The Bono/Bush Jr. Collaboration. Remember: Hitler Loved Dogs and Little Kids

Bono hangs out with George W. Bush at his Texas ranch [image credit: David Caplan/Instagram/GeorgeWBush]

Op Ed Commentary

Channel surfing last night I came across something on C-Span that caught my attention. I saw the famous Irish singer, Bono, from U-2, sitting with none other than Junior Bush. What gives I asked myself? Then I did some research and came up with this, from last May of 2017:

Former President George W. Bush and U2 lead singer Bono at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, on May 26, 2017.

Lead U2 singer Bono made a pit stop Friday at former President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, a few hours before his band’s sold-out concert in nearby Richardson.

“Bono is the real deal,” Bush wrote on Instagram, along with a photo of himself with Bono at the Prairie Chapel Ranch. “He has a huge heart and a selfless soul, not to mention a decent voice. @laurawbush and I are grateful he came to the ranch to talk about the work of @thebushcenter, @onecampaign, @PEPFAR, and our shared commitment to saving lives in Africa.”

Both men have been active in efforts to end the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Bush created PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, while Bono co-founded ONE, a global campaign and advocacy organization that rallies around AIDS awareness and anti-poverty initiatives.

So, there you have it, an Irish singer who railed against the indignities and atrocities leveled upon his people by the Brits, cozying up with a war criminal more horrific than any British leader! Yes, nice of Junior Bush to finally show some decency for others in need. Yes, nice enough for Bono to put his time ( and hopefully his riches ) in the work he is doing for those same folks in need. I forget, did Junior Bush serve time ( if not being executed) for his war crimes? Did Bono have a memory lapse and forget what transpired  and still resonates with the creation of ISIL and other crazy fanatical groups? This was all  because of the Bush /Cheney gang’s illegal and immoral pre-emptive attack/invasion/occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq? Does Bono really think that the millions of afflicted Iraqis and their mourning families should just say ‘ Well, the evil one is now doing some good. Se le vie.’

You see, this Bono/Bush Jr. collaboration is indicative of how mass apathy and mass amnesia operates. We have seas of so called journalists who for years have only criticized the 2003 attack on Iraq not for that action- rather how the subsequent occupation was handled or ‘ bungled’. So what they did, and what Bono has been doing, is in fact giving legitimacy to the ‘ War on Iraq’. This is similar to the recent Trump administration’s missile attack on Syria. Since no Russians were killed, and since it did not start WW3, well, it was OK. The illegal and immoral aspect of attacking another sovereign nation, without even the backing of the United Nations, becomes acceptable. Might makes right!

Reminds one of the old joke: A guy complains to his friend about his brother. ” I cannot take it anymore. My brother is behaving like a chicken. He flutters his arms like one, wants to be fed seeds, and even makes sounds like a chicken. What am I to do?” His friend offers ” Well, you have no choice. You have to have him placed in an institution.” The guy answers ” I cannot do that.” ” Why not” the friend asks. ” Well,  I NEED THE EGGS! “

The post The Bono/Bush Jr. Collaboration. Remember: Hitler Loved Dogs and Little Kids appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Why Democrats Love Bush Now

The renewed popularity of George W. Bush among Democrats may reflect a growing tolerance of war among American voters. (CN) — Will Ferrell returned to his familiar role last weekend as George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live, doing a bit on the recent news that the 43rd US president is now enjoying soaring popularity among Democrats. It was a […]

Miss Him Yet? Majority of Democrats Now View George W. Bush Favorably

(ANTIMEDIA) — As one recent poll shows that Donald Trump has the lowest first-year job approval rating of any elected president in U.S. history, another suggests that former president George W. Bush’s popularity has nearly doubled since leaving office in 2009.

According to a CNN poll conducted by the report-generating software SSRS, 61 percent of Americans polled now view Bush favorably compared with just 33 percent during his last year in the White House.

Much of the 43rd U.S. president’s ratings climb can be attributed to shifting views among Democrats and independents. In 2009, for instance, just 11 percent of Democrats looked upon Bush favorably. Now, that figure stands at a 54 percent majority.

In fact, Bush now holds a majority favorable rating among every demographic but liberals, the poll shows. Within that group, 43 percent approve of the former president while 48 percent still harbor an “unfavorable opinion” of the man.

Republicans, by contrast, regard Bush in virtually the same light as they did after he left office. At that time, 76 percent of Republicans polled approved of the outgoing president. That number spiked to 88 percent in a 2015 poll but has now shrunk back to 76 percent in the days of the Trump administration.

As for the current president, a Gallup poll published Monday revealed Trump’s 38 percent approval rating for his first year in office is more than 10 percentage points lower than any other U.S. president’s first-year average.

All this comes within the context of a separate Gallup poll, published last week, which shows global confidence in U.S. leadership has fallen to a new low of just 30 percent. That’s one percentage point below China and just three points ahead of Russia.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Both Bush Presidents Lash Out At Trump, GHW Confirms He Voted For Hillary

The fading Republican establishment remains unable to reconcile its ongoing collapse, and continues to scapegoat Donald Trump for all the GOP"s troubles instead of looking in the mirror.

Two weeks after an outraged George W. Bush lashed out at Trump, accusing him of emboldening "bigotry and white supremacy", on Saturday we learn just how deep the animosity toward Trump runs within the extended Bush household. In a new book to be released this month from historian Mark Updegrove, titled "The Last Republicans", and previewed on Saturday by the NYT and CNN, former President George H.W. Bush said he considers Trump a “blowhard,” only interested in feeding his own "ego." Meanwhile, his son, former President George W. Bush, thinks Trump fans public anger and came to office without any understanding of the job.

When asked about Donald Trump in May 2016, GHW Bush said: "I don"t like him ... I don"t know much about him, but I know he"s a blowhard. And I"m not too excited about him being a leader."

