Oorlogsmisdadigers Bush en Blair die de oorlogen tegen Afghanistan en Irak begonnen hebben nu een grote mond over terugtrekking troepen

Tony Blair die Groot-Brittannië (GB) meesleepte in 2 oorlogen t.w. tegen Afghanistan en Irak, heeft nu een grote bek over de terugtrekking van troepen uit Afghanistan, alsof mede door zijn beslissing deel te nemen aan deze illegale oorlogen niet minstens 2,5 miljoen mensen werden vermoord' (moet zijn 5 miljoen*) en ontelbare oorlogsmisdaden werden begaan........ Voorts moeten er honderdduizenden (zwaar) gewonden zijn gevallen onder de burgers, om nog maar te zwijgen over de 629 Britse militairen die omkwamen in die oorlogen, waarbij uiteraard evenzo duizenden (zwaar) gewonden waren te betreuren onder die militairen...... Alsof het normaal is dat miljoenen mensen op de vlucht zijn geslagen door die oorlogen......

Voorts zijn Bush en Blair één op één verantwoordelijk  voor de moslimterreur op de straten van Europa, immers het was en is uiterst naïef om te denken dat de grootschalige terreur van het westen in Afghanistan, Irak, Libië  en Syrië onbeantwoord zou en zal blijven (vergeet daarbij niet dat de terreuraanslagen van 9/11, de zogenaamde reden voor de oorlog tegen Afghanistan werden uitgevoerd onder regie en met hulp van de geheime diensten in de VS en Israël >> de bewijzen daarvoor zijn overweldigend.....)

Oorlogsmisdadigers Tony Blair en George W. Bush hadden al lang en breed in een Scheveningse gevangenis moeten zitten en dat voor de rest van hun leven, veroordeeld door het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC), waar dit strafhof anderen, meestal gekleurden, voor veel minder oorlogsmisdaden heeft veroordeeld en gevangengezet.....

Dezelfde Tony Blair (voormalig Labour premier van GB) laat zich intussen feestelijk betalen door de psychopathische heersers van de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten en Saoedi-Arabië, dit vanwege advieswerk voor deze schoften die een genocide uitvoeren in Jemen.......

Terecht merkt Caitlin Johnstone op, in het hieronder weergegeven artikel van haar site, dat figuren als Bush en Blair zich tot het eind van hun leven beter hadden kunnen verstoppen onder een grote steen, maar nee, deze oorlogsmisdadigers zoeken de reguliere westerse media en het publiek om hun ongenoegen te uiten over de terugtrekking van de westerse terreurtroepen uit Afghanistan, waar ze in feite een illegale oorlog (gebaseerd op leugens) zijn begonnen...... 

Naast de andere landen die mee hebben gevochten in Afghanistan ('opbouwmissies' uitgevoerd met bommen en granaten), waaronder de andere deelnemende NAVO-lidstaten, zijn Bush en Blair verantwoordelijk voor de situatie die is ontstaan in dat land, alsook voor het feit dat de Taliban strijders vergeleken met 20 jaar geleden veel machtiger zijn geworden...... Ofwel: een waanzinnig resultaat.......

Het ergste is wel dat opperploerten Bush en Blair straks met alle (staats-) eer zullen worden begraven, alsof het filantropische weldoeners zouden zijn geweest i.p.v. smerige en ordinaire oorlogsmisdadigers die daarbij de wereld en hun volk op schunnige manieren hebben voorgelogen......

Waar halen Blair en Bush het gore lef vandaan??? 

Hier het artikel van Caitlin Johnstone met een foto van Blair die laat zien dat hij 'werkelijk' een duivel is:

Bush-Era War Criminals Are Louder Than Ever Because They’ve Lost The Argument

by Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

After the US troop withdrawal established conclusively that the Afghan "government" they'd spent twenty years pretending to nation build with was essentially a work of fiction, thus proving to the world that they've been lying to us this entire time about the facts on the ground in Afghanistan, you might expect those who helped pave the way for that disastrous occupation to be very quiet at this point in history.

But, far from being silent and slithering under a rock to wait for the sweet embrace of death, these creatures have instead been loudly and shamelessly outspoken.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has posted a lengthy essay by the former British Prime Minister who led the United Kingdom into two of the most unconscionable military interventions in living memory. Blair criticizes the withdrawal as having been done out of "obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending 'the forever wars'," bloviating about “Radical Islam,” and asking, "has the West lost its strategic will?"

