America’s Hype over WMD: Five Invasion Plots, Three Continents, Identical Lies

Global Research
Felicity Arbuthnot

 “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare…. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” (Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965, from War Office  minute, 12th May 1919.)

As the sabre rattling against Syria gets ever louder, the allegations ever wilder and double standards, stirring, plotting and terrorist financing (sorry: “aiding the legitimate opposition”) neon lit, it is instructive to look at the justifications presented by US Administrations for a few other murderous incursions in recent history.

This month is the twenty third anniversary of the US invasion of Panama on 20th December 1989, as Panamanians prepared their Christmas celebrations. A quick check reminds the late Philip Agee recalling President George H.W. Bush telling the American people that the threat from Panama (pop: 3,571,185 – 2011) was such that: “our way of life is at stake.” Agee referred to this in his aptly named talk “Producing the Proper Crisis.”(i) Apt then as now. Nothing changes.

The aim of the invasion was to capture the country’s leader General Manuel Noriega and, of course, to: “establish a democratic government.” Regime change.
With the approaching transfer of control of the Panama Canal to Panama (originally scheduled for 1st January  1990) after a century of US colonial stewardship, America wanted to ensure it was in the hands of malleable allies.

Noriega a CIA asset, since 1967 (ii) who had also attended the notorious School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia, came to power with US backing, but seemingly his support for the US was cooling. To encapsulate a long story, the US kidnapped him and sentenced him to forty years in jail.
Plans to invade were called: “Operation Prayer Book.” It was later re-named “Operation Just Cause”, with General Colin Powell commenting that it was a moniker of which he approved as: ”Even our severest critics would have to utter ‘Just Cause’ whilst denouncing us.” (Colin Powell, with Jospeh E. Persico: “My American Journey”, 1995.)

All military marauding should simply be called: “Operation Silly Name 1, then 2,3,4” etc., until the numbers finally run out.
Twenty seven thousand US troops backed by Apache helicopters decimated much of the small country, with a defence force of just three thousand. George Bush Snr., said he was removing an evil dictator who was brutalizing his own people  (sound familiar?) and that the action was needed to:” protect American lives.” It was also to: “defend democracy and human rights in Panama” – and to “protect the Canal.” Surprise, eh?

Manuel Noriega was released from US jail in 2007, extradited to France which had awarded him the country’s highest honour, The Legion d’honneur in 1987. He remained in jail in France until December 2011, when he was returned to Panama, where he is still imprisoned.

In the near forgotten Panama decimation (unless you are Panamanian) the densely populated, poverty stricken neighbourhood of El Chorillo was incinerated by American actions to such an extent that it became named “Little Hiroshima.”

One woman charged that: “The North Americans began burning down El Chorillo at about 6.30 in the morning. They would throw a small device in to a house and it would catch on fire – then they would move to another, they burned from one street to the next, coordinating the burning on walkie-talkies.”
A US soldier was recorded stating: “We ask you to surrender … if you do not, we are prepared to level each and every building.”
“Everything that moved they shot”, said a city resident.

The dead were consigned to mass graves with witnesses stating that US troops used flame throwers on the dead, noting the bodies shriveling as they burned. Others were bulldozed in to piles.(iii)

There was worse. As the current self righteous, if contradictory statements flow from Washington and Whitehall about Syria’s unproven chemical weapons, proven facts relate to America’s.

“From the 1940s to the 1990s the United States used various parts of Panama as a testing ground for chemical weapons, including mustard gas, VX, sarin, hydrogen cyanide and other nerve agents in … mines, rockets and shells; perhaps tens of thousands of chemical munitions.” (William Blum: Rogue State, 2002.)

Further, on departing Panama at the end of 1999 they left: “many sites containing chemical weapons. They had also: “conducted secret tests of Agent Orange in Panama …” In the 1989 invasion, the village of Pacora, near Panama City: “was bombed with (chemicals) by helicopters and aircraft from US Southern Command, with substances that burned skin, caused intense pain and diarrhea.”
Many analysts felt that Panama was the testing ground for Iraq.

Nine months after the poisoning of Panama, on Hiroshima Day 1990, the strangulating US-driven embargo on Iraq was enforced by the UN, after the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie had given the green light for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, after Kuwait’s considerable provocation and financial and geographical destabilization.(iv.)

