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20 Years Ago on March 19…
…US President George W. Bush ordered air strikes on Baghdad, launching the war for “regime change” and the ousting of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies. Such a belief is now deemed to have been false, although the length of time between Colin Powell’s February 5 address to the United Nations, in which he laid out the case, and the subsequent Allied invasion – exactly six weeks later – left plenty of time for such efforts to be covered up, dismantled, or moved.
And so, with apparent evidence on both sides to support their respective cases, the conspiracy theorists, and the conspiracy realists, continue to joust over the truth, which is likely never to be fully known.
Regardless, or irregardless as the case may be, I remember the television coverage of those aerial attacks on that day exactly two decades ago. It was awe-inspiring, and thrilling. The subsequent initial phase of the land war – which lasted just over a month and was spearheaded by the United States with support from the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland, and the following “quagmire” years resulted in the deaths and wounding, both physically and mentally, of tens of thousands of Allied troops, and in consequences that we, and they, still live with today.
As cowards do, Saddam Hussein ran away and hid from reprisals, remaining undiscovered until December 2003, when American soldiers found him, filthy and deranged, hiding in a hole in the ground near ad-Dawr. He was subsequently interrogated, tried, and executed (by the interim Iraqi government) on December 30, 2006. Sic semper tyrannis.
Today, I remember not the meretricious crapweasels of the various governments on all sides who have been – ever since – revising the rather clear history of the war, those who started it, and even, sometimes, those who fought in it. I choose rather to remember the valiant soldiers from all services and all nations who fought, and those who were wounded and who died in the cause of freedom and to keep us safe.
From February 7, 2001–just a month into the first Persian Gulf War:
And from the UK:
Australia:
And Poland:
Thank you.
Published in General
This is not evidence. This is your conspiracy theory. It’s along the lines of Jane Fonda and the anti American radicals that blame America. Show me evidence of Colon Powell having prior knowledge contra to the statements at the UN. No one at the UN contradicted Powell or the US version of the facts. The only dissent from major powers was that it was not necessary. But no one disputed the claim.
If I remember correctly, 80% of Iraqis at the time wanted the end of the Saddam regime.
When I was growing up, it was the left that built conspiracy theories about the CIA and covert operations in foreign countries that slandered the US. I’m not saying that the CIA was pure, but the radicals went with slander first without any facts. To my dismay, it’s now conservatives who do the same thing. These same people who claimed the Iraq invasion was built on a lie are the same people who claim the CIA started the Ukraine/Russian war.
Thank you for doing the research. I said earlier in the thread there were about a half dozen reasons justifying the removal of Saddam. You listed a solid dozen! I’m going to have to try to save your research.
No, you didn’t listen carefully. I remember counting a half dozen reasons at the time. Namill demonstrated there were even more.
I think his reticence was to imitate his people and neighbors. The perception of great force was critical to his survival.
Hardly “research”; I just copypasted the Wikipedia entry, and linked that in the first line.
And that’s abbreviated. There were actually 23 reasons listed in the official authorization, which you can read here.
That is what I’ve been looking for. I remember telling people that there were 22 more reasons than WMD, but I lost my bookmark to the list.
I meant intimidate his people…. Not imitate…lol. Fat fingers and autocorrect!!
It seems you find a lot hard to believe. It is ok, believe what you like.
Don’t let me try to dissuade you.
The briefing you so easily dismiss was taught at the US Army war college and framed the basis for part of the surge (2007-2008) that ended the insurgency.
You also found it hard to believe that the VAERS database showed 22K death following the COVID shot.
Has the intervening year made the vaccine injury thing any more clear to you?
Isn’t there a history on the part of US occupying forces not ‘dealing with’ or even listening to, tribal elders in what is–by and large and over the wider region (as opposed to fairly Westernized large central cities)–a tribal region? Something about Afghanistan 2002 springs to mind where (IIRC) the majority of the Loya Jirga announced that they’d vote to restore the old regime, headed by Zahir Shah. This wasn’t–it was thought–in the best interests of the US. So, after delays and pressure applied by the US, (IIRC) the former King/Shah dropped out of, or was dropped out of, the running, and “our sonofabitch,” the privileged and wealthy Pashtun Hamid Karzai was elected to lead the transitional government. What could possibly go wrong?
Whether the process springs from a natural aversion to the unknown, or a determined avoidance of the traditional culture (but I repeat myself) I tend to throw my usual asparagus on the Harvard/Oxford State Department types, and hope for better things to come.
In the case of Iraq and the KSOG (Kennedy School of Government) types what happened is the Coalition Provisional Government folks made policy decisions in a vacuum (De-Baathification, for example) and used the power of the purse to enforce them.
One story that I am familiar with is about a guy who was responsible for a hydro-electric dam north of Baghdad. He had maintained the dam and facilities on a shoestring budget ever since Desert Storm – keeping it running and the lights on, so to speak. Everything was jury rigged, but functional and he was ecstatic when the coalition toppled Saddam. Finally, he thought, the Americans are going to help me make critical repairs – without having to pay the baksheesh up the chain to the “leadership”. The dude just wanted his dam to work.
The CPA fired him. He was a member of the Baath party, you see.
Just an example.
Another would be disbanding the entire Iraqi army in a day.
