Still no mass
weapons, no ties to 9/11, no truth
THE INVASION was
still a lie. The capture of Saddam Hussein changes nothing about that. There
were too many forked tongues in the road to his lair. The way we removed the dictator,
we became a global dictatorship.
No major reason for
the war has been proven. The deadly WMDs became weapons of mysterious
disappearance. In August 2002, Vice President Cheney said: "Simply stated,
there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our
allies, and against us." In the 48-hour
warning to Saddam on March 17, 2003, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by
this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to
possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. . . . The
terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds
of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other." On March 30, a week
and a half after the start of the invasion, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
boasted about the weapons of mass destruction, "We know where they are.
They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north
somewhat." Nine months later, no
chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction have been found. There were the
administration's attempts to tie Saddam to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
They worked so well that nearly 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam was
"personally involved" in the attacks. On March 21, two days after
announcing the invasion, Bush wrote a letter to congressional leaders in which
he said: "The use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the
United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions
against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those
nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided
the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001." By the fall, after
Cheney revived a discredited claim that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met
with an Iraqi intelligence agent prior to the attacks, Bush was forced to
admit, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in
September the 11th." Bush scared Americans
with fears of an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons. In his State of the Union
address last January, Bush said: "the British government has learned that
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa." That claim had been discredited months earlier by many US
intelligence sources. Bush used it anyway. Bush was so
successful in putting mortal fear into Americans that there never was a pause
to wonder if this was carnage without cause. We could not wait for United
Nations weapons inspectors to finish their job. We could not wait for diplomats
to try a last appeal. As with the environment and arms control, there was no
attempt to listen to the world at all. There is a thin line between arrogance
and shame. Because we are the preeminent power in the world, we assumed that
our arrogance would not shame us. Bush told the world
we were going to secure America and liberate Iraqis at the same time. With no
weapons of mass destruction, with no nuclear weapons, and with no tie to 9/11,
Saddam's capture could not possibly have been worth the lives of 455 US and 80
European soldiers. With no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons, and
no tie to 9/11, it could not possibly been worth the lives of 7,600 to 45,000
Iraqi soldiers. With no rationale for the invasion, you could consider this a
massacre. As murderous as
Saddam was, an invasion with no reason was not worth the killing of unknown
thousands of Iraqi civilians. At the beginning of the war, Rumsfeld said:
"To the Iraqi people, let me say that the day of your liberation will soon
be at hand." Halliburton has been liberated to profit off Iraq, but I have
yet to read a news report where a grieving Iraqi family clutches the body of an
innocent loved one and hugs an American soldier in appreciation of their
"liberation." With no weapons, no
ties, and no truth, the capture of Saddam was merely the most massive and
irresponsible police raid in modern times. We broke in without a search
warrant. Civilian deaths constituted justifiable homicide. America was again
above the law. We have taught the next generation that many wrongs equal a
right. In arrogance, we boasted, "We got him!" The shame is that we
feel none for how we got him. The capture of this dictator, driven by the
poison of lies, turned America itself into a dictator. Derrick
Z. Jackson's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. Charles
Mims |
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