IRAN LIE same as IRAQ LIE

WhatReallyHappened
Michael Rivero

This video is very nicely done and I am not just saying that because it is my voice. Watch this, like it, and send to everyone you know. This video really hammers home the point that the lies used to sell the war with Iran are just repeats of the lies used to sell the war with Iraq!

Despite Internet Reformation, Citizens Are Lacking in Media Literacy and Civics Education

J.T. Waldron

The greatest threat to the power elite has been the internet reformation and it is justifiably compared to the Gutenberg press, which circumvented the elite religious aristocracy and gave birth to the Renaissance period.  Today's explosion of source material has brought forth a new age of enlightenment among a segment of the population willing to analyze, collect and discern content from all walks of life.  Those who paid attention now find themselves miles apart from those who obtain their news and information from conventional sources of newspapers and television programming.  A new world has developed as establishment propaganda campaigns become thoroughly discredited amongst the crowds that understand 9/11 Truth, Wall Street, Iraq WMD's, the war on terror, Jessica Lynch and the Gulf of Tonkin.

This vortex of information is closing fast, however, as the media monopolies redirect and restrict access to what once seemed like an infinite pool of information.  As peoples' attentions are directed towards screens and devices providing content that is becoming more limited and insular, basic societal attributes like media literacy and civic education seem to have suffered along the way.

Diminished Interest in Current Events

In 1990, the daily newspaper circulation in the United States was more than 60 million. 2006 marked a decline in circulation to 50 million.

The internet reformation is tapped as the primary cause of such a decline in readership, which can be described as the first wave of change in the perceptual landscape, that is, everything available as media for public consumption.  From the early 90's, an initial wave of readers migrated from paper and ink to various television and internet sources.  This trend was attributed to a younger market forgoing the more thorough details found in newspapers in exchange for web browsing and television sound-bites.  This decline also signifies a decline in media literacy as people are less inclined to ask questions about what they watch, hear or read.

Educator and journalist David T.Z. Mindich reports a lapse in consumption habits among younger readers. “When young people are asked about current events, particularly political affairs, they are far less likely to know the facts than their elders are — and further, young people are far less likely to care about their lack of knowledge. This runs alongside a declining interest among young people in the consumption of the various news media, from newspapers to radio to television” .

Technological Barriers

The second trend involves a decline in cable television audiences.  Inflicting a devastating effect on advertising revenues, CBS, Discover, News Corp and Scripps have recently been downgraded by Citibank entertainment from "Buy" to "Neutral".   Consumers are using their cable modems to download and watch movies and programs normally accessed through cable subscriptions.   The reaction to this trend by bandwidth providers is set to have a constricting effect on the perceptual landscape. Monopolies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have begun instituting "data caps" to limit consumers' access to alternate sources of programming.  Once the restrictions are in place, programming provided by the cable provider will not be subject to that cable provider's restrictions, but Netflix, Amazon and Livestream will be subject to the bandwidth restrictions.   The range of information that people can access online will be further reduced by cable company verification systems allowing access to only certain kinds of programming.

Another means of subtly redirecting traffic to fewer options online is through the proliferation of 'I-Shephard' devices like I-phones and Blackberries.  Specific sites and locations are accessed though the convenience of a scanned pattern, which habitually bypasses the need to choose from a list of titles and sources.  These direct links are like blinders on a horse that narrow its vision.  Another attractive feature of these devices for those who wish to control what we learn is that each device becomes the single center of attention for its owner and has the inherent outcome of discouraging people from actually talking to each other.

Missing Skill-Set

The Occupy Movement is probably the single greatest example of a society ready for change but paralyzed by its inability to critically negotiate the various influences designed to render it ineffective.  Comparing the larger more widespread Occupy Movement to Berkeley in the 60's (which is well documented by the documentary film entitled "Berkeley in the 60's") demonstrates how our predecessors understood the need to obtain single objectives consecutively.   Up to the 1960's, three courses in civics and government were provided in U.S. high schools.  Two of the courses explored the role of citizens and encouraged critical debate about current events.  Eventually, this curriculum was whittled down to a single general government class.  Civics education and any discussion of our role as citizens in a free society were eventually dismissed as a skill-set to be acquired outside the educational system. Requirements by state assessments and the Federal 'No Child Left Behind' Act thoroughly gutted the civic mission in schools for increased focus on math and reading.  Over the past 40 years, the establishment has won its battle to corrupt school curriculae by dismantling civics education and discouraging critical discourse.

