The United States has been in conflict with Iraq since 1990 when the first President George Bush invaded the country. Since that time the lies have been flying so much that it’s hard to know what is fact and what is fiction.
In August 1990 George Bush justified the deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia by letting the American people know that it was to deter a possible attack from Iraq. The underlining reason of course was there was oil involved.
“Our nation now imports nearly half the oil it consumes and could face a major threat to its economic independence.”
Dick Cheney wasn’t the VP then but was still involved as Secretary of Defense. He warned those watching the news that if Saddam got control of Kuwait then he would be in a position to control the worldwide energy policies and that would make him have a stranglehold on the US economy.
Saddam invaded Iraq the next day on the second of August. Cheney met with King Fahd to get the okay to deploy troops from Saudi Arabia. Fahd agreed but only until Saddam was no longer a threat.
The air operation titled Desert Storm began on January 17. Iraq attacked Israel the same day with seven Scud missiles. President Bush calls up the National Guardsmen and Reservist on January 18.
Iraq creates a massive oil slick in the Gulf on January 25. Saudi Arabia is attacked by the Iraqis on January 29. By February 23 an estimated 700 oil wells are ignited. The next day the United States pushes the war effort by sending in land troops. The day after 28 soldiers perish when an Iraqi Scud hits U.S. barracks in Dhahran. a cessation of hostiles is declared at 8:01 a.m. on February 28. The terms for cease fire is negotiated in Safwan on March 1. The troops start being sent home on March 17. The cease fire terms are accepted by Iraq on April 6. But that wasn’t the end of troops in the area, Task Force Provide Comfort forms and deploys on April 6. On April 11 the cease fire takes effect. On June 7 the U.N. steps back into place taking care of Kurdish refugees.
The next year secrets started to emerge. The New York Times got portions of a high level Defense Department policy paper written by Paul Wolfowitz intended only for top Pentagon officials which included Cheney. The paper was entitled “Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999″ and outlined how the United States must correct wrongs that threaten US interests.
“Various types of US interests may be involved in such instances: access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to US citizens from terrorism or regional or local conflict.”
The paper went on to state, “must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.”
In August Dick Cheney was speaking to the Discovery Institute in Seattle.
“The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.”
- Dick Cheney
His opinion on what to do in Iraq was a full 180 with this President Bush as opposed to the current one. He continued that speech with, “So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”
Between April 14 to April 16, 1993 President Bush visited Kuwait. Later that year he stated that there was an assassination plan that was thwarted from coming into play by the Kuwaiti government. According to Bush a car bomb was to be used on the Landcruiser that Bush was to be riding in. According to this report it contained 80 to 80 kilograms of plastic explosives. The CIA investigated the explosives for this planned attack. On June 26, 1993 the United States launched a cruise missile against a building housing the Iraqi Intelligence Service which was suspected of being behind the assassination attempt. The missile attack killed six to eight persons. The next day Madeline Albright was in an emergency session explaining the justification of the attack and giving evidence to support it to the United Nations.
With that attack it seemed quiet between Iraq and the United States for years. That is until June 1997 when the Project for a New American Century was signed by Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot Cohen, Steve Forbes, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others. The project’s objective was to rally support for American global leadership.
In January of 1998 the first whispers appear for the United States to rid Saddam Hussein from power. President Clinton received a letter signed by Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, William Bennett, John Bolton, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz to do just that.
Ahmed Chalabi hosted Scott Ritter a liaison of the UN weapons inspectors working in Iraq in his London apartment. During this meeting one of the world’s largest political lies started to take shape.
“I should have asked him what he could give me,” Ritter said. “Instead, I let him ask me, ‘What do you need?’ ” The result, he said, was that “we made the biggest mistake in the intelligence business: we identified all of our gaps.” Over the next several hours, Ritter said, he outlined most of the U.N. inspectors’ capabilities and theories, telling Chalabi how they had searched for underground bunkers with ground-penetrating radar. He also told Chalabi of his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical- or biological-weapons laboratories, which would explain why investigators hadn’t been able to find them. “We made that up!” Ritter said. “We told Chalabi, and, lo and behold, he’s fabricated a source for the mobile labs.” (The I.N.C. has been accused of sponsoring a source who claimed knowledge of mobile labs.)
By October 31, 1998 the wheels were put in motion to oust Saddam Hussein with the Iraq Liberation Act that President Bill Clinton signed. The act makes it the policy of the United States to “to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress gets much of the $97 million to work on this task.
In November of 1999 “Curveball” an Iraqi defector enters into the picture. He was a convicted sex offender and low level engineer within Iraq. He is also one of the most important keys to the later claims of weapons of mass disaster inside of Iraq. His claims were what Colin Powell used later that Iraq had a number of mobile factories making biological weapons when talking to the United Nations.
According to his handlers in Germany though he was a liar.
“This was not substantial evidence,” said a senior German intelligence official. “We made clear we could not verify the things he said.”
When the United States used the information of this “Curveball” his handlers in Germany were shocked. His claims were not to start war but to be able to get a visa to stay in Germany. He was just another in a long line of Iraqi defectors that would say anything in order to gain asylum in the European country.
“We were shocked,” the official said. “Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven…. It was not hard intelligence.”
Regardless this one man’s lies were repeatedly used by the United States as a basis of a reason to invade another country.
Before becoming President in 2000 George Bush cautioned that the United States should not be overextended in too many places. That the nation should be careful of using the troops as nation builders and instead should be used to prevent wars from happening to begin with.
In the same campaign, VP candidate Cheney says the US stopped short of toppling Saddam Hussein, in 1991, so as to avoid being “an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.”
Bush’s words from this time period are a total reverse of the way his administration has been.
“If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.”
November 2000 came bringing in the reign of President George Bush. His VP had his fourth heart attack later that month on the 22nd.
In January of 2001 George Bush took the oath of President. Within days he started appointing his key staff. One of those appointments that would haunt him was Joe Allbaugh. Allbaugh was a campaign aide from Bush’s home state of Texas. He had no prior experience in disaster management which made him the “logical” choice to head FEMA.
US and British warplanes bomb targets outside of the Iraqi no fly zone as a message to Saddam. That took place in February of 2001.
At the end of February 2001 Colin Powell states of Hussein’s ability to be a threat to the world on a visit to Egypt:
“has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”
Starting in March of 2001 oil execs begin meeting with the Bush’s task force.
The first inkling that perhaps the Bush administration wasn’t on par with the threat of terrorism came with these words:
“The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism.”
- Paul Bremer
In July the CIA meet with Condoleezza Rice to state their concerns about the safety of the country when it came to terrorism. The CIA had been trying to let it be known that there were numerous threats that they had been monitoring. Of this meeting Rice is quoted as saying,
“What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States,” she said. [And the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible.”
On September 10, 2001 the National Security Agency intercepts a message about a direct threat to the United States.
“The match is about to begin” and “Tomorrow is the zero hour.”
Three years later it was revealed that the FBI still hadn’t translated 120,000 hours of recordings that could have contained threats of terrorism.
On September 11, 2001 almost 3,000 people perished in the worst attack on United States soil.
“I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.” Clarke responds, “But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.” Bush tells him, “I know, I know, but — see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred….”
There has never been proof that Hussein was involved.
The years leading up to the 9/11 attack show that the United States was planning on taking out Saddam. The cards were in motion to change the government. It had nothing to do with terrorism. It had nothing to do with Muslim extremists. Today though people believe that the war in Iraq has to do with both.
What do you believe?
