Remind us:Why did the U.S. Invade and Destabilize Iraq?

Ikaria · Dec 28, 2003

Buck72 said:
I understand plenty there Ikaria, unlike most that parrot what they hear on CNN, I read the source documents. Oh, and I'm a participant.

Please include a reference to my "little understanding" so that we can have a proper chataqua regarding these points.

Thanks!!

alonesoldier · Dec 28, 2003

[url]http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/transcripts/2002/aug/020809.seelye.html[/url]

At Moonlight(ph), an American-style fast-food restaurant, tables are overflowing with customers spending a small fortune by Iraqi standards--55 cents for a hamburger. In a once-wealthy country devastated by sanctions, the average salary is about $10 a month, and eating out is a luxury most people can't afford. Still, the crowd at Moonlight reflects a recent development. For some in Iraq, life is improving.

Thats $120 dollars a year, I think you might be confusing Iraqi Money with American money. NPR you would like, it is the American version of the BBC, very anti war and anti American foreign policy.

[url]http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/summary.html[/url]

"It is not a lie when you are ordered to lie." Dr.Rihab Taha

Blaming Sanctions for Regime Failure
In a total of 29 separate resolutions,6 the UN Security Council has stated clearly its reason for imposing sanctions: to force Iraq to comply with previous UN resolutions. But Saddam Hussein refuses to comply. In 1990, under UN Security Council Resolution 661, the UN permitted food and medicine imports. Beginning in 1991, the Security Council attempted to create an Oil-for-Food Program that would allow Iraqi oil to be sold, with proceeds deposited in an UN-controlled account and used to purchase food, medicine, and humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people.7 The Iraqi government rejected this proposal.

In 1995, over Iraq's protests, the Security Council adopted another oil-for-food resolution.8 It was only in 1996, after another year and a half of Iraqi delays and international pressure, that the Iraqi regime finally agreed to accept oil-for-food, allowing the first imports to arrive in 1997. Even after the program was in place, the regime continued to deprive its citizens of the food and medical commodities that the international community wanted to supply. In 22 subsequent resolutions the Security Council extended, revised, adjusted, or expanded the Oil-for-Food Program out of concern for the people of Iraq, consistently broadening the range of goods permitted for importation.9

Iraq claims that 1.7 million children, including 700,000 under the age of five, out of a total national population of 22 million people, have died because of sanctions. According to an Iraqi government website, after the Oil-for-Food Program was instituted the number of children who died before the age of five jumped 50 percent from 1996 to 2001. The facts tell a different story:

Under the Oil-for-Food Program, the Iraqi regime exported food to earn hard currency it could use for its own purposes. Infant formula sold to Iraq under the Oil-for-Food Program has been found in markets throughout the Gulf, presumably exported by the regime to circumvent the sanctions.10
According to the UN, under the Oil-for-Food Program the daily food ration in Iraq rose from about 1,200 kilocalories per day in 1996 to over 2,200 kilocalories per day in August 2002.11
Iraq therefore implausibly claims that child mortality soared while the average caloric intake for Iraqis increased by 80 percent, and while medical supplies were becoming more plentiful.
High-ranking regime loyalists receive the most expensive medical care, including heart bypass surgery and neurosurgery using an ultra-modern, $6 million gamma knife, while basic medicines are in short supply for the Iraqi people.12
Since the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein has spent more than $2 billion building 48 new palaces, some complete with gold-plated faucets and artificial waterfalls on their grounds.13
How much food does $2 billion buy for hungry people? In 2001, the World Food Program spent $1.74 billion to deliver 660,000 metric tons of food to 77 million people worldwide.

Case Study

Baby Funerals

"Small coffins, decorated with grisly photographs of dead babies and their ages 'three days', 'four days', written usefully for the English-speaking media are paraded through the streets of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, the procession led by a throng of official mourners."
The Observer (London)

People the world over are moved by the suffering and deaths of innocent children, and where possible, the Iraqi regime attempts to link images of child deaths to the policies and actions of its adversaries. They have blamed thousands of child deaths on United Nations sanctions, not the Iraqi regime's policies that caused those sanctions. They also claimed that exposure to depleted uranium from spent munitions used in the Gulf War had caused many deaths and deformities in children. To support these claims, they have staged mass children's funerals, and to stage those funerals, they need dead children. There is only one problem, according to defectors, journalists, and participants in these funerals: To have enough children's remains to make a proper show, the regime has to collect and store them.

