"We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are.
They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and
east, west, south and north somewhat."

Donald Rumsfeld, (March 30, 2003)
"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around
the policy [to invade Iraq]."

Downing Street Memo (July 2002)
"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting
the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every
man will be glad of those conscience-soothing
falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse
to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will
by and by convince himself that the war is just, and
will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after
this process of grotesque self-deception."

Mark Twain. The Mysterious Stranger 1916
----
Now Karl Rove,
Bush's political brain, says that the Iraq War was
"Osama bin Laden’s Idea." — This is crazy.
The fact is that the world was ready to accept a case
for destroying and eradicating the terrorist-training
camps located in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, after
9/11. That is the reason the United Nations Security
Council passed two resolutions to that effect in the
fall of 2001 and in early 2002. [These were Resolution
1373 ->http://www.un.org/docs/scres/2001/sc2001.htm],
adopted on September 28, 2001, and [Resolution
1390,->http://www.fatf-gafi.org/LongAbstract/0,2546,fr_32250379_32235720_34346122_32247554_1_1_1,00.html]
passed on January 16, 2002.
But the case for going to war against Iraq is entirely
different: It was a fabrication
from day one. That is the reason the United Nations
Security Council refused to pass a resolution
authorizing it, in January 2003. The Bush-Cheney
regime nevertheless went ahead with this illegal war
and will carry the historical opprobrium for having
done so. It took the low moral road, thus reducing the
moral stance of western civilization in the world and
doing irreparable damage to international law and
order. It has also brought discredit on the very
institution of representative government and on
democracy in general. This is a scandal of high
proportions, above and beyond all the crimes being
carried out on the ground in Iraq.
The British ambassador to Australia
and former British cabinet minister Helen Liddell
recently rendered a service to many when she stated
the obvious, i.e. that the Bush-Cheney war of
aggression against Iraq had little to do with a war
against terrorism. The Bush-Cheney regime is marketing
any imperialistic and colonialist adventure around the
world as an "anti-terrorist" mission and a push for
democracy. —This is a lie. It is a propaganda trick to
silence critics and chloroform the American public.
All these wars of aggression are illegal attempts by
the United States and its willing co-conspirators to
dominate militarily the strategic oil-rich Middle East
and Caspian region in order to displace Russia, China
and even Western Europe from this region of the world.
It has nothing to do with fighting Islamist terrorism.
In fact, it feeds and exacerbates terrorism.
Therefore, the historical reality remains that the
Bush-Cheney regime disregarded truth and international
law in order to justify taking military control of
oil-rich Iraq, without provocation, even though it
knew perfectly well that this country had no ties to
the 9/11 attacks nor to bin Laden's terrorist
organization, and that it had no weapons of mass
destruction. In the process, however, [this Karl
Rove-inspired Republican regime took partisan
advantage of the anger present in America after 9/11
to run two elections, in 2002 and in 2004,
->http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,356034,00.html]
on the theme of national security and on a platform of
war hysteria, thus profiting immensely politically
from this propaganda scam.
Now that hundreds of people die daily in occupied
Iraq, that they have triggered [a religious and
sectarian civil war
->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_war], and that a
majority of Americans have seen through their lies and
machinations, the architects of this disaster are
trying to shift blame and find new excuses. But to no
avail. The truth is now too powerful to be
extinguished by crude propaganda tricks and by lies.
For a while, however, [the campaign of disinformation
and propaganda
->http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1403971080/ref=sr_11_1/104-2645753-4771157?_encoding=UTF8]
worked remarkably well. For example, immediately after
the events of 9/11, only three percent (3%) of
Americans made a link between the terrorist attacks
and Iraq; by February 2003, weeks before the March 20,
2003 onset of the Iraq War, a whopping seventy-two
percent (72%) of Americans had been persuaded by the
Bush-Cheney regime and their sycophants in the media
that the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, had been
personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Political
analysts will study this propaganda coup for decades
to come.
Even the Democrats in Congress—goaded
by the [pro-Israel
Lobby->http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/Beauty/grow_up_alex.htm]—were
suicidally content to go along with the Bush-Cheney's
scam until the 2006 elections. They now adopt the
majority view that there is no military solution in
Iraq, that to believe so will only lead to bad
policies and make matters worse, and that a promise to
withdraw all American troops from this country is a
prerequisite to reintroduce some stability in this
ravaged country.
But how many thousands more deaths must occur before
sanity prevails?
_____________________________________________
Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached
at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Visit his blog site.
Author's Website
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book ["The Code for Global
Ethics" ->http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com]