10th Year of the Invasion of Iraq: 20 Popular Lies

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq which had been dubbed as Operation Iraqi Freedom. A war fundamentally founded on deceit and political mendacities.

Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitacker at the Global Research explains them

Here’s a snippet.  (bold and italics original)

Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath

1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks

A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi’s contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.

2 Iraq and al-Qa’ida were working together

Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden’s “aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq”, it added.

Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa’ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.

3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a “reconstituted” nuclear weapons programme

The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush’s State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has “separate intelligence”. The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now “under review”.

4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons

The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.

Read the rest here.

Here is Daily Reckoning’s Bill Bonner’s take

The trouble with the Iraq War is that the people who made the mistake have learned nothing. The lies and delusions behind the war never blew back into the faces of those responsible for them. Instead, soldiers, taxpayers, and innocent Iraqi civilians paid the price. Politicians, the military brass, and the pundits — notably Thomas Friedman — who promoted the war still walk on two legs and sleep soundly at night.

Read the rest here