Today's U.S. citizens lack the fundamental exchanges once found in various community meetings, churches, schools and town halls.  Media literacy and civics education is almost completely absent as the state plows forward with its erosion of civil liberties.   This is also evident in what the public seems to absorb as "alternative" or "dissenting" in the perceptual landscape.  Celebrated cults of personality offering the trojan horse of a few key issues that ring true are blindly followed by people setting aside their own scrutiny for the work of another figurehead.  Crowds of self-proclaimed progressives following Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now", for example, are receiving the full pitch for humanitarian plunder into Syria based on deceptive reports from Washington-based "humanitarian activists".  So many progressives seem willing to support another NATO war crime.  The inability to discern truth from fiction is our society's Achilles heel.

Colin Powell: U.S. was set for war with Iraq before his U.N. speech

Yahoo
Jeff Stacklin

The George W. Bush Administration was set on going to war with Iraq even before Colin Powell made his infamous 2003 weapons of mass destruction pitch to the United Nations, writes the former secretary of state in his new book, "It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership."

It might be Powell's biggest revelation in the book, which details the experiences and lessons learned during his career as a soldier, a four-star general and secretary of state.

Powell writes in one chapter in which he discussed his address to the U.N. that war "was approaching," reports the Huffington Post, which obtained an advanced copy of the book slated for a May 22 release.

"By then, the President did not think war could be avoided," Powell writes. "He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met--and never would meet--to discuss the decision."

Powell refers to the address to the U.N. as a "blot." It was during that address that he appealed to the international body to support the United States because the country--albeit, erroneously--believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, notes a Bloomberg report on the book.

The speech and the facts surrounding the speech serve as a lesson to business leaders on the importance of staying skeptical and following their intuition, Powell writes.

"Yes, a blot, a failure will always be attached to me and my UN presentation," the former U.S. secretary of state writes. ... "I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem. My instincts failed me."

Powell points a finger at Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, the former vice president's chief of staff, as the ones responsible for providing the inaccurate information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, the Huffington Post reports.

In the book, Powell notes the weapons of mass destruction case "was a disaster."

"I learned later that Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, had authored the unusable presentation, not the NSC staff. And several years after that, I learned from Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice that the idea of using Libby had come from the Vice President, who had persuaded the President to have Libby, a lawyer, write the 'case' as a lawyer's brief and not as an intelligence assessment."

Powell, though, takes credit for rejecting continued appeals from Cheney to add "assertions that had been rejected months earlier to links between Iraq and 9/11 and other terrorist acts," according to the Huffington Post report.

Iraq inquiry: Government ‘intentionally and substantially’ exaggerated WMD threat

The Telegraph
Rosa Prince

Tony Blair’s government ‘intentionally and substantially’ exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein ahead of the war in Iraq, a former senior British diplomat has claimed.

Tony Blair's govermnet accused of telling 'lies' about Iraq's WMD potential

Carne Ross, who was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the United Nations, accused the former government of issuing “lies” to the public about the dictator’s capacity to launch weapons of mass destruction.

He said that it was a "disgrace" that ministers failed to exhaust all peaceful options before going to war against Iraq.

"There was no deliberate discussion of available alternatives to military action in advance of the 2003 invasion," Mr Ross added.

"There is no record of that discussion, no official has referred to it, no minister has talked about it, and that seems to me to be a very egregious absence in this history - that at some point a Government before going to war should stop and ask itself, 'are there available alternatives?"'

Giving evidence before the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, Mr Ross said that “nuanced” intelligence about the threat from Iraq was “massaged” into "more robust and terrifying" messages about Saddam’s supposed WMD.

Mr Carne, who served at the UN between 1997 and 2002, claimed that the British and United States governments were fully aware that there was no “substantial threat” from Iraq ahead of the war.

He said: "It remains my view that the internal Government assessment of Iraq's capabilities was intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public Government documents during 2002 and 2003.

"Throughout my posting in New York, it was the UK and US assessment that while there were many unanswered questions about Iraq's WMD stocks and capabilities, we did not believe that these amounted to a substantial threat.

"At no point did we have any firm evidence, from intelligence sources or otherwise, of significant weapons holdings."

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, Mr Carne said, the presentation of the intelligence relating to Iraq changed significantly.

The now notorious claim in the “dodgy dossier” of September 2002, which implied that Saddam had the capacity to launch WMD within 45 minutes, had “no basis in firm intelligence”.