His son was just as vocal: “Wow, this guy doesn"t know what it means to be president,” the junior Bush said, indicating that a president should not “exploit the anger, incite it” but rather “come up with ideas to deal with it.”

Which, of course, is easy for the Bushes to say: after all they - together with the Clinton and Obama administrations - spent over two decades laying the groundwork and building up the "anger" which resulted from the greatest social and political polarization and wealth inequality the US has ever seen. Perhaps the reality - as the election one year ago showed - is that the status quo simply no longer works. Perhaps... the Republican party is broken precisely due to the work of the two Bush presidents.

In any case, both former Bush presidents are worried that Mr. Trump has blown up a Republican Party that they spent two lifetimes building; Dubya also told Updegrove: "I"m worried that I will be the last Republican president."

Ironically, author Updegrove told the NYT that "at the time, I think he was concerned that Hillary Clinton would win ... But if you look at his values and those shared by his father and Ronald Reagan, they are very much in contrast to the values of the Republican Party today, in particular the platform that Donald Trump ran on."

So what happened? Well, as CNN adds, "George H.W. Bush confirmed that he voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton." His son meanwhile voted for nobody:

"George W. Bush told Updegrove he left the top of the ballot blank. "I voted "None of the Above" for president, and Republican down ballot in 2016.""

In retrospect, Dubya may be correct: as Axios" Mike Allen writes, George W. Bush is probably right that he was "the last Republican president," as his family sees the party.

The "Republican Party" is now multiple ideological parties, awkwardly — and probably not sustainably — scrunched under one inadequate label.

Which, considering the previous "label" no longer meant anything to most Americans - except such figures as the Bushes, of course- is probably not a bad thing.

How to Get the Media to Pretend You’re Not a War Criminal

(ANTIMEDIA Op-ed) — One won’t find much mention of it in the corporate media, but in 2011 a Malaysian court found George W. Bush and Tony Blair guilty of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and genocide as a result of their roles in the Iraq war. According to the Telegraph, such a damning verdict meant their names were to be entered into a symbolic “Register of War Criminals.”

Shortly after the Iraq war was launched, then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan publicly admitted the invasion was illegal and a complete breach of the U.N. Charter. In the days leading up to the invasion, France, Germany, and Russia made a joint declaration stating they would not allow passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing an invasion of Iraq. In other words, the Iraq war had no legal basis.

There are only two ways a country can launch a war against another. One is in self-defense. The other is with authorization from the U.N. Neither of these requirements were satisfied, and the result of this criminal act should shock us to the core.

At the end of May, the Washington D.C.-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) released a study concluding that the death toll from the American-led “War on Terror” could be as high as two million since the years following the 9/11 attacks — and that over one million of these deaths took place within Iraq. Even if one took into account those killed by enemy forces, PSR found that despite “all the inaccuracies…the answers still allowed for the conclusion that approximately one-third of all victims of violence had been directly killed by the occupation forces.” [emphasis added]

In its totality, the Bush administration did a lot more than simply rain bombs down on an innocent civilian population in contravention of international law. As early as May 2003, the U.S. made the single largest policy blunder of the decade by deciding to completely disband Iraq’s police and military, putting close to 400,000 servicemen out of jobs. As TIME has explained, the effects of this decision alone are still affecting the world to this day:

“It’s a jarring reminder of how a key decision made long ago is complicating U.S. efforts to fight ISIS and restore some semblance of stability to Iraq. Instead of giving Iraq a fresh start with a new army, it helped create a vacuum that ISIS has filled. Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine general and chief of U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, said keeping the Iraqi army intact was always part of U.S. strategy. ‘The plan was that the army would be the foundation of rebuilding the Iraqi military,’ he says. ‘Many of the Sunnis who were chased out ended up on the other side and are probably ISIS fighters and leaders now.’ One expert estimates that more than 25 of ISIS’s top 40 leaders once served in the Iraqi military.”

In summary, the Bush administration invaded a sovereign nation without a legal basis, a decision that killed over one million people (one-third of that total was caused directly by American forces) and helped fuel the rise of ISIS and extremism in general.

It is mind-boggling that George W. Bush has not only been hailed as some sort of anti-Trump warrior recently but that countries who don’t engage in this sort of behavior (think North Korea, Iran, and Syria) are universally branded as unstable risks to global security. It’s as if Bush’s illegal wars are now forgotten about by the media because he has become vocal against Donald Trump.

According to AlterNet, Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their role in killing more than one million people once said a “prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.”

Ferencz’s words directly referenced international legal doctrine. Specifically, it was the judgment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg that stated:

“[T]o initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Donald J. Trump may be one evil, twisted, and dangerous man. But if we want to send a message to him that there are limits to what one president can do, we should surely start with Bush and Obama before him, both of whom were found to have been guilty of some of the worst crimes imaginable.

As the Guardian explained:

“And he [Bush] caused far more harm to the country and planet than Trump has so far, and maybe ever will. It was under Bush that America invaded Iraq, murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, and destabilized the Middle East so thoroughly that it may take the entire 21st century to recover.

“More than 4,000 American soldiers died. He stocked his cabinet with warmongering neoconservatives far more cunning and apocalyptic in outlook than any of the amateurs who populate Trump’s gang. These were men who dreamed of civilization-annihilating wars and found a president willing to transform their dreams into crackling reality.

“The blood on Bush’s hands will never dry. Under the guise of spreading democracy, his administration brought suffering to the world and strangled civil liberties at home.”

Op-ed / Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Former Presidents Come Together for Photo-Op As Internet Forgets They’re ALL War Criminals

When five former presidents came together for a photo-op with Lady Gaga, the internet forgot all about one title the men have in common—War Criminal

Critics Slam Establishment’s Applause for ‘War Criminal’ George W. Bush

“The Iraq War was worse than anything Donald Trump has done (so far).”

