We Weren't All Wrong
February 12, 2004
By Alex Young

"It turns out we were all wrong." These are the words that Dr. David Kay, former head of the CIA-Pentagon Iraq Survey Group, whose chief job was to locate chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Dr. Kay was referring to intelligence agencies' assessment of Iraq's alleged possession of illegal weaponry.

It turns out that Dr. Kay is wrong again, and not just regarding Iraq's WMDs. "All" of us weren't wrong. In fact, most of us got it right. The ones that did get it wrong were the ones named Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, Wolfowitz, Rice, and Powell.

On February 15, 2003, the largest protest in the entire history on the face of the planet took place. Ten million people in over 600 cities around the world rose up and called upon the United States to find a diplomatic solution to the Iraq conflict. The global citizenry was against this war.

The United Nations refused to pass another resolution authorizing war. Out of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, only two (The US and Britain) supported such a resolution. Out of the ten elected members of the Security Council, only Spain supported such a resolution. Staunch US allies like Mexico and Germany refused to toe the American line. Once the proposed resolution authorizing war was seen as having no chance of passing, the United States pulled it back, saying that Resolution 1441, and its mention of "serious consequences," was legally sufficient to wage a military action. The governments of the world were against this war.

United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector Dr. Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei both concluded, after Iraq let inspectors in the country, that it appeared that Iraq was complying with Resolution 1441. After their report was issued on March 6, 2003, there were definitely a number of unresolved issues and stockpiles of weapons that could not be accounted for; however, the report could not, and did not, conclude that Iraq was actually in possession of any banned weapons. In fact, according to the report, many of the banned weapons that couldn't be found were probably worthless as there is a specific shelf life for chemical and biological agents and that shelf life had either already passed on some agents or would have rendered the remaining ones ineffective.

These United Nations weapons inspectors were finding the same thing that the US weapons inspectors are finding - a whole lot of nothing. Yet the UN inspectors were repeatedly dismissed and insulted by the US government for not finding any WMD. "There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the (weapons) inspections," said Dr. Blix. The head weapons inspectors assigned to Iraq were against this war.

Scott Ritter, a former USMC captain and former UN weapons inspector stated time and time again that he saw no evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He went on every talk show and news program he could to state the evidence that he saw firsthand. He was called a traitor by every conservative Republican in the nation.

The 16 words in Bush's State of the Union where he said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" were debunked by Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, who traveled down to Niger for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to check out the claims. When he found the allegations to be untrue, he briefed the CIA, yet the passage still managed to make it in the State of the Union. There were even repeated attempts by CIA officers (some successful) to remove similar verbiage of the Iraq-uranium claim in other presidential speeches.

Bush also mentioned in the State of the Union, "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Yet the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, experts at the Department of Energy, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspectors, scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (who enrich uranium for American bombs), the British government, and the Institute for Science and International Security all have concluded that the tubes are more suited for conventional (legal) missiles, as Iraqis have claimed, and not facile for nuclear centrifuge equipment.

The Bush administration consistently misrepresented the available intelligence, lied, and presented speculation as 100% proof. People who received their news from other sources than Fox knew that there were a wide variety of questions regarding the "evidence" that the Bushians continuously rammed down our throats in the march for war.

So Dr. David Kay's statement that "it turns out we were all wrong" is indeed a falsehood. The only ones that were wrong were the ones that manufactured the lies to pull the wool over our eyes. The truth is, we did know beforehand that Iraq posed a vague and unclear threat that clearly didn't meet the "clear and present" danger threshold that nations should use before unilaterally and pre-emptively attacking a defenseless country, overthrowing its government, and installing a pro-American leadership.

The price we are paying is dead American soldiers, squandered international goodwill, alienating the entire planet, and spending over $150 billion on this "nation building."

We weren't all wrong. Ten million people in the world knew we were wrong. A majority of the world's governments knew we were wrong. Many intelligence analysts knew we were wrong. Why didn't Bush know? Is it ignorance or incompetence? Either way, impeachment, not re-election, should be in his immediate future.