Weapons of Mass Deception

George W. Bush: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Saturday, 18 October 2014 09:04 By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed 

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US Army soldiers take samples from items found in a weapons cache, Baqubah, Iraq, January 3, 2009. (Photo: The US Army)Thirteen years ago, after the Towers came down but before the war started, I wrote a book that claimed there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and therefore there was no reason to go to war there. That book has stood the test of time, but as it turns out, there were WMD in that shattered, battered and bombed-out nation...just not in the way it was explained to us.

On Tuesday, The New York Times published a thunderclap of an article titled "The Secret Casualties of Iraq's Abandoned Chemical Weapons." The gist of it, in short, is that Iraq was littered with thousands of chemical munitions the US and other countries had sold to the country before 1991. US troops were tasked to police them up and destroy them, a process that injured many of them in ways they still endure today, but because the Bush administration wanted to keep these munitions secret, the troops who happened to scoop up a leaking mustard gas shell and woke up the following day covered in boils and unable to breathe never received proper medical treatment.

But wait, hold the phone: Wasn't the whole point of the exercise about the presence of WMD in Iraq? If US troops found thousands of chemical shells, which they dealt with at their peril, why didn't the Bush administration bellow the fact to the heavens?

Ask Karl Rove:

Starting in 2004, some members of the George W. Bush administration and Republican lawmakers began to find evidence of discarded chemical weapons in Iraq. But when the information was brought up with the White House, senior adviser Karl Rove told them to "let these sleeping dogs lie."

The issue of Iraq's WMD remnants was suddenly thrust back into the fore this week, with a blockbuster New York Times report accusing the Bush administration of covering up American troops' chemically induced wounds.

To people familiar with the issue, both inside that administration and outside, the blame for the coverup falls on one particular set of shoulders: Rove's.

Some very stupid people heralded the Times' article as vindication of their long-embraced belief that Iraq actually did have WMD, and therefore George W. Bush's calamitous war was justified. There are several problems with this premise: 1. One actually has to read the article, which is long and full of words, several of which explain that the chemical munitions discovered were from 1991 or before, and were utterly useless as designed when found during the war; 2. None of it was worth fighting a decade-long war over; 3. The Bush administration didn't announce the existence of these decrepit munitions to the world because the US sold them to Iraq during the last Bush administration, and because pretending they weren't there meant the VA could blow off the affected soldiers.

The rhetoric, circa March 2003: Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile biological weapons labs, and uranium from Niger for use in a "robust" nuclear weapons programs.

The rhetoric in this brave new year of 2014: THE NEW YORK TIMES SAID THERE WERE A BUNCH OF SHELLS IN IRAQ FROM BEFORE 1991 THAT GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH SOLD TO SADDAM HUSSEIN WHICH GEORGE W. BUSH USED AS AN EXCUSE TO PLUNDER THE TREASURY AND SINK US INTO PERMANENT WAR IN THE MIDEAST AND WIN SOME ELECTIONS WHICH MEANS WE WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG YOU GUYS.

Fail.

Meanwhile, as these old dogs grapple and scrape over this well-stripped bone, the fruits of their pestiferous labors continue to bloom. The latest revelation, from McClatchy News, reads US Will Build New Syrian Rebel Force to Battle Islamic State:

For most of the three years of the Syrian conflict, the U.S. ground game hinged on rebel militias that are loosely affiliated under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, or FSA. Their problems were no secret: a lack of cohesion, uneven fighting skills and frequent battlefield coordination with the al Qaida loyalists of the Nusra Front.

This time, (retired Marine General John) Allen said, the United States and its allies will work to strengthen the political opposition and make sure it's tied to "a credible field force" that will have undergone an intense vetting process.

"It's not going to happen immediately," Allen said. "We're working to establish the training sites now, and we'll ultimately go through a vetting process and beginning to bring the trainers and the fighters in to begin to build that force out."

This time...

This time...

This time?

It is always this time, until next time, which becomes this time, and by God, we're going to deploy the same catastrophically failed tactics that led us here to begin with. Why? Because eternal war means eternal weapons sales...and a nifty side benefit happens to be the irrational paranoia consistently dosed to the American public by way of the "news" media, which lets things like "George W. Bush was right and the Iraq war was good!" slide by unremarked.