(COMMONDREAMS) — While media outlets and television talking heads were quick to applaud former President George W. Bush’s implicit rebuke of Trumpism in a rare political address delivered in New York on Thursday, many critics dissented from the chorus of applause, calling the speech “hypocritical bullshit” and highlighting Bush’s long list of offenses that includes wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, an overseas torture regime, and “heinous” treatment of Muslims at home and abroad.

Bush delivered his remarks before a conference hosted by his foundation, which he convened “to support democracy,” in the words of the New York Times.

During the course of his 16-minute address, the former president lamented that “our discourse” has been “degraded by casual cruelty,” and that “we’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.”

Bush also turned his attention to foreign affairs, noting: “We’ve seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places.”

“Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone and provides permission for cruelty and bigotry,” Bush said. “The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.”

The former president’s remarks were largely greeted with positive press, and many echoed pundit Chris Cilizza’s celebration of the Bush’s “major smackdown” of Trumpism.

Others, however, saw Bush’s speech as nothing more than “hollow words,” given his long record of human rights abuses.

In a piece for Vice News, Eve Peyser argued that the “racist and authoritarian” policies of the Bush administration paved the way for Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House.

While “Bush never verbalized his Islamophobia,” Peyser notes, his “administration detained more than 1,200 people—most of whom were Muslims or of Middle Eastern descent—without charge, instead holding them as ‘material witnesses."”

Bush may now be denouncing the “conspiracy theories and outright fabrication” of the present moment, but “the war in Iraq, which destabilized the region, killed hundreds of thousands, and helped give rise to ISISwas predicted on intelligence that Bush’s administration misrepresented to the American people,” Peyser observes.

The Trump administration is now simply building upon the bigoted policies put into place by the Bush White House and ignoring the former president’s “platitudes,” Peyser concluded.

Others similarly criticized the media’s largely positive treatment of Bush’s brief emergence from retirement, arguing that such favorable press amounts to “rehabilitation” of a “war criminal” who helped intensify the bigotry and war-mongering he now claims to oppose.

2 big reasons Bush is being rehabilitated: 1) most elite institutions supported his crimes; 2) their architects work in biggest news outlets https://t.co/vfe30QB1fX

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 20, 2017

never forget the most consequential conspiracy theory in US history–that Iraq was behind 9/11–was pushed by Bush admin & mainstream US media https://t.co/m4Yoy5CRWV

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) October 19, 2017

Some commentators from major networks also sounded off.

MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes concluded simply: “The Iraq War was worse than anything Donald Trump has done (so far).”

By Jake Johnson / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

An Outraged George W. Bush Lashes Out At Trump: "Bigotry Seems Emboldened"

Former President George W. Bush came out swinging against the current administration on Thursday, and while he did not name President Castro, Dubya blasted that "bigotry seems emboldened" in the U.S., while urging the country to accept "globalization" - the same globalization which both the IMF, the BIS and even the Federal Reserve now agree and warn has led to record wealth inequality in the US - while rejecting "white supremacy."

"Bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed," Bush said.

Former Pres. George W Bush: "Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication." pic.twitter.com/KyQK5vul3j

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 19, 2017

Without explicitly naming Trump or any other politicians, Bush criticized the “governing class”, although it was not immediately clear if the president who invaded Iraq included himself in that grouping. 

"Discontent deepened and sharpened partisan conflicts in recent years", Bush said during a speech for the George W. Bush Institute, in which he also slammed conspiracy theories and Trump"s favorite topic, fake news: "Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seem more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication."

It is unclear if that statement was serious or sarcastic considering, well... it"s self-explanatory.

The former president was right in stating that public confidence in the country"s institutions has declined in recent decades, which of course would imply that other presidents, Trump"s predecessors are at fault.  "Our governing class has often been paralyzed in the face of obvious and pressing needs. The American dream of upward mobility seems out of reach for some who feel left behind in a changing economy," he said.

Making it obvious that he had Trump in mind during his speech, Bush warned against Russia’s attempts to meddle in the United States election, calling on the nation to confront “a new era of cyber threats.”

"The Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other" he said allegedly referring to the $100,000 reportedly spent by Russian "actors" both before and after the US election - something which Clinton"s own campaign chair mocked - and added that “America must harden its own defenses. Our country must show resolve and resilience in the face of external attacks on our democracy and that begins with confronting a new era of cyber threats,” Bush said during a forum for the George W. Bush Institute in New York City.

George W. Bush on Russian election interference: "This effort is broad, systemic, and stealthy...ultimately, this effort won"t succeed." pic.twitter.com/c8A0vtROoc

— ABC News (@ABC) October 19, 2017

Bush extended his critique to the ideological level, saying that there are signs that the intensity of support for democracy itself has waned and warned that support for socialism appears to be rising "especially among the young, who never experienced the galvanizing moral clarity of the Cold War or never focused on the ruin of entire nations by socialist central planning."

"Some have called this Democratic de-consolidation. Merely, it seems to be a combination of weariness, frayed tempers and forgetfulness," he said.

During his speech, Bush also warned that democracies face "new and serious threats" today. Economic, political and national security challenges proliferate "and they"re made worse by the tendency to turn inward. The health of the Democratic spirit itself is at issue and the renewal of that spirit is the urgent task at hand."

“We cannot wish globalization away,” he continued later, urging society to "adapt" to economic and social and change.

Surprisingly, W. had no introspective insight to explain how the collapse of democracy may have started with Trump"s predecessors, including both president Obama and, of course, Dubya himself, or what specific aspects of the US political process may have led to the general popular revulsion with "establishment" system , which - as much as Putin would love to take credit - started long before any alleged Russian inolvement.

Russia And The US Work Together To Build A Space Station In The Lunar Orbit

 Maybe all is finally forgiven in the ongoing battle to constantly turn the narrative back to the Russian election meddling, as the former Soviet Union and the United States attempt to work together to build a manned space station which orbits the moon.

