The Bush administration’s primary justification for launching the Iraq War is thought, probably correctly, to be an alleged WMD program that did not exist. The coterie of delusional neoconservatives surrounding Bush and Cheney contributed to a systematic process of cherry-picking dubious intelligence and outright manipulation of evidence in order to satisfy a political decision that had already been made to change the regime in Iraq through a war of aggression.
The historical record pretty clearly demonstrates the distortions the administration employed to make the case that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Inspectors who said they didn’t exist were ignored, false stories about aluminum tubes and yellowcake from Africa were peddled assertively, Iraqi defectors that were known liars were used as anonymous sources alleging Saddam’s WMD development, etc.
The plan eventually worked. The administration’s expressed certainty was persuasive to Americans. “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Dick Cheney said in a 2002 speech. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” No doubt.
But as central as these false claims about Saddam’s WMDs were to the propaganda campaign for war, I believe what will be most remembered is the claim of an operational connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Significant portions of Americans still believe that Saddam and al-Qaeda were in cahoots and cooperated in the 9/11 attacks. The reason is simple: the administration told them this lie.
An investigation by a committee in the House of Representatives in 2004 identified “237 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq that were made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice. These statements were made in 125 separate appearances, consisting of 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings, 53 interviews, 4 written statements, and 2 congressional testimonies.” According to the committee, at least 61 separate statements “misrepresented Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda.” A Senate investigation in 2006 also covered these lies.
Keeping this lie afloat took some work. The Bush administration, primarily Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, “applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime,” McClatchy reported in 2009.
According to Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Bush’s Secretary of State Powell, “the administration authorized harsh interrogation” in 2002, and “its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.”
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the detainee captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, eventually provided that smoking gun. He claimed knowledge of an Iraq-Qaeda connection because it was tortured out of him. The Bush administration cited it as evidence for the Iraq War’s greatest lie.
Other lies were told to this effect. Two months after the 9/11 attacks, on December 9, 2001, Dick Cheney went on Meet the Press and, when asked by Tim Russert whether “Iraq was involved in September 11,” mentioned a “report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that [9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”
In fact, the CIA had told Cheney this report was false a day before his Meet the Press appearance. In a briefing that was sent to the White House Situation Room, the CIA concluded that “11 September 2001 hijacker Mohamed Atta did not travel to the Czech Republic on 31 May 2000.” Cheney cited it anyways.
Two years later, on September 14, 2003, Cheney appeared once again on Meet the Press. Russert asked him if he was “surprised” by the fact that “69 percent” of Americans believe Saddam “was involved in the September 11 attacks.”
“I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection,” Cheney said. “With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it.” In reality, it had been conclusively discredited years earlier.
As Paul Pillar, former CIA analyst and National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote in his recent book: “The supposed alliance between Saddam’s regime and al-Qa’ida clearly did not drive the Bush administration’s decision to launch the war [in Iraq] because the administration was receiving no indications that any such alliance existed,” adding that “this fact did not stop the administration from nonetheless promoting publicly the notion of such an alliance.”
By August 2003, after another year that included the most intensive selling of the war, more than two-thirds of Americans thought Saddam had been involved in 9/11. Some of this belief was due to innuendo such as the vice president’s repeated references to a phantom meeting in Prague between an Iraqi and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. It was due mostly to the administration’s rhetorical drumbeat that repeatedly mentioned Iraq, 9/11, and “war on terror” in the same breath.
Pillar is right: the Saddam-Qaeda connection did not drive the Bush administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq. But it did drive the administration’s propaganda campaign to generate public support for the war.
This was absolutely critical to the blank check that the vast majority of Americans gave to Bush and Cheney to go to war. Alleged WMDs, I think, could never have achieved the level of popular support for war crimes against Iraq on its own. The pain and indignation Americans felt after being attacked on 9/11 needed to be exploited for a war of choice as brazen as Iraq to gain support. And the record is clear that the Bush administration fostered this deception, employing torture and citing false intelligence to do so.
The record is clear, but the CIA is still trying to cover it up, as Marcy Wheeler has recently noted.
