The most important point: nobody came screaming about Iraq

Common sense--oxymoron that it is--is compelling and resonant.

NOBODY came running to the administration warning of Iraq after 9-11. The intelligence community was perplexed by the neocons' fixation. By definition, the administration stirred up tempests in teapots that had none, and fed them with whatever fears they could conjure.

Beyond the fact that the administration used our fear when we were at our most frail to exploit us to fulfill their greedy revenge fixation, there is simply no groundswell in evidence.

Had there been a "present" or "gathering" danger, other entities (foreign intelligence services and such) would have come knocking at the door. Not only didn't they, but when thumbscrewed to support the preordained ratfucking, they wouldn't even help sustain the lie.

Our own intelligence community was so against these nasty insinuations that they couldn't even be properly bullied; Cheney and his thugs had to go to Langley repeatedly, set up a special intelligence operation in the Pentagon and the White House and STILL they couldn't whip up enough of a frenzy. They've since resorted to mass firings and restructuring to keep the cat in the bag. This, coupled with the shot across the bow with the Plame affair that they would destroy anyone who dared to question their plans, shows their ugliness in the plain light of day.

By definition, this was fearmongering from those who'd long since decided--and publicly asked for--the removal of Saddam Hussein. They couldn't even sucker or force anyone to make it look like they'd been called to action.

This should be obvious.

When no WMD Found, Bush Complains CIA Gave Him The Evidence.

Not only is this contradiction, it is hypocrisy. Also:

It pissed off the CIA!

mightily for it. 2000+ dead, innumerable Iraqis and Americans injured and killed, not to mention the downfall of our country, in everyone's eyes?

but plenty of them immediated got on board with the Osama/Al Queda narrative and there was panic about how far his web spread and how many countries were infiltrated. They followed us to Afghanistan to fight the "evil doers" - no questions asked.
But you're right - I never heard Canada or Sweden or France or the Phillipines say "We must get Iraq as well!!!"
How can these talking heads miss what is so obvious? Freedom fries indeed!
Excellent post.

:thumbsup:

Kuwait is the country Saddam actually attacked.

reality and truth, time again, in order to resist the false narrative that underlies most corporate monopoly news and opinion, the Bush cabal narrative that there was some reason we had to do this--whatever reason they're making up that day--and that, now that we're there, we can't just leave, this latter being the hook that many Democrats and many otherwise reasonable members of the public get snared by. We can't just leave, can we? We can't stop killing Iraqis now that we've started, can we? We can't just stop a war, can we? We can't just leave the Iraqis to their own devices, can we? How on earth will they manage without us?

Insidious. We have to first do "Iraqification" of Iraq. As if Iraq needed to be Iraqified. (Shades of Vietnam!)

And then, back up in time, as PurityOfEssence does, and consider what was happening THEN. Not only did NO ONE else consider Iraq a threat--except Bush's poodle Blair who was ALSO cooking intelligence-- not only did our own CIA not consider Iraq a threat, not only did NO ONE come running to the US with anxious pleas to do something (except for the Pentagon-funded double agent Chalabi), not only did NO ONE have any believable intelligence of any threat, but most nations of the world pleaded with us not to do it, refused to support it, and the UN inspectors begged for more time to finish their inspections, which had only about a month to go to completion.

Iraq was a prostrate country. Its army had been decimated by Persian Gulf I. It had no air force. The UN sanctions had wrecked its once healthy economy. And the UN inspectors had stripped it of any serious weapons. It was a turkey shoot. The kind of target that bully boys pick out. A cowardly and dastardly act.

Trying to get up high to an objective view--say, that of an alien monitoring our communications and observing us from outer space--you might narrate it thusly: The U.S. got the U.N. to destroy another country's army in defense of the artificial little monarchy of Kuwait, then got the UN to destroy the country's economy, and to strip it of most of its defenses, then, after all that was done in the name of the international community, the US on its own struck Iraq, killed tens of thousands of Iraqis with bombing raids, invaded and took it over, and immediately, a) seized its oil fields, b) began detaining and torturing its citizens, and c) began pouring billions of dollars into the pockets of the US regimes' cronies that were intended to repair the damage we had done.

How's that for a foreign policy? Never again will any country in the world trust us to be peace-minded and fair, or to have any ethics at all.

And they know now that the American people--even if we oppose such heinous actions (which we did in great numbers, as a matter of fact*)--can do nothing to stop it. We have been Diebolded into submission.

-------

*(58% of the American people opposed the Iraq war before the invasion. Feb. 03.)

...watching from afar, they now know how easy it is to dupe the American people. Just put a scare into them and they'll follow you to hell.

Personally, it freaks me out to think we live with, and depend upon, so may easily duped citizens.


The whole thing makes me think of a really bad awful Halloween story.