Tony Blair Institute ✔ @InstituteGC

Read Tony Blair’s article on Afghanistan and what needs to happen next.https://bit.ly/3D7n3R5

 

 

Tony Blair: Why We Must Not Abandon the People of Afghanistan – For Their Sakes and Ours | Instit... institute.global

608 likes

10:02 AM - Aug 22, 2021

374 people are talking about this

 

It's essentially a 2,750-word temper tantrum, authored by the same man who fed the British people this load of horse shit after 9/11:

The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.

This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

Blair promised that by helping the Bush administration usher in an unprecedented new era of military expansionism they could seize this unfortunate event to "re-order the world" in a way that would benefit all the world's most unfortunate people. Mountains of corpses and tens of millions of refugees later it is clear to anyone with functioning gray matter that this was all a pack of lies.

And now, like any sociopath whose reputation is under threat, Blair has begun narrative managing.

Lowkey @Lowkey0nline

Tony Blair is paid around £1m a year as an international advisor to an organisation called the Mubadala Development Fund in the UAE

It has been reported that Mubadala has been developing a plan to mine US$1 trillion worth of resources in Afghanistan.

Skin in the game?

9,427 likes

12:12 PM - Aug 22, 2021

3,530 people are talking about this

 

Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush 

 @WarmongerHodges

Tony Blair is being paid £9m to advise the Saudi Arabian government. Yesterday the Saudis blew up a bus full of schoolchildren in Yemen. Reports suggest at least 29 children died. That works out at about £300,000 per child. Who says crime doesn't pay? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/21/tony-blair-advising-saudi-government-9-million-deal-country/ …

 

Tony Blair is advising the Saudi government under a £9 million deal between the country and his...

Tony Blair is quietly advising the Saudi government under a £9 million deal with his "institute for global change", The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

telegraph.co.uk

635 likes

1:36 PM - Aug 10, 2018

902 people are talking about this

This is also why George W Bush has released his own statement through his own institution. It's also why Bush-era neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton are doing media tours condemning the withdrawal, and why Bill Kristol, whose neoconservative influence played a key role in the Bush administration's military expansionism, is now promoting the arming of proxy forces against the Taliban. They're narrative managing.

They're narrative managing because they've been proven wrong, and because history will remember them as men who were proven wrong. Their claims that a massive increase in military interventionism would benefit the people of the world have been clearly and indisputably shown to have been false from top to bottom, so now they're just men who helped murder millions of human beings.

It's about preserving their reputations and their legacies. No no, we're not mass murdering war criminals, we are visionaries. If we would have just remained in Afghanistan another twenty years, history would have vindicated us. If we would have just killed more people in Iraq, it would be a paradise right now. The catastrophe cannot possibly be the fault of the people directly responsible for orchestrating it. It's got to be the fault of the officials who inherited it. It's the fault of the ungrateful inhabitants of the nations we graciously invaded. It's the people and their imbecilic desire to end "the forever wars".

But of course it's their fault. None of this needed to be this way, it was made this way by stupid people with no functioning empathy centers. They can try to re-frame and spin it however they like, but history will remember them for the monsters they are. The saner our society becomes, the more unforgiving our memory of their crimes we will be.

____________________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Caitlin Johnstone | August 22, 2021 at 3:05 pm | Tags: afghanistan, bush, tony blair, war | Categories: Article, News | URL: https://wp.me/p9tj6M-2Ho

Comment

See all comments

 ==================================

* Mijn excuus, dit aantal moet inderdaad 5 miljoen zijn, zie o.a.: ''De illegale oorlogen van de VS deze eeuw hebben niet 2,5 miljoen levens gekost, maar minstens 5 miljoen' (toegevoegd op 27 augustus 2021)

-------------------------------

Zie ook: 'George W. Bush noemt terugtrekking van troepen uit Afghanistan een vergissing....'

'VS agressie politiek ten aanzien van China en Iran is desastreus en gevaarlijk voor de hele wereld'

'De VS heeft 20 jaar lang gelogen over Afghanistan'

'Het neoliberale systeem is niet alleen gericht op eeuwige groei maar ook op oneindig oorlogvoeren' (en zie de berichten onder de links in dat schrijven!!)

'MIVD wist al jaren dat Taliban Afghanistan snel zou overnemen na vertrek westerse troepen: toch bleef Nederland nalatig....' (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)

'Brekend nieuws: de Afghaanse president Ashraf Ghani ontvlucht het land'

'Afghanistan: buiten de tolken zijn andere collaborateurs die voor Nederland werkten niet welkom, ofwel zij mogen wat Rutte 3 betreft worden vermoord'

'Coronacrisis: Australische militairen moeten de straten en huizen van o.a. moslims in Sydney controleren' (dezelfde militairen die oorlogsmisdaden tegen moslims begingen in Afghanistan....)