A BBC Correspondent documentary aired on June 23, 2002, exposed how the Iraqi regime staged these processions: Instead of burying dead children immediately in accordance with Muslim custom, Iraqi authorities hold the bodies in cold storage until enough bodies are available to conduct a "parade of dead babies."15 In one such event, the Iraqi regime exhibited some 60 coffins, decorated with large photographs of the deceased, around Martyr Square in Baghdad while government-controlled demonstrators chanted anti-U.S. slogans and demanded the elimination of UN sanctions, all for the benefit of foreign reporters who were present.

On camera, an Iraqi identified as Ali, described as a former member of Saddam's inner circle living in northern Iraq, related the account of a taxi driver who had explained to him how it worked: "He went to Najaf [a town 100 miles south of Baghdad] a couple of days ago. He brought back two bodies of children for one of the mass funerals."16

Ali continued: "The smell was incredibly strong. He didnt know how long they'd been in storage, perhaps six or seven months. The drivers would collect them from the regions. They would be informed of when a mass funeral was arranged so they would be ready. Certainly, they would collect bodies of children who had died months before and been held for the mass processions."17

In a separate article, the programs host reported, "A second, Western source went to visit a Baghdad hospital and, when the official Iraqi minder was absent, was taken to the mortuary. There, a doctor showed the source a number of dead babies lying stacked in the mortuary, waiting for the next official procession."18

alonesoldier · Dec 28, 2003

[url]http://www.usembassy.it/file2003_01/alia/A3012110.htm[/url]

21 January 2003

U.S. Documents Iraqi Disinformation, Propaganda, January 21, 2003

(Report details Iraqi tactics to protect its weapons programs)

The "Apparatus of Lies" Report can be read on the White House website at: [url]http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/index.html[/url] or downloaded as a .pdf file (3.3Mb) at: [url]http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/apparatus.pdf[/url]

The U.S. government has compiled a detailed report that discusses the Iraqi regime's use of propaganda and disinformation to gain international support for the regime and to hide development of its weapons of mass destruction programs, a senior administration official said January 21.

"The manipulation of public opinion is a high priority for Saddam Hussein's regime. This report takes a broad look at Iraqi deception, illustrating Saddam's commitment to deception and his contempt for the truth," the official said.

The report -- "Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's Disinformation and Propaganda 1990-2003" -- was released by the White House's Office of Global Communications, and a senior administration official briefed the news media at a special background briefing at the Washington Foreign Press Center.

According to the White House report, Iraq's main tools of disinformation include: staged suffering and grief; co-location of military assets and civilians; restricting journalists' movements; false claims or disclosures; false man-in-the-street interviews; self-inflicted damage; on-the-record lies; covert dissemination of false stories; censorship; bogus, edited, or old footage and images; and fabricated documents.

"The world must decide whether to believe statements made by the government of Iraq," the senior administration official said. "Experience has taught us to be extremely skeptical."

He said the most well-known strategy used by the Iraqi government is the exploitation of tragedy in an effort to redefine the blame for the nation's problems.

"The regime's most cynical strategy is to actually cause severe civilian hardship or even deaths and then exploit the Iraqi people's suffering by placing the blame on U.N.-imposed sanctions or other nations" the White House report said.

This report along with others seeks to document Saddam Hussein's deceit regarding U.N. resolutions and weapons inspections, he said. The responsibility for proving Iraq does not have an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program does not fall on the United Nations or the United States, but on the Iraqi government, the official said. The Iraqis, he said, must comply with existing U.N. resolutions and verify that they have divested themselves of all types of WMD called for in the resolutions.

He said the United States has shared more intelligence with the U.N. agencies currently conducting inspections in Iraq to help them pursue their mandate. The inspections are being jointly conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

"We will continue to support them to the best extent possible," he said. He noted that the resolutions also call for the rest of the world to make available to the inspectors their own intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs.