"This process of exaggeration was gradual, and proceeded by accretion and editing from document to document, in a way that allowed those participating to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty,” he said.

"But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies."

Scientist Who Destroyed Iraq’s Chemical Weapons the Last To Be Freed

Empty Wheel

Destruction of Iraqi chemical weapons
commenced in the early 90's.

In a little noticed piece (best as I can tell, only NYPost picked it up in the US), AFP reports that the last Iraqi WMD scientist still held in prison, Mahmud Faraj Bilal Al Samarrai, is set to be released.

“The judicial authorities have decided to free Mahmud Faraj Bilal al Samarrai,” he said.

That’s welcome news for Bilal al Samarrai, I’m sure. But here’s the detail that ought to interest American taxpayers even more:

In a letter to the CIA in 2006, made public by his lawyer, the former head of research and development at the military industries ministry recalled that he had given himself up to the CIA on March 2, 2003.
[snip]
Samarrai said his immediate superior, General Faez Abdullah Shahin, was never jailed and Saddam scientific adviser General Hammudi al Saadi was freed in 2005, as was deputy premier and military industries minister Abdel Tawab Mullah Hawaish.

The AFP provides the evidence of the bombshell there, but doesn’t make it explicit. This guy “gave himself up” to the CIA on March 2, 2003, more that two weeks before the war started.
Which is all the more troubling paired with the Iraq Survey Group report, which makes clear Bilal al Samarrai (whom they refer to as Bilal) is the guy who destroyed undeclared chemical weapons in response to IAEA inspections in 1991.

Following a particularly invasive IAEA inspection in late-June 1991, Saddam ordered Dr. Mahmud Faraj Bilal, former deputy of the CW program, to destroy all hidden CW and BW materials, according to an interview with Bilal after OIF

[snip]

A senior Iraqi scientist who directed the destruction of chemical and biological munitions contends that the decision to destroy the hidden materials was made at the end of June 1991. David Kay’s inspection and the ensuing controversy prompted Iraqi concerns about renewed war with the United States, according to Dr. Mahmud Firaj Bilal. Amir Rashid contacted Dr. Bilal and ordered that all hidden chemical and biological munitions be destroyed within 48 hours. When Bilal responded that this was impossible, Rashid directed that Bilal use the resources of the Iraqi Air Force and the surface-to-surface missile force to accomplish the task. Dr. Bilal gathered his colleagues from Al Muthanna State Establishment, went to the locations of the stored munitions, and began the destruction.

[snip]

ISG interviewed Dr. Mahmud Firaj Bilal, the Iraqi scientist who supervised the destruction of Iraq’s undeclared chemical munitions, along with a number of Iraqi higher officials who were knowledgeable of the weapons destruction. Although other sources have corroborated parts of Dr. Bilal’s account, ISG’s understanding of Iraq’s chemical and biological warfare agent unilateral destruction is heavily dependent on Dr. Bilal’s information, which is a weakness in our analysis. Nevertheless, as with Iraq’s long range missiles, we obtained a reasonably coherent account of the disposition of the CW munitions, though we were not able physically to verify the story. The UN has, however, verified some of it.

• Iraq likely destroyed all 20 concealed CW Al Husayn missile warheads in the summer of 1991, according to Dr. Bilal based on UN-sponsored excavations. All were “binary” GB/GF nerve agent warheads filled with a mixture of isopropanol and cyclohexanol and MPF.

• Al Muthanna had dispersed approximately 1024 CW R-400 bombs along various Iraqi airbases. Iraq did not declare some of these to the UN and unilaterally destroyed them in situ. The UN holds these as accounted for, although they were unaware that a small percentage of them were used on the Shia in March 1991 according to multiple sources. 

• Iraq disposed of 1.5 tons of spoiled bulk VX nerve agent at the Al Muthanna State Establishment dumpsite. 

• Dr. Bilal also stated that Iraq destroyed the following chemical agent precursors:
  
• 157 tons of the VX precursor phosphorus pentasulfide (P2S5) destroyed by mixing it with soil at Saqlawiyah, northwest of Fallujah. UNSCOM-sponsored excavations accounted for about this amount. 

• 55 tons of the VX precursor choline destroyed at Qasr al-‘ashiq near Samarra’.
  
  
• 10 tons of the mustard precursor thiodiglycol destroyed by burning at Saqlawiyah. This precursor was never declared to the UN and had been stored in the city of Samarra’. When the rest of the unilateral destruction took place, no one remembered this stock until a month after the rest of the chemical destruction. This realization triggered its destruction.
  