Part of this long-term project to send humans to Mars, the NASA-led program will see the two countries working together to create a crewed spaceport in lunar orbit. The proposed crew-tended spaceport will orbit the moon and serve as a “gateway to deep space and the lunar surface.”

Russian and the US have agreed to put their heads together to make the new mission possible. The US space agency said earlier this year that it was exploring a program called the Deep Space Gateway, a multi-stage project to push further into the solar system.

While George W. Bush wanted to see humans on the moon again by 2020, Barack Obama scrapped that plan and focused his intention on plans to visit Mars, including a mission to test the necessary technology by capturing a boulder from the surface of an asteroid and bringing it into lunar orbit. Now with the Donald Trump at the helm, asteroid missions are no longer a top priority. The Trump administration wants to see a spaceport orbiting the moon, crewed visits to the lunar surface are once again on the menu.

Plans to return to the moon have waxed and waned depending on the US administration. NASA, however, has even bigger plans. The organization has ambitious intentions to send humans to orbit Mars by the 2030s, and subsequent plans to colonize the red planet.

On Wednesday the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that a cooperation agreement had been signed at an astronautical congress in Adelaide.“The partners intend to develop international technical standards which will be used later, in particular to create a space station in lunar orbit,” the Russian agency said in a statement. The Russians and Americans would cooperate to build the systems needed to organise scientific missions in lunar orbit and to the surface of the moon, the agency added. “Roscosmos and Nasa have already agreed on standards for a docking unit of the future station. Taking into account the country’s extensive experience in developing docking units, the station’s future elements will be created using Russian designs.” –The Guardian

“To avoid future problems over technical cooperation, part of the standards should be unified – for a possibility for various countries to work on their craft and dock to the international lunar station,” Igor Komarov, Roscosmos’ general director was quoted as saying in the statement.

Russia and the United States also discussed using Moscow’s Proton-M and Angara rockets to help create the infrastructure of the lunar spaceport, the statement said, adding that the main works were scheduled to begin in the mid-2020s.

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Ron Paul: Police State Was Planned, 9/11 Just ‘Provided An Opportunity’ to Implement It

Sept. 11, 2001, is remembered for a number of reasons, and one of the most important, which often goes unnoticed, is that it was used as an excuse to degrade the liberties of Americans through the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26, 2001—just 45 days after 9/11. The act passed in the Senate with a vote of 98-1, and it passed in the House with a vote of 357-66.

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul was one of the few who voted against the act when he was in the House of Representatives, and he has been speaking out against it ever since. Paul is also known for his presidential campaigns, and when he was seeking the Republican nomination in the 2012 election, he reminded the world of one of the most crucial aspects of the PATRIOT Act.

“The PATRIOT Act was written many, many years before 9/11,” Paul said during a speech in Ames, Iowa, in December 2011. He noted that the attacks simply provided “an opportunity for some people to do what they wanted to do.”

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The PATRIOT Act contained a number of provisions, which included bypassing the Fourth American, giving unprecedented power to the National Security Agency, and letting the Federal Bureau of Investigation search telephone, email and financial records of American citizens without court orders.

As the American Civil Liberties Union noted, a law that was passed in the name of fighting terrorism, instead worked against Americans by turning regular citizens into terrorist suspects:

“Hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security, the Patriot Act was the first of many changes to surveillance laws that made it easier for the government to spy on ordinary Americans by expanding the authority to monitor phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, and track the activity of innocent Americans on the Internet. While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects.”

 The final version of the USA PATRIOT Act was 342 pages long and it changed more than 15 existing laws. Before signing it into law, Bush claimed the bill was so heavily approved because “it upholds and respects the civil liberties guaranteed by our Constitution. This legislation is essential not only to pursuing and punishing terrorists, but also preventing more atrocities in the hands of the evil ones.”

In addition to the question of how the House and Senate came together in such a short time to pass a law that had such a massive impact on the nation, there is also the question of how many members of Congress actually read the 342-page bill in full—and then there is the question of how the bill was written in the first place.

READ MORE:  America"s Delusional — Lightning Far More Likely to Kill You Than Foreign Terrorists

Ron Paul’s claim that the PATRIOT Act was written many years before 9/11, was echoed by former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke. According to one report, Clarke told Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig:

“After 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed. The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.”

The USA PATRIOT Act was not the only thing the government pushed for right after 9/11 that would continue to impact the United States for years to come. As Paul noted in 2011, the attacks were also used as an excuse to invade Iraq, and to create a “War on Terror” that is still ongoing today.

“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat,” Paul said.

On the 16^th anniversary of 9/11, it is important to remember that the United States government used fear and propaganda to capitalize on the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent lives, and it has gone on to take the lives of hundreds of thousands in the name of maintaining “freedom.”

The U.S. also used fear and propaganda to interfere with the civil liberties of millions of innocent Americans by hastily passing the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act—a law that has only created more terrorism, and while it has taken Americans’ liberties, it has also taken away their security.

READ MORE:  Iraqis Say US Created ISIS, Threaten Military Force if New Wave of US Troops Doesn"t Leave Now

Why Presidents Campaign On Peace But Rule By War

Authored by Joey Clark via TheAntiMedia.org,

If the United States government continues as it does today, bestriding the narrow world like a colossus, it will be stabbed through the heart by daggers inscribed with the nation’s founding principles - the words “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” shedding salty tears of blood from sullied steel.

But I hope this day will not arrive.

I hope we will soon stop simply damning war presidents as hypocrites and killers so we may take the time to see the complex reasons why presidential peace candidates continue to become warmongers.

As a candidate, George W. Bush promised a humble foreign policy.

But as president — especially in reaction to the violent and tragic imperial blowback of 9/11 — humility gave way to hubris. War was not only waged against Bin Laden’s terror network and the Taliban in Afghanistan but also globally against all Terror, a campaign that somehow led U.S. forces to topple a tyrant in Baghdad only to ignite and invite more terror to a fight amongst the rubble.

