I was told the US went to war in Iraq to aid the Iraqi humanitarian mission and thwart Saddam Hussein's development and proliferation of WMD.
In my opinion this was not the case in 1991 nor was it the case in 2003.
Ironically shortly before the millennium the international community had increasingly placed pressure on the Clinton administration to end the sanctions, a movement I was semi-actively involved while studying political science at the University of Michigan.
Some researchers say that over a million Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of the sanctions, [6] although other estimates have ranged as low as 170,000 children. [4] [7] [8][9] But it wasn’t merely numbers that spoke to me, it was the personal stories of people like Deana Talal Rabiah and Will Lafi Youmans, who described the desperate state in which Iraqi citizens lived as a result of the sanctions imposed upon them by the US led Coalition operating in the then “no-fly zones”
Moreover it was meeting Denis Halliday who was appointed United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level that changed my mind because by the time I met him he'd resigned after a 34 year career with the UN in order to have the freedom to criticize the sanctions regime, saying "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide"[12] UNICEF announced that 500,000 child deaths have occurred as a result of the sanctions.
So wait a minute you mean we created a humanitarian crisis in Iraq and then went in to fix it for humanitarian reasons? Or is there more at work here?
I was told to provide a list of US companies working and obviously profiting from the war in Iraq to support my claim that we are not simply seeking oil contracts, but military and construction contracts as part of our geo- strategic interest in gaining a foothold in the Middle East to counter the "Persian threat", to gain regional influence to counter and/or end dependency on Saudi Arabia, and lastly to establish a permanent presence in a geo-political strategy reminiscent of the Great Game (in order to thwart terrorist activity, protect Israel and expand our sphere of influence by engaging in democratic nation building); for which I have no problem as an student of political science and an vocal advocate of maintaining US military-economic hegemonic stability.
However, the lies and deceit READ THE FULL REPORT HERE. must end. The right argues well we know we didn’t have correct intelligence, thus how do we solve the problem, well we have to look at the problem from its source, which happens to be the intentional misrepresentation of facts!
The end result is a course of action, which involves a long term military commitment (which is estimated to cost $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel prize-winning Columbia University economist) and Linda Bilmes (Harvard budget expert).
Which unless we raise taxes or cut discretionary funding or gain so economic advantage in the region (via trade agreements, further weapon contracts) will drive our country and economy into ruin! Inevitably ALL AMERICANS REGARDLESS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.
In contrast to War supporters on the right, I honestly believe some were and/or are willing to risk 4k more lives and spend hundreds of years to achieve something we never achieved both in the aftermath of WWI, WWII or the Cold War: REGIONAL DOMINANCE OF THE MIDDLE EAST.
The new Pentagon Report (see “READ THE FULL REPORT HERE”) link and Senate Intelligence Report (http://intelligence.senate.gov/prewar.pdf) are reminiscent of the 1973 Pentagon Papers, identifying the US could not practically win the War in Vietnam. With esteemed PATRIOTS and fellow alumnus of my alma mater Cranbrook Kingwood such as Daniel Ellsburg pointing out yet again how the government might be duping us, how can any rational minded individual not compare the actions and arrogance of this administration to that of Nixon during Watergate?
We need only review the “Masters of War” post to understand the appropriate nature of comparing the Nixon Administration’s handling of Vietnam to the Bush’s Administrations handling of this war.
Nixon's Oval Office tape from June 14 shows H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon show the depth of deceit not only of this administration but those to control the future as well.
To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it's wrong, and the President can be wrong.”
After Ellsburg released the Pentagon Papers the Nixon Administration did everything it could do to disclaim him (sound anything like the Valerie Plame-Joseph Wilson CIA leak)?
Does Gulf of Tonkin sound like the intelligence reporting used to justify this military campaign?….I’m sorry to those on the right for that accusation I forgot…this is a humanitarian effort backed up by countless UN binding UN Resolutions!
If you review my Obama bin B%&*%!$: Silencing Anti-War Rhetoric, you’ll see what else UNSC Resolution 687 has to say on this subject.
