General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why this sudden push to rewrite history about the Iraq war? [View all]FleetwoodMac
(351 posts) Why did the Bush administration suppressed information that ran contrary to their narrative?
For instance, former Iraqi Foreign Minister Najib Sabri, who was a French double agent, was debriefed by the CIA during the spring of 2002. The information from Sabri, along with documentary evidence, debunks the idea that Iraq had any WMD. It was relayed to former CIA Director George Tenet, who personally briefed Bush Jr. on Sept 18, 2002. The information was not passed outside of the inner circle - not even to Colin Powell. CIA's chief of clandestine operation (Europe), Tyler Drumheller, confirmed this in 2006.
Why did the Bush administration weaved tenuous, faulty and misleading data into a whole complex hypothesis to buttress the U.S. case with its allies?
For instance, the forged Niger uranium documents.
Why did the Bush administration used outright lies to obtain support from U.S. Congressmen ahead of the Iraq War Resolution vote?
For instance, Senator Bill Nelson, January 28, 2004:
I, along with nearly every Senator in this Chamber, in that secure room of this Capitol complex, was not only told there were weapons of mass destruction--specifically chemical and biological--but I was looked at straight in the face and told that Saddam Hussein had the means of delivering those biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction by unmanned drones, called UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles. Further, I was looked at straight in the face and told that UAVs could be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack eastern seaboard cities of the United States.
Is it any wonder that I concluded there was an imminent peril to the United States? The first public disclosure of that information occurred perhaps a couple of weeks later, when the information was told to us. It was prior to the vote on the resolution and it was in a highly classified setting in a secure room. But the first public disclosure of that information was when the President addressed the Nation on TV. He said that Saddam Hussein possessed UAVs."
Had all the facts been known, we would not have gone into 'war' with Iraq. We were, on varying levels, deceived, intimidated and made fools of. Our Congressmen and Congresswomen, for all their faults, would not have allowed the destruction of an entire country. They were deceived and lied to. The press corp was pressured, coerced and intimidated. The populace was served with jingoistic propaganda of the likes never seen before.
I, We, were not responsible for Iraq. The war criminals (Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, among others) were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The blood is in their hands.