It was October 2002, and living in my highrise apartment at the edge of Lake Ontario, with my new job and Congress had just told Bush Jr to have at’r, bomb Baghdad back to the Stone Age. Based on lies and quasi-intelligence from questionable sources, and I remember watching Bushy selling his wares to the politicos in Washington, sitting in my sisters living room, yelling at the TV.
My brother-in-law was horrified, as I to him was denigrating the truth coming from the lips of the American President, and how dare I, being an American myself.
Well, being a well-informed American, I had been out hunting the truth of it in the wires.
Most journo’s outside the American spin cycle were telling a different story, knew Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, al-Qaeda was not in his wheel house, and that he was not building weapons of mass destruction, and everything ol’Bush junior was spouting was pure bull, unadulterated crap.
All that is now on record, investigations complete, reports made and filed, and generally over the intervening years forgotten of in the turning of the politico world.
To be fair, only diehards like myself, the ones who stuck to the news like glue, hunting the truth out in the far corners, sniffing the lies out, reading the words of those in the know, from sources outside North American shores, investigative journalists on the scent, and it was all there for anyone to find for themselves.
What I could never quite wrap my head around, and probably the most important lesson I learned from that time, is how gullible all the goons inside the beltway really are. How they rarely poke their lobbied to death heads outside themselves to sniff the fresh air of sources outside their bubbles of bullshhh… you know?
What I could find within the course of just a couple of hours of digging, was outside their grasp? No. Because they were too lazy to be bothered. What was outside their grasp was basic research, if they really wanted to know the truth it was all there for them to read, if they had but just looked.
And, here we are again. Not so unusual for power hungry politicos to start wars for their own gain, but, I thought this one was, and I quote, a dove.
Everyone seems to believe this is purely about changing the channel on all the crap hitting the fan at the moment. What with Impeachment, and more possible factoids concerning Trumps entanglement with Russian back loans and Deutsche Bank, of docs detailing his withholding funds to Ukraine, and BOOM, assassinates an Iranian General and everyone’s blown off course.
Bushy junior was no different, invasion of Iraq begins March 2003, elected for a 2nd term November 2004.
Now, I always figured, as did others at the time, that he was trying to finish what his Daddy started, and that he thought his father was wrong to have let Saddam stay in power.
Now, regardless of what Saddam did, cruel he may have been, a dictator certainly, but until there was someone to replace him, until there was some plan in place to keep the country on track, intact really, the Americans and their coalition (of which Canada refused to take part), they really had no business there. Saddam had his heavy and cruel boot on an ant hill that basically exploded all over the Middle East once he was removed.
That’s what happens when you ignore the truth and do what you want for your own political gain.
Today the Middle East is no better off, no more peaceful with Saddam gone, and in fact that act just gave birth to something worse.
Wilful blindness I call it.
Thing is though, if ol’rumpTus thinks this is going to get him a slamdunk, well, I think he is going to be disappointed. Personally, I think he was duped into this by, em, someone who has more to gain, or just as much.
Certainly Russia is allied with Iran, and has condemned the killing, however…
An escalation could also present Russian President Vladimir Putin with a golden opportunity to demonstrate global leadership by working toward a resolution, they said.
“Putin would love to seize the role of a mediator to reduce tension but also to strengthen his image in the West,” said Jonathan Katz, a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund in Washington.
General Qasem Soleimani, the powerful head of Iran’s elite Quds Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was killed in a U.S. air strike in neighboring Iraq on January 3 days after pro-Iranian militants attacked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
rferl.org
I mean, from all that research I did back in the day, the one stark fact that rules them all, is that nothing that transpires in the Middle East is black and white, nothing. Tribal mindsets and complex centuries old grievances rule, and few in the West really understand that region. Plus, everything about the place is fodder for the propaganda spin cycle as so few in the West really ever visit, outside of Israel.
That said, from most accounts I’ve seen, not many outside Iran are upset this guy is dead – he was the architect of a lot of death and destruction.
Yet, killing him is not going to make the region safer, and in fact it could make it far worse. Now we wait to see how Iran responds.
So, then I read this morning from Reuters Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif over the phone on Friday, offering his condolences, pointing out how it violates international law, which is rather amusing coming from Russia.
As if Russia gives a rats bum about international law, Putin would break international law for breakfast every morning if he could, just to show how badass he is.
And Trump just purrs back… “yes my overlord, it is delicious “.
The only question now is how long Putin’s going to keep ol’rumpTus around, as this little favour may just end up a double-edged sword.
I mean, how many babies of his base coming home in body bags will it take?
But, Trump and his cronies I’m sure will be fine.
by PaulaB 