Leonard Pitts Jr: If only I had been mistaken about Iraq war

[gator_in_Ontario]

I was one of 2 people in my workplace who never supported the war, so I can relate to this:



http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/8221289.htm

[Jade Fox]

1. Pitts, as usual, a voice of common sense and honestly.....n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

2. I wonder if Pitts will take the next step

and tell his readers the real reason for the war, i.e. using Iraq as an example to the rest of the world that from now on big, bad Uncle Sam is gonna kick ass as he sees fit, so don't even think of standing in his way as the Shrub puppet string pullers go about the goal of establishing global domination and corporate rule over the rest of the planet as per the neo-con PNAC plans.


In September of 2000, PNAC, sensing a GOP victory in the upcoming presidential election, issued its white paper on "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for the New Century." The PNAC report was quite frank about why the U.S. would want to move toward imperialist militarism, a Pax Americana, because with the Soviet Union out of the picture, now is the time most "conducive to American interests and ideals... The challenge of this coming century is to preserve and enhance this 'American peace'." And how to preserve and enhance the Pax Americana? The answer is to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major-theater wars."

In serving as world "constable," the PNAC report went on, no other countervailing forces will be permitted to get in the way. Such actions "demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations," for example. No country will be permitted to get close to parity with the U.S. when it comes to weaponry or influence; therefore, more U.S. military bases will be established in the various regions of the globe. (A post-Saddam Iraq may well serve as one of those advance military bases.) Currently, it is estimated that the U.S. now has nearly 150 military bases and deployments in different countries around the world, with the most recent major increase being in the Caspian Sea/Afghanistan/Middle East areas.


5. George W. Bush moved into the White House in January of 2001. Shortly thereafter, a report by the Administration-friendly Council on Foreign Relations was prepared, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," that advocated a more aggressive U.S. posture in the world and called for a "reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy," with access to oil repeatedly cited as a "security imperative." (It's possible that inside Cheney's energy-policy papers -- which he refuses to release to Congress or the American people -- are references to foreign-policy plans for how to gain military control of oilfields abroad.)


6. Mere hours after the 9/11 terrorist mass-murders, PNACer Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered his aides to begin planning for an attack on Iraq, even though his intelligence officials told him it was an al-Qaida operation and there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks. "Go massive," the aides' notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." Rumsfeld leaned heavily on the FBI and CIA to find any shred of evidence linking the Iraq government to 9/11, but they weren't able to. So he set up his own fact-finding group in the Pentagon that would provide him with whatever shaky connections it could find or surmise.

www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm

[sonias]

3. "the invasion was always a sham"

It was arguably the starkest indication to date that the nation's show of diplomacy in the days prior to the invasion was always a sham, a fig leaf to cover the fact that George W. Bush was determined from the beginning to go to war. Diplomacy would not get in his way, nor would facts, nor would the hesitation of allies.
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Pitts can see right through the sham like so many of us did. Yet this is exactly what so many people still fail to see and accept. They are so blinded or purposefully ignorant that they still agree that the war was a good thing. What do you have to show for it a year later? Are you safer? Are the Iraqi people really free or safe? Is the coalition of the willing still willing? What did you get for 150 billion and still counting.

If you aren't outraged, you're not paying attention.

Sonia



http://www.showgeorgethedoor.org

[Martin Eden]

4. "America did the right thing in Iraq"

--So sayeth GW Bush.

<<snip>>
He told an audience in Charleston, S.C., last month that even knowing what he knows today -- i.e., that weapons of mass destruction probably don't exist -- he would still have invaded Iraq.

''America did the right thing in Iraq,'' he said.
<<end of snip>>

Quite simply, this statement says the United States has the right to launch military invasions of sovereign nations without any internationally recognized justification -- self defense or intervening to prevent ethnic cleansing/genocide.

Most Americans might not make a big deal of this concept, but the rest of the world sees it for what it is -- a rogue superpower wielding power in the same manner as empires of the past.