The Real Reason for Bush’s Invasion of Iraq
is a National Security Secret
By
Paul Craig Roberts
06/07/08 "ICH' -- --- American soldiers have been fighting and
dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.
All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false.
Bush said he invaded Iraq “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass
destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and
to free the Iraqi people.”
We now know that these were false claims. Disinformation about
Iraq was produced by a special unit within the Pentagon run by
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith. The unit operated outside the
normal intelligence channels of the CIA and DIA. Its purpose was
to create false intelligence to enable Bush to initiate war with
Iraq.
Did President Bush know that the claims put into his speeches by
his speechwriters was false?
Who instructed Bush’s speechwriters to incorporate known lies
into the President’s speeches?
Why did Vice President Cheney, the Secretary of State, the
National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of Defense all lie
to the American people and to the entire world?
What is the real agenda?
Millions of Americans have come to their own conclusions about
the reasons for Bush’s invasion: (1) Oil: the US government
wants to hold on to power by expanding its control over oil, and
Bush and Cheney want to reward their oil company cronies. (2)
Military-security complex: Police agencies favor war as a means
of expanding their power, and military industries favor war as a
means of expanding their profits. (3) Neoconservative ideology:
Neocons’ believe in “American exceptionalism” and claim that
America’s virtue gives the US government the right and the
obligation to impose US hegemony on the rest of the world,
especially in the Middle East where independent Muslim states
object to Israel’s theft of Palestine. (4) Karl Rove: Rove used
the “war president” role to rescue Bush from attack by Democrats
as an illegitimate president elected by one vote of the US
Supreme Court. (5) American self-righteousness over 9/11 and
lust for revenge.
All of these reasons came together to make a cruel war on an
innocent people.
There may be other reasons about which we know not.
As it is now recognized that every reason for the war is false
or illegitimate, the question is: why does Bush insist on
persisting with a costly war, the express reasons for which are
now known to be mistakes? There were no weapons of mass
destruction, no connections to al Qaeda, and Bush has installed
a puppet Iraqi government that cannot venture outside the
heavily fortified and US protected “green zone.” The Iraqi
government governs nothing.
War without cause is murder, not war.
That Bush persists with a war for which he can provide no
legitimate reason indicates that there is a secret agenda that
has not been shared with the American people. Are we
experiencing the privatization of the US government by police
agencies, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby?
That the American people and their elected representatives
continue to tolerate a war that has killed and maimed thousands
of their own soldiers, destroyed the infrastructure of a
country,
killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and created 4
million refugees for no known reason raises serious questions
about the morals of the American people.
Is the impotence of the peace movement due to the power of the
Israel Lobby or have Americans become morally degenerate as
commentators increasingly assert?
One indication would be the response of presidential candidates
to the gratuitous and failed war. What we saw at the Republican
presidential candidates’ debate on June 5 is inconsistent with
the self-esteem of the American people. All of the leading
Republican presidential candidates openly and nonchalantly
endorsed using nuclear weapons against Iran unless Iran abandons
its right to enrich uranium under the non-proliferation treaty,
to which Iran is a signatory (unlike nuclear-armed Israel,
India, and US puppet Pakistan).
What is moral degeneracy if it is not using nuclear weapons to
murder masses of innocent civilians and spread deadly
radioactivity over vast areas merely in order to force a country
to do as we order? If this isn’t barbarism, what is barbarism?
Do the American people realize that the frontrunners for the
Republican presidential nomination are monsters who want to
murder people who have done us no harm?
After five years of war that has achieved no noble purpose, no
valid aim, indeed, no aim at all except perhaps Osama bin
Laden’s aim of stirring up uncontrollable strife in the Middle
East, how can Republicans cheer for candidates who preach a
wider war and the use of nuclear weapons against defenseless
people?
Is the approval lavished on Republican presidential candidates,
who are willing to use nuclear weapons as means of terrorizing
Muslim peoples, an indication that the American people have
morphed into inhuman monsters?
If not, what does it indicate? Ignorant fanaticism? Paranoia?
Blind hatred? The belief that no one is of any value but
Americans?
For six and one-half years the Bush Regime has relied on
coercion, intimidation, war, and threats of war. Diplomacy and
good will have been shunned. The regime’s blatant warmongering
has resurrected the nuclear arms race. China and Russia regard
America’s drive for world hegemony with great alarm. China has
put nuclear ICBMs on mobile platforms to increase their
survivability in event of an American attack. Russia has
developed new multi-warhead ICBMs, which can penetrate any known
missile defense, and new cruise missiles that Putin says will be
targeted on Europe if the US persists in its aggressive military
encirclement of Russia.
An administration that resurrects the threat of nuclear
Armageddon so that its cronies in the military-security complex
can become still richer is evil beyond compare.
Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant
secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was
associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and
contributing editor of National Review. He is author or
co-author of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution
(Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic
appointments, including the William E. Simon chair in political
economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Georgetown University, and senior research fellow, Hoover
Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous
scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30
occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious
Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer
for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell
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