The Young Turks on Report Showing Iraq Invasion Based on Lies

This is a piece from The Young Turks on a recently declassified report from the intelligence committee for the Joint Chiefs of Staff showing that instead of the confident knowledge the Bush administration claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, the result was the complete opposite. Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and Bush himself stated that they were absolutely certain that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, and that they were only a few months away from developing nuclear bombs. They also claimed that the Iraqis also possessed the missiles to drop these bombs on Israel.

This report shows that instead of secure knowledge, Bush’s administration was profoundly ignorant whether Hussein really did pose a threat. The report states that they didn’t know how much they didn’t know. In some areas of Hussein’s weapons programme, they admitted that they had zero knowledge, while in others the information could go up to about 75 per cent. The report’s compilers admit that in some areas the report was based on 90 per cent uncertainty. They had very little information on Hussein’s chemical weapons. Furthermore, the report stated that the Iraqis did not have the precursors for a sustained chemical weapon attack. As for biological weapons, the report states they had no information on their whereabouts or the regime’s capabilities regarding the various stages in their manufacture. They also had little or no information regarding their nuclear weapons programme. And the report states that Hussein did not have long range missiles. In other words, there was absolutely no danger of him nuking Israel, despite Rice’s statement that the first information they would have about the Iraqi nuclear threat might be a mushroom cloud.

Cenk Uygur states that this report is damning. The invasion of Iraq was based on lies. The only fact to come out of it that might partially exonerate Bush himself, is a statement from one of the intelligence staff responsible for the report. When he was asked whether the report would have been sent to Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney to pass on to the president, he said, ‘That’s the last place it would have gone.’ The generals did not want Bush to know the truth, as they wanted war.

And in Britain Tony Blair’s regime also lied with the ‘dodgy dossier’ and ‘sexed up reports’. The results have been millions of dead and displaced Iraqis, the emergence of ISIS, and the destabilisation of almost the entire Middle East. But the American military wanted war anyway.

I think Ozzy Osbourne sang about this kind of affair in Black Sabbath’s War Pigs.

‘Generals gathering in their masses
Just like witches at Black Masses’.

Bush is a liar, but Ozzy still rocks.

Tags: 'Dodgy Dossier', 'War Pigs', Biological Weapons, Black Sabbath, Cenk Uygur, Chemical Weapons, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Dubya, Intelligence, Iraq Invasion, Iraq War, ISIS, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Middle East, Nuclear Missiles, Nuclear Weapons, Ozzy Osbourne, Saddam Hussein, The Young Turks, tony blair, Weapons of Mass Destruction