Declassified CIA Document Reveals Iraq War Had Zero Justification

Another article parading opinion as fact. Why? Of course, to divert our attention of addressing issues by playing the blame game. Sorry, I don't have the time or interest to play...

Walt here is what I posted today on FP.com, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/15/veteran-suicide-here-is-a-name-to-put-with-the-numbers-that-numb-us-so/ Thomas Rick's Blog in response to a Gold Star Father who lost a son in Iraq and he answered a Marine vet (and Suicidal Ideation or attempt survivor) who was writing about GWOT Vets who commit suicide, and who rhetorically asked "And I’m left wondering, “When did we become a nation comfortable with the fact that more veterans die by suicide than by combat?” and this Gold Star Father said: To answer your last question, I'm afraid it was the day that Dubbya told the nation to go shopping. In essence, "move along, nothing to see here."

I wrote in response to the father's post that Dubya told us to shopping: Sir, those words echoed around my heart and my head, and I felt gut punched when I heard them. So no war bond drives, no belt tightening or rationing or even higher taxes to pay for this new War? It seemed clear to me why . . . because George Bush wanted Americans to just forget that a war was going on in Iraq that was going to be sending our young men and women home back to us in those flag draped coffins and in horribly scarred and burned condition, many being multiple amputees having somehow survived those horrendous IED attacks that in previous wars would have ended their lives. Many others would come back suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury, the signature battle injury from the Iraq War. And even more coming back from the war with "moral injury" and PTSD and carrying those invisible wounds that haunt men for the rest of their lives.

The fact that neither GWB (who by many accounts joined the Texas Air National Guard to avoid the possibility of the draft and service in Vietnam, and then failed to attend drill and meet other requirements of his Texas Air Guard Service, which for normal officers would have meant being sent to a Board of Inquiry and likely dismissal, and an Under Other Than Honorable Discharge), nor Dick Cheney who received five deferments to avoid Vietnam Era Drafted Service, nor Rumsfeld, though he was a Naval Aviator reservist during the Vietnam War, ever served in the Vietnam War like their political contemporaries such as Senator Jim Webb (who famously snubbed GWB when GWB asked how is Marine Son was dong in Iraq), or John McCain who spent years in Hanoi Hilton after being shot down over Vietnam,or Senator John Kerry who served as a decorated Swift Boat Captain in Vietnam, made their decision to take the country to War in