As a candidate, Barack Obama railed against Bush’s wars of “choice,” promising peace in Baghdad, Kabul, and beyond.

But as president, Obama’s peace prize and campaign promises gave way to more wars of choice.Though Obama “ended” the war in Afghanistan, leaving thousands of troops stationed there, he escalated the Afghan war first. Obama pulled out of Iraq only to topple Gaddafi in Libya. He attempted to topple Assad in Syria only to jump back into Iraq once again to take on ISIS — no doubt an enemy of the United States but an enemy also interested in toppling Assad in Syria. He fought both sides of the same war, inflaming the conflict further. His expanded use of drones is also well documented.

As a candidate, Donald Trump railed against the Bush and Obama wars, including Afghanistan, as an utter waste of American blood and treasure — treasure and manpower that should go to “America First.” Candidate Trump didn’t shy away from saying he would bomb the shit out of ISIS, but his candidacy did seem to suggest a change in direction to a more ‘realist’ and ‘transactional’ approach to foreign policy as opposed to Bush’s overt hubris and Obama’s covert idealism.

But as president, Trump has already launched cruise missiles into Syria, flirted with nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, and most recently gone against his instincts on pulling out of Afghanistan. The latest news is that 3,500 troops will be thrown back into Afghanistan, bringing the troop levels there to 14,500.

“My original instinct was to pull out — and, historically, I like following my instincts,” Trump said in his address to the nation on the Afghan war, “But all my life I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office; in other words, when you’re president of the United States.”

Indeed, it is easy to write off Trump, Obama, and Bush as lying and hypocritical warmongers, fair enough. It is also easy to apologize for their actions as fallible men reacting to complex events the best they can, true enough. Both approaches have and will be adopted in the name of either defending peaceful ideals or advancing cynical imperial ploys, respectively.

However, rather than simply criticizing or apologizing for presidents, again, it is time we ask why recent presidents have pursued war despite their professed humility, aspirations, and instincts.

What is it about sitting in the presidential chair that changes a man? Why does the presidency mute men’s better angels only to amplify their demons?

If peace candidates wanted to be honest with the American people, they would first stop regarding their re-branding of the same-old-song-and-dance war policies as actual changes in policy. If presidents wished to be truthful, they would stop dressing up America’s military actions as forever and always fights between the American good and the evil du jour. And if ‘the people’ had any desire to take a long hard look in the mirror, they would stop buying into euphemisms such as “leadership” or “strength” or “hegemony” to obscure a truth that has been staring them in the face over the past century — America is an empire.

Though many presidents and the American people themselves may wish to deny it, as Niall Ferguson wrote in his 2004 book Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, a defense of American empire:

“Julius Caesar called himself imperator but never king. His adopted heir Augustus preferred princeps. Emperors can call themselves what they like, and so can empires. The kingdom of England was proclaimed an empire—by Henry VIII—before it became one. The United States by contrast has long been an empire, but eschews the appellation.”

The American empire — what Thomas Jefferson hoped would be an “empire for liberty” — has been centuries in the making no matter what Americans choose to call it. This is why recent  ‘peace’ candidates have turned into war presidents. They are caught in an imperial catch-22. Their choices are hardly a matter of choosing good and evil. No, the ‘necessary evil’ of imperial government only allows them to choose between lesser evils, yet evils all the same.

The criticisms from hawks and doves alike are true — pull back the United States and power vacuums will be left behind to filled by China in the Asia Pacific, Russia in Eastern Europe, and Iran and Sunni fundamentalists in the now decimated Middle East and Central Asia; stay put and push forward only to experience more blow back, more debt, and more death while flirting with the Thucydides trap, especially in relation to a rising, nationalistic China..

And speaking of Thucydides, if war presidents really wished to be honest with the American people, they would quote what Pericles said to the people of Athens:

“And do not imagine that what we are fighting for is simply the question of freedom or slavery: there is also involved the loss of our empire and the dangers arising from the hatred which we have incurred in administering it…Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.”

It’s time to pick your poison, America. We face the prospect of tyranny either way.

Even with the best of intentions, empires have ramifications. Empires have consequences even when they are let go. Even if the millennial generation never asked to inherit the American Empire in the first place, the legacy of our forefathers cannot be simply shrugged off without immense effort and sacrifice.

I, of course, prefer to end the empire, bring the republic back home, and brave the dangers of peace and commerce. I do not agree with Niall Ferguson that “liberal” empire is necessary for peace and prosperity worldwide. Sorry, Mr. Kipling, there is no white man’s burden, no need for “savage wars of peace,” no matter the imperial end sought. If necessary, I am quite prepared to “[w]atch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.”

For those of you who agree with me — that we must end this bloody empire, not out of sloth or decadence, but out of conviction that liberty cannot be imposed with liberty serving as the cost — do not kid yourself.

Put yourself in the shoes of those you elect to do your dirty work. Imagine yourself behind the presidential desk surrounded by military and intelligence professionals giving you the latest news on threats across the globe.

Now, ask yourself: which tyranny would I choose?

My choice would be to see the American empire ended, even at a high cost. Luckily for myself and those who want the empire, I am not president. Most of us will never have that much power, thank the gods. But, that said, we cannot continue to count on peace candidates to actually be peace presidents until we all demand it’s time all the wars for peace be lost no matter who sits in the oval office.

You see, under American Empire, Trump is not the imperator. Obama was not the princeps. No, the American Colossus is the American people. And we, the people, are full of dissonance and impatience, full of sound and fury, full of fear and vaunting, scared of our own tall shadow that has bound us to the perilous path we have chosen to walk.

May we heed these words before tragedy strikes either way:

“Men at some time are masters of their fates.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars

But in ourselves”

Pat Buchanan Exposes What Harvey Really Wrought

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Like 9/11, Hurricane Harvey brought us together.

