More Lies Concerning Iraq

By now most of you have hopefully heard about the Downing Street Memo, in which, at a secret meeting held in July 2002, British authorities report to Tony Blair that George Bush has decided to use the military option against Iraq, and has "fixed the intelligence around the policy." The discussion includes the beginnings of a plan as to how to convince the world that such military action is justified.

Then in September of 2002, a month before Congress voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq, and over six months before the invasion "officially" began, US and British planes began massive airstrikes against Iraqi air defense targets;

...At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of Iraq.

The Sunday Times of London recently reported on new evidence showing that "The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war." The paper cites newly released statistics from the British Defense Ministry showing that "the Allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001" and that "a full air offensive" was under way months before the invasion had officially begun...

Also in 2002, as secret plans are being made to crush Saddam Hussein, and bombs are dropping all over Iraq (unofficially, of course), it has been revealed that John Bolton orchestrated the firing of the head of a global arms control agency. Why? Because this diplomat made the mistake of trying to send in inspectors to search for chemical weapons, which would have upset the US plans to invade, since they knew damn well there were no WMDs;

A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani ``had to go,'' particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war...

...The Iraq connection to the OPCW affair comes as fresh evidence surfaces that the Bush administration was intent from early on to pursue military and not diplomatic action against Saddam Hussein's regime.

An official British document, disclosed last month, said Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed in April 2002 to join in an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq. Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help...

...After U.N. arms inspectors had withdrawn from Iraq in 1998 in a dispute with the Baghdad government, Bustani stepped up his initiative, seeking to bring Iraq - and other Arab states - into the chemical weapons treaty.

Bustani's inspectors would have found nothing, because Iraq's chemical weapons were destroyed in the early 1990s. That would have undercut the U.S. rationale for war because the Bush administration by early 2002 was claiming, without hard evidence, that Baghdad still had such an arms program...

Bolton's reward for his bullying tactics? He'll soon be the new US ambassador to the UN. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

Yesterday, the British Prime Minister and the President were asked about the Downing Street Memo in a joint press conference. Here's part of the President's response;

...My conversation with the Prime Minister was, how could we do this peacefully, what could we do. And this meeting, evidently, that took place in London happened before we even went to the United Nations -- or I went to the United Nations. And so it's -- look, both us of didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option. The consequences of committing the military are -- are very difficult. The hardest things I do as the President is to try to comfort families who've lost a loved one in combat. It's the last option that the President must have -- and it's the last option I know my friend had, as well...

This man is so busted, but he just keeps telling lies. You'd think he would have learned a thing or two from Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton; the people will turn against you if they find out you lied.

These lies are in a different category, however. People have died. Specifically, over 20,000 innocent civilians and over 1,600 American troops have lost their lives because of this President's megalomania. These are war crimes.

Let's demand a Congressional inquiry, and awaken the media to this issue.

Time to stop the lies, Mr. President. I hear the word "impeachment" blowing in the wind.

J.