in seeing the recent testimony of george galloway i thought that it was worth taking a look in hindsight at what has happened in iraq. (by the way, george galloways quote: ‘i met with saddam hussein twice. which happens to be as many times as donald rumsfeld met with saddam hussein. but whereas i met with saddam hussein to try to get oil money to go to starving iraqii’s, donald rumsfeld met with saddam hussein to sell him weapons.’ is fantastic. in fact his whole testimony was fantastic, and certainly worth watching.)
so let’s do a cursory recap:
1-in the 1980’s the republican administrations of george bush and ronald reagan provided saddam hussein with military assistance and chemical weapons technology, which he then used on his own people and on his neighboring countries.
2-during the 1990’s saddam hussein destroyed all of his weapons of mass destruction, as verified by independent arms inspectors.
3-after 9-11 george bush claimed that iraq:
a-had weapons of mass destruction
b-had been involved with al qaeda
c-had been involved in 9-11
all of these claims were instantly refuted by the international intelligence community.
4-in the run up to the invasion of iraq the bush administration systematically ignored or suppressed or altered any intelligence information that didn’t support their rush to war.
5-in april, 2003 george w. bush proclaimed ‘mission accomplished’, and claimed that major hostilities had ended in iraq.
6-since that date over 15,000 u.s servicemen have been wounded and 1,600 u.s servicemen have been killed. significantly more u.s servicemen have been wounded and killed after the president proclaimed ‘mission accomplished’.
7-the war in iraq has cost american taxpayers over $300 billion dollars.
8-the contractor to receive the largest percentage of this money has been halliburton inc, whose former ceo, dick cheney, is now the vice-president of the united states, and who was the most aggressive proponent of suppressing and altering intelligence information that didn’t support the rush to war.
9-over $15 billion dollars is unaccounted for in iraq. it has ‘gone missing’. $15,000,000,000.00 is ‘missing’.
10-due to poor republican post-war planning, many troops in iraq were not given basic body armor or humvee armor, thus resulting in a tragic abundance of preventable deaths and injuries.
the reason that i want to provide this re-cap is that it seems that our collective attention has gone elsewhere(nick & jessica, the high cost of premium ice cream, etc). history is going to look at back at the war in iraq and ask some very valid questions:
1-how was the administration able to pull off this $300 billion con and not be impeached?
2-why weren’t the mainstream american media involved in making the public aware of what was actually going on?
-moby