'Landsadvocaat vindt dat het Nederlandse leger niets verkeerd heeft gedaan toen het in 2007 een massamoord beging op de bevolking van een Afghaans dorp'

'Donald Rumsfelds dood: het systeem is er niet om ons te beschermen tegen zware misdadigers maar om deze te beschermen tegen ons'

'Afghanistan en Taliban: geschiedvervalsing door o.a. BBC World Service'

'10 jaar geleden werden de Irak oorlogs-logboeken van de VS vrijgegeven, voor de oorlogsmisdaden daarin vermeld moeten niet de daders Bush en Blair boeten, maar journalist Julian Assange' Zie de links in dat bericht naar artikelen over wapenleveringen van de VS (en verder o.a. van Nederland) aan ISIS en Al Qaida......

'Deep State een complottheorie van gekkies? Lees dit!!'

'The Mail on Sunday en Sky News schieten levensgrote antisemitische bok bij het belasteren van Corbyn' (12 februari 2019) (en zie de links in dat bericht)

'Waarom de burgers van de VS de illegale oorlogen steunen' (29 december 2018)

'Khashoggi: VS prijs voor uit de wind houden van Saoedische terreurkroonprins MBS >> 450 miljard dollar' (26 november 2018)

'Bolton geeft toe dat de VS een fascistisch beleid voert......' (5 november 2018)

'Tony Blair weigert na de moord op Khashoggi een lucratieve deal met Saoedi-Arabië op te zeggen' (30 oktober 2018) (en zie de links in dat bericht naar meer artikelen over Khashoggi)

'WikiLeaks toont aan dat VS en GB een gezamenlijke gewelddadige en bedrieglijke buitenlandpolitiek voeren' (29 oktober 2018) (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)

'Khashoggi waarschijnlijk vermoord vanwege kennis over de 9/11 aanslagen' (16 oktober 2018)

'Tony Blair bevestigt $ 12 miljoen dollar te hebben gekregen van terreurstaat Saoedi-Arabië...' (7 september 2018) (hetzelfde Saoedi-Arabië dat een genocide uitvoert op de sjiitische bevolking van Jemen.....)

'De VS bombardeert landen in het Midden-Oosten >> Europa krijgt de vluchtelingen' (13 juli 2018)

'MH17 vliegramp: wat je niet zou mogen weten over Maleisië, het JIT en Oekraïne…' (19 juni 2018) (voor meer berichten over rampvlucht MH17, zie de links in dat bericht!!)

'VS wordt eindelijk aangeklaagd voor oorlogsmisdaden bij Internationaal Strafhof (ICC)' (10 november 2017) Een aanklacht die werd ingetrokken na dreigementen uit de VS aan de rechters en aanklagers van het ICC.....

'Iraq: Will Tony Blair Finally Stand Trial for His Part in the “Supreme International Crime”?' (9 juli 2017 >> Information Clearing House)

'Cameron oorlogsmisdadiger: 'de Libiërs smeekten ons hen van Khadaffi te bevrijden..........'' (15 september 2016)

'Tony Blair nog steeds blij met Irak oorlog, wel 'met excuus' voor leugens en aangedikt met valse emoties voor de door hem vermoorde militairen......' (7 juli 2016)

'Hillary Clinton en Tony Blair creëerden de hel op aarde in Libië........' (18 januari 2016)

'Tony Blair, de massamoordenaar, 'biedt excuus aan': "Er zijn fouten gemaakt bij de oorlog tegen Irak...." ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!' (26 oktober 2015)

'Tony Blair's waanzinnige prestaties als speciaal VN gezant voor het Midden-Oosten' (28 juli 2014) Hoe kon de VN een oorlogsmisdadiger, die mede verantwoordelijk is voor een paar miljoen doden, aanstellen als speciaal gezant voor o.a. Irak waar hij een gigantisch aantal mensen liet vermoorden...... Voorts is Blair een grootlobbyist voor de fascistische apartheidsstaat Israël dat het Palestijnse volk zo bloedig onderdrukt en daarbij niet alleen een etnische zuivering doorvoert, maar waar je zelfs kan spreken van een Israëlische genocide op de Palestijnen (en ook dat volk bestaat uit mensen...).... Overigens heeft de VN later de Nederlandse VVD oorlogsmidadiger Hennis-Plasschaert aangesteld als speciaal gezant voor Irak >> nog een klap in het gezicht van de Iraakse bevolking..... Ook zij, alsook Rutte, Koenders, Balkenende en de Hoop Scheffer e.a. die mede verantwoordelijk waren voor de deelname van Nederland aan de illegale oorlog tegen Irak zouden al lang gevangen moeten zitten in Scheveningen......