Many lies were told to justify the Iraq War. But none were as baseless and vital as this one. At the risk of joining the parade of idiots predicting “the judgement of history” on Iraq, I would anticipate the Saddam-Qaeda connection lie as the most important, far surpassing the more popularized WMD claims.
somthing i have said 100 times
not only was the AQ-saddam connection a lie (and who made the niger cake forgery… and the fake connection between saddam and AQ in europe?….i'd rather not say right now, but many of you know). http://fundly.com/otp
the other lie is that AQ (somewhat abstract anyways) was connected to 9/11!!! the only 'evidence' linking anyone really to that, was water-boarded BS confessions, and pakistani ISI money nobody wants to mention. oh, and OBL denied it 2 times, in depth. that is, until we "missed" him in tora bora, and NATO troops found a VHS in a house in afghanistan, played it, and it had a very non-OBL like dude, purportedly taking responsibility for 9/11. my ass. then he claimed it a few times on suspect audio and video recording in the future. then we shot him in the head and dumped him in the sea. and the tapes are… lost, or didn't record, or you know…. a matter of national security.
but guess what, i haven't even hit the whopper of all lies yet….
9/11 was a false flag with controlled demo of all 3 buildings in NYC, with elements in the USG (and others) committing, orchestrating, and facilitating the WHOLE THING!
and if you followed me to this point, i suggest you consider the ONE move that we have, to tip over the truckload of BS, pressing down on all of humanity.
this is the summary- http://www.ae911truth.org/actionalerts/2013/03/ac…
and this is the page we are using right now to organize (and raise funds… but please… for FREE, click support to get tied into the biggest move yet for 9/11 truth- i am a founder of the project and co-leader) http://fundly.com/otp
-peace
~anon
The biggest lie that Bush still repeats is "Saddam didn't let the (UN) inspectors in"
Building 7.
http://fundly.com/otp
that is the world's answer to building 7… and 9/11.
the time is now, this year. we cannot wait for the next 9/11, or the next BS thing to displace 9/11 and start from scratch. THIS is the window, to force the issue.
Yes. But look at how after well over a decade the lies and obfuscations that have been dog-piled on top of 9/11. When the next "big thing" hits then you'll hear all the talking heads, pundits, and political whores clamoring for us to "get over it" about 9/11 because, in their own evil words, they have to "do something" about the latest rush to war and the lies that got us there. You can bank on it.
Building 7 was a 230,000 ton building yet it's demise was indistinguishable from background noise on the seismic scale. It made the equivalent of a few jackhammers when it 'hit' the ground (a 0.6; most reading stations couldn't even pinpoint it on the seismic readings for that day). It's demise was also silent. Advanced, black weaponry was used on 9/11. A directed energy device. It just so happens that NIST's contractors who 'investigated' the buildings destruction are manufacturers and researchers of directed energy weapons. One would think they would've known what they were looking at during their investigation.
Obviously you are speaking in a code that other people recognize, but when I think of "Building 7" I think of this: http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
Which makes sense to me in a way the conspiracy theory doesn't.
And the lie will continue.., Look: USA was founded on a stolen land, 2-by the british and french modernized, at the time colonialists 3-now in 2013 USA still at war with the legitimate owners of a land so is the british, looking to colonize more land as Israel dose. They have managed to create more apartheid, dictatorial, non democratic, religious regimes then any friends which they are not looking for, their interests is not based on democracy nor friendships.., is their way or war which has been the motto of the USA and English or French, Germans or Swedish Neo fascism for that matter.
Especially so, if you believe how the US press was manipulated, or commandeered, by the government during and after the 9/11 tragedy itself, particularly the TV news media.
Depending on the extent of things, that can be, I believe, much more Soviet that the Soviets at the height of Soviet Communism. At least the Soviet people more or less knew what was going on. In the USA, the artifice can be unbelievably rigid, an impenetratable steel structure. Given further that that very press is hailed as the free, true voice of democracy and the people – perhaps Stalin and Lenin would today quake in their boots at what the USA has achieved. They could never hope to even compare.
And very few people are aware of this properly, day in day out, even if they may sometimes give the most watered down possibility a little thought and wake up the next day having nearly forgotten it.
Perhaps, there has never been such a steeled, fascist, populous controlling "success", ever, in the history of the world, as in the USA in the 21st Century.
The last memorable and honorable statement by an American….. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson stated before the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal in 1945.
" To initiate a war of aggression is the supreme international crime differing only from other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole…. we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
"We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us'
Nazi war criminals were hanged. American war criminals should be hanged also. Hang Bush. Hang Cheney. And hang Obama also for continuing the criminal war started by Bush.
Completely agree. Also impose sanctions on all those countries who violate the Security Council resolutions and help the terrorists in Syria with arms, money and diplomatic support. Why pass UN Resolutions if they are to be violated openly and International conferences can take place to help terrorists ?
