As usual, the Arabs knew. They knew all about the mass torture, the promiscuous shooting of civilians, the outrageous use of air power against family homes, the vicious American and British mercenaries, the cemeteries of the innocent dead. All of Iraq knew. Because they were the victims. Robert Fisk, The Independent article 24th October 2010, ‘The Shaming of America’
But, written in bleak militarese as it may be, here is the evidence of America’s shame. This is material that can be used by lawyers in courts. If 66,081 – I loved the 81 bit – is the highest American figure available for dead civilians, then the real civilian mortality score is infinitely higher since this records only those civilians the Americans knew of. Some of them were brought to the Baghdad mortuary in my presence, and it was the senior official there who told me that the Iraqi ministry of health had banned doctors from performing any post-mortems on dead civilians brought in by American troops. Now why should that be? Because some had been tortured to death by Iraqis working for the Americans? Did this hook up with the 1,300 independent US reports of torture in Iraqi police stations? ibid.
We were standing in the old US Marine base not far from the newly re-built railway station – there are, of course, no trains – and the pale stencil of USMC was still on the wall. But there was dust blowing around the yard and some of the sandbags had broken open.
All the way back to Baghdad, the old American bases looked scruffy, some of the concrete blast walls had collapsed. There was a feeling of an empire departed – Britain after the Romans had left. Robert Fisk, The Independent article 23rd April 2012, ‘Iraq’s Road Back from Oblivion’
For a while the flag-draped coffins from Iraq and Afghanistan were hidden from the American people. The American Future: A History by Simon Schama
The failure to find Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction has raised serious questions about the legitimacy and legality of the ongoing war in Iraq. But as both American and Iraqi casualties escalate and as the conflict becomes more chaotic and deadly by the day, debate within the United States continues to focus narrowly on whether American intelligence agencies provided accurate enough information to justify going to war. In the process, a larger question has been all but ignored. If the war was not about weapons of mass destruction, what is it really about? Hijacking Catastrophe
In all its previous incarnations and long before 9/11 and the current War on Terror the Wolfowitz doctrine had identified regime change in Iraq as a crucial first step toward global domination by force. In a widely circulated letter to President Clinton in 1998 the members for the Project for the New American Century challenged the President to act forcefully and militarily to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Two years later George W Bush would hand-pick many of these Neo-Conservatives for key foreign policy posts in the Pentagon and the State Department. Once installed in government positions, as recent interviews with a number of former members of the Bush administration have revealed, the group maintained its long-standing focus on Iraq. A focus that intensified after the attacks of September 11. ibid.
The president needed a convincing reason for war with Hussein ... By the Spring of 2003 the US had attacked Iraq. Frontline: Top Secret America, PBS 2011
Why the president of the United States seemed so determined to go to war with Iraq. Frontline: The War Behind Closed Doors, PBS 2003
Wolfowitz champions the idea of pre-emption. ibid.
Rumsfeld’s deputy Paul Wolfowitz on a conference call with the vice-president suggested a retaliatory attack on Iraq. Frontline: Bush’s War I, PBS 2008
Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 1 De-Ba’athification of Iraqi Society. Frontline: Bush’s War II
Finding the weapons was left to the CIA. ibid.
It was the vice-president who had pushed the case for WMDs the hardest. ibid.
CIA officers leaking inside stories about the flawed intelligence. ibid.
The idea of making Iraq safe for the allies was falling apart. ibid.
When he was there Rumsfeld himself got in a helicopter and headed for Abu Ghraib. He decided they needed to get tougher with the detainees. ibid.
Many Congressional Republicans were begging the president to throw Rumsfeld overboard ... Soon Bush’s war will be handed to someone new. ibid.
The vice-president continued to assert a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. But the CIA kept saying it wasn’t true. Frontline: The Dark Side, PBS 2006
It took only three weeks for Baghdad to fall. The Americans, hoping to be seen as liberators, would be challenged within hours – when the looting began. Frontline: The Lost Year in Iraq, BBC 2006
The military in Iraq was run by Don Rumsfeld. ibid.
From the first day Bremer went right to work: he decided that de-Ba’athification would be Order Number One. ibid.
CPA order #2: the decision to dissolve the Iraqi military. ibid.
Sanchez and Bremer would both work for Rumsfeld. ibid.
By early summer Iraq was becoming a very dangerous place. ibid.
America was still at war. ibid.
General Sanchez’s sweeps filled Abu Ghraib. ibid.
Condoleezza Rice – in the inner circle Rice had been over-matched. ibid.
Rumsfeld ordered the marines to clean out Fallujah. ibid.
Then, Abu Ghraib: the photos appeared in late April. ibid.
The Reagan administration had cozeed up during the Iran war to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, turning a blind eye to his repeated use of chemical weapons, sometimes against his own people. Made in part from US-supplied chemicals. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States IX: Bush and Clinton – American Triumphalism – New World Order, Showtime 2012
‘They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the children to die on the cold floor’ ... It was a masterful performance ... The young witness [Nayirah] had never been at the hospital ... The US bombing of Baghdad had begun. ibid.
Afghanistan was a distraction to Bush; his attention was focused on toppling his father’s old adversary Saddam Hussein. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States X: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror
Scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the September 11th attacks. Indeed, Saddam’s goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them. He is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address. Brent Scowcroft, Wall Street Journal 15th August 2002
Bush puts deaths of Iraqis at 30,000. USA Today headline
US sustains 3,000th fatality in Iraq. NBC on-line article
Rumsfeld actually puts Iraq on the table and says part of our response may be, should be, to attack Iraq. Bob Woodward, author Bush at War
Our involvement in Iraq radicalised a whole generation of young people who saw our involvement as being an attack on Islam. Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5 chief, evidence to Iraq Enquiry
We gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi Jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before. ibid.
We were overburdened with intelligence that was pretty well more than we could cope with. ibid.
We were asked to put in some low-grade small intelligence to [the dossier] and we refused because we didn’t think it was reliable. ibid.
The threat is still severe ... And it has mutated and developed in different ways. ibid.
That he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons which could be activated within forty-five minutes. Tony Blair, address to Parliament
We know that he has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons. Tony Blair, 4th April 2002
There are no decisions that have been taken about military action. Tony Blair, 16th July 2002
What is important is that whatever action we take, should we take action, is in accordance with international law. Tony Blair, 25th July 2002