VS pleegt suïcide met verhoging enorme schuldenlast

Ron Paul, een voormalig republikeins en libertarisch lid van het VS-congres, heeft de kat voor de zoveelste keer de bel aangebonden, al zal dit gezien zijn tekst nog niet de laatste keer zijn dat hij dit doet, de laatste keer voor de VS wegzakt in een diep faillissement.......

De nationale schuld van de VS bedraagt 23 biljoen (in VS noemt men dit een triljoen) en alsof de VS niet de wereldwijde kampioen is in de uitgaven voor oorlogsvoering*, gaat daar de komende 2 jaar nog eens een extra bedrag naar toe van (houd je vast): 1,4 biljoen dollar en dat op een budget dat al op een niveau van meer dan 1 biljoen dollar per jaar ligt!!

Het grootste cliché werd ook voor deze budgetverhoging gebruikt: deze waanzinnige verhoging is nodig om de veiligheid en vrijheid van/in de VS te garanderen...... Paul stelt volkomen terecht dat het tegenovergestelde wordt bereikt, zo stelt hij dat de VS meer kwetsbaar is dan ooit tevoren, zo heeft de strijd tegen 'terreur' in Afrika, waar de VS in 2007 haar strijdkrachten onderbracht in AFRICOM, sindsdien de terreur alleen maar doen groeien vanwege VS bemoeienissen.......

Ook de VS oorlog tegen Syrië kost de VS burger kapitalen aan belastinggeld, terwijl de VS daar illegaal bases heeft gecreëerd en vooral bezig is om barbaarse terreurgroepen te beschermen, geteisem dat dood en verderf zaait onder de Syrische bevolking en maar één doel heeft: de regering Assad wegwerken, de reden waarvoor de VS de oorlog tegen Syrië begon......

Nog een opvallende constatering van Paul, is het uit het INF-verdrag stappen van de VS, volgens hem ingegeven om met raketten die onder dit verdrag verboden waren, te kunnen stationeren op VS bases in de buurt van China..... De VS heeft dit verdrag opgezegd, daar Rusland zich niet aan dit verdrag zou houden, terwijl de VS elke uitnodiging van Rusland afwees om de bewuste raketten te inspecteren zodat men kan zien dat deze raketten het INF-verdrag niet schenden....

Juist de VS heeft dit verdrag geschonden met haar zogenaamde raketschild tegen invliegende raketten uit Iran.... ha! ha! ha! Dit 'raketschild' staat deels in Polen en Roemenië, waar de raketten in een mum van tijd kunnen worden voorzien van meerdere kernkoppen en als aanvalsraketten kunnen worden ingezet tegen Rusland.......

Kortom niet alleen door de haat die de VS genereert over de wereld, maar ook een naderend faillissement zal de VS uiteindelijk dwingen zich meer op het eigen grondgebied te concentreren en eindelijk eens wat te doen voor het grote arme deel van de VS bevolking....... (als in GB lijden ook in de VS mensen, waaronder kinderen, honger....) Wellicht kan de wereld dan eindelijk weer eens rustig ademhalen......

Het volgende artikel over de uitlatingen van Paul werd gepubliceerd op het rechtse platform Money and Markets, goed te merken in de verdediging van de Tea Party. Doet m.i. in dit geval niets af aan de boodschap van Paul.

Ron Paul: Congressional Spending Surge Is National Suicide

Posted by Money and Markets Staff | Aug 5, 2019 | News

Per his latest blog, fiscal conservative and former Republican and Libertarian politician and presidential candidate Ron Paul laments the amount of money being spent by Congress, calling it “suicidal.”

Per Ron Paul Institute:

With a national debt approaching $23 trillion and a trillion dollar deficit for this year alone, Congress last week decided to double down on suicidal spending, passing a two year budget that has the United States careening toward catastrophe. While we cannot say precisely when the economic crash will occur, we do know that it is coming. And last week Congress pounded down on the accelerator.

We are told that the US economy is experiencing unprecedented growth, while at the same time the Fed is behaving as it does when we are in recession by cutting rates …and dodging insults from the President because it’s not cutting fast enough. This is not economic policy — it’s schizophrenia!

But that’s only the beginning.

Take what they call “national defense” spending. This is the misnomer they use to try and convince us that pumping trillions into the military-industrial complex will make us safe and free. Nothing could be further from the truth: probably ninety percent of the “defense” budget is aggressive militarism and welfare for the rich.

Under this budget deal the military budget would increase to nearly $1.4 trillion for two years. Of course that’s only a fraction of real military spending, which is, all told, well over one trillion dollars per year.