  
• Al Muthanna State Establishment gave cyclohexanol, isopropanol, and isopropylamine to various industries for use as solvents.
  

• Iraq also destroyed a quantity of empty aerial bombs intended for CW use and empty 122-mm CW rockets.
  
• Bilal insisted that Iraq’s CW “Full, Final, and Complete Declaration” is completely accurate regarding the unilateral destruction of CW munitions.

Meanwhile, at least one of Bilal al Samarrai’s colleagues who got set free years ago told the ISG a different story. Hawaish, for example, told the ISG that Saddam had retained his mustard gas.

In a 7 August 2003 debriefing, [Abd al-Tuwab] Huwaysh said that as of early 2003, all 550 mustard rounds were kept by the SRG at Suwayrah, probably the former location of the II RG Corps Headquarters, just north of the Shaykh-Mazar ammunition depot.

Hawaish got set free while the US still ran Iraq, Bilal al Samarri did not.
So more than 9 years after the fact, we learn that the Iraqi scientist who oversaw the destruction of Saddam’s CW stock in 1991 gave himself up to the CIA more than two weeks before the war began.
And they’ve been hiding that fact for all these years by keeping him holed up in prison long after his colleagues–who provided less troubling news to the Americans–got set free.

Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

The Independent
Jonathan Owen


Defector tells how US officials 'sexed up' his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion 

A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."
The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were presented as "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence" by Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, when making the case for war at the UN Security Council in February 2003.

But Mr Janabi, speaking in a two-part series, Modern Spies, starting tomorrow on BBC2, says none of it was true. When it is put to him "we went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie", he simply replies: "Yes."

US officials "sexed up" Mr Janabi's drawings of mobile biological weapons labs to make them more presentable, admits Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Powell's former chief of staff. "I brought the White House team in to do the graphics," he says, adding how "intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy".

As for his former boss: "I don't see any way on this earth that Secretary Powell doesn't feel almost a rage about Curveball and the way he was used in regards to that intelligence."

Another revelation in the series is the real reason why the FBI swooped on Russian spy Anna Chapman in 2010. Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama's inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI's head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got "closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership... she got close enough to disturb us".

Memo reveals intelligence chief's bid to fuel fears of Iraqi WMDs

Sir John Scarlett was chairman of the joint intelligence committee
before serving as head of MI6 from 2004 to 2009.

Guardian
Chris Ames

Sir John Scarlett wanted dossier to strengthen case for war

The senior intelligence official responsible for Tony Blair's notorious dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction proposed using the document to mislead the public about the significance of Iraq's banned weapons.

Sir John Scarlett, who as head of the Joint Intelligence Committee was placed "in charge" of writing the September 2002 dossier, sent a memo to Blair's foreign affairs adviser referring to "the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional".

The memo, released under the Freedom of Information Act, has been described as one of the most significant documents on the dossier yet published.

The disclosure supports the evidence of the former intelligence official Michael Laurie, who told the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war that it was widely understood that the dossier was intended to make a case for war and misrepresented intelligence to this particular end.

The role of the Joint Intelligence Committee is to present impartial intelligence-based advice to ministers. Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of communications, told Scarlett that the dossier's credibility depended on it being seen to be the work of Scarlett and his team of experts.

But the 2004 Butler review found that the published dossier had presented a more certain case on Iraq's weapons than was set out in the committee's reports. In spite of this, Scarlett went on to be head of MI6.

Scarlett's memo was sent to Sir David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, in March 2002 after an early draft of the dossier had been drawn up covering four countries with "WMD programmes of concern": Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, had commented that the paper "has to show why there is an exceptional threat from Iraq. It does not quite do this yet." In response, Scarlett suggested that the dossier could make more impact if it only covered Iraq. "This would have the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional," he wrote.

73,846 US Soldiers Dead from both Gulf Wars, How they manipulated the numbers to fool you

Federal Jack

Guardsman Gerard Darren Matthew,
sent home from Iraq with mysterious
illnesses, holds baby daughter, Victoria,
who has deformed hand. He has tested positive
for uranium contamination

(ATS)   Iraq War Deaths Exceed Vietnam War Numbers.

Department of Veterans Affairs Reports 73 Thousand U.S. Gulf War Deaths.

