Selling the Iraq War
War Criminals are Still Running Loose
The treacherous lie led to the deaths of 4,486 American troops, the wounding of 32,226 service members, over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians - at a cost of $3 trillion.
The documentary is based upon the book with the longer title of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
by David Corn and Michael
Isikoff. It aired recently on MSNBC, narrated by Rachel Maddow who
challenged viewers to know the truth so that it won’t ever happen again.
It’s not that I was surprised about the revelations of the documentary. I am part of the 80% of African-Americans that the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found were opposed to the invasion. Black folks knew Bush and his cronies were up to no good from the git-go. Eventually the rest of the country caught up to us as the lies started to unravel.
Hubris had some new information as some of the documents have since been declassified. Like the November 2001 memo notes where Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks to review plans for the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government. This was the beginning of a full-fledged strategy of deception that went beyond the Bush administration to the highest levels of the FBI, CIA, the U.S. military and all that’s in between. Day after day, interview after interview, these war mongers looked us in the eye and fed the world a deceptive stew of uranium bought by Saddam Hussein from Niger, weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), connections between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, mythical meetings of terrorists and a heap of other falsehoods.
I was not moved by the sorrowful admission of Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) of collaboration and I totally understand why General Colin Powell has all but told the GOP to kiss his grits. There were a bunch of people who were not just deceived but who were unwittingly used in the wicked scheme.
By 2005, it was clear that there were no WMDS yet Bush continued to push forward with the war. President Obama declared an end of the Iraq War at the end of 2011. To this day, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condy Rice admit no guilt or remorse about their decision to invade Iraq under false pretense. So the question remains, why are these war criminals not being hauled before the World Criminal Court?
Over the next month, we’re sure to hear more about the fraudulent war as we move into the 10th anniversary. I can’t help but wonder how the thousands of families of the dead and wounded feel knowing their sons and daughters were sent to die based upon the ultimate betrayal by their beloved country.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial
Board member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, is the leader of the Organization
for Black Struggle in St.
Louis and
the Black
Radical
Congress National
Organizer.
Additionally, she is an Alston-Bannerman
Fellow. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Click
here to contact Ms.
Rogers.
