The true horror of our unjustified war in Iraq
So the Chilcot report is out and it tells us what we all already knew – this was an unjustifiable war that we should never have been involved in…
Tony Blair overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, sent ill-prepared troops into battle and had “wholly inadequate” plans for the aftermath, the UK’s Iraq War inquiry has said.
Chairman Sir John Chilcot said the 2003 invasion was not the “last resort” action presented to MPs and the public.
There was no “imminent threat” from Saddam – and the intelligence case was “not justified”, he said.
…I remember watching with horror at the ease with which so many of my fellow NZers bought into the bullshit lies used to justify this invasion. It’s always reminded me that allowing politicians to use Muslims as a bogey man (as Key has done when trying to justify mass surveillance powers) always needs to be jumped on early least it snowball into the next demand for a new crusade.
13 years after the deeply flawed and divisive decision to invade Iraq as punishment for a group of Saudi’s who had no connection with Iraq flying planes into the World Trade Centre, the Chilcot report has finally been released and it paints a grim and disurbingly naive British and American leadership who went to war based on little more than ego and bullshit.
The report finds there was no imminent threat and that the war wasn’t justified.
I’m sure that will make the anywhere between 180 00 to over 1 million Iraqi deaths (we’re not sure of the exact number because we don’t count them when they die) will be thrilled to bits that their brutal deaths were for an unjustifiable invasion that bordered on war crime.
I were on the front lines of the anti-war protests 13 years ago, but I only feel more empty and angry now the truth has been revealed. There’s no celebration for being right when so much wrong has been caused.
John Key still says we should have been alongside this unjustifiable war which in turn seeded the next terror threat ISIS, whom we are currently fighting – Christ he’s a fuckwit.
So the brutal former CIA supported dictator, Saddam Hussein, who only had weapons of mass destruction because America had sold them to him – didn’t turn out to be an imminent threat after all and removing him has spilled hundreds of thousands of innocent people’s lives, created one of the worst refuge crisis in the region and inspired a whole new branch of Islamic terrorism, which in my mind only brings up one simple question – why aren’t George W Bush and Tony Blair being arrested as a war criminals?
In the same month that NZ extends our military in Afghanistan and Iraq past 2018 to prop up the corrupt regimes who are now empowering the next wave of Islamic dissent, let’s remind ourselves that these wars to date have cost over $6 Trillion dollars. Imagine what we could have down with $6 Trillion in aid to these regions instead of the death and carnage we have created.
When you are against unjustified war, it’s not just the immediacy of life lost you protest against, it’s the thousands of downstream abuses and damage that war creates as well.
We were deceived, lied to and manipulated. As the West loses its mind with wall to wall coverage of 5 American Police shot, days ago Bagdad had car bombs that killed 250. That juxtaposition probably tells us more about how the West disinfects its crimes while inflating crimes against it.
I am shamed by the war mongers that parade as “our people” who use war for gain either oil or profit from selling munitions,
It is an offence by them to assume we all support their war not ours.
…and they also bombed the shit out of Libya….unless leaders in the West are brought to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity this will continue
…and Middle Eastern people will be deprived of their homelands
…not once has Angela Merkel criticised the USA or Sarkozy or Cameron or Blair for their roles in creating the refugee crisis
…Germany needs workers and doctors and engineers because of a slumping population and an adherence to a growth economy..Merkel needs to be called out on this…because she is imposing the refugee crisis on all EU countries without democracy
Actually your comment “wall to wall coverage of 5 American Police shot, (while) days ago Bagdad had car bombs that killed 250. That juxtaposition probably tells us more about how the West disinfects its crimes” is less obvious than you think, Martyn.The police ambush is not just 5 deaths. In the US the total number of guns probably exceeds the number of people. Every attempt to reduce the number fails due to the power and influence of the NRA.
In recent years the police have murdered black civilians with impunity, until they have become enraged by it. One of them has decided to exact revenge. It isn’t hard to see how attractive copy-cat killings like this will look to some people. The US could be on the verge of mass insurrection. How could it deal with an urban guerilla movement? Five dead police might be just a beginning…
A disaster in the making, and Bush and Blair and much of the political establishment that supported and joined them remain in total denial. I wonder whether Tony Blair can sleep at night, these days, when almost daily we get news of suicide attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and increasingly also other countries.
They may have killed Osama Bin Laden, that was Obama and his troops, but have they solved anything?
The ones now in charge within Al Qaeda and its off-shoot IS are far worse than that late terror leader was.
I fear the future will continue to be a vicious cycle of yet more and worse violence, thanks to Blair and his mate George W. Bush, both practicing “Christians”, we are told.
They seem to belong to the Crusader kind of fake Christians, having encouraged a reaction that is worse than there ever was.
Saddam Hussein was a threat alright – just not with WMDs or any link to 911. His threat was way more damaging and the reason behind it gets ignored because it’s inconvenient to think of the money masters as callous Mafia dons despite the evidence.
Saddam Hussein effected an attack on the US dollar by changing the denomination of the embargoed Iraqi oil revenues from $US to the Euro. As the Euro rose in value, so did the value of Iraq’s cash in the bank and worse than that other OPEC countries started to follow suit undermining the dominance of the dollar.
It wasn’t Hussein’s atrocities, dictatorship, human rights abuses, gassing of Kurds or political repression that got him into trouble (plenty of that everywhere to which the powers turn a blind eye) it was his threat to the money system.
Gaddafi’s uppity ideas about a pan-African currency the gold dinar triggered his big smack down.
Moral: dictators can fuck with the people, but touch the $US and you’ll be asking for “democracy”.
Remember, it isn’t the US as such that goes to war – they’re just the agent with the capability.