Following is the text of the report's Executive Summary:
(begin text)

The White House
Washington, D.C.
January 21

APPARATUS OF LIES Saddam's Disinformation and Propaganda 1990-2003

Executive Summary

"It is not a lie when you are ordered to lie." a senior Iraqi biological weapons official

In December 1998, when U.N. weapons inspector Dr. Richard Spertzel became exasperated by Iraqi evasions and misrepresentations, he confronted Dr. Rihab Taha, the woman the Iraqis identified as the head of their biological weapons program and asked her directly, "You know that we know you are lying. So why do you do it?" She straightened herself up and replied, "Dr. Spertzel, it's not a lie when you are ordered to lie."(1)

Dr. Taha's brief reply is one symbol of a highly developed, well disciplined, and expertly organized program designed to win support for the Iraqi regime through outright deceit. This elaborate program is one of the regime's most potent weapons for advancing its political, military, and diplomatic objectives. In their disinformation and propaganda campaigns, the Iraqis use elaborate ruses and obvious falsehoods, covert actions and false on-the-record statements, and sophisticated preparation and spontaneous exploitation of opportunities. Many of the techniques are not new, but this regime exploits them more aggressively and effectively -- and to more harmful effect -- than any other regime in power today.

In the weeks ahead, as the international community seeks to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions and disarm the Iraqi regime, governments, the media, and the public are urged to consider the regime's words, deeds, and images in light of this brutal record of deceit.

"Apparatus of Lies" discusses the lies that Iraq has used to promote its propaganda and disinformation in four broad categories:

-- Crafting Tragedy: To craft tragedy, the regime places civilians close to military equipment, facilities, and troops, which are legitimate targets in an armed conflict. The Iraqi regime openly used both Iraqis and foreigners as human shields during the Gulf War, eventually bowing to international pressure and releasing them. It has also placed military equipment next to or inside mosques and ancient cultural treasures. Finally, it has deliberately damaged facilities and attributed the damage to coalition bombing and has attempted to pass off damage from natural catastrophes, such as earthquakes, as the result of bombing.

-- Exploiting Suffering: To exploit suffering, Saddam blames starvation and medical crises -- often of his own making -- on the United Nations or the United States and its allies. This is such an effective ruse that the Iraqi regime actually causes or actively ignores hardship and then aggressively exploits the Iraqi people's suffering. For the last few years, the Iraqis have aggressively promoted the false notion that depleted uranium -- a substance that is relatively harmless and was used for armor-piercing munitions during the Gulf War -- has caused cancers and birth defects among Iraqis. Scientific evidence indicates that any elevated rates of cancer and birth defects are most likely due to Iraqi use of chemical weapons.

-- Exploiting Islam: Experts know that Saddam Hussein is a non-religious man from a secular -- even atheistic -- party. But to exploit Islamic sentiments, he adopts expressions of faith in his public pronouncements, and the Iraqi propaganda apparatus erects billboards and distributes images showing him praying or in other acts of piety -- all while the regime prevents pilgrims from making the Hajj. The regime also has made many false claims designed to incite Muslims against its adversaries.

-- Corrupting the Public Record: To corrupt the public record, the regime uses a combination of on-the-record lies, covert placements of false news accounts, self-inflicted damage, forgeries, and fake interviews.

The Iraqi regime uses several tools in various combinations to disseminate false information and images in the expectation that supporters and commentators will cause it to reverberate through the media. Many of these falsehoods die quickly, but even the most implausible claims can find believers or at least a permanent home in the public record. Under certain circumstances, some will gain vigor and continue to be repeated and grow, even after they have been proven false.

The Iraqis have adapted and varied their mix of themes and techniques over the years, depending on the situation, and they have quickly seized new opportunities to spread false information. Iraq's disinformation effort is serious and sophisticated. The regime commits substantial resources to this effort and has achieved some remarkable successes.

