Originally posted in Namekagon Notebook on Sept. 4, 2012, a reminder of the history we tend to forget: how we have devastated Iraq twice.
With the Republican National Convention now in the history books, it behooves us to cast our minds back to previous administrations. Did you notice that no previous Republican president spoke at the RNC? They had a couple of Georges to choose from, both H.W. Bush and W. If the Repubs were so proud of what they had “built” during their heroes' administrations, why not bring one of them forward to tout how great they were?
I mean, there were videos of George 1 and George 2, although #1 did most of the talking. And, their fair ladies also made video appearances. But, no talk of all they had accomplished from 1988 to 1992, and from 2000 to 2008. Why?
Perhaps because both Georges are war criminals. Do you think that might be why? On Sept. 2, 2012, South African Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for George W. Bush and his British counterpart ex-prime minister Tony Blair to be tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
War criminals Bush and Blair
"The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003," Tutu wrote in an exclusive for the Observer this weekend, was "premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction [WMDs]," and instead of bringing peace, democracy, or harmony to the region, "has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history." [
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The second Iraq war
People forget that the second Iraq war was premised on a lie, namely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was planning to use them. On December 5, 2002 the White House issued this statement: "The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and vocally as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it," spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
There were claims that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, and had purchased special aluminum tubing that could only be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium. In the long run, the only thing that was provable at all was that Iraq at some point in the past had poison gas that the U.S. had given to them for use in its war against Iran. Then, America pulled out the United Nations weapons inspectors before they could finish the job of not finding any other WMDs.
In the end, we invaded Iraq just because there was a dictator in place that the United States CIA had staged two coup attempts to put there. Saddam was our boy, but we now turned against him and used him as a reason to go into Iraq for a war that lasted until this very year, 2012. It has turned out to be the second costliest war in America's history, second only to World War 2.
The Bangor, Maine Daily News wrote this in January, 2012: “Even though the last U.S. combat troops have left Iraq, American taxpayers will face decades of additional expenses, from veterans’ health care and disability benefits to interest on the debt accumulated to finance the war. [3]
The Washington Post has calculated that the cost of the second Iraq war will top $3 trillion dollars. But you will hear no talk of this when Republicans insist on cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Fuel Assistance and other social safety net programs. [4]
And what about the first Iraq war, that little excursion into the land of war crimes by George H. W. Bush? The first Iraqi war was also premised on a lie. There was no reason at all to go in and destroy the entire country's infrastructure (except so Cheney's company, Halliburton, could make hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding what we destroyed). Here's the story on that.
The first Iraq war
You may not remember, but in the Carter Administration days, our enemy was Iran, not Iraq. Here we go with the history lesson.
Back in 1953, after World War 2, the Iranian people elected a popular president named Mohammad Mosadeck [spellings vary]. He knew Iran had lots of oil, and decided to claim their oil for themselves, so they could sell it and enrich the people with schools, water supplies, hospitals and so on. This pissed off the American oil companies. So, we overthrew that government and put in a dictator called the Shah, a.k.a. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He ruled there with an iron hand, our puppet, glad to sell all of his oil to Standard Oil and their buddies.
In 1979, the people of that country got tired of the torture and dictatorial rule of the Shah. So they had a revolution, overthrew him, and took a bunch of hostages. Remember the hostage crisis? The Oil companies had a guy waiting in the wings next door in Iraq. You guessed it. It was Saddam Hussein. He was another dictator that we had installed, just like the Saudi royal family. [look them up if you want a real lesson in dictatorship]. It took two CIA coups to put him in power.
We had already armed Iraq, so it was easy to send them to war with Iran. Got it so far? Saddam Hussein was our big buddy. We had even given him poison gas. Sound familiar? He used it against Kurdish population in the town of Halabja in 1988. It doesn't matter that doing that is illegal under international law.
He carried on the war against Iran from 1980 to 1988. America was a supporter of his activities the whole time. By gassing Kurds and unleashing his military on other northern Iraqi tribes, Hussein was responsible for over 200,000 civilian casualties in his own country. On the same day as the gassing, our defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld was meeting with Saddam Hussein, shaking his hand for the cameras. Meanwhile, American oil companies enjoyed total access to and control of Iraq's oil.