The American public will believe anything that officialdom tells them. That is how stupid they are.
Yep, that one line covers it all. They are just stupid.
You can blame the politicians all you like, but at the end of the day the politicians ARE (or would be if the population were not so spineless) controlled by us, the people. They were then and they still are, and what are Americans today doing to right this wrong. Nothing. Still nothing.
Stupid, selfish and spineless.
I agree. And as smart as my Dad is, it drives me crazy that he just assumes that authority, really any kind, including experts and professionals, are always right and always trustworthy. I'm jaded by experience with authority, teachers and principles mostly. When a bully picks on you, then beats the crap out of you after school, then a teacher drags you and the bully to the principal who then uses a large wooden paddle with holes in it to strike you multiple times, I doubt very much that you will just assume that authority figures are just always right.
Haha like mi.say…..Babylon.your kingdom is falling….then again what whites did to Jesus…..look at what Hitler did…..or bush….or Obama…..all devils of the earth masquerading as angels…..the worse is they made the uncle Tom the most heinous so they can point outshot the n@gga did not us
The "Greatest Lie" isn't about WMD it is that 9-11 was done by the CIA and the Mossad on Cheneys
orders. Bush, the useful idiot was kept out of the way and Cheney ran the show. He did it for
the Rothchilds, his masters…
pretty much…
Let's also remember the Anthrax false flag – fake letters written by a Washington insider impersonating Middle Eastern resisters, and anthrax traced to Federal labs.
And the cherry on top of that one was Colin Powell going before the UN and shaking a bottle of white powder representing anthrax. When that whole story came apart – a miracle if you ask me that it ever was traced – the course of war was already set and the public had received the impression intended (along with phony stories about 9/11 hijackers seeking crop-dusters and one of them being treated for cutaneous anthrax down in Florida). The USA Patriot Act was passed without debate or perusal due to the supposed risk to congress people from the anthrax mailed to them. It was a major propaganda coup, and it tied 9/11 to Saddam in the most devious way. But the public was not able to link all the pieces – too hard for most people to sit down and collect the damning evidence against our leaders. Since that time, we have been in a parallel country where criminals must maintain their lies. I see no end to it, and the end of hopes and dreams as a nation. It's turning into something medieval.
Maybe that was Nuttyahoo's inspiration for the Iranian ACME brand cartoon bomb drawing he showed at the UN last year.
Recalling a comment from 2003 illustrative of the American public's prescience on WMDs, "Osama Hussein must have them."
Not only is there no evidence that Iraq was connected to Al Qaida, there is no evidence either that Al Qaida was connected to the September 11 attacks.
There is no "Al-Qaeda".
Amazing how many times cheney's name pops up. Well, not really.
DeBunk De 911 myth…… No matter how bad the Iraq war was and continues to be, it pales in comparison to the 911 lie and lies….. with it's scores of smoking guns…. 911 was an inside job or one done by very powerful people within the government….. There is no way mere stupidity could have left us so helpless…. There is no way no one would get fired …but one There is no reason the bush cheney team would oppose an investigation but one.. There is no way the investigation could have been so bad, save one…. There is no way that no one would be arrested for the destruction of 911 "terrorist" 91 tapes of interrogations evidence… but one or Air Controller statements tapes…but one. No reason for bush/cheney to demand no oath prior to testifying… only one….. No reason that the Dancing Israellis were allowed to flee home to Israel, but one… No reason the Bin Laden Family was allowed to escape home to Saudi Arabia, but one No reason that General in charge of Norad on 911was promoted BUT ONE!!! and NO Reason the General in charge of NSA got the TOP JOB as Director of the CIA for hearing nothing before 911 but one….. And that one reason is that no one was punished at ALL for fear they would tell their side of HOW IT WAS that they did not protect America or the American citizens……… and who told them not to….
http://fundly.com/otp
Hello, I would like to know how you feel about the way they are investigating Benghazi. The effort and time they are placing into this investigation and the amount of time and resources, all people should be asking this question especially those who lost love ones. Instead the powers at the time just brushed it away, even the second lie about WMD and the lost of thousands of young Americans, whatever came of those investigations and the people who lied to our country.
In reality, the Greatest Lie is the narrative of 9-11 itself! Imperialist perfidy persists because the corporate-bin-Laden media works 24/7 for the Wall Street-Pentagon "Dictatorship of the Profitariat". The only solution? To dismantle the USA empire, as the late & presient Prof. Chalmers Johnson so pointedly prescribed; short of that, an inevitable self-created Capitalist "credit" Collapse the world had never yet seen. Soberingly sad but true
http://fundly.com/otp
The biggest lie is that the iraq war was an aberation and not the norm of over 200 years of such criminal behavior.