Main Tools of Iraqi Disinformation

-- Staged suffering and grief

-- Co-location of military assets and civilians

-- Restricting journalists' movements

-- False claims or disclosures

-- False man-in-the-street interviews

-- Self-inflicted damage

-- On-the-record lies

-- Covert dissemination of false stories

-- Censorship: Bogus, edited, or old footage and images

-- Fabricated documents

An important priority of Saddam's deception apparatus is to manipulate the televised images the world sees. This is accomplished by controlling the movements of foreign journalists, monitoring and censoring news transmissions, disseminating old or fake footage, and carefully staging events or scenes. The regime's most cynical strategy is to actually cause severe civilian hardship or even deaths and then exploit the Iraqi people's suffering by placing the blame on U.N.-imposed sanctions or other nations.

Recent U.S. government reports, including "A Decade of Defiance and Deception," have documented Saddam's deceit regarding U.N. resolutions and weapons inspections. In order to raise awareness of many of the regime's other forms of deception, particularly those likely to be repeated, "Apparatus of Lies" examines the facts behind Iraqi disinformation and propaganda since 1990. Given the nature and history of the regime, evidence of further deception is almost certain to come to light.

(end text)

still visiting relatives. can not respond quickly.

Zoot · Dec 28, 2003

Noam Chomsky said:
No Westerners know Iraq better than Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the respected UN diplomats who were the chief UN humanitarian coordinators, with an international staff of hundreds of investigators traveling daily through the country. Both resigned in protest at what Halliday described as the "genocidal" character of the US-UK sanctions regime. Both reject claims that food and medicine were being withheld by the authorities. Their successor, Tun Myat, backed their view, describing the Iraqi system "as the best distribution system that he had ever seen in his life, as a World Food Program official." The senior UN World Food Program official reported that the WFP had conducted more than a million inspections of the system and "uncovered no significant evidence of fraud of favoritism." He added that there was "no way we could create something else that would work half as well" as the Iraqi system, which is "the most efficient in the world." (Rajiv Chadrasekaran, [/i]Washington Post Weekly, 10 February 2003.

As Halliday, von Sponeck, and others had pointed out for years, the sanctions devastated the population while strengthening Saddam Hussein and his clique, also increasing the dependency of the Iraqi people on the tyrant for their survival. Von Sponeck, who resigned in 2000, reported that the US and UK "systematically tried to prevent [him and Halliday] from briefing the Security Council... because they didn't want to hear what we had to say" about the savagery of the sanctions. (Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, Al-Ahram Weekly, 26 December 2002). The US media apparently agree. Though the expert knowledge of the UN coordinators is without parallel, Americans have had to turn elsewhere to hear what they had to say, even at a moment of laserlike fixation on Iraq. Discussion of the effects of the sanctions has been minimal and apologetic, the usual procedure with regard to the crimes of one's own state.

As

sedders · Dec 28, 2003

another off topic spam session

Zoot · Dec 28, 2003

I think my spam was on topic, even if it was accidentally posted in the wrong thread.

sedders · Dec 29, 2003

sorry zoot, was talking about the previous post, not yours. There are some here who like to cut and past pages of propoganda from their favorite ministry of truth.

alonesoldier · Dec 29, 2003

The White House, the U.S Embassy, the BBC and NPR are part of the ministry of truth? Aren't you fond of quoting real propaganda like chomskey and moore?

It was actually selected in such a way to answer questions posed to me earlier in the thread when I was away and unable to respond.

sedders · Dec 29, 2003

I havn't quoted michael moore but would trust his word more that the white house after that pre-war speach of his.

Next time you should quote the post you're responding to if you're late.

FutureTeller · Dec 30, 2003

This is how we here in the Mideast see the issue:
1. To have more power on the world by making a big new empire.
2. To scare the other Arabic regimes in the area so they totally submit to its demands. (And this is happening unfortunately)!
3. To gurantee the Oil resources in the Mideast, by having power on the Iraqi reserves and scaring Saudi Arabia! And that's why the only ministry that was protected by the American soldiers after entering Baghdad was the "Oil Ministry"! While they left the other ministries to be robbed, burned and destroyed!
4.Refresh the weapons industry in the USA.