I have said this many times before, and will have to say it many times again until either these people are in jail or I am wrapped in my shroud: The single greatest strength of the American right is their utter and complete lack of shame. They will say anything - literally anything - if it moves the political ball even a few inches down the field.

P.S. The region of Iraq where the majority of these pre-1991 US-made chemical munitions can still be found is currently under the control of ISIS.

Thanks, George. You're the gift that keeps on giving.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission. 

WILLIAM RIVERS PITT

William Rivers Pitt is Truthout's senior editor and lead columnist. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26898-george-w-bush-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving

The Rachel Maddow Show / The MaddowBlog

File Photo: U.S. Marines from the Marine 1st Division take down a Saddam Hussein statue April 9, 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq.

 

Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images, File

Conservatives continue to get Iraqi WMD story wrong

10/15/14 10:21 AM—UPDATED 10/15/14 04:16 PM

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By Steve Benen

The New York Times has a powerful, front-page article today on Iraqi chemical weapons from the Saddam Hussein era. It’s an impressive piece of investigative journalism from C.J. Chivers – which the right is unwisely seizing on for reasons that don’t make sense.

 

The article itself doesn’t need embellishment. As Jessica Schulberg summarized, the Times’ report reveals that “between 2004-2011, American troops fighting in the Iraq War found over 5,000 chemical warheads, shells, and aviation bombs. The discoveries were never publicly disclosed by the military; U.S. soldiers who were exposed to nerve agents like sarin and mustard gas while attempting to remove conventional weapons were denied appropriate medical care and ordered to remain silent about yet another miscalculation of the Iraq War. “

 

The article deserves to be read and taken seriously. Some on the right, however, see a different kind of opportunity. As Simon Maloy explained:

[F]or many conservatives, the real news broken by the Times is that BUSH WAS RIGHT ABOUT IRAQ.

 

It’s incredible that I have to write this sentence in October 2014, but here it goes. No, George W. Bush was not right about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Now, I know what you’re going say. “But look! The Times says they found WMDs in Iraq! The liberal media was wrong! Bush was right!” No, Bush was still very wrong. Very, very wrong.

Brad Dayspring, a Republican operative and former aide to then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, argued overnight that “those who mocked any statement that there were WMD’s in Iraq … were/are wrong.” Someone at the conservative Media Research Center published a variety of triumphant tweets, including this gem: “Every single thing media told us about Iraq and WMD was wrong.”

 

I can appreciate why the right is still a little sensitive on this. A Republican president lied the nation into a disastrous war, the consequences of which we’re still struggling to address, based in large part on weapons stockpiles that didn’t exist. That conservatives are still searching for some kind of evidence to justify the catastrophic Bush/Cheney failure isn’t too surprising.

 

But today’s New York Times report does not offer the evidence the right wants to believe.

 

In the years following the misguided U.S. invasion, we’d periodically hear reports about American troops finding chemical weapons. This was usually followed by a variety of Republicans proclaiming, “A ha! We knew it! We were right all along! Take that, liberals!”

 

I specifically remember when then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and then-Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) held a press conference to declare, “We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

 

This generally turned out to be quite embarrassing for Republicans, who routinely failed to recognize the difference between old, inoperable chemical weapons from Iraq’s war with Iran, and the active, imaginary WMD stockpiles Bush used as a rationale for war.

 

The same is true today. Conservatives may hope to exploit the New York Times report, but the article references pre-1991 weapons. Everything Republicans said in the lead up to the 2003 invasion is still wrong.

 

Indeed, a little common sense is in order – if U.S. troops had found WMD stockpiles, the Bush/Cheney administration would have said so. Indeed, they were desperate to do exactly that.

 

But the WMD were never found because they didn’t exist. This is no longer open to debate. Strange figures on the fringes of American politics – including, apparently, Iowa’s Joni Ernst – occasionally suggest the non-existent weapons were secretly there, but these claims were discredited many years ago. Even Bush administration officials itself long ago abandoned this nonsense.

 

The fact that Republicans still don’t want to come to terms with this really isn’t healthy.

 

Schulberg added, “The existence of aging chemical weapons in Iraq was never the justification for Bush’s invasion, nor was it a secret. The secret was the harm that they were causing to U.S. troops and the subsequent failure to care for these individuals.”

 

There’s a real story here that warrants attention. It’s just not the story the right was hoping for.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conservatives-continue-get-iraqi-wmd-story-wrong