AUTHOR just as fn guilty as Bushys and 80 % of americans whose livelihoods depend upon such national criminal actions.
Now looking back “safely” with no fear of reprisal the author fonds convenient excuse to hide truth of whole nations complicity in what was most barbaric and drliberate act of cultural genocide in over last 400 years of hostory.
One of the reasons for democrats not willing to prosecute these Neo mafia bosses is that democrats are as guilty as these people are.., which brings us back to Obama and his justice department not willing to close Guantanamo because the nation still at war which was based on lies.., second his justice department is not going to prosecute these people because then halve of democrats needs to be in jail as well as Cheney and others. So the lying concept of these people regarding any war will continue.., in the other hand when was the last time USA or EU didn't lie about a war started or conducted by them.
In a better world, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and others would have paid for their misdeeds by being lawfully executed. In a better world than that, Americans would not be so gullible as to allow them to go to war in the first place. In a better world than that, such people would never be entrusted with power. In the world that we have, fools and their money and lives are easily parted and crime does pay if you do it right.
hallelujah friend. Been saying the same thing since Vietnam ended. These guys are destined to repeat this crap over and over until the people FINALLY smarten up. Don't count on it. I want to retire in Dubai or should we glass them too?? If not, WHY NOT??
if you read above you will see the real we the people, now is time and oboma need added to the list, along with McCain, Liberman, Graham warmonger
I heard Iraq controlled Hollywood, too.
The WMD lie pales in comparison to the 9/11 lie. Which was so obviously an inside job until only morons are left clinging to the official version.
I'm afraid the morons are the majority! They LIKE the official version better, and THEREFORE it MUST be true – at least to other people.
Well, carroll price knows how to poison the well. I guess that's settled, nobody can overcome logic and debating skills like that.
As others have already stated the greatest lie is the official story of 9-11. Until we wake up to that there is no hope
really great peice on counter punch about the "progressive money machine" and i think it parrelels something i have noticed in my own interactions with people.
conservatives, generally just try to avoid any discussion of iraq, on the dumb end of the spectrum because they think it was a success and on the smart end of the spectrum because they have some shame.
but the liberal/proggresives are really rewriting history in to it being just Bush/cheney lied everyone in the world in to it and every one else who supported it only had the best of intentions and should not be held accountable for what they did when being mislead
not only was the AQ-saddam connection a lie (and who made the niger cake forgery… and the fake connection between saddam and AQ in europe?….i'd rather not say right now, but many of you know). http://fundly.com/otp
the other lie is that AQ (somewhat abstract anyways) was connected to 9/11!!! the only 'evidence' linking anyone really to that, was water-boarded BS confessions, and pakistani ISI money nobody wants to mention. oh, and OBL denied it 2 times, in depth. that is, until we "missed" him in tora bora, and NATO troops found a VHS in a house in afghanistan, played it, and it had a very non-OBL like dude, purportedly taking responsibility for 9/11. my ass. then he claimed it a few times on suspect audio and video recording in the future. then we shot him in the head and dumped him in the sea. and the tapes are… lost, or didn't record, or you know…. a matter of national security.
but guess what, i haven't even hit the whopper of all lies yet….
9/11 was a false flag with controlled demo of all 3 buildings in NYC, with elements in the USG (and others) committing, orchestrating, and facilitating the WHOLE THING!
and if you followed me to this point, i suggest you consider the ONE move that we have, to tip over the truckload of BS, pressing down on all of humanity.
this is the summary- http://www.ae911truth.org/actionalerts/2013/03/ac….
and this is the page we are using right now to organize (and raise funds… but please… for FREE, click support to get tied into the biggest move yet for 9/11 truth- i am a founder of the project and co-leader) http://fundly.com/otp
-peace
~anon
equally striking to me is, that there was no immediate outcry at least by the better educated, be it diplomats, media, historians etc. i became interested in middle east politics in the 6-day-war in 1967 when i was 12. i must admit, until a few years ago, i was mainly concerned with israel; the rest of the reagion more or less stood on the sidelines. yet, from this alone i had learned enough about the arab countries to know, that AC and Saddam being in cahoots was a totally fabricated lie. anyone knowing the slightest bit about the baath-parties in irak and syria should have noticed this.
