2003 Iraq War

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Event.png 2003 Iraq War (War,  War Crime,  US Sponsored Regime-change efforts since 1945) Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
Date2003 - Present
PerpetratorsUS
Interest ofAlia Muhammad Baker, Peter van Buren, Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, Karen Kwiatkowski, Jim Molan, Office of Special Plans, Operation Mass Appeal, Scott Ritter, Dahlia Wasfi, Michael Yon

Official Narrative

Saddam Hussein was a bad man. The invasion was not a resource war for oil, but an act of humanitarian intervention and when the invasion was launched Iraq had been linked by repeated propaganda in the commercially-controlled media to the attacks of 9/11. The Wikipedia infobox declares that the war was "Part of the War on Terror", but does not elaborate.

Problems

Saddam Hussein had no documented connection to 9-11, and Iraq was not on the Pentagon's list of terrorist nations on September 11th. In The Age of Turbulence (2007), Allan Greenspan wrote that "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Legal Status

This was heavily spun but the war was basically a war of aggression, the supreme international war crime.

Downing Street Memo

Full article: Downing Street Memo

"The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy", said Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, at a meeting in Downing Street of Tony Blair's war cabinet on 23 July 2002.

Dodgy dossier

Full article: Dodgy dossier

On 3 February 2003, as the drums of war on Iraq were rising in tempo and volume, the UK Government under Tony Blair released a document entitled "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation", supposedly based on high level intelligence. It turn out that the majority of it was a word for word copy of an article written by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a US based undergraduate.

Consequences

In 2006, the Lancet reported a figure of 655,000 excess deaths due to the war.[1] In 2007 Media Lens reported that IBC's figure was approximately 5-10% of the actual number.[2] As of August 2014, Iraq Body Count estimated that as an absolute minimum, 193,000 people have been killed as a result of the war, which the site describes as "a conservative cautious minimum". Extrapolating, this would mean a death toll of around 2-4 million.

 

Related Quotations

PageQuoteAuthorDate
David Aaronovitch“If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere.”David Aaronovitch
Jimmy Carter“Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, [there is] massive Islamic condemnation of the United States. (...) (American media organisations), have been cowed, because they didn't want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive journalism. In fact, it's hard to think of a major medium in the United States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when criticism was deserved”Jimmy Carter2004
Midge Decter“We're not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We're there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil.”Midge Decter21 May 2004
Jörg Haider“Asked about the impression that Saddam is better for him than Bush, Haider said: "The choice is really hard for me. Both have been at war with international law and committed human rights violations. The one is lucky enough to command a world power, hence the power to write the laws, while the other has been a weak dictator"”Jörg Haider
Money laundering“Beginning in the very earliest days of the war in Iraq, the New York Federal Reserve shipped billions of dollars in physical cash to Baghdad to pay for the reopening of the government and restoration of basic services.

The money was packed onto pallets inside a heavily guarded New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey, trucked to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, and flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport.

By one account, the New York Fed shipped about $40 billion in cash between 2003 and 2008. In just the first two years, the shipments included more than 281 million individual bills weighing a total of 363 tons. But soon after the money arrived in the chaos of war-torn Baghdad, the paper trail documenting who controlled it all began to go cold.”
Eamon Javers25 October 2011
Petrodollar“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”Alan Greenspan2007
Rendon Group“"Did you ever stop to wonder," Rendon later remarked, "how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American — and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?" After a pause, he added, "Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then."”James Bamford17 November 2005

 

Related Documents

TitleTypePublication dateAuthor(s)Description
Document:Cabinet Office Briefing Paper 21 July 2002briefing paper12 June 2005Generated for participants for the secret meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, this classified paper states that since regime change was illegal it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal. The last page is missing.
Document:Former MI6 chief behind faked “evidence” for Iraq war leading anti-China Wuhan lab conspiracyArticle10 June 2021Julie HylandPresident Biden's intelligence service order relating to the Wuhan lab leak theory was issued the same day that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, gave evidence before a parliamentary committee in which he confirmed a government policy to allow tens of thousands to die from Covid-19.
Document:Gaddafi's 2009 speech: "Let's call it the UN Terror Council"Speech23 September 2009Muammar GaddafiNo one is above the UN General Assembly. All nations should be and should be seen to be on an equal footing. At present, the UN Security Council is security feudalism, political feudalism for those with permanent seats, protected by them and used against us. It should be called, not the UN Security Council, but the UN Terror Council.
Document:Guilt by AssociationBook2008Jeff GatesA copiously referenced account of the extent to which Zionist Israeli interests have taken effective control of the US state, their methodology and their responsibility for taking America to war in Iraq in 2003
Document:How British journalists are seduced by the Ministry of Defence and spooksArticle28 September 2021Richard Norton-TaylorIn the world of the spooks, few in the media raised questions about the root causes of terror attacks in Britain even when Eliza Manningham-Buller, then head of MI5, warned that the invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat in Britain.
Document:Manning Memo 14 March 2002memo14 March 2002David Manning
Document:Peter Ricketts Memo 22 March 2002memo22 March 2002Peter Ricketts
Document:Sanitising the Iraq Wararticle6 July 2016Jonathon ShafiThe full horror of what Blair unleashed will never be truly understood in the West. And, internationally the full consequences of this war are still to be felt. As the sister of a soldier killed in Iraq said: “There is one terrorist in this world and his name is Tony Blair.”
Document:Striving to Make Sense of the Ukraine Warblog post4 April 2022Craig MurrayThese things can be true at the same time: a) The Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal: Putin is a war criminal; b) The US led invasion of Iraq was illegal: Blair and Bush are war criminals.
Document:Suffer the little childrenArticle12 November 2012Susie BonifaceNine years ago the BBC was at the centre of another frenzy when it similarly accused the government of misleading the public. Only then it wasn't child abuse, it was starting a war after publicly stating our enemy could launch chemical weapons within 45 minutes of the order being given.
Document:The Death of David Kelly and the "Sexed Up" WMD Reportarticle21 February 2008Stephen Frost
David Halpin
Christopher Burns-Cox
Paul Brandon
Document:The Man Who Sold the WarWikispooks Page17 November 2005James Bamford
Document:The Woman who nearly Stopped the Wararticle19 March 2008Martin BrightIn January 2003 Katharine Gun, a translator at GCHQ, learned something so outrageous that she sacrificed her career to tell the truth. Martin Bright on a brave deed that should not be forgotten.
Document:The Word We Dare Not Speakarticle24 February 2011John Pilger
Document:The bloody legacy of Bomber BlairArticle1 January 2022Alex Snowdon"Petition for Tony Blair to have his 'Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter' rescinded" Such an honour rests upon expecting us to conveniently forget or ignore the enormous damage that Blair did. People are right to be angry.
Document:We Are The Bad Guysblog post12 August 2024Craig MurrayIn the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine. The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are. But find one and take one.
File:PSR Body Count.pdfreport15 March 2015IPPNWCasualty figures for the 'War on Terror' after 10 years
Document:Saddam Hussain message to the people of Iraqletter30 December 2006Saddam Hussein
Document:Saddam Hussein letter to the American Peopleletter7 July 2006Saddam Hussein
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References


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