Truespeak

In an attempt to goad Saddam Hussein into a war, US and British forces began an air assault on Iraq in 2002. Months before the UN Resolution 1441.

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

[snip]

The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

During 2000, RAF aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the coalition, a mere 13%. During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out of 107, or 23%.

However, between May 2002 and the second week in November, when the UN Security Council passed resolution 1441, which Goldsmith said made the war legal, British aircraft dropped 46 tons of bombs a month out of a total of 126.1 tons, or 36%.

By October, with the UN vote still two weeks away, RAF aircraft were dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone.

Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation was designed to “degrade” Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war.

It was not until November 8 that the UN security council passed resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” for failing to co-operate with the weapons inspectors.

The ramifications of this story are numerous. First, this proves that we had decided to invade Iraq long before it was publicly announced. Second, this lends credence to the Downing Street memo that said "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." And third, WE KNEW THAT SADDAM DID NOT POSSESS WMD!

If we thought that Saddam truly possessed WMD, wouldn't this have put our security at risk? Wouldn't this have endangered the entire Middle East and possibly the world? Clearly, this is either the most reckless administration in history or we knew ahead of time that Saddam didn't have the WMD that we claimed he did. Which means that Colin Powell was sent to the UN to LIE! Which means that all of those speeches were full of LIES! Which means that this war that has killed over 1600 men and women that are being honored on this Memorial Day was predicated on a LIE!

It's as if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and all the others are saying, "Happy Fuckin' Memorial Day, everybody! Your loved ones didn't have to die, but then you wouldn't have anything to do today would you?"

(I'm not sure what's more offensive, my government lying to my face or the mainstream media ignoring it completely. This morning I scoured all of the major US news outlets and I can't find anything even mentioning this. Damn liberal media!)