If you’ve watched videos of intrepid travellers who have ventured back to Taliban Afghanistan (all Brits at least the ones I’ve seen and limited to four), they’re staying in a compound hotel where lots of USAID (i.e. CIA light) materials are strewn about. It’s woke crap meant to transform Afghanistan in the neoliberal image. It’s stuff that makes at least half the American public angry. And probably 99.9% of Afghans angry since they are more sane than American elites. Add to this going past vast depots of discarded American war machinery. What a folly. But we never learn.
In Iraq, the ‘liberation’ meant Shia began killing Sunni as vengeance for past wrongs. The Americans did nothing about it. The Sunni began forming their own militias to protect themselves against Shia and then Americans who didn’t like the formation of militias. Then Abu Ghraib and the formation of ISIS. As I’ve said, we never learn.
ISIS was formed in the late 1990’s as a split from AQ. ISIS and AQ disagreed on how to bring about their promised Caliphate and truthfully, ISIS ended up controlling more territory than AQ ever did.
The other things were there. The media went light on reporting them.
The media stressed what it feared, the WMD, and ignored talking about the reasons they did t care about.
He inherited our stupid way of fighting wars.
This is not just a rehash of an old war. The Senate is currently debating S.316 that would repeat the 2002 AUMF and the 1991 AUMF. I expect it to pass and be signed by Biden.
That’s nothing new, back in the 60’s we had conservatives claiming fluoridation was a Commie plot. People who obsess over politics seem prone to believing conspiracy theories, on both ends of the spectrum.
The media had a lot of help. I just watched W’s address to the nation, announcing the start of hostilities (about 5 minutes), March 19, 2003.
Much of it is soothing platitudes and unwavering support for the troops. And–what later was shown to be–a monumental misunderestimation of the task at hand.
But–as with his SOTU speech seven weeks prior, and as with Powell’s address to the UN a week after that–the only specific reason actually given for going to war is that Saddam had “weapons of mass murder,” and that we needed to remove the threat over there, before those same weapons came over here and we had to fight them in our own streets with our own emergency responders as our own citizens–civilians–were killed.
When the administration repeatedly sold to the public that one thing as the only reason for the war, I’m not sure, for the first part, that the media can be faulted (all that much) for picking up the storyline and running with it.
And I’m not surprised, for the second part, that the general public saw, and still sees in the rear-view mirror, Saddam’s supposed massive stockpiles of WMD as the reason for the war.
Nor am I surprised, for the third part, that the failure to find, within very short order, warehouses stuffed with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons all ready to be lobbed at the Iraqi people or at the West, and with bundles of signed receipts showing that at least half of them had been sold to Islamist terrorist cells worldwide for use in the streets of New York, caused the reaction and backlash that it did.
Whichever way, and whether because the administration simply didn’t know any better, or because it was too lazy to make a proper case for the war to the public so it defaulted to the most volatile thing and that most likely to gin up panic and therefore support, or because it really believed its own press releases, or because it was simply lying, or–embrace the power of “and”–the administration was guilty at the very least of a colossal mismanagement of expectations.
As has been laid out by several commenters here, either the easy way (thank you Wikipedia) or by those with far more detailed and direct knowledge than I, there were lots of good reasons to justify going into Iraq and taking out Saddam. My point was, and continues to be, that the war wasn’t sold to the general public on those terms. Not by the media and (more importantly) not by the administration or the Commander-in-Chief. It was sold to the general public as a war to remove the threat of WMD from the hands of a brutal and lunatic dictator, and to insure that those same weapons were not sold to, or taken by, Islamist terrorists.
I think the reaction to the wafer-thin 2000 election played a bigger role in later press coverage than is generally recognized. Press coverage played a bigger role in the Bush team’s planning and messaging than it probably should have.
What I’m pointing out is the anti Americanism. It’s the blame America first mentality. Conservatives had a presumption that fundamentally America was a good nation. Whatever the fluoridation issue was does not sound like what I’m bringing up.
Well then, this guy must have been dead-wrong because Bush never went after the Iraqi oil after we won the war.
Agree! I’ve been on Ricochet for about seven years now, and I’ve seen a slow descending into speculation, hearsay, and conspiracy theories. It is very disheartening.
Yes, I still find it hard to believe that 22,000 people died as a result of getting Covid shots. In fact it is outright loony.
The VAERS Database is a self-reporting collection of data. That means it doesn’t come from doctors or nurses or anybody in the medical field. It is just average Joes reporting that their loved one died and they think it was due to taking the vaccine. With that standard, I’m surprised the number isn’t 50,000.
From VAERS own website, they give this warning as to the information collected:
Key considerations and limitations of VAERS data:
As I told you before, there was no video of any army briefing at your link in comment #71. There was nothing for me to dismiss.
Ah it is called “new information”. You dismissed the video, which depicts the PowerPoint using stop motion. That was the old information. You dismissed this.
The briefing has been taught at the US Army War College. That is the new information.
That sounds like exactly what we did to de-Nazify Germany after World War II. And a similar thing in Japan, except that we let Emperor Hirohito stay on his throne, but without real power, since the Japanese public revered him like a god.
Incorrect.
Doctors are the ones who file VAERS reports.