The "great" American Empire has marched forward with a renewed fervor of imperialism in the beginning of the 21st century. With 16 years since the Iraq War, that can be enough time to forget what has happened and has continued to happen since. But millions on the planet will never forget, as they've been directly impacted.
Many Americans and people in the Middle have suffered - and easily the former more than the latter. Lives have been destroyed, yet the lies sold to the public continue to pervade the public consciousness, basking us in a consensus dream state where unreality is treated as reality.
Despite thinking their country is noble or the greatest, Americans are fast asleep to let more atrocities spread. Lies were told to sell the Iraq war, and lies have continued to be told to sell Americans on more direct and indirect wars, like Syria. There is no "official" war against Syria, but the reality of what's going on discloses the truth: it's a war.
Those who bring wars are still playing their games on the world stage, and they are respected for it. The public is socially engineered to think and behave as the governing and corporate elite desire them to: support wars. Complaints are at a minimum, and apathy reigns as the ignorance spreads like a virus to allow any war mongering to take place.
People are being lies to and fooled, and the cycle repeats. Iraq was exposed as a lie, some outrage took place, then it was forgotten almost as quickly as the news came out. Regime change has been the name of the game for the neocons that aim to broaden the scope of U.S. power on the world stage.
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The neocons remain deeply entrenched in the political power structure and guiding the destiny of America, remaking America in their image, as they have wanted and spoke about: to create a New American Century.
As we forget the lessons of the past, we are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. Whether Americans identify as neocons, with their politics, or neither, they are essentially neocon enablers at this point.
The list of regime changes that the U.S. has been involved in since WWII is staggering:
- China 1949 to early 1960s
- Albania 1949-53
- East Germany 1950s
- Iran 1953 *
- Guatemala 1954 *
- Costa Rica mid-1950s
- Syria 1956-7
- Egypt 1957
- Indonesia 1957-8
- British Guiana 1953-64 *
- Iraq 1963 *
- North Vietnam 1945-73
- Cambodia 1955-70 *
- Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
- Ecuador 1960-63 *
- Congo 1960 *
- France 1965
- Brazil 1962-64 *
- Dominican Republic 1963 *
- Cuba 1959 to present
- Bolivia 1964 *
- Indonesia 1965 *
- Ghana 1966 *
- Chile 1964-73 *
- Greece 1967 *
- Costa Rica 1970-71
- Bolivia 1971 *
- Australia 1973-75 *
- Angola 1975, 1980s
- Zaire 1975
- Portugal 1974-76 *
- Jamaica 1976-80 *
- Seychelles 1979-81
- Chad 1981-82 *
- Grenada 1983 *
- South Yemen 1982-84
- Suriname 1982-84
- Fiji 1987 *
- Libya 1980s
- Nicaragua 1981-90 *
- Panama 1989 *
- Bulgaria 1990 *
- Albania 1991 *
- Iraq 1991
- Afghanistan 1980s *
- Somalia 1993
- Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
- Ecuador 2000 *
- Afghanistan 2001 *
- Venezuela 2002 *
- Iraq 2003 *
- Haiti 2004 *
- Somalia 2007 to present
- Libya 2011*
- Syria 2012
- Venezuela 2019
The 21st century has seen another strong push for American interventionism and regime change. Afghanistan was easily sold as "justice" and a "necessary" response to the events of 9/11. That's where the push to invade the Middle East was reignited, with the target on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. But Iraq is where the massive war effort was pushed harder, and based on no attack on America.
It was all just based on lies, or at least falsity. And the conflict in Iraq has been harder and longer fought as well. There were more lies to sell it compared to Afghanistan which most were eager to have in their confused drive for revenge. Iraq was where the neocons showed how well they spin their web of deceit to get what they want and spearheaded the new era of regime change in the Middle East.
The truth is that mere hours after the attack on 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spoke to officials in the Pentagon. His aide, Steve Cambone wrote that Rumsfeld asked:
Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden].
