The Iraq War at 20

After that start-off by Two-Party Opera, let's add a few more thoughts. March 20 is the official start, but, I'm jumping the gun a day with Brian's prodding, and it may still have been March 19 in DC when "go was the word" anyway.

First, like World War I and II are really part of a thread, so are the original Gulf War and the Iraq War. Connection? House of Bush.

Actually, there's three parts to that thread, arguably. The first being the Carter-era Iran hostage crisis. 

According to former Texas House speaker Barnes, Poppy Bush was not part of that, it seems. Rather, in a big twist? John Connally was.

The Gulf War? Before my blogging time. Before there really was a civilian internet. But, I remember the controversy over depleted uranium tank shells. I remember Poppy Bush later being attacked from his right for stopping the war early. 

And, of course, connecting it to the Iraq War? I remember the sanctions and their punishment on Iraq. I remember Madeleine Albright, as Clinton's Secretary of State, writing off the many thousands of deaths they caused.

The Iraq War itself? We know the only "Mission Accomplished" by Shrub Bush was Turd Blossom Rove's politicizing the war run-up in the 2002 midterms, then again in the 2004 general, as the cowardly Dems warhawked with John Kerry. This was when and why I became a Green.

We know how Obama flip-flopped on the "surge."

And, we know that Lying Glenn Greenwald supported the war, in the preface to the book that made him famous. And lied about it to the point of attacking others who pointed out his lies. Then doubled down on his lying.

Part of why I became a Green? A decade after the invasion, and 8 years after Glennwald supported the invasion in his first big book, a BlueAnon wanker at Daily Kos was STILL regurgitating his lies.

And, 20 years later? Iraq is still a hellhole; Sadrites not under Iran's thumb battle other Shi'ites who are. Sunnis are semi-marginalized. Kurds want still more autonomy and may still push for an independent nation. ISIS lurks at their edges, still.

And, BlueAnon never learned. Dear Leader, with Shillary as his Secretary of State, pushed to bomb Libya, figuring that it too would succumb to shock and awe, then easily be rebuilt. Actual result? North Africa's strongest economy wrecked, and replaced by open slave markets. And, people smart enough in other fields to know better, like Massimo Pigliucci, or Juan Cole, or Bernie Sanders, signed off. (Bernie also voted for the first, and all subsequent, "support the troops" resolutions in Iraq.)

And, BlueAnon still hasn't learned. Even Pope Francis talked about NATO "barking" at Russia, but Warmonger Joe won't listen to him or the Goldilocks Three Bears and start peace talks. And, even within BlueAnon, showing Dem tribalism on war, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including the Fraud, er the Squad, supports the warmongering.

Don't forget that all these wars were started by, or abetted by, lies.

Gulf War? We're still not sure what Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein; I believe it was indeed the claim that the Bush Administration had no big problems with him taking Kuwait. I also wrote an op-ed column about that. We know, during the run-up to war, about the incubator babies who weren't real, and the Emir of Kuwait hiring Western PR flak.

Iraq War? The lies about the aluminum artillery tubes by Powell et al. Tenet going Hearst reporter to Shrub Bush's William Randolph Hearst in 1898 Cuba. Condi Rice's "smoking gun - mushroom cloud."

Libya? The lies about how easy this would be. The lies about our real intent. The lies, post-Iraq, about how regime change could be done without boots on the ground.

Russia-Ukraine? The lies that we never promised "not one inch further eastward" on NATO expansion, when we did; even Gorby lied about that later in life, just because he hated Putin that much. The lies behind the Minsk Agreements. And more. That's even as Warmonger Joe still opposes real peace talks.

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Sidebar, and not noted immediately? Our media's responsibility. Via Jeff St. Clair, the New York Slimes' 20th anniversary piece "somehow" never mentions the name of Judith Miller.

And, directly related to that, at Counterpunch, Jeff has a good piece about the selling of the war.

Sidebar: Here's my story about meeting a guy in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, with a VERY interesting conspiracy theory on how the Gulf War started.