"The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I consider and weigh in my mind these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth.

They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible."

Thomas More, Utopia

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Happy Anniversary!

It's been five years since Colin Powell's bruva performance before the UN Security Council in his role as Team Bush's most credible official. Sitting before the Security Council, his props carefully organized beside him, Powell passionately spun the Iraqi/WMD lies that bamboozled the nation into supporting a war of aggression. Jon Schwarz lays it all out in devastating detail.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Powell passionately spun the Iraqi/WMD lies that bamboozled the nation into supporting a war of aggression"

Lol, what a laughably retarded statement. First of all, The nation already supported removing Saddam and liberating Iraq. The American people were clamoring for Saddam's removal ever since 1991 when Bush 41 didn't "finish the job". US support for Saddam's removal remained extremely high (70-85%) throughout the 1990s an up until the 2003 Iraq Liberation.

Bush merely enacted the collective will of the American people. Secondly, your claimed "war of agression" is bullshit. Saddam was our enemy, we had every right to remove him, end of story

Anonymous said...

To the general:

Let's see, when Powell was saying what the conservatives wanted he was a prince. Look we support blacks in the party, they'd say. Then they would point to Connie Rice. When he didn't say what they wanted he is a jerk.

Where are the WMD's? That's old news. They were not there. The president deceived the American people to go to Iraq. No, make that he out and out lied. History will show us he is one of the worst presidents in history.

Anonymous said...

WMD was a total irrelevancy. That nonsense was purely for the consumption of the "international community". Who gives a damn about what they think? I didn't need WMD to support an Iraq liberation. I DEMANDED one, despite the presence/absence of WMD....as did a majority of the American people

Anonymous said...

To the general:

I can think of at least a half dozen dictators worse than Saddam. Why pick on him? Bush thought we would run through there like a hot knife through butter.

When we finally leave there I give the country three months (tops) before OUR regime is overthrown.

Coldtype said...

“The nation already supported removing Saddam and liberating Iraq”
-“Gen. Pinochet”

Who gives a fuck what “the nation” supported? Was a US attack on Iraq sanctioned by the UN Security Council or conducted in accord with Article 51 (self-defense from imminent attack) of the UN Charter as required by international law? Answer: hell no and that’s all that matters. Just out of curiosity, why wasn’t “the nation”, more accurately those who own and run it, clamoring to “liberate” the people of Iraq when the murderous tyrant was at the height of his power? For example, when he launched his invasion of sovereign Iran in 1980 at the cost (with US assistance) of perhaps one million lives, why did the Reagan administration provide Saddam with diplomatic, economic and overt military support for this clear violation of the UN Charter? When Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988 after they rose up against him, why did the US shield him from international sanction with its UN Security Council veto?

“…your claimed "war of agression" [sic] is bullshit”
-GP

Fascinating. Then perhaps you can explain what Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, our chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, meant when he announced the following at the Tribunal:

An "aggressor” is a state that is the first to commit such actions as "invasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State"; and that a war of aggression was, "…the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” [see: “Just War? Hardly” by N. Chomsky].

“Saddam was our enemy, we had every right to remove him, end of story”
-GP

On the contrary you imperial prick, we had no such “right” to invade a sovereign nation, overwhelmingly contribute to the slaughter of over one million of its citizens, create four million refugees, shatter its infrastructure, and set up institutions for the purpose of looting its most important natural resource.

For the definitive exposition of the Team Bush lies that led us to war, take the time to read this report
by Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Center for Public Integrity.