of arrest.
The context is NOW what it is.
And also, let us not forget that that very day, that banner day, he was hiding the US Fleet from the US Press. He kept the ships out at sea, somewhwere between Asia and San Diego, ships which were otherwise returning to port for a shore cycle after a combat cycle. He did this so land based PRESS helicopters could not buzz his photo op.
But I am sure all those 10,000 families who were put off were PSYCHED to put off seeing their loved seamen for a few more days in the name of jingoism, propaganda, and photo opportunities.
Nothing says freedom like a photo op, that youâve kept the ACTUAL press from covering.
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If it had been two-snaps-up-in-a-cirlce, that would have been unequivocal. What is his left hand doing? Thumb down? Glued to the podium? Giving the armed-forces the finger? This was just a mixed message.
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plus scare words
People are telling you that they are already, or will soon become zombies, and they know it. Aim for the kneecaps, you wonât have time for kill shots.
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We can safely say that, probably, some to most of the people involved had worked for GHW Bush when GHW Bush ran the CIA, in the time frame when the CIA helped Iraq manufacture these weapons.
So, we donât know -nothing- about the back-story. We know of prior institutional involvement, and we can deduce likely personal involvement by likely one or more of the same spooks.
I imagine it was cleaning up their own mess.
GHW Bush used to sign his name âThe Head Spookâ. Let that be widely known.
