| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Patriotboy is Fair and Balanced" |
| Date: |
23 Sep 2003 02:25:17 PM |
| Object: |
A History of the Iraq War, Told Entirely in Lies |
" The Revision Thing: A History of the Iraq War, Told Entirely in
Lies
All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and
advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity.
Once again, we were defending both ourselves and the safety and
survival of civilization itself. September 11 signaled the arrival of
an entirely different era. We faced perils we had never thought
about, perils we had never seen before. For decades, terrorists had
waged war against this country. Now, under the leadership of
President Bush, America would wage war against them. It was a
struggle between good and it was a struggle between evil.
It was absolutely clear that the number-one threat facing America was
from Saddam Hussein. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda had high-level
contacts that went back a decade. We learned that Iraq had trained Al
Qaeda members in bomb making and deadly gases. The regime had long-
standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations. Iraq and Al
Qaeda had discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq. Iraqi officials
denied accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials simply were
not credible. You couldn't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam
when you talked about the war on terror.
The fundamental question was, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons
program? And the answer was, absolutely. His regime had large,
unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--
including VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gas, anthrax, botulism,
and possibly smallpox. Our conservative estimate was that Iraq then
had a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons
agent. That was enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. We
had sources that told us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized
Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons--the very weapons the
dictator told the world he did not have. And according to the British
government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical
attack in as little as forty-five minutes after the orders were
given. There could be no doubt that Saddam Hussein had biological
weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.
Iraq possessed ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of
miles--far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other
nations. We also discovered through intelligence that Iraq had a
growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be
used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.
We were concerned that Iraq was exploring ways of using UAVs for
missions targeting the United States.
Saddam Hussein was determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. We
knew he'd been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear
weapons, and we believed he had, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons. The British government learned that Saddam Hussein had
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our
intelligence sources told us that he had attempted to purchase high-
strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear-weapons production. When
the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied-finally denied
access, a report came out of the [International Atomic Energy Agency]
that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I didn't
know what more evidence we needed.
Facing clear evidence of peril, we could not wait for the final proof
that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. The Iraqi dictator
could not be permitted to threaten America and the world with
horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons.
Inspections would not work. We gave him a chance to allow the
inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. The burden was on those
people who thought he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell
the world where they were.
We waged a war to save civilization itself. We did not seek it, but
we fought it, and we prevailed. We fought them and imposed our will
on them and we captured or, if necessary, killed them until we had
imposed law and order. The Iraqi people were well on their way to
freedom. The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding
American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the
center of Baghdad were breathtaking. Watching them, one could not
help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the
Iron Curtain.
It was entirely possible that in Iraq you had the most pro-American
population that could be found anywhere in the Arab world. If you
were looking for a historical analogy, it was probably closer to
post-liberation France. We had the overwhelming support of the Iraqi
people. Once we won, we got great support from everywhere.
The people of Iraq knew that every effort was made to spare innocent
life, and to help Iraq recover from three decades of totalitarian
rule. And plans were in place to provide Iraqis with massive amounts
of food, as well as medicine and other essential supplies. The U.S.
devoted unprecedented attention to humanitarian relief and the
prevention of excessive damage to infrastructure and to unnecessary
casualties.
The United States approached its postwar work with a two-part
resolve: a commitment to stay and a commitment to leave. The United
States had no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new
government. That choice belonged to the Iraqi people. We have never
been a colonial power. We do not leave behind occupying armies. We
leave behind constitutions and parliaments. We don't take our force
and go around the world and try to take other people's real estate or
other people's resources, their oil. We never have and we never will.
The United States was not interested in the oil in that region. We
were intent on ensuring that Iraq's oil resources remained under
national Iraqi control, with the proceeds made available to support
Iraqis in all parts of the country. The oil fields belonged to the
people of Iraq, the government of Iraq, all of Iraq. We estimated
that the potential income to the Iraqi people as a result of their
oil could be somewhere in the $20 [billion] to $30 billion a year
[range], and obviously, that would be money that would be used for
their well-being. In other words, all of Iraq's oil belonged to all
the people of Iraq.
We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological
laboratories. And we found more weapons as time went on. I never
believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in
that country. But for those who said we hadn't found the banned
manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they were wrong, we found
them. We knew where they were.
We changed the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people. We
didn't want to occupy Iraq. War is a terrible thing. We've tried
every other means to achieve objectives without a war because we
understood what the price of a war can be and what it is. We sought
peace. We strove for peace. Nobody, but nobody, was more reluctant to
go to war than President Bush.
It is not right to assume that any current problems in Iraq can be
attributed to poor planning. The number of U.S. forces in the Persian
Gulf region dropped as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This
nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. There is a lot of
revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain--he is no
longer a threat to the free world, and the people of Iraq are free.
There's no doubt in my mind when it's all said and done, the facts
will show the world the truth. There is absolutely no doubt in my
mind."
http://www.harpers.org/online/revision_thing/?pg=1
--
"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance
of official policy, but a love of one's country
deep enough to call her to a higher standard."
--George McGovern
Tim
"Fair and Balanced"
.
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