Lessons from Iraq remain unlearned 15 yrs after US invasion
Mar 20, 2018 11:29:35 GMT
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Post by Διαμονδ on Mar 20, 2018 11:29:35 GMT
Lessons from Iraq remain unlearned 15yrs after US-led invasion:
Recent actions by the United States in the Middle East suggest it hasn’t learned anything from its monumental debacle 15 years ago by invading Iraq, under a preemptive policy of regime change.
The strategy, led by the neocons in the Pentagon, was to throw out then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, replace him with a government favorable to the US, and then proceed to regime change in Syria, Iran, and Libya, due to their close ties to Hussein.
Given the pro-Israeli neocons running the Pentagon at the time, such as then-Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and his undersecretary of defense, Doug Feith, their strategy had the effect of having the Pentagon become an instrument of carrying out the foreign policy of Israel, which regarded these Middle East countries as a threat to its survival.
Even prior to becoming the deputy secretary of defense, Wolfowitz had designs of taking out Hussein.
He sought to develop a basis for invasion, based initially on Iraq’s support for terrorism and later possession of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
There was a time constraint – the United Nations was about to lift years of sanctions that had been imposed on Iraq following Desert Shield/Desert Storm, actions the US and its allies took to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.
In the spirit of transparency, I was director of Technology Security Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during this period. Despite having WMD inspectors in and out of Iraq for a decade, however, my office at the time, which monitored technology to Iraqi research and development facilities over the years, had determined that there was no evidence of operational WMD left in Iraq.
However, that didn’t stop the Central Intelligence Agency, then led by George Tenet, to publish in October 2002 a National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq indeed had WMD. Then in December 2002, Tenet briefed President George Bush, saying that the evidence was a “slam dunk.”
Continuation here!
Recent actions by the United States in the Middle East suggest it hasn’t learned anything from its monumental debacle 15 years ago by invading Iraq, under a preemptive policy of regime change.
The strategy, led by the neocons in the Pentagon, was to throw out then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, replace him with a government favorable to the US, and then proceed to regime change in Syria, Iran, and Libya, due to their close ties to Hussein.
Given the pro-Israeli neocons running the Pentagon at the time, such as then-Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and his undersecretary of defense, Doug Feith, their strategy had the effect of having the Pentagon become an instrument of carrying out the foreign policy of Israel, which regarded these Middle East countries as a threat to its survival.
Even prior to becoming the deputy secretary of defense, Wolfowitz had designs of taking out Hussein.
He sought to develop a basis for invasion, based initially on Iraq’s support for terrorism and later possession of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
There was a time constraint – the United Nations was about to lift years of sanctions that had been imposed on Iraq following Desert Shield/Desert Storm, actions the US and its allies took to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.
In the spirit of transparency, I was director of Technology Security Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during this period. Despite having WMD inspectors in and out of Iraq for a decade, however, my office at the time, which monitored technology to Iraqi research and development facilities over the years, had determined that there was no evidence of operational WMD left in Iraq.
However, that didn’t stop the Central Intelligence Agency, then led by George Tenet, to publish in October 2002 a National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq indeed had WMD. Then in December 2002, Tenet briefed President George Bush, saying that the evidence was a “slam dunk.”
Continuation here!
