Most Americans are blissfully in the dark about it, but across the
Atlantic in the UK, a commission reluctantly established by Prime
Minister Gordon Brown under pressure from anti-war activists in Britain
is beginning hearings into the actions and statements of British
leaders that led to the country’s joining the US invasion of Iraq in
2003.
Even before testimony began in hearings that started yesterday,
news began to leak out from documents obtained by the commission that
the government of former PM Tony Blair had lied to Parliament and the
public about the country’s involvement in war planning.
Britain’s Telegraph newspaper over the weekend published
documents from British military leaders, including a memo from British
special forces head Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, saying that he had been
instructed to begin “working the war up since early 2002.”
Fresh questions over the legality of the Iraq war were raised today after the government admitted it could not substantiate its claim that Lord Goldsmith had changed his mind over the legal basis for the invasion before a highly controversial meeting with two of Tony Blair's closest allies.
The admission has revived allegations that the former attorney general was pressured to revise his opinion that an invasion could be illegal without an explicit UN resolution.
Opposition MPs have renewed calls for a full Iraq inquiry in light of the new information.
On 3/7/03 - 12 days before the US/UK invasion of Iraq - Attorney General Goldsmith
Q: If you were to go back and change anything from your political career, what would it be?
A: Well, of course, the biggest disappointment for me is that we are still in this war in Iraq, and, ah, I had always thought at the time that, that, ah, people knew the truth they would not vote for this war and, I don't know what else, er, not have been supportive of this, I don't know what else we could have done, ah, but this has been the most damaging to us:
There are a growing number of theories in circulation about the Habbush forgery revealed in Ron Suskind's The Way of the World. The forgery was publicized in December 2003 - 6 months after the invasion, when it became clear no WMD's were found going to be - in an attempt to prove there were pre-war ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
I'll try to keep track of them here...
CIA officials Rob Richer and John Maguire
Ron Suskind: under direct orders coming from CIA Director George Tenet
CIA asset and former Iraq Intelligence Chief Habbush
Ron Suskind's explosive new book has the Busheviks so terrified that they deployed their designated liar, Condi Rice, to lie through her teeth to Karl Rove's personal stenographer, Politico's Mike Allen.
The last couple of weeks have brought confirmation—as if it were needed—even in the corporate media, that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the gang of thugs and sycophants around them in the White House, engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie the country into a war in Iraq.
An Out of Iraq Town Hall meeting in the month of April will be held in Tucson, Arizona - 7th Congressional District. The time and the date of the meeting to be announced. The actual topics to be addressed at the Town Hall meeting will be released about one week before the meeting. To be a part of this meeting contact info@harleymeyer.com
It’s appropriate that on this week of the fifth anniversary of the criminal US invasion of Iraq, we are also seeing several other things: the death toll of American troops in that doomed adventure is rising past 4000, the economy is sliding into a recession which could be deep and long, and the financial markets are teetering on the edge of a possibly historic collapse.
The conjunction of all of these dire things is no coincidence.
We’re appalled by the costs, both financial and medical, of this on-going disastrous war.
We’re even more appalled that Congress keeps signing blank checks, while the pundits proclaim that the Iraq War is no longer a leading concern of Americans; finances are.
Of course the reality is that much of the financial debacle facing both the country and individuals stems directly from the obscene costs of this war.
When journalists are caught lying outright, they can be fired, and can even find their careers terminated. Take Janet Cooke, the Washington Post reporter who made up a story about a young drug user. A decade after her firing, she was earning $6/hour as a Liz Claiborne clerk in a department store. Or consider Stephen Glass, who famously made up stories at the New Republic. He landed on his feet as a fiction writer, but his journalism days are over.
So what to do about George Bush and his gang of fabulists, who now, thanks to a study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, stand shown to have lied to Congress and the American people 935 times in what the two organizations say was "part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