In awe at the destruction 50 inches of rain did to East Texas and our fourth-largest city and in admiration as cable television showed countless hours of Texans humanely and heroically rescuing and aiding fellow Texans in the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

On display this week was America at her best.

Yet the destruction will not soon be repaired. Nearly a third of Harris County, home to 4.5 million people, was flooded. Beaumont and Port Arthur were swamped with 2 feet of rain and put underwater.

Estimates of the initial cost to the Treasury are north of $100 billion, with some saying the down payment alone will be closer to $200 billion. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the cost of Harvey will exceed that of the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II.

Though the country has appeared united since the storm hit, it is not likely to remain so. Soon, the cameras and correspondents will go home, while the shelters remain full, as tens of thousands of people in those shelters have only destroyed homes to return to.

When the waters recede, the misery of the evacuees left behind will become less tolerable. Then will come the looters and gougers and angry arguments over who’s to blame and who should pay.

They have already begun. Republicans who balked at voting for the bailout billions for Chris Christie’s New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the coast in 2012 are being called hypocrites for asking for swift and massive federal assistance to repair red state Texas.

And whereas George W. Bush soared to 90 percent approval after 9/11, no such surge in support for Donald Trump appears at hand.

Indeed, the sneering and sniping began on his first visit to Texas.

He failed to celebrate the first responders, they said...

He failed to hug any of the victims...

He failed to show empathy...

First lady Melania Trump wore spiked heels boarding Marine One for Texas.

A prediction: The damage done by Harvey — as well as the physical, psychic and political costs — will cause many to echo the slogan of George McGovern in 1972, when he exhorted the country to “come home, America.”

The nation seems more receptive now, for even before Harvey, the media seemed consumed with what ails America.

The New York and D.C. subway systems are crumbling.

Puerto Rico is bankrupt.

Some states, such as Illinois, cannot balance their budgets.

The murder rates are soaring in Baltimore and Chicago.

Congress this month will have to raise the debt ceiling by hundreds of billions and pass a budget with a deficit bloated by the cost of Harvey.

And the foreign crises seem to be coming at us, one after another.

Russia is beginning military maneuvers in the Baltic and Belarus, bordering Poland, with a force estimated by some at 100,000 troops — Vladimir Putin’s response to NATO’s deployment of 4,000 troops to the Baltic States and Poland.

The U.S. is considering sending anti-tank missiles to Kiev. This could reignite the Donbass war and bring Russian intervention, the defeat of the Ukrainian army and calls for U.S. intervention.

In the teeth of Trump’s threat to pour “fire and fury” on North Korea, Kim Jong Un just launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan. Trump’s answer: U.S. B-1Bs make practice bombing runs near the demilitarized zone. Reports from South Korea indicate that Kim may soon conduct a sixth underground test of an atomic bomb.

War in Korea has never seemed so close since Dwight Eisenhower ended the Korean War with an armistice more than 60 years ago.

Despite the opposition of his national security team, Trump is said to be ready to repudiate the Iranian nuclear deal in October, freeing Congress to reimpose the sanctions lifted by the deal.

This would split us from our NATO allies and, if Iran ignored the new U.S. sanctions or began anew to enrich uranium, force Trump’s hand. Is he, are we as a country, ready for another trillion-dollar war, with Iran, which so many inside the Beltway seem so eager to fight?

The U.S. and Turkey have urged Iraq’s Kurds to put off their nonbinding referendum on independence Sept. 25. The vote seems certain to endorse a separate state. A Kurdistan, seceded from Baghdad, would be a magnet for secession-minded Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran, 30 million in all, and present a strategic crisis for the United States.

Along with the steady growth of entitlement spending, the new dollars demanded for defense, the prospect of new wars and the tax cuts the White House supports, Hurricane Harvey should concentrate the mind.

Great as America is, there are limits to our wealth and power, to how many global problems we can solve, to how many wars we can fight and to how many hostile powers we can confront.

The “indispensable nation” is going to have to begin making choices. Indeed, that is among the reasons Trump was elected.

Trump's Presidential Approval Rating In Context

Presidential job approval is a simple, yet powerful, measure of the public"s view of the president"s job performance at a particular time. Approval ratings for Presidents Obama and Trump shown in the Presidential Job Approval Center are based on weekly Gallup Daily tracking averages.

From Truman to Trump...

On day 212 in office, President Trump has a 37% approval rating.

President Truman holds the record for lowest approval rating (for now) at 22% on day 2499 in office.

President George "W" Bush holds the record for the highest approval rating at 89% on day 267 in office

Lost Interview Reveals Bush’s Plans to Invade Iraq – 2 Years Before 9/11

As George W. Bush bathed in extraordinarily high approval ratings following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, plans were already being drawn by his war-mongering cabal to use the event to invade Iraq. The few voices of dissent were drowned in an overwhelming, nauseating tide of nationalistic fervor, completely obscuring all sense of reason.

The administration rolled out a propaganda campaign to convince Americans of the need for pre-emptive war in Iraq, creating a rising sense of inevitability—up to the day of “shock and awe.”

By the time enough Americans realized they’d been duped—with the help of mainstream media from The New York Times to Fox News—it was too late. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other neocons hailing from the notorious Project for the New American Century (PNAC) had their agenda of military hegemony well underway.

Bush-friendly historians would have you believe the 43^rd President made his decision to invade Iraq after careful deliberation and input from many voices. Those of us paying attention already knew this was a sham, but now we have even more proof that Iraq’s fate was sealed the moment Bush was “elected.”

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According to Bush’s former ghostwriter, Mickey Herskowitz, Bush had dreams of invading Iraq two years before 9/11 when he was running for president, and wasn’t afraid to let them be known..