My point is if we are going to go to WAR for geo-strategic reasons just say F----U We’re America! Don’t sugar coat it…Do it like a Man!
And to all those who claim conspiracy well with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush’s links to the Nixon administration and the history of both, I must admit we have the Usual Suspects.
And like that they’re gone………………
FYI: Daniel Ellsburg BioDaniel Ellsberg was born in Detroit in 1931. After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. Summa cum Laude in Economics, he studied for a year at King's College, Cambridge University, on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.
Between 1954 and 1957, Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander.
From 1957-59 he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1962 with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision.
In 1959, he became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making.
He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification on the front lines.
On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, he worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.Hardly the background of a "conspiracy theorist" or "irrational" man.
Here list of companies profiting from the War in Iraq.
This data is derived from the General Services Administration database and covers fiscal years 1990 through 2002.
Campaign Contributions of Post-war Contractors
This data is derived from political contributions to the Federal Election Commission from 1990 through mid-year 2003.
Because of inconsistent and, sometimes scarce, information provided by the U.S. government, the amounts in the "contract values" field represent several type of contract payouts. The amount is either what has been paid to date on an existing contract that may extend for several years; or it represents a minimum and maximum value range of the contract; or in some instances it is the only figure provided by the government, and the contract parameters are unclear. All information known about a given contract is included in the individual company profiles. Any information not given about a particular contract could not be ascertained from either the government agency awarding the contract, the company or public sources of information. Contracts for geographical areas that include both Iraq and Afghanistan are listed under Iraq, but individual contracts are explained in the respective company profiles.
IN all fairness to the right, weapons grade material was discovered in Iraq.
"The United States has informed an international agency that oversees nuclear materials that it intends to move hundreds of tons of uranium from a sealed repository south of Baghdad to a more secure place outside Iraq," the paper announced in a little-noticed May 2004 report. "The repository, at Tuwaitha, a centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program until it was largely shut down after the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, holds more than 500 tons of uranium," the paper revealed, before insisting: "None of it [is] enriched enough to be used directly in a nuclear weapon."
Well, almost none. The Times went on to report that amidst Saddam's yellowcake stockpile, U.S. weapons inspectors found "some 1.8 tons" that they "classified as low-enriched uranium."The paper conceded that while Saddam's nearly 2 tons of partially enriched uranium was "a more potent form" of the nuclear fuel, it was "still not sufficient for a weapon."
Consulted about the low-enriched uranium discovery, however, Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press that if it was of the 3 percent to 5 percent level of enrichment common in fuel for commercial power reactors, the 1.8 tons could be used to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb. And Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times that the low-enriched uranium could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions."A country like Iran could convert that into weapons-grade material with a lot fewer centrifuges than would be required with natural uranium," he explained."
Reporters questioned the lawmakers as to why the Bush administration had not played up the report to boost their case for continued warfare in Iraq.
"The administration has been very clear that they want to look forward," Santorum said. "They felt it was not their role to go back and fight previous discussions."
Interesting perhaps the following evidence presented before the UN Security Council is why.
U.S. corporations involved...
A - nuclear K - chemical B - biological R - rockets (missiles)
1) Honeywell (R,K)
2) Spektra Physics (K)
3) Semetex (R)
4) TI Coating (A,K)
5) UNISYS (A,K)
6) Sperry Corp. (R,K)
7) Tektronix (R,A)
8) Rockwell )(K)
9) Leybold Vacuum Systems (A)
10) Finnigan-MAT-US (A)
11) Hewlett Packard (A.R,K)
12) Dupont (A)
13) Eastman Kodak (R)
14) American Type Culture Collection (B)
15) Alcolac International (C)
16) Consarc (A)
17) Carl Zeis -U.Ss (K)
18) Cerberus (LTD) (A)
19) Electronic Assiciates (R)
20) International Computer Systems
21) Bechtel (K)
22) EZ Logic Data Systems,Inc. (R)
23) Canberra Industries Inc. (A)
24) Axel Electronics Inc. (A)
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