The only message our children will take away from the war in Iraq is that if you repeat a boldfaced lie enough, it will someday become accepted truth. And as a corollary, saving face is much more important than admitting a mistake, no matter how destructive the outcome.
Unfortunately for our children, manipulating the truth became the norm for the Bush administration, which invaded Iraq on what we know now (and the administration almost certainly knew then) were utterly false pretenses. Thanks to these lies, Americans, including our soldiers and civilians serving in Iraq, were convinced Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 attacks and had weapons of mass destruction, two of the ever-evolving reasons for getting into the war. Many still believe this. Engaging in mass deception in order to justify official policy both degrades and endangers democracy. But by far, it is ordinary Iraqis who have suffered the most.
We know now beyond any doubt that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 and had no weapons of mass destruction. But as Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA analyst with the Iraqi portfolio, wrote on March 14, “Intelligence did not drive the decision to invade Iraq – not by a long shot, despite the aggressive use by the Bush administration of cherry-picked fragments of intelligence reporting in its public sales campaign for the war.” Indeed, this was a war in search of a justification from the very beginning, and any little lie would have worked.
It is very fortuitous for all those politicians, policy makers, and bureaucrats with Iraqi blood on their hands — Republicans and Democrats both — that the only courtroom they’ve been shuffled into is the court of public opinion, where most received light sentences.
Indeed, the Iraq war boosters are still a fixture on our television screens. Dan Senor, who served as a spokesman for the U.S occupation authorities and willfully misrepresented events on the ground during that time, is a regular commentator on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a veritable roundtable of Washington establishment punditry. Kenneth Pollack, a longtime Brookings fellow and CIA analyst who wrote the 2002 book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (which is barely mentioned today on the Brookings website), is a familiar face on the commentary circuit and among think tank salons. Ex-Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, who each left their most recent posts in disgrace, are raking in thousands of dollars for speeches, lectures, and consulting work.
Sure, there are pundits and reporters who admit they wrongly supported the war, but their regrets are usually reserved for their blind faith in the war planners and their own lack of inquisitiveness. For example, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius confessed in a March 21 column that Iraq was one of “the biggest strategic errors in Modern American history.” But the thrust of his own mea culpa was that he did not write enough “on the overriding question of whether the war made sense,” which would have allowed him to see that the U.S was not strong enough nor flexible enough to succeed.
Rarely do pundits apologize for the horrendous Iraqi losses inflicted by the war: more than a million deaths and millions more wounded with varying lifelong disabilities, including thousands of tortured prisoners, with an estimated 16,000 of them still unaccounted for. Twenty-eight percent of Iraqi children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and 2.8 million people are still internally displaced or living as refugees outside the country. Add to that the complete upheaval of the Iraqi economy, as well as its transportation, education, and medical institutions. Don’t forget the countless people suffering from trauma and depression, sectarian strife, terrifying birth defects from toxic pollution, and a brain drain that has left the country illiterate.
Not since the American Civil War has the U.S citizenry had to endure such horrors. Yet discussion of these repercussions is noticeably absent as we still struggle to understand the scope of the Iraq war and what all of its lies have wrought.
Let us start with a sincere apology to the Iraqi people for the crimes the U.S government has committed. A long-range plan for restitution is a second step. Empires decline due to moral decay from within. Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, our nation is looking at the moral abyss. If lies have delivered us to this place, then only the truth will begin our journey back.
This has been cross-posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus.
Dulce Et Decorum Est III & A Taste of Armageddon
(or the empire has no clothes but a disposition matrix)
by michael hall
In due homage to Horace, Owen and Mikhail i humbly nod
for how sweet & glorious it must be to kill or die for God & country by pompous duty with dishonor
so c'mon kiddies, any up for good jingo sport?
who’s hungry & poor, who wants to play the hubris 'anything for profit' killing game?
As effusively embedded newspapers rah rah their pied pier patriotism with journalistic integrity & objectivity ha ha!
as a new battle lies just around the corner & armed forces day just weeks away hooray!
rally loyal citizens to whitewash warm innocuous blood off disgraced musket & sullied polluted flag
strike up the marching parade manifested by destiny down main street usa hey hey!
Awaken & open thine eyes chauvinistic folk, visit & see your overseas deeds of nefarious brutality
for as americans you're liable for this appalling tax-paid violence exported to hamlets & villages
assaulting families who've never did you any harm in lands you've never heard of, nor care less for
so step on up, one & all, for everyone here is accountable & responsible for this odious debacle
Take a trip citizens to the overflowing morgues filled with small smashed bodies, once toddlers full of laughter & life
deeply inhale the rancid stench of scorched flesh crispy burnt to a black bubbly mass by melting phosphorus
gaze into doll dead eyes frozen forever by shock & awe renditioned via your God blessed terror raining down hill
atop a cold gurney a stiff finger from a tiny hand amidst a pile of mangled flesh is pointing at you war supporters
Watch as grief-stricken fathers zombie-wander in shattered stumbling silence
sifting through ragged debris & devastating destruction searching for lost sons & missing daughters
discovering ripped wet mangled body parts strewn about as pieces of a human jig-saw puzzle
taking home the ear, the hand, the foot to be quietly buried while 6000 miles away 'heroes' giggle & dub this 'bugsplat'
Hearken to the heart-piercing shrieks as soul-torn asunder mothers wail like howling wild animals
as they find their loves buried, broken & bloody in the rubble of your glorious works
then if you can, please explain to the unresponsive moaning neonatal orphan
why your armed forces just murdered his parents…by accident, then wave a condolence payment in his face
Celebrate as your special op-forces silently & quickly dig our bullets from civilian bodies
to cover their tracks from being at the wrong address…again
declare a holiday murdered women at a bridal shower or when 4 kids are droned to smithereens while tending sheep
rejoice in exported evil exploits as great american victories for which your war crimes always are
Trust flim-flam, the PR propaganda spin from your MSM complicit mouthpiece
praise your taxes which finances anglo-terrorism through illegal & immoral aggressive violence
raise your false flag ever higher to cover the rising pile where the butchered lie
however dear good christian citizens, do not trust that any civic rag could ever soar over the sick slaying of the innocent
Consider Fallujha surrounded & caged, then the cowering cringing unarmed civilian inhabitants
shot, burned & barbequed like slaughtered sitting ducks in a ‘free-fire zone’ shooting gallery
ponder upon your sanctimonious attack at a school in Bajour where 69 children are massacred by joystick
this is Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, My Lai, Haditha, & other mass-media contorted & distorted great triumphs
which to no doubt in my mind, the next war crime called a ‘battle’ will be anointed too, of course, ta! ta!
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