Holding Leaders Accountable for Untruths About War

[Postman]

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1020-03.htm




In his testimony, Wilkie addressed the question that keeps cropping up not only in Australia but in the United States and the United Kingdom as well: If the casus belli was neither WMD nor support for al Qaeda, then what was it? He reminded Australian lawmakers that ONA had made it ''very clear'' to the government that ``the U.S. was intent on invading Iraq for more-important reasons.''

To find the ''more-important reasons,'' Wilkies former ONA colleagues needed no spies to ferret out the answer. They could, and did, simply read the ideological and strategic rationale for conquering Iraq by clicking on the Project for a New American Century, a think-tank created in 1977 by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others now in charge of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

[Jose Diablo]

1. War is a serious business

People do not go to war for trivial reasons.

What it means to wage war is total commitment in human lives. This means many will give their lives, their future they themselves would have had and the future their families would have had.

A democratic society should weigh the loss versus the benefit seriously before making a declaration for war. How seriously was this examination of the facts?

First, we find the reasons to go to war were lies. There was no weapons of mass destruction, thus no imminent threat.

Second, Iraq was not harboring the perps of 911. Our government told us Iraq had a hand in making 911 happen. This also was a lie. To be sure, all of us where extremely distressed about 911 and based on that we depended on our leaders to tell the truth.

We need to examine why exactly did our leaders say we need to destroy Irag.

It is unclear what happened on 911, our government has been less than totally open in telling us who caused and how 911 happenned. 911 is the emotional reason we allowed the Iraq war. Yet clear understanding about 911 is withheld.

We hear much about the profiteering of certain corporations in connection with the Iraq war. We also hear about connections between our leaders with these corporations.

A reasonable person would conclude after hearing of the money flow that our leaders have a financial interest in making war.

We as a people though would suffer the results of this war.

The lies about why we, the people, should wage war and suffer the loss are beyond the limits.

Our leaders need to be held accountable. I do not mean accountable with some sort of horseshit like, "gee we thought this was true". Their accountability means death.

If the real reason we went to war was money, then our leaders that lied should die, just like our children have died because we trusted our leaders to tell the truth and gave them the approval to wage war.

The leaders that lied must die, how else can we put this behind and move on?

Or is it more important that leaders have more value than those that have died for the leaders lies. If this is true, this world truely sucks.