That lengthy war cost Iraq a lot of money in several ways. Hussein had to borrow money from other countries, including Kuwait. Also, the over production of oil from Iraq created a glut in the market, sending price per barrel down. By 1988, when the Iran/Iraq war came to a stalemate, Iraq was unable to meet its debts to Kuwait. So, Hussein trumped up charges against the tiny emirate, saying that Kuwait was slant drilling under its border with Iraq and stealing the bigger country's oil. And, he said that Kuwait's refusal to reduce its oil production was depressing the price per barrel, which further sent Iraq into debt.
Since Iraq was all geared up for war, but had stopped fighting Iran, Hussein decided to put the troops to work with an invasion of Kuwait. Now, this is where a critical thing happened. It is absolutely documented in the American Congressional Record that on July 25, 1990 Hussein met with the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. He told her of his plans to invade Kuwait. She admitted in open testimony to Congress that she gave him the green light. She said to him,”Your dispute with Kuwait is an inter-Arab matter of no concern to the U.S.A.” Ambassadors don't do things on their own. They are official voices of the countries they represent.
Eight days later, on August 2, he proceeded to invade Kuwait. Under the George H. W. Bush Administration, America reacted by invading Iraq in a war of aggression called “Desert Storm” or “Gulf War 1”. It was a minor war, compared to the protracted conflict known as “Operation Iraqi Freedom” or “Gulf War 2”. It began on January 17, 1991 and ended two months later. We had during that time officially killed 50,000 Iraqi civilians.
A hallmark of the first Gulf War was the aerial bombardment of the entire country's
infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, water and sewage treatment plants, bridges, dams, electrical generating plants, cement making factories, radio and television stations, refineries, and factories that made medicines, textiles and basic materials like electrical wire.
BAGHDAD BURNING
No violence short of a nuclear explosion has been as intense as the air onslaught then unleashed upon Iraq. In the first 24 hours, for example, over 1,300 combat sorties were flown by Coalition air forces. Called a “hyperwar” it was much like the “Blitzkreig” carried out over London by the Nazi air force. There was no excuse for the damage done to the civilian infrastructure.
Immediately following the war, Iraq was producing only 4 percent of its pre-war electrical capacity. This completely shut down all hospitals. Civilian deaths resulted in large numbers, followed by starvation and disease from lack of drinkable water and from the complete end of sewage treatment for the entire country. This is the moral equivalent of biological warfare.
We also pioneered our use of depleted uranium tank busting ordnance during Desert Storm. There is common belief that depleted uranium isn't radioactive. Not true. It is highly radioactive. Depleted means that we have taken the U235 out of it for use in our reactors and hydrogen bombs. There is a huge amount of U238 left in it, which is just as radioactive!
In areas where depleted uranium use was the highest, Iraqi doctors have reported a massive rise in the number of babies born with birth defects and they have seen the number of cancer cases among Iraqi citizens absolutely skyrocket. In September this year, say campaigners, 170 children were born at Fallujah General Hospital, 24 per cent of whom died within seven days. Three-quarters of these exhibited deformities, including "children born with two heads, no heads, a single eye in their foreheads, or missing limbs". The comparable data for August 2002 – before the invasion – records 530 births, of whom six died and only one of whom was deformed.
To really get educated about this, go to the following site: http://gulfwarvets.com/... . We have used uranium armaments in both Iraq and Afghanistan. At last count, more than 1,000 tons have been used in Afghanistan and more than 3,000 tons in Iraq. Our own soldiers are sick with radiation poisoning, which is why the site I told you about was created by Gulf War Vets.
So, America is the only country in the world to have used weapons of mass destruction both in the old days (Japan atom bombed) and in modern times. Notice something here? You have never been told about this. No news organization reports on this stuff, especially Fox News. No one knows about this unless they are active in the peace movement.
What do you think of America now? We have literally killed over a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, because of the lingering effects of our war tactics, people will continue to suffer and die there for a hundred years.
Now you know why neither President Bush 1 nor 2 spoke at the Republican National Convention.
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