Learned nothing from Iraq war 15 years ago?

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05.06.2018 | www.kla.tv/12546

Exactly 15 years ago on April 14th, the US minister of defense declared that the Iraq war - also called the “second Iraq war” - was over. The Iraq war was a violation of international law - a mili-tary invasion by the USA, Britain and a “coalition of willing”, beginning on March 20th, 2003. The decisive trigger of the war was a test tube shown to the UN Security Council on February 5th, 2003, by former US Minister for foreign affairs, Colin Powell. This was supposedly the proof that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. It became clear later that this was a lie. In a television interview from September 2005 Powell expressed regret, that he had tried to con-vince the UN Security Council through statements about it being necessary which afterwards turned out to be wrong. Powell stated that this was a “blemish” in his carrier. Marching into Iraq is often described today in the USA as a “mistake”. On the 28th of March, 2018 the Iraqi author Sinan Antoon published a commentary - “How America destroyed my country”. In it he explained that this was not simply a “mistake” but, a crime. The Iraqi author - born in Bagdad - is everything but a defender of the former Head of State, Sad-dam Hussein. As a young student he landed in prison for making a joke about the president. A few months after the Gulf War in 1991 Antoon left Iraq to attend a US university and remained in the USA. In 2002 as the American people was being prepared for the Iraq war, he spoke out decidedly against the planned invasion. The USA had always supported dictators in the Arab world, including Saddam Hussein. Yet suddenly the Bush administration was presenting slogans, as if it were about democracy in the Arabic world. Antoon knew after experiencing two wars - the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988 and the first Iraq war from 1990 - 1991 that ”the real goals of the war are always veiled in sophisticated lies”. Sinan Antoon was one of the 500 Iraqi citizens living abroad, with varied ethnic and poitical back-grounds who signed the petition: “No to war against Iraq. No to dictatorship.” They denounced Saddam’s administration but, were against a war which would in turn turn the whole region into a bloody chaos. Their voices were unwanted in US main-stream media, which was “standing at atten-tion on the side of the war advocates. After the Iraq war ended, Sinan Antoon went back to Iraq several times; first time directly after the war and the last time in April 2017. Amongst other things he wanted to allow the Iraqi people speak for themselves through a documentary film. Antoon describes the consequences of the Iraq war like this: _ “getting rid of” Saddam was just side-effect of a different goal: namely that the State of Iraq should be destroyed and the government replaced by a badly functioning quasi-autonomous one. _ Most of the members of the new government installed by the USA were allies of the USA in the decades beforehand. They plundered the country and turned it into one of the most corrupt in the world. _ Suicide attacks became daily occurrences. The invasion of the country made it an attraction for terrorists. _ Iraq then staggered into a sensationalized “civil-war” costing hundreds of thousands of civilian’s lives and driving into exile hundreds of thousands more _ The conclusion: No one knows exactly how many Iraqis died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago. Serious estimates judge that it must be more than a million people. Try to imagine this number! The invasion of Iraq has often been called “a mistake” in the USA or even a “grave mistake”. It was a crime. Those criminals who carried it out are still walking around freely.” This is Iraqi author Sinan Antoon’s statement. It could not be any clearer. Still just the past few days, exactly 15 years later, history could be repeating itself. After the premature condemna-tion/condemning of Russia in the poisonous gas attack in Britain and especially after the “uncon-firmed chemical weapons attack, on April 7th, in the city of Duma, Syria, all the signs point again to war. Instead of the test-tube from 2003, now extremely dubious and unproved claims - that Assad had used these weapons - have to do the job. German Syria expert Günter Meyer stated that this is “complete nonsense”. It would diametrically oppose all logic, to use chemical weapons here just as the rebels were about to give up. Also Britain’s former ambassador to Syria (2003 - 2006), Peter Ford, expressed harsh criticism of this claim that Syria’s government had used poisonous gas in Duma. “Please switch on your brain!”, he responded to a BBC anchorman and asked the following question: “Why would Assad do such a thing, when the fight for Duma was nearly over? And why would he do exactly that which would cost him the victory?” In light of the fact that - opposing all logic - unfounded threats of war are looming, maybe the question should be put out as to whether certain politicians and media have any independently thinking brain left? In any case, obviously not one has learned anything from the Iraq wars!

from dd.

Sources/Links: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irakkrieg
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell
https://de.qantara.de/inhalt/der-irak-krieg-vor-15-jahren-wie-amerika-mein-land-zerst%C3%B6rte
https://deutsch.rt.com/der-nahe-osten/68227-konflikt-zwischen-nuklearmachten-ist-nicht-kontrollierbar/
https://deutsch.rt.com/international/68234-britischer-botschafter-ad-zu-giftgasvorwurfen/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=347&v=3j_Z1f84Ps8