"More Damning Than Downing Street"

[ewagner]

This blog entry by Paul Loeb is more precise than most on this issue. I found it EXTREMELY DAMNING!


SNIP
With Congressman John Conyers about to hold hearings, coverage of the Downing Street memo is finally beginning to leak into the media. In contrast, we’ve heard almost nothing about the degree to which this administration began actively fighting the Iraq war well in advance of the March 2003 official attack--before both the October 2002 US Congressional authorization and the November United Nations resolution requiring that Saddam Hussein open the country up to inspectors.

I follow Iraq pretty closely, but was taken aback when Charlie Clements, now head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, described driving in a Baghdad neighborhood six months before the war “and a building would just explode, hit by a missile from 30,000 feet –‘What is that building?’” Clements would ask. “’Oh, that's a telephone exchange.’” Later, at a conference at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, Clements heard a U.S. General boast “that he began taking out assets that could help in resisting an invasion at least six months before war was declared.”

Earlier this month, Jeremy Scahill wrote a powerful piece on The Nation’s website, describing a huge air assault in September 2002,

“Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace,” Scahill writes. “At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/paul-loeb/more-damning-than-downing_2681.html

[SteppingRazor]

1. Not too surprising...

when you consider the massive shift in funds and equipment, all dog-eared for Afghanistan but nevertheless sent to Iraq, that was carried out by the Bush administration well before the invasion.

[kentuck]

2. And send in inspectors to make sure there were no threats...

when the decision was made to invade. It was a cakewalk, militarily speaking. Unforunately, the war did not begin until Bush made his "Mission Accomplished" speech...

[Norquist Nemesis]

3. Yes, that was part of the goading Saddam into war

and making statements about him firing at US planes in the no-fly zone. I was stunned when just the US took Baghdad, I read an article reporting that they were bombing six months before Bush's televised ultimatum. The article was explaining the question of why the Iraqi Air Force was MIA during the invasion...it had already been dessimated in the previous six months.

[cthrumatrix]

6. you can do this when the press is "SILENT"

[jojo54]

4. CCB - LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!

eom

[ewagner]

5. "CCB" ??? n/t

[Village Idiot]

7. Why, OH WHY Do any intelligent beings still DOUBT???

Do you people NOT REMEMBER that, at many points during the 2001-2003 weapons inspection process, the Iraqi government repeatedly KICKED OUT the investigators for spying for the USA? The WH was using this, as well as denied requests to inspect parts of the Presidential Palace, as rationale for the Invasion...

Remember? There were some demands made that NO US inspectors were going to be allowed back into Iraq, etc...

Does it not amaze/dismay/outrage ANYONE that there are now proofs (the DSM, the Pre and Post Inspection rhetoric, etc) that the word of ("tyrannical despot") Saddam Hussein can be trusted more than the President of the United States, the supposed Leader of the "Free World???"

Wow....does this mean that we can't trust *'s analysis of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, or Iran's Rafsanjani, or Syria's Assad, or North Korea's Kim Jong-Il??? But....but....but what about Russia's Vladimir Putin? He's still a "bad guy," right? And Aristide? Jaques Chirac, too????