Herskowitz was interviewed by Russ Baker, who reported:

“Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade…if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”

The people surrounding Bush had their own visions of grandiosity. They were reportedly in awe over the public adulation of Margaret Thatcher as she maintained British imperialism in the Western Hemisphere. Dick Cheney and the PNAC gang wanted roses thrown at their own feet for conquering the Middle East.

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Invading easily defeatable countries was seen as an avenue to success as an American leader, which, as Baker notes, was the modus operandi in the Reagan White House, where Cheney was deeply involved.

“Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.”

Making war is, of course, a common theme in almost every administration since World War 2 birthed the military-industrial complex.

Bush couldn’t have done it without the help of Dick Cheney, often likened to Darth Vader for the callousness with which he discusses US-wrought death and destruction. Cheney, who cut his teeth in the Reagan era helping to invade sovereign Latin American countries, brought a horde of neocons and military-industrial complex goons to the Bush administration, many from PNAC.

It just so happens that PNAC sent a letter in 1998 to President Bill Clinton, advocating for regime change in Iraq and urging Clinton to take a more hardline stance. The Cheneys always had close ties to the Bush family, and neocons found their man in George Jr.

Bush’s statements in 1999 to Herskowitz weren’t the only indicator of Bush’s obsession about invading Iraq and removing Saddam. That same year, during a presidential primary, Bush said of Saddam’s purported weapons stash, “I’d take ’em out, take out the weapons of mass destruction-I’m surprised he’s still there.”

Just after the 9/11 attacks. PNAC sent a letter to Bush calling for a “a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” Citing the newly crafted ‘war on terror’ justification—giving the president unheard of powers to carry out unilateral military action around the globe and round up “enemy combatants”—PNAC declared that not invading Iraq would be “an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”

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To the already informed, it comes as no surprise that Bush always intended to invade Iraq, and 9/11 provided the perfect excuse. Of course, in the American political-corporate establishment, there is no chance Bush will actually be prosecuted for the massive campaign of lies and deception used to lead America into the full-scale invasion of a sovereign Middle Easter country.

The more important point to remember is that the U.S. can easily be led into wars of aggression–potentially far more dangerous than Iraq–by elected presidents and lawmakers completely willing to deceive the public by capitalizing on fear.

Sowing division among the populace is a primary step to the conquering of public perception. Never underestimate the willingness of desperate “leaders” to provoke or contrive an attack in order to overwhelm the movement of peace and liberty.

United In Hate: How Donald Trump Made Liberals Love George W. Bush

(ANTIMEDIA Op-Ed) If anything, President Donald Trump has been able to accomplish at least one feat: to unite unprincipled conservatives and liberals in deeming former President George W. Bush a morally sound leader.

In light of Trump’s immigration orders targeting both undocumented individuals and travelers from countries on the receiving end of U.S. foreign intervention, Bush has been getting a great deal of love from the media. He has had warm interviews with celebrity talk show hosts and the Today show. He has been leaving traces of harsh criticism aimed at Trump, and this commentary seems to be leaving both #NeverTrump conservatives and hysterical liberals in awe of how sane he now sounds.

We"re revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.

In one example, Bush criticized Trump for his alleged involvement with Russian officials, claiming “we all need answers.”

Julian Assange — the man behind the website that published the notorious emails associated with Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff — has said the documents were leaked and not hacked. Apparently oblivious to this, however, Bush appears to simply trust the media on the scandalous ties between the president and the Kremlin. He also praised the press even though they have failed to present sufficient evidence to prove their narrative is accurate.

Perhaps Bush’s eight years away from the public spotlight helped him, and the people to forget how he and his administration helped to shape the narrative in 2003. Back then, the then-president needed to convince the American public that Saddam Hussein was out to get us all. Unfortunately, the Iraqi dictator was too busy writing his memoirs to worry about weapons of mass destruction — or the lies being manufactured by the Bush administration.

About $2 trillion later, Bush and his cronies were responsible for one of the bloodiest military campaigns in recent history, derailing the country’s progress and helping create yet another threat to the millions of innocent Christians, Muslims, and Jews of the Middle East: ISIS.

But please, ignore all that. What matters is that Bush says he would like to see “an immigration policy that’s welcoming and upholds the law.” The guy is solid — a solid farce, that is. Was he worried about the countless innocent civilians losing their homes and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan before he invaded? Perhaps he loved immigrants so much that his plan was to destroy the Middle East so they could all move west as refugees. We’ll never know. But what we do know is that if that was his plan, it worked magically.

Ellen DeGeneres told Bush she was “so excited” to have him on her show, even though Bush opposed same-sex marriage and went so far as to propose a ban on the practice.

In January, celebrity comedian Aziz Ansari told the Saturday Night Live audience that Bush “made a speech after 9/11, and it really helped.”

To the forgetful funny man, “[t]hings changed. … [because Bush] said Islam is peace” after 9/11, refusing to indict the entire religion. I guess words speak louder than actions, right?

On the daily talk show The View, liberal Joy Behar confessed that while she was “after” Bush for eight years, she was considering purchasing the former president’s paintings.

“The thing about this is that Donald has now done something I thought he would never do. I like — I like the fact that George Bush — I like George Bush now, is what I’m trying to say. I’m having trouble saying it.”

United in hate.

After countless celebrities joined Iraq war protesters, helping Bush’s approval ratings to tank to 25 percent in 2008 — one of the lowest in history — liberals are now coming together to celebrate their long lost “Bushie,” the Republican who speaks to their inner tyrants.

Instead of keeping politics out of the emotional realm, understanding that politicians — regardless of party affiliation — perpetuate policies that dramatically hurt innocent people both domestically and abroad, these emotionally promiscuous luminaries are again united in hate. The end result? They are now elevating those who speak to their anger — not necessarily those who advocate what they claim to represent.

I can’t wait to see the same characters giving Trump taps on the back years from now when another bad seed occupies the White House.

