Lies About Iraq:
Why We Shouldn't Be There In the First Place
by MG William Flatt
For two years I have bit my lip and refrained from drawing conclusions or holding judgment on the war in Iraq. I bit my lip and held my tongue when Mr. Bush sent our troops there (and Afghanistan) without the constitutionally mandated declaration of War by our Congress. I bit my lip when "victory" was declared but the troops were not brought home. I bit my lip when it became apparent - in fact painfully obvious - that the troops were sent for occupation rather than 'liberation'. I bit my lip when the self-evident nature of that occupation was the cause of an ever-growing insurgency that will keep our troops tied down for years to come, absent some about-face in policy and a pullout. But when the Iraqi government declared martial law at the beginning of the month (March 3, 2005 - AP); that was the last straw. There can be no doubt now that U.S. involvement in Iraq has nothing to do with the poor excuses that were thrown in the public's face as a bald-faced measure to 'manufacture consensus'.
I've bit my lip long enough; it's raw with the effort. I must say what so many others have been thinking, but perhaps have been afraid to say out of fear of being branded as 'unpatriotic'. After two years, I can comfortably say with a degree of hindsight that the war in Iraq is unjust and the excuses for going there were the cheapest of lies.
First we were told that Saddam had WMD stockpiles. Never mind that everyone who participated in the search, particularly former US Marine-turned-inspector Scott Ritter, never found anything. Not one bloody vial, let alone a 'stockpile'! Later, it was exposed that our CIA had in fact rejected the faulty British intel that Bush cited long ago. So lie #1 went out the window. Lie #2 was the so-called Iraq / Al-Quaeda connection, which also failed the basic smell test. After all, Saddam wasn't a fanatical Muslim, so why should he be anything but an enemy to Bin Laden and vice-versa?
Lie #3 was "we must liberate Iraq", and that worked until we won the conventional military battle, captured Saddam and all his top men, and began our occupation. Soon people started asking why we weren't coming home now that we accomplished what we were told we went there to do; then along came Lie #4 and it was "let's bring democracy to Iraq". Not only does uncensored news accounts show that the average Iraqi would rather have a strong government rather than a democracy, they deeply resent being occupied by the military forces of an arrogant, swaggering, imperialistic government.
And whatever happened to the Constitution? The people running our de facto government operate so far outside the bounds of our Constitution that I doubt completely whether our nation's Founders would recognize modern America at all.
Every branch of our federal government is subverted to globalist interests, illegally engaging our military in foreign misadventures guaranteed to cement the enmity of the peoples and nations of the rest of the world. The misuse of our armed forces as the President's private army is nothing short of treason; it is something that our founding fathers sought to explicitly prevent by placing the war-making power with the Congress. Instead, every branch of government has abdicated its rightful duties in favor of the usurpation of the powers of the other branches, separation of powers be damned!
Instead of marching off to some foreign land that presents no real military threat to our country, soldiers (specifically officers) should be refusing to carry out illegal orders and arresting those who issue them!
On the subject of illegal orders, one has to note that's how the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted. Our troops routinely receive and carry out orders they may in fact know are unlawful, but they are only punished for refusing illegal orders; and punished most severely at that.
The problem with Abu Ghraib is that it did NOT represent the exception to U.S. military conduct overseas, but instead represented the sole instance where official secrecy was unable to keep abuses hidden from the public. In this case, photo evidence of these abuses posted on the Internet, leading to a very public investigation.
I was prepared, only 9 months ago, to say the Abu Ghraib incident was an example of the law of unintended consequences rearing its head. Originally I was prepared to say this was because of the Bush administration's adoption of the use of torture and other harsh treatments as a matter of policy. Instead I am convinced that rather than a covert policy being exposed, the whole scandal (and the photos having been published by the mainstream media) were part of a larger, carefully orchestrated psychological operation. This was to accomplish two objects:
1) Legitimize the use of torture
2) Downplay claims of war crimes
This would be accomplished by manipulating the public consciousness into a backlash against the media establishment and their blatantly liberal bias. In a nation that is largely conservative except for certain major metropolitan areas, this use of the Hegelian dialectic insures that anyone who doesn't dislike President Bush would be tricked into defending his authorization of heretofore prohibited tactics and other crimes. It deflects attention away from what is happening elsewhere, and what exactly is being done in the name of this so-called "war on terrorism"... Things like kidnapping, murder, and outright torture. I have seen extensive video footage of these war crimes myself, so I know it is real and not the rants of a politically disaffected minority.
One of the many facts that have gone unreported during the occupation of Iraq has been the routine use of civilian 'security contractors' to supplement the military forces there. These contractors are nothing less than mercenaries. Companies like these are in it for the profit, and getting paid means they have to produce results. That often translates into using any means necessary for the sake of getting the job done. That's what happened at Abu Ghraib. This is why Bush insisted on blanket immunity from the U.N. for all people "employed by the United States". This was naturally intended mainly to protect Bush and senior U.S. officials from ICC sanctions, but also provides a great deal of wiggle room for subordinates further down the chain of command. Of course, that doesn't mean that they couldn't provide the occasional sacrificial lamb or two for the appeasement of public opinion. A case in point would be Pfc. Lynndie England or her paramour, Spc. Charles Graner. They were hung out to dry while others involved fared far better. These scapegoats provide excellent diversion from the unreported activities of these private 'contractors' who specialize in obtaining intelligence.
