In his recently published memoir, "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior," General Hugh Shelton, who served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, called the Iraq war "unnecessary" and said that the Bush team went to war "based on a series of lies."
Shelton also said that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon officials pushed for war in Iraq "almost to the point of insubordination."
This is not some voice from the peanut gallery.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is - by law - the highest ranking military officer in the United States armed forces, and the principal military adviser to the President of the United States. The Chairman outranks all respective heads of each service branch, including the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
Thank you, General Shelton, for confirming what Seymour Hersh and many others have been saying since 2003 (and see this).
Great! When do the war crimnes trials begin?
ReplyDeleteThere's too much entertainment competing with sobering news like this, to have any kind of effect on the public. A vote for a mainstream candidate is a vote for corporate power.
ReplyDeleteNot only is the Iraq war based on lies, but the whole concept of the "war on terror is bogus. If we wanted to really squash those responsible for 9/11, we could have done so without dropping a single bomb or putting a single boot on the ground.
ReplyDeleteIt is a simple fact that in 01, Al Qaeda got it's funding from middle eastern oil money. If it was truly our desire to attain victory, the best way to do so would have been to increase all aspects of domestic energy production. That would have resulted in speculators driving energy prices down. This would have resulted in drying up of terror funds, plus a massive American economic boom simultaneously.
The days following 9/11 left us with a briefly unified Federal Government which would have been willing to adopt any strategy offered. This strategy would have bankrupted the Iranian regime in a way UN sanctions never will. Venezuela would also be in a similar situation. Russia would not have the funds to be rebuilding militarily as it is now, and China would be buying energy from us, paying our national debt.
This solution was so simple, yet so obvious. Instead, we showed war weary Iraqis what the 4th of July looks like with "Shock and Awe". Iraq had been in a continuous state of war since 1980. Didn't Bush or Rumdumbsfeld realize that most Iraqis have seen bombs or shelling off and on their entire lives? They thought our billion dollar fireworks display was quite "cute".