[Vision2020] The Deceptions of War

[Tom Hansen]

Excellently written, Nick.

 

The Bush administration lives in a world full of smoke and mirrors, where
snake oil is a valued commodity, the lives of those in uniform are nothing
more than cannon fodder and the civilian population of Iraq are measured in
terms such as "collateral damage".

 

I have, more than likely, served more time in the chow lines of the many
mess halls I have eaten in than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, etc. etc. have
served in uniform combined.  Bush's chest-thumping policy of "Stay the
Course" tactics and "You're either with us or you are unpatriotic" policy
does not harmonize well with the eulogies of 2,000+ casualties, not to
mention those service men and women who return from Iraq scarred and broken
for countless years to come. 

 

What was once front-page news when casualties were reported from Bush's War,
now amount to nothing more than space filler on page 6.

 

And the beat goes on . . .

 

Take care, Moscow.

 

Pro patria,

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

 

  _____  

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Nick Gier
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 6:00 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] The Deceptions of War

 

        Greetings:

I've sent this to my usual column venues and wanted to share it with
interested Visionaries.  Nick Gier

THE DECEPTIONS OF WAR:
THE COOKING OF INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQ

President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are busy defending themselves
against the charge that they deceived the American people about the reasons
for going to war in Iraq.  Sorting through my thick Iraq file, Ive come up
with following examples of outright deception.

$               Cheney continued to repeat the alleged 2001 meeting between
9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague, even though
American and European intelligence agencies said the report was false.

$               The bipartisan 9/11 Commission reported that there was no
collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but Bush
and Cheney blithely continued to make these charges.

$               Even though on June 17, 2004 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
stated that Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not Al Qaeda, Bush and
Cheney continued to state that he was. Zarqawi now heads the main terrorist
organization in Iraq because of the turmoil of the U.S. invasion, not
because Saddam invited him there.

$               The day after the 9/11 report was released Cheney claimed
that Zarqawi ran [a] poisons factory in northern Iraq out of Baghdad, but
he should have known full well that this camp was not under Saddams
control, and when it was taken by U. S. troops, captured documents revealed
no connection to Baghdad.  

$               With regard to Iraqs capacity to produce nuclear weapons,
Bush, at a September 2, 2002 news conference, declared that a new report
from the UNs International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iraq was
six months away from building a nuclear weapon.  It was later discovered
that no such report existed.

$               On December 8, 2002, former U.S. weapons inspector David
Albright appeared on 60 Minutes and stated that the aluminum tubes Saddam
ordered could not be used to enrich uranium. He concluded that Bush
administration was selectively picking information to bolster a case that
the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent than it is, and in essence, scare
people. 

Bush and Cheney sometimes defend themselves by saying that they are privy to
information that others dont have.  At the same time they declare that
Congress voted for the war on the basis of the same intelligence they had.
They obviously cannot have it both ways. We now find is that most of the
information not shared was contrary to the view that Saddam was a threat to
the U.S.

In the fall of 2002 Bush kept telling us that we wanted to avoid a war in
Iraq, but a July 23, 2002 memo detailing a secret meeting of British
officials demonstrates that Bush had no desire to go to the UN, or give UN
inspectors another chance to disarm Hussein.  Here are the crucial passages
from this memo: Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMDs.  But the intelligence
and facts were being fixed around the policy.

There should be no question that the Bush administration did in fact cook
the intelligence on Iraq.  The result has been an Iraq in far worse shape
than before, the recruitment of new terrorists and insurgents where none
existed before, and the unnecessary deaths of 2,100 Americans and tens of
thousands of Iraqis. 

Some Bush supporters have a mantra that goes something like this: Its
better to fight terrorists in Baghdad rather than to fight them in Detroit.
During the Cold War millions of innocent people in the Third World died
because both sides chose to fight in some elses country.  Our country would
be much more secure if the billions spent in Iraq had been used to repair
our crumbling infrastructure, protect our ports, search air cargo, and
secure our nuclear and chemical plants.

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