Opinion / Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Which Nation Do Americans See As Their Greatest Enemy (Spoiler Alert: It's Not Russia)

Back to work "deep state", neocons, and Clinton apologists, because America is not buying the narrative that Russia is their greatest enemy.

Americans have consistently identified ISIS as the biggest threat to their nation across multiple polls. Traditional foes, such as the countries making up George W. Bush"s infamous "Axis Of Evil", have been pushed into the background by the rise of non-state actors like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. In recent years however, Statista"s Niall McCarthy notes that the threat presented by some of America"s traditional enemies has started to manifest itself once again. Russia"s annexation of Crimea came as a reality check to the Obama administration while as recently as last Saturday, North Korea conducted a ballistic missile test.

YouGov conducted a poll to find out which countries Americans perceive as their nation"s biggest enemies. North Korea has continued to make headlines even after that missile launch with news emerging earlier this week that Kim-Jong-un"s half brother was allegedly poisoned in an airport in Malaysia. Both incidents have illustrated the unpredictability of the nuclear-armed regime in Pyongyang and it comes as little surprise that 57 percent of Americans consider North Korea their enemy.

Some of the entries on the upper portion of the infographic below are surprising. Iraq and Afghanistan were considered U.S. enemies by 29 and 23 percent of respondents respectively, despite their governments being key U.S. allies in the fight against Islamic extremism. Iran was labelled an enemy by 41 percent of Americans, even though a deal was signed last year to prevent Tehran developing nuclear weapons.

This chart shows the percentage of American adults considering these countries an enemy of the U.S.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Finally, we note that "Media" did not make it on the list (yet).

5 Signs We're Going To War

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Is it possible that not everything is as it seems?

While the majority of America is being distracted by shiny things and manipulated into civil unrest over identity politics, Melissa Dykes of The Daily Sheeple warns that an unprecedented push for war is underway.

It’s pretty clear that we’re being taken to war… A plan implemented by George W. Bush after 9/11… continued under Obama… and now kicked up a notch by our new President, Donald Trump. 

Watch:

Saddam Hussein’s CIA Interrogator Finally Reveals Truth About Bush’s Invasion of Iraq

January 6, 2017   |   Carey Wedler

(ANTIMEDIA) Last month, former CIA analyst John Nixon made headlines when he asserted that while he was interrogating Saddam Hussein after the 2003 invasion, the dictator warned him that the U.S. would fail in Iraq.

Now, Nixon has revealed yet another unsettling detail: the Bush administration knew they were going to take on Iraq on “day one” — before the 9/11 terror attacks even occurred. In fact, they viewed Iraq as “unfinished business,” according to the former analyst.

“We never really understood at that point what unfinished business meant, but we knew that they wanted to do something,” Nixon said in an interview with BBC Radio 4′s “Today Programme” this week.

“You know, they had their minds made up from day one. And then after 9/11, that’s when the death warrant for Saddam Hussein was signed,” he explained.

He added that Hussein’s execution was “the final straw in terms of pulling out the justifications for the war in Iraq.”

The Bush family had history in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. When George Bush Sr. was president, he launched the Gulf War, which, like his son’s war, was also rooted in fabricated justifications. Claiming thousands of Iraqi troops were threatening Saudi Arabia, and thus U.S. oil interests, Bush Sr. made the case for U.S. military action. His administration also argued Hussein was threatening Kuwait without provocation, conveniently leaving out details of the two nations’ previous partnership and internal conflicts that stemmed from it.

Bush ultimately opted not to invade Iraq, instead deploying troops to Kuwait to expel Iraqi soldiers, a move that drew praise from then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Still, in 1993, Bush Sr. visited Iraq and was hit with an assassination attempt — one U.S. intelligence agencies pinned on Hussein (it’s possible this is the “unfinished business” Nixon recalls, especially considering that when criticizing Hussein after 9/11, Bush Jr. said, “After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time”).

The history of the United States’ involvement in Iraq prior to Bush Sr. is even more muddled. Though Bush Sr.’s administration sounded the alarm on Hussein, the U.S. government — under the Reagan administration before Bush — had been backing the dictator’s regime in its fight against Iran during a bloody, years-long war. In fact, the CIA provided tactical aid to Hussein knowing he was using chemical weapons. More recently, it was revealed that this relationship was much deeper than previously known.

As Foreign Policy noted in 2013, “senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks,” which was “tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.”

Indeed, the U.S. government empowered Hussein before they moved to oust him under the false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction.

Incidentally, Nixon also said this week that he knew immediately upon interrogating Hussein that there were no weapons of mass destruction. As reported by the Independent, Nixon recalled that “‘all the White House wanted to know’ was if there was any evidence that Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.”

“But talking to Hussein, [Nixon’s] advisers and subsequent research had led him to the conclusion that Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme had ended years earlier.”

Nixon says he and his team were subsequently regarded as failures, even though in February of 2001 then-Secretary of Defense Colin Powell said Hussein had “not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.”

“We know he’s been developing weapons of mass destruction. … And so we’re watching him very carefully. We’re watching him carefully,” Bush claimed just eight months later.

These flimsy accusations, taken with Nixon’s recent statements, are ultimately unsurprising. Years prior to 9/11 and the Iraq War, neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century was making the case for invasion. In early 1998, they demanded President Clinton work toward the “removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime.” Clinton had signed the Iraq Liberation Act by the end of the year, officially adopting a policy of regime change in Iraq and paving the way for the subsequent administration to tear into the country.

Nixon has long been a critic of the Iraq War and has revealed many of his experiences in his recent book, Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein. As he told BBC Radio this week:

“We went to Iraq to do all of these things, to find the weapons of mass destruction, to help build a new Iraq, to establish rule of law, give the Iraqi people democracy, and one by one, all of those things just crumbled.”

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This article (Saddam Hussein’s CIA Interrogator Finally Reveals Truth About Bush’s Invasion of Iraq) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.