What do we get for this money? Are we safer? Not at all. We are more vulnerable than ever. We spend billions fighting “terrorism” in Africa while terrorism has actually increased since the creation of the US Africa Command — “AFRICOM” — in 2007. Meanwhile we continue to spend to maintain our illegal military occupation of a large section of Syria – which benefits terrorist groups seeking to overthrow Assad.

We’re sending thousands more troops to the Middle East including basing US troops in Saudi Arabia for the first time since 2003. Back then, even neocon Paul Wolfowitz praised our departure from Saudi Arabia because, as he rightly stated, US troops on Saudi soil was a great recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.

Now we’ve pulled out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty so that we can deploy once-forbidden missiles on China’s front door. A new arms race with China will mean a new boon for our new Defense Secretary’s former colleagues at Raytheon!

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) pronounced the Tea Party dead with the adoption of this budget. He’s right of course, but only when it comes to Congress. Given the opportunity, I still believe a good part of the American people will vote for candidates who promise to rein in the national credit card. President Trump himself ran on a platform of ending deficit spending and even paying off the national debt!

So the Tea Party may be dead in Washington, but I am not convinced it was ever really alive in Washington. With a few exceptions, most politicians saw the Tea Party as just the flavor of the month. Spending is what keeps Washington alive and keeps the DC suburbs rich. They’re not about to cut back on their own.

But the spending will end. The trillions thrown down the drain on militarism will end. The only question is whether it will end when we are completely bankrupt and at the mercy of countries we’ve kicked around for decades or whether Americans will demand an end to bipartisan addiction to war and spending in Washington!

===================================

* De VS geeft veel meer uit aan oorlogsvoering, dan Rusland en China samen.... Sterker nog: het scheelt niet veel of de VS geeft meer uit aan oorlogsvoering dan de som van alle andere landen op aarde samen aan defensie besteden......)

Zie ook:
'VS zet nucleaire raketten in met 'minilading', de weg naar een kernoorlog' (en zie de links in dat bericht)

Irak oorlog: 16 jaar na 20 maart 2003 ontkent de perschef van Bush dat er is gelogen om Irak binnen te vallen.....

Het gore lef wat sommigen hebben is niet zelden ten hemel schreiend, zoals de perschef van president Bush (deze oorlogsmisdadiger en top-idioot mag zich president blijven noemen). Ari Fleischer (de perschef) nam het besluit e.e.a. via Twitter de wereld in te helpen, waarschijnlijk als reactie op de dreigementen van de VS tegen het Internationaal Strafhof dat men actie zal nemen tegen de functionarissen, die zich bezig houden met onderzoek naar VS oorlogsmisdaden.......

Ongelofelijk wat ploert Fleischer durft te zeggen, terwijl de hele wereld weet (of kan weten) dat de VS heeft gelogen, leugens die meer dan 2 miljoen Irakezen het leven heeft gekost, ofwel die mensen zijn in feite vermoord door de VS......

Fleischer doet net of de geheime diensten van de VS, Israël en nog een paar landen zeker wisten dat er massavernietigingswapens lagen in Irak, weliswaar klopte dit niet, maar dat is iets anders dan liegen, aldus de hufter..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Alsof die geheime diensten ook maar de neiging hebben om de waarheid te vertellen, jezus!!

De wapeninspecteurs van de VN, o.l.v. Blix, hebben uit en te na gewezen op het feit dat Irak (onder Saddam Hoessein) geen massavernietigingswapens had en deze zelfs niet voor hen verborgen kon hebben.....

Overigens liet de Hoop Scheffer, oorlogsmisdadiger van het CDA, vorig jaar weten nog steeds achter de illegale oorlog tegen Irak te staan, ondanks het enorme aantal slachtoffers, een land dat voor een groot deel in puin ligt en waar de oorlog nog lang niet is afgelopen...... Irak, een land waarnaar Nederland vluchtelingen deporteert, rechtstreeks de oorlog in, dit op basis van ambtsberichten van Buitenlandse Zaken, terwijl hetzelfde ministerie nog steeds een negatief reisadvies voor Irak afgeeft....

Caitlin Johnstone schreef op haar site een uiterst scherp artikel over deze zaak en laat van Fleischer en anderen geen spaan heel, lezen mensen, het gaat hier om geschiedvervalsing van de eerste orde, ook de reguliere (massa-) media doen net of hun neus bloedt als het om de illegale Irak oorlog gaat, terwijl zij deze oorlog op valse feiten van A tot Z hebben gepropageerd, waar de kennis over het tegendeel voor het oprapen lag........ (over het brengen van fake news gesproken....)