Sorry Afghanistanis but you are out of luck…
"In 1997 Trilateral Commission founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of the Afghan mujahadeen, wrote a book titled, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. In the book, Brzezinski – who sat on the board at BP Amoco – argues that the key to global power is control of Eurasia and that the “key to controlling Eurasia is controlling the Central Asian Republics”." http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/02/25/afghan-hi…
Some interesting new developments:
"The ground is giving way under the feet of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the attacks of September 11. The main source of the Commission’s report, Abu Zoubeida, whose confessions were extracted under torture, is now officially considered worthless. And the CIA agent who arrested and interrogated Zoubeida has admitted he invented everything." http://www.voltairenet.org/article177634.html
And that's how it started: http://www.bollyn.com/#article_14004
"While most Americans saw the terror attacks of 9-11 as the beginning of the "War on Terror," the ideological framework of this Zionist fraud was actually born in Jerusalem during an international conference on terrorism held by the Jonathan [Netanyahu] Institute in early July 1979 – twenty-two years before the terror attacks that changed America. What is most important to note is that the same people who created the fraudulent "War on Terror" are currently running the state of Israel."
Good Cooment
There were numerous interviews with young fresh faced just out of college military cadets who all to a tee claimed. "We are doing this to avenge 9/11 and see it dosen't happen again.
The media portrayed these "brave" patriots as the pride of America selfishly going to war to save generations back home.
Most didn't know where Iraq was or the difference between various Middle East states. When asked to pinpoint Iraq on a map 70% got it wrong.
Lets be honest. The only reason they went over was because… the pay was good.
All of the US media are fools and could not care lessThe massacre of 43 million native americans is a case in point they keep the american people like mushrooms fed excreta and kept in the dark.
In all that focus on the criminal event itself, we should just sit back and ponder some other more sinister hidden issues that can shed more light on the subject. You see Zionists are the most vindictive creatures (not humans because it would be too patronizing) on the face of our planet, they do not forget. I believe it is their payback for the Babylonian captivity they suffered more than2.5 millennia ago.
Think about it in this light and discuss.
The bigger lie is 9/11 and Afghanistan. To this day, the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorists" web page does not state that Bin Laden is wanted for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The official account of 9/11 is demonstrably false — http://www.twf.org/News/News911.html
Major General Smedley Butler. " War is a Racket."
no jail for the liars we live aworld where the wealthy make the laws.and i and everyone out there are losers for letting it happen the only fix is civl war and we all know this our leaders are the weathy sheep
Great article on the Iraq War lies!
Where Did The Towers Go? Why was there so little rubble? Why were 1400 cars toasted on 9/11, after the demise of the buildings? Did you know 6 buildings, all with WTC prefixes, were destroyed on 911? Why were the seismic signals from the buildings 'collapsing' not consistent with what they should have been had the buildings actually hit the ground? How did 1 million tons of building material slamming to the ground not destroy the slurry wall (the bathtub) that the twin towers were built in, yet earth moving equipment during the clean up did?
Yes I am Completely agree with the blogger and the blog.the attack was so planned that we can only decrease the intensity of the attack.
umm….damn! we are a bunch of gullible morons, if the news say it …we believe it, and we have alot of intelligent folks out there that is not part of the liers club. SO whats next…population control,
? Marshal law?
This isn't true, one only has to realize who Hussein was, what his goals were and what he believed and how much capital he had to work with to come to the conclusion that he was undoubtedly compiling the means to destroy massive amounts of people with a minority of strikes, whether it be through chemical or nuclear means. You don't even need the government to tell you that, you just need to know who he is, what he and his likemindeds believed and wanted. Not to mention he had proven his willingness to acquire and use these types of weapons in the past. Also, it must be remembered that for 9 days after our government demanded he let inspectors in to verify what he did or did not have, Hussein remained non-responsive, totally silent, because a response of any kind would constitute an admission of guilt or a lie of international proportions. In my opinion, to believe that a man of his mind-set, with his resources and having unquestioned authority, did not have or was not compiling or trying to compile WMDs is naive. In 9 days of silence and access to armies of men and money being no object I believe he was systematically hiding and dismantling his stock, realizing that the U.S. was in earnest post-911, whether he was involved or not. And that is why none have been found. Once the war began, he still had time to continue relocating or destroying his weapons. I know many are on the "our government lied to feed their own agenda" bandwagon, and that one would choose that over common sense is disturbing.
this is a great moment and unforgetable
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