More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans.  This probably is news to you.  But the truth has been hidden by a technicality.  So here is the truth.

The casualties in the Vietnam War were pretty simple to understand.  If a soldier was dead from his combat tour, he was a war casualty.  There are 58,195 names recorded on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.

But something odd has happened with the Iraq War.  The government, under the Bush administration, did something dishonest that resulted in a lie that’s persisted since the war began — and continues to this very day.  They decided to report the war deaths in Iraq only if the soldier died with his boots on the ground in a combat situation.

The actual figures have been hidden from the American public just like the returning, flag draped coffins were censored from the press.  But the figures are now available and we can only hope that the American people will be outraged when they learn how they have been misled.

According to The Department of Veterans Affairs, as of May 2007, reports in the Gulf War Veterans Information System reveal these startling numbers:

Total U.S. Military Gulf War Deaths: 73,846

* Deaths amongst Deployed: 17,847

* Deaths amongst Non-Deployed: 55,999

The stastics for non-lethal injuries are likewise staggering:

Total “Undiagnosed Illness” (UDX) claims: 14,874

Total number of disability claims filed: 1,620,906

* Disability Claims amongst Deployed: 407,911

* Disability Claims amongst Non-Deployed: 1,212,995

Percentage of combat troops that filed Disability Claims 36%

I know you probably will think this is another conspiracy theory
full article — www.viewzone.com…

Source: www1.va.gov… Note: Sometimes this link is not active so we have posted the pdf file on viewzone 393 kb.]

More deaths and mysery to follow…

More than 1,820 tons of radioactive nuclear waste (i.e. depleted uranium) were exploded in Iraq alone in the form of armor piercing rounds and bunker busters. This represents the worlds worst man made ecological disaster ever. 64 kg of uranium were used in the Hiroshima bomb. The U.S. Iraq Nuclear Holocaust represents far more than fourteen thousand Hiroshima’s.

The nuclear waste the U.S. has exploded in the Middle East will continue killing for hundreds of years! That’s how long these particles of radioactive dust will continue to blow around, get lodged in someone’s lungs or be ingested. Scientists calculate that there is now enough radioactive material in Iraq to wipe out a third of the world’s current population.

While we never found any WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq, we sure made up for it by importing our own! Birth defects among Iraqi newborns are up a whopping 600% from before the war. The defects are typical of the kind produced by exposure to radioactive poisons. And these injuries are happening to the civilian population of Iraq — the people we were supposedly “liberating.”
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread699497/pg1

Tony Blair 'to be called back' to Iraq war inquiry to answer questions about 'gaps' in his evidence

Mail Online
Tony Blair is to be recalled by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War to answer new questions about 'gaps' in the evidence he gave earlier this year.

The former Prime Minister is likely to be asked to clarify the political build-up to the 2003 American-led invasion.

He is also expected to further explain the legality of Britain's participation in the controversial war.

Sir John Chilcot will write to Mr Blair next month to ask him to attend a public hearing in early 2011, reported The Times.

During his six-hour testimony earlier this year, Mr Blair mounted a vigorous defence of the invasion and insisted he had no regrets over removing Saddam Hussein.

He denied he took the country to war on the basis of a 'lie' over the dictator's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

At the end of his session one member of the audience shouted: 'What, no regrets? Come on' while others heckled 'You are a liar', 'And a murderer'.

Sir John has previously explained that as his team pores through thousands of secret government documents relating to the Iraq invasion, should they find 'conflicts or gaps within the evidence' then they will recall witnesses.

Liam Fox, the current Defence Secretary, asked Sir John to recall Gordon Brown to the inquiry earlier this year after he was forced into an humiliating admission that he had slashed defence spending while British troops were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The then-PM told MPs he had been wrong to tell the inquiry that defence spending under Labour was 'rising in real terms every year'.

In January, an unrepentant Mr Blair was heckled and jeered by families of Britain's war dead as he declared he had 'not a regret' about invading Iraq.

He made it clear he would do the same again and warned world leaders they may soon have to take similar decisions over Iran.

Despite the deaths of up to 700,000 Iraqis and 179 British troops, Mr Blair said he felt 'responsibility but not a regret' at the end of his six hours of evidence. There was no hint of remorse.

Saddam had been a 'monster' and it had been right to remove him even to prevent the 'possibility' that he could acquire weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair said.

He warned that Iran's nuclear weapons programme now poses an even greater threat.