On the Anniversary Of The Iraq Invasion, Bush Press Secretary Claims Bush Didn't Lie

by Caitlin Johnstone

On the sixteenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, as the US government threatens punitive action against International Criminal Court investigators for attempting to look into US war crimes, former George W Bush administration Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has decided to publish a Twitter thread claiming that Bush did not lie to the world about Iraq.

Here is a transcript of the full thread by Fleischer:

The Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow. There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs were found, the left claimed "Bush lied. People died." This accusation itself is a lie. It's time to put it to rest. 

The fact is that President Bush (and I as press secretary) faithfully and accurately reported to the public what the intelligence community concluded. The CIA, along with the intelligence services of Egypt, France, Israel and others concluded that Saddam had WMD. We all turned out to be wrong. That is very different from lying. 

After the war, a bipartisan group was created to determine what went wrong, particularly why the intelligence community's conclusions about Iraq were so different from what was found on the ground after the war. The group of experts was named the Robb-Silberman commission. It's report was issued in March 2005. It can be found in full here. Its key finding was that that a "major intelligence failure" took place. It also stated that no intelligence service was pressured by the Bush Administration to conclude that Saddam had WMDs. 

Here are the key quotes from their report: 

"Overall Commission Finding: The Intelligence Community's performance in assessing Iraq's pre-war weapons of mass destruction programs was a major intelligence failure. 

Nuclear Weapons Summary Finding: The Intelligence Community seriously misjudged the status of Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program in the 2002 NIE* and other pre-Iraq war intelligence products. This misjudgment stemmed chiefly from the Community's failure to analyze correctly Iraq's reasons for attempting to procure high-strength aluminum tubes. 

Biological Warfare Summary Finding: The Intelligence Community seriously misjudged the status of Iraq's biological weapons program in the 2002 NIE and other pre-war intelligence products. The primary reason for this misjudgment was the Intelligence Community's heavy reliance on a human source--codenamed 'Curveball'--whose information later proved to be unreliable. 

Chemical Warfare Summary Finding: The Intelligence Community erred in its 2002 NIE assessment of Iraq's alleged chemical warfare program. The Community's substantial overestimation of Iraq's chemical warfare program was due chiefly to flaws in analysis and the paucity of quality information collected. In the case of Iraq, collectors of intelligence absorbed the prevailing analytic consensus and tended to reject or ignore contrary information. The result was 'tunnel vision' focusing on the Intelligence Community's existing assumptions. The Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion, but the pervasive conventional wisdom that Saddam retained WMD affected the analytic process. The CIA took too long to admit error in Iraq, and its Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center actively discouraged analysts from investigating errors. 

Finally, we closely examined the possibility that intelligence analysts were pressured by policymakers to change their judgments about Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs. The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." 

That is what the investigators reported, after been given full access to people throughout the intelligence community. Which leads me to conclude that there was a liar and his name was Saddam Hussein. He created an elaborate system of lies to fool western intelligence services and he succeeded. He wanted us to believe he had WMDs. 

The allegaton that "Bush lied. People died" is a liberal myth created to politically target President Bush. I understand the anger that was felt after no WMDs were found. But that doesn't justify calling the President a liar. I can only hope that serious historians and other experts do their homework and resist falling for this myth.

Ari Fleischer

✔@AriFleischer

The Iraq war began sixteen years ago tomorrow. There is a myth about the war that I have been meaning to set straight for years. After no WMDs were found, the left claimed "Bush lied. People died." This accusation itself is a lie. It's time to put it to rest.

11.2K

2:44 AM - Mar 20, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Ari Fleischer is lying. It is an absolute proven fact that George W Bush and his administration lied extensively about the degree of certainty in intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction, having ties to Al Qaeda, and seeking nuclear weapons, all of which (along with Vice President Cheney's claim that the US invaders would be "greeted as liberators") proved false. The Bush administration did not know the things they claimed to know with any degree of certainty, but they claimed that they were certain in order to manufacture support for war. Claiming to know something you do not know is lying, especially when it's to advance an ulterior motive.

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda," Bush claimed in January 2003. "Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own."

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney claimed in August 2002. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

"The United States knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in December 2002. "Any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."

"We are absolutely sure they have continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, and we are sure they have in their possession weapons of mass destruction,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said in December 2002.

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources," Powell told the United Nations Security Council in his infamous Iraq presentation in February 2003. "These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

"People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind," Powell said in the same presentation. "These illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material."

Powell was not nearly as certain as he claimed to be. None of them were. Facts revealed after the invasion prove that for all their public claims of complete and total certainty that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, was aiding and abetting Al Qaida, and was developing nuclear weapons, behind the veil of government secrecy there was nothing like certainty at all.