AND... read this please, this is a part of President George W. Bush: State of the Union Address: January 29, 2002.

George W. Bush: Albuquerque, N.M., the Washington Post, May 31, 2002

mediamonitors.net/khodr60.html

At the end of his speech:
"Daddy, I hope I've kept the Bush legacy alive to fight the Arab and Muslim world every ten years to ensure their chaos and complicity. No Arab oil King or Prince is going to force us to improve our SUV fuel efficiency, not while I'm President. On the contrary, they will be made to increase production and decrease prices. "

Ikaria · Dec 30, 2003

Wow. How much more blatant does it need to get?

Ikaria · Dec 30, 2003

Only thing is, I think you'll find that that "uncensored speech" has been interpolated by an ironic hand.

Still, the gist is there.

secretdawn · Dec 30, 2003

Satisfied said:
Some say it was because Saddam was a bad guy, one that used evil gas that the U.S. illegally sold him on "his own" people.

Or that it was some reason other than WMDs.

But what did the Bush Administration originally say?

Flash presentation of why the U.S. attacked Iraq.

Any thoughts? Backpedaling?

I really don't think it matters anymore why we did it in the first place...there is a country that was once oppressed and living in fear of their lives everyday, and worse, afraid of torture beyond our wildest imagination...now they can walk down the street and speak there minds, they can build there own government the way they want it to be. They are free. And that is worth more than the loss we or they have suffered. God bless Bush for freeing that country...who cares why he did it, or if he was wrong about some things, or everything...bottom line...they were oppressed and tortured, murdered and raped by their leaders and that was plenty reason to take them down.

whatbogsends · Dec 30, 2003

secretdawn said:
I really don't think it matters anymore why we did it in the first place...

It is quite distressing to hear that people donk think it matters if our president lied to us about the reasons for going to war. This is the man who was supposed to "bring integrity back to the White House". Blind obedience is one of the worst crimes one can commit.

Edge · Dec 30, 2003

Not to mention Iraq is still not free: its streets aren't safe, its leaders have been appointed, not elected, and its citizens are still being killed daily by the various opposing factions and the US army.

Ampmonster · Dec 30, 2003

"Blind obedience is one of the worst crimes one can commit."

in a sense you just called every christian...heck every religious person in the world a criminal....
if only we were smart enough to blindly follow our professors instead...

whatbogsends · Dec 30, 2003

Ampmonster said:
"Blind obedience is one of the worst crimes one can commit."

in a sense you just called every christian...heck every religious person in the world a criminal....

Only the ones who follow blindly.

alonesoldier · Dec 30, 2003

George W. Bush: Albuquerque, N.M., the Washington Post, May 31, 2002

mediamonitors.net/khodr60.html

At the end of his speech:
"Daddy, I hope I've kept the Bush legacy alive to fight the Arab and Muslim world every ten years to ensure their chaos and complicity. No Arab oil King or Prince is going to force us to improve our SUV fuel efficiency, not while I'm President. On the contrary, they will be made to increase production and decrease prices. "

The author of this is Mohamed Khodr.

sedders · Jan 1, 2004

alonesoldier said:
George W. Bush: Albuquerque, N.M., the Washington Post, May 31, 2002

mediamonitors.net/khodr60.html

At the end of his speech:
"Daddy, I hope I've kept the Bush legacy alive to fight the Arab and Muslim world every ten years to ensure their chaos and complicity. No Arab oil King or Prince is going to force us to improve our SUV fuel efficiency, not while I'm President. On the contrary, they will be made to increase production and decrease prices. "

The author of this is Mohamed Khodr.

So? Are you discreding the message by discreding the author? Is that all you can do?

Oh thats right, it's a post by alonesoldier, what was I to expect? (see i can do it too)

Blemonds · Jan 1, 2004

Edge said:
Not to mention Iraq is still not free: its streets aren't safe, its leaders have been appointed, not elected, and its citizens are still being killed daily by the various opposing factions and the US army.

You're right. Let's bring Saddam back

Remind us:Why did the U.S. Invade and Destabilize Iraq?

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