If you're in the business of committing war crimes, it helps when you can desensitize the public to the nature of your actions. From 2000 to 2003, the Bush administration leaked their own memoranda citing the 'legality' of using torture. The principals involved in these policy discussions were handsomely rewarded for their efforts, and now hold the top positions in the Justice Department, Homeland Security, State Department, and National Intelligence. They created the legalistic justification to peddle the torture policy to the public and to Congress.
Even Alan Dershowitz, the well-known left-wing civil liberties attorney, came out right after 9/11 (but before we invaded Iraq) and proclaimed that we ought to legitimize torture for use against enemies of the state. If I didn't hear it with my own ears, I might not have believed it!
What disturbs me even more is how the lies for going to Iraq; the use of torture; the post 9-11 homeland security and domestic surveillance mechanisms; the invasion of Afghanistan; The various Patriot and Victory acts; ad nauseam, were all planned by a private think tank called the "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC) well before Mr. Bush was even elected to office. This strongly suggests foreknowledge of what would happen on 9-11, but the follow-on military activities overseas that have come to pass. It strongly suggests that American personages may have planned and possibly executed the 9-11 attacks, particularly after the revelations of critical documents such as the Northwoods plan, among others. This in turn has led to class action suits, RICO lawsuits, and other court actions against the Bush administration (et. al.)!
When these disturbing facts are taken as a whole, the implications for the future of American liberty is simply staggering. It should be noted that the Patriot acts, the torture policy, the Victory Act, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, and other elements provide for the suspension of Americans' basic Rights. While I am trying very hard not to be or even sound like an alarmist, the truth is we should be very, VERY concerned about the totalitarian police state that is being constructed under our noses and in plain view! As a lover of liberty, I am compelled to sound the watchman's alarm!
We should be deeply concerned because the media has openly, if matter-of-factly, reported that thousands of citizens have already been targeted falsely as "possible suspects". So far, politically incorrect American patriots have not been subjected to the widespread and full force of these diabolical measures, but there has been loose talk for several years about detention camps for political dissidents, 'roundups' and 'door-to-door warrantless searches'. I could talk about how "where there's smoke, there's fire", or about a Jewish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp who told my dad (back in the 1970's) how America was slowly becoming like Nazi Germany. Only the willfully ignorant can dismiss what is happening; what was once the exclusive province of the most paranoid and fearful watchers of diminishing civil liberties is now a full court press with liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and populists all coming together to discuss the rapid loss of our freedom.
But the growing debate is still in hushed terms. Already the President and his quislings have declared that dissent is treason (or sedition) and that old-style patriotism is actually terrorism. Only a few editorialists have openly challenged this declaration on their own, and none in the mainstream media have dared to touch it. Free speech, it seems, has been put on a very short leash. Soon it may be relegated entirely to one of those Orwellian "free-speech zones" where protesters at rallies are kept from the public so they can't infect anyone with their "thought crimes".
I believe that a very small number of people are waking to the truth of today's America. We're not merely fighting two major military conflicts overseas; our own government has very quietly declared war on its own citizens. How long before we begin to see trials for prohibited speech? For that matter, will we even hear about it? Remember, Mr. Bush said, "If you're not with us, then you're against us". Such reasoning makes dissenting opinion into a federal offense, protesters into domestic enemies, and citizen militiamen such as myself (and possibly you, too) into 'high-value targets'. Until the machinery of tyranny is dismantled, any of us may at any time get a taste of this "war on terror" from the receiving end. People who love liberty have already been declared to be terrorists, according to a law-enforcement-only document made by the FBI.
Like so many phony 'wars' this nation has begun, the genuine purposes are the opposite of the stated goal. The 'war' on poverty has mostly abolished the middle class, and made us all a little poorer. The 'war' on crime and the 'war' on drugs have only increased crime and drug abuse, while stripping all of us of many essential liberties. The 'war' on illiteracy has made a mockery of our educational system and endangers the future of our nation's productive capability. So with this 'global war on terrorism', we find that external threats to our nation have multiplied. Everyone hates us; either openly or more dangerously, they hate us secretly and plot for God knows what. All the while, the United States Congress votes away your liberties and federal bureaucracies wage war upon your freedoms.
This is why I've come down on the side of opposing the Iraq war; it is more than just that. Unjust wars (and certainly this qualifies!) are the product of illegitimate powers wielded by tyrannical rulers. You can support the troops without supporting the war, and certainly those who are serving with honor are getting my support. But in the absence of a legitimate reason for being there in the first place, the only correct answer can be, "We shouldn't have gone in the first place". It's not about whether we like the Iraqi people, or whether we would like to help them. It's about whether we belong there uninvited.
Besides, we don't need to go to Iraq to fight. We have enough fights to wage here at home, in defense of our liberties and the integrity of our nation. While this fight is one without bullets, they are still important. One of the most important is the struggle to secure our borders. In May, I will weigh in on the success of the upcoming Minuteman Project, which shall run for the entire month of April. For more information on the MMP, visit http://www.minutemanproject.com and http://www.civilhomelanddefense.us