For starters, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who was cited in Powell's presentation and who Fleischer refers to by the code name "Curveball" in the above thread, was known to have been lying about bioweapons long before the invasion. Despite the confident assertions made by the Bush administration about Janabi's claims to the public, no American personnel were present when he made those claims, and he told the Guardianin 2011 that the BND (the German intelligence agency who interrogated him) had known he was lying all along.

"The BND [German intelligence] knew in 2000 that I was lying after they talked to my former boss, Dr Bassil Latif, who told them there were no mobile bioweapons factories," Janabi said. "For 18 months after that they left me alone because they knew I was telling lies even though I never admitted it.

Believe me, back then, I thought the whole thing was over for me. Then all of a sudden [in the run up to the 2003 invasion] they came back to me and started asking for more details about what I had told them. I still don't know why the BND then passed on my information to the CIA and it ended up in Powell's speech."

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was Powell's chief of staff and helped him prepare his UN presentation on Iraq. When asked on MSNBC if he believed he was lied to about Janabi following the 2011 revelation, Wilkerson told Cenk Uygur that "I cannot come to any other conclusion, especially when I have discovered that no US personnel were present when Curveball was interrogated by the BND, the German intelligence service. That we accepted that, that we even had a head of the European division for the CIA, Tyler Drumheller, who at the last minute during Powell's preparation, during my preparation of the secretary, had told both Tenet and McLaughlin that Curveball might not be reliable. That information was never relayed to the Secretary of State, or to me. I have some serious doubts about it now. I think there was some manipulation of this material, and there was some outright lying."

When asked by Uygur who he thought lied to him, Wilkerson said one of WINPAC's two WMD experts at the time may have been answering directly to Dick Cheney's office.

A declassified report from 2002 titled Iraq: Status of WMD Programs reveals that while the Bush administration was making its claims of absolute certainty regarding the dangers posed by the Iraqi government, behind the scenes it was damn near the opposite. Some choice excerpts:

“Our assessments rely heavily on analytic assumptions and judgment rather than hard evidence. 
The evidentiary base is particularly sparse for Iraqi nuclear programs.”

“We range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their program."

"Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program is based largely—perhaps 90%—on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”

"We cannot confirm the identity of any Iraqi facilities that produce, test, fill, or store biological weapons.”

“Our knowledge of what biological weapons the Iraqis are able to produce is nearly complete. Our knowledge of how and where they are produced is nearly 90% incomplete.”

“We do not know the status of enrichment capabilities. We do not know with confidence the location of any nuclear-weapon-related facilities.”

“Please take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD. It is big.” (That one was from Rumsfeld.)

“We don’t know with any precision how much we don’t know.”

This is not the language of certainty. Yet certainty was presented to the public to manufacture support for a war which murdered a million Iraqis.

The 2002 Downing Street memo, made public in 2005, reveals a secret meeting between senior officials of the British government, intelligence and defense agencies discussing what they knew about America's plans for war. The text of the document contains an assertion by the head of MI6 that Bush had already determined that the invasion of Iraq would take place, and it was only a matter of fixing bits of intelligence around a narrative to make the case.

"Military action was now seen as inevitable," the document reads. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," the document quotes Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as saying. "But the case was thin."

In a 2008 hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, attorney and author Vincent Bugliosi pointed out that the fact that Bush lied about Iraq could be proven by the difference between the classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and its declassified white paper which was made available to the public. The classified version contained dissents from the consensus and language which made it clear that the reader was reading assessments and opinions by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, whereas the unclassified version saw these things deleted, presenting the assessments as absolute fact.

"The evidence that he lied about weapons of mass destruction, by the way, which is not the basis for this book, are right in front of me," Bugliosi said. "I have it right here. Here is the evidence. This document here is the National Intelligence Estimate. I didn't name it before. I talked about a classified report. This is it right here. October 1st, 2002, classified NIE report. It is called Iraq's Continuing Programs of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In this document right here, the CIA and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies use words like this, 'we assess that' or 'we judge that' Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. This document here is the white paper that was given to you folks here in Congress and the American people. And the words 'we assess that' or 'we judge that' were removed, meaning that you folks here heard a fact, and in fact, it was only an opinion.

"Number two, on nuclear weapons, this document right here, the classified report has several important dissents. This document right here, the white paper that you folks were given and the American people, all of those dissents were deleted."

Over and over and over again we saw the same thing: uncertainty presented as certainty. Guesses presented as fact. Opinions presented as proof. That's a lie. Bush lied. We know this with as much certainty as his administration was pretending to have in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. There was a pre-existing agenda to invade Iraq, and justifications were advanced to provide an excuse for that invasion with such extreme aggression that now-National Security Advisor John Bolton literally threatened to murder an international official's children for making diplomacy work with Saddam.