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The act of war to topple Saddam and change the government there was already determined. It was only a matter of when to set it in motion. In order to justify the war, a narrative of lies were spread.
One of the lies was an alleged tie between Saddam and al Qaeda. A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report title "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction" was quickly composed by the CIA in October 2002 to justify a war on Iraq.
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The top secret document was cited over and over by Bush administration officials in order to sell the war on Iraq. It was the goto document to "prove" Saddam was a threat. Years later, FOIA requests revealed more and more of the document that was originally "white out" in large part to preserve the lie of a threat.
Rumsfeld claimed:
"We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad."
It turns out there was no tie made to Saddam and al Qaeda. The NIE report does state:
"As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training and support are second-hand."
"The presence of al-Qa'ida militants in Iraq poses many questions. We do not know to what extent Baghdad may be actively complicit in this use of its territory for safehaven and transit."
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And a report by the RAND corporation about the NIE report title "Blinders, Blunders and Wars" states were "no operational tie between Saddam and al Qaeda":
'The fact that the NIE concluded that there was no operational tie between Saddam and al Qaeda did not offset this alarming assessment.'
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Other lies to sell the Iraq war included the famous claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) we heard echoed over and over in the media. Bush stated in October 2002 that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons" and "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."
Rumsfeld also made claims of WMDs, such as:
"We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical- and biological-agent training"
The NNIE report in fact makes no such conclusions, contrary to what the lying neocons were telling Americans and Congress. The report says Iraq:
"probably has renovated a [vaccine] production plant" to manufacture biological weapons "but we are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed." The NIE also said Hussein did not have "sufficient material" to manufacture any nuclear weapons and "the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program."
Iraq was also linked to a string of anthrax attacks after 9/11, as you may remember. Those attacks are said to have killed 5 and sickened 17 more. Just like playing on the trauma of an attack like 9/11 through linking Saddam to al Qaeda in order to justify and gain support for a war on Iraq, the same was done with the anthrax attacks.
But the NIE report also makes it clear there was no link between Saddam and the anthrax attacks:
"We have no intelligence information linking Iraq to the fall 2001 attacks in the United States, but Iraq has the capability to produce spores of Bacillus anthracis — the causative agent of anthrax — similar to the dry spores used in the letters.
"The spores found in the Daschle and Leahy letters are highly purified, probably requiring a high level of skill and expertise in working with bacterial spores. Iraqi scientists could have such expertise," [but samples from Iraq] "were not as pure as the anthrax spores in the letters."
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And let's not forget the "mushroom cloud" comments from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, where claims of Iraq having "aluminum tubes":
"are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs ... we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
But those tubes were assessed by the US Department of Energy as being of the dimensions "consistent with applications to rocket motors", not with a nuclear weapons program.
As a result of these falsehoods, and most likely outright lies told by the Bush administration officials, over $6 trillion have been spent in ongoing wars in the Middle East since 9/11, with an estimated minimum of 480,000 dead as a direct result of war. The indirect numbers likely reach over 1,000,000 dead.
This is the result of the neocon goal for a New American Century and engaging in regime change across the world to maintain and promote their global economic and geo-political power of the U.S.A. We're all paying for it in some way or another as the world is reshaped in the image of war mongers, and some pay a heavier cost than others.
The falsities and lies continue to pervade our media, who now seem just as ready and willing, or even eager, to accept the spin from the government about the need to intervene in different parts of the world and ignite conflict. Venezuela is another example where covert unconventional warfare methods, like sanctions and propaganda, are used to attempt to overthrow a regime in order to set up a more U.S.-favorable rulership.
References:
- 16 Years After Iraq, the US Has Become a Nation of Passive Neocons
- “Overthrowing Other People’s Governments: The Master List of U.S. “Regime Changes”
- CIA document: Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
- RAND document: Blinders, Blunders and Wars
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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