A hearing on the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War has reportedly revealed that the U.S. was discussing plans — less than a month after the Bush administration took office — to invade Iraq, and the UK government reportedly ‘distanced itself’ from talk of removing Saddam Hussein in early 2001 despite concerns about his threat.
According to testimony from officials, the British government was aware of Washington’s drum beats of war with Iraq immediately after the inauguration of former President George W. Bush, long before the attacks of 9/11. Britain was opposed to military involvement at that time.
The decision to deploy British troops — which was later met with charges that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will be a future witness in the hearings, had misled the country into believing that Iraq was holding weapons of mass destruction — faced strong public opposition in the UK.
Hundreds of pages of reports obtained by the Sunday Telegraph reportedly reveal that Tony Blair covered up British military plans for a full Iraq invasion throughout 2002. Blair lied to parliament and the public when he said that Britain’s objective was ‘disarmament, not regime change.’
The hearings will reportedly include testimony from many of the key officials involved in Britain’s decision to invade Iraq and may last more than 18 months, and are intended to produce a report that is thorough, impartial, objective and fair. Most of the hearings will be held in public.
Revelations of Bush’s Intentional Invasion of Iraq are nothing new
Revelations that Bush intended to invade Iraq when he took office are nothing new. The Downing Street ‘Memo’ — the actual minutes of a meeting that were transcribed during a meeting of many of the British Prime Minister’s senior ministers on July 23, 2002 — provided the first hard evidence that exposed how the Iraq war began.
In the public record, there is a large amount of evidence that vividly illustrates Bush’s long-standing intent to invade Iraq, Bush’s willingness to provoke Saddam Hussein into providing a pretext for war, the fact that the Iraq war began with an air campaign almost a year before the March 2003 invasion and months before Congress approved the war, Bush’s widespread attempt to crush dissent and manipulate information to justify the lies he used to start the Iraq war and the lack of planning for the aftermath of the Iraq war as well as the lack of a fundamental understanding of the Iraqi society.
Despite the fact that there was no evidence of a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, President Bush and seven of his top officials waged a carefully orchestrated misinformation campaign — using at least 935 lies — to galvanize public opinion and lead the U.S. to war with Iraq. The Bush administration’s use of the Pentagon military analyst programthat pushed covert propaganda on the American people, in addition to being unethical, was also illegal.
The Iraq war, among other things, is based on deceptions and lies, it violates international law, it’s driven by corporate profiteering — oil — and it, along with the war in Afghanistan, has resulted in financially and morally bankrupting America and her military while pushing the country over a constitutional precipice and destroying Democracy.
According to Reuters, the U.S. will be out of Afghanistan by 2017, which will of course, create more financial hardship for the American people. How much more can we afford? When will America hold the Bush administration accountable for their crimes?
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