Update [2005-6-25 21:47:44 by kant]: Raw Story working on a Smoking Gun...
Smoking Gun... Key words... "illegal airstrikes." Also see
London Times story...
pertinent graphs...
If this was a covert air war both Bush and Blair may face searching questions. In America only Congress can declare war, and it did not give the US president permission to take military action against Iraq until October 11, 2002.
Last week one US blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, unearthed more unsettling evidence. It was an overlooked interview with Lieutenant-General T Michael Moseley, the allied air commander in Iraq, in which he appears to admit that the “spikes of activity” were part of a covert air war.
From June 2002 until March 20, when the ground war began, the allies flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq, attacking 349 carefully selected targets. The attacks, Moseley said, “laid the foundations” for the invasion, allowing allied commanders to begin the ground war.
The bloggers may have found their own smoking gun.
Leave it to Larissa from here.
Original posts below fold.
!
Update [2005-6-25 15:0:51 by kant]:Rumsfeld is making the rounds tomorrow... Meet the Corporate Press... This Weak. Make them confront him with Michael Smith's article... Call, e-mail etc.
Original post below the fold.
Update [2005-6-25 15:4:37 by kant]: Abizaid and Levin on Late Edition... Contact Levin's office... and Wolf... Make them Ask Abizaid about the bombing.
Update [2005-6-25 15:8:22 by kant]: Face the Nation: Abizaid;
Jan Crawford Greenburg, Chicago Tribune; Lara Logan, CBS News Correspondent... Contact one and all.The Karl Rove BS has buried the lede about the DSM... To paraphrase Michael Smith, the reporter who first broke the DSM story: "It's the bombing, stupid!"
How convenient that the news of Rove's speech hit the headlines on the same morning that Smith published
his op-ed piece in the LA Times.
Smith lays out a reality-based argument that proves that Bush and Blair actually started the War - in violation of all U.N. Resolutions and builds to the following conclusion...
Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.
The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war is old news.
The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress.
The details of Smith's arguments are below the fold... But the point of this diary is to refocus attention on the fact that this air war is Bush's Gulf of Tonkin. It where the framing of Bush's mendacity must begin.
Smith begins his argument by telling us whatwe already know, and what the MSM has FINALLY begun to report...
American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
He then lays out the evidence of how and when the war REALLY began...
But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This we now realize was Plan B.
Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.
British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.
But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.
The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into 2003.
We need to put pressure on the MSM to report this news. This must be the next stage in the fight to get the MSM to cover the TRUE HISTORY of Bush's war.
Fight the good fight!