Here are a few more courtesy of Vox:

In October 2002, Bush said that Saddam Hussein had a “massive stockpile” of biological weapons. But as CIA Director George Tenet noted in early 2004, the CIA had informed policymakers it had “no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.” The “massive stockpile” was just literally made up.

In December 2002, Bush declared, “We do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon.” That was not what the National Intelligence Estimate said. As Tenet would later testify, “We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.” Bush did know whether or not Iraq had a nuclear weapon — and lied and said he didn’t know to hype the threat.

On CNN in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice claimed that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.” This was precisely the opposite of what nuclear experts at the Energy Department were saying; they argue that not only was it very possible the tubes were for nonnuclear purposes but that it was very likely they were too. Even more dire assessments about the tubes from other agencies were exaggerated by administration officials — and in any case, the claim that they’re “only really suited” for nuclear weapons is just false.

On numerous occasions, Dick Cheney cited a report that 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. He said this after the CIA and FBI concluded that this meeting never took place.

More generally on the question of Iraq and al-Qaeda, on September 18, 2001, Rice received a memo summarizing intelligence on the relationship, which concluded there was little evidence of links. Nonetheless Bush continued to claim that Hussein was “a threat because he’s dealing with al-Qaeda” more than a year later. 

In August 2002, Dick Cheney declared, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” But as Corn notes, at that time there was “no confirmed intelligence at this point establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation.” Gen. Anthony Zinni, who had heard the same intelligence and attended Cheney’s speech, would later say in a documentary, “It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.”

In 2007 General Wesley Clark told Democracy Now that he'd actually been informed of the decision to invade Iraq immediately after 9/11, while the crosshairs were turning on Afghanistan and well before the public narrative was being amped up in demand of an invasion of Iraq. His comments read as follows:

About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. 

He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail." 

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" -- meaning the Secretary of Defense's office -- "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. If you've been following the behaviors of the US war machine, Iraq won't be the only painfully familiar name on that list.

Ari Fleischer

✔@AriFleischer

It remains important to learn what we’ve attacked and where. How widespread?
In addition to military targets, I hope we targeted Assad’s palace in Damascus. Leave him alive but destroy his prestige. Leave him without a home, as Assad has left millions of Syrians w/o theirs.

1,914

2:12 AM - Apr 14, 2018 · New York, USA

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Ari Fleischer

✔@AriFleischer

“In the last few months of 2018, Iran officially entered a deep recession.” Time to step up the sanctions... https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-official-figures-alarming-unemployment-2019/29698225.html …

941

1:36 PM - Jan 10, 2019

Iran's Official Figures Indicate Alarming Unemployment Rate Later This Year

The official unemployment rate has reached 27 percent among young Iranians and over 40 percent among university graduates, says Omid Ali Parsai, chairman of the Iranian Statistical Center.

en.radiofarda.com

Ari Fleischer is a liar. He was in the thick of the Bush administration's campaign to sell the Iraq war to the American public, and to this day he continues trying to sell them on new acts of depraved US interventionism. He's just as much a warmongering neocon inside as he was when he was behind a podium defending Bush's wars in the press room, so it's no wonder he wants to preserve the image of his insatiable death cult. Fleischer wants to preserve his legacy, yes, but he also wants to preserve support for the war machine whose feet he worships at, hence his ham-fisted attempt at narrative manipulation regarding the unforgivable Iraq invasion.

The responses to Fleischer's Twitter thread have been overwhelmingly negative, though, so it doesn't look like anyone's buying it. In our new political landscape, where the image of George W Bush is being continually rehabilitated, that gives me a bit of hope.

These monsters lied to start a war which snuffed out a million human lives and destabilized an entire region, and they did it right in front of our faces. The fact that they're now trying to lie about the thing we all watched them do is as insulting as it is infuriating. Never let them pull the wool over your eyes, and never forget what they did. Forgiveness is highly overrated.

Thanks for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Caitlin Johnstone | March 20, 2019 at 3:25 pm | Tags: Ari Fleisher, bush, george w bush, invasion, iraq, lied, news, Politics, war | Categories: Article, News | URL: https://wp.me/p9tj6M-1Bl

* NIE: National Intelligence Estimate

===============================
Voor meer berichten over de illegale oorlog tegen Irak, klik op het labels Irak, direct onder dit bericht. Let wel: na een aantal berichten wordt het laatst gelezen bericht telkens herhaald, dan onder het laatst gelezen bericht even opnieuw op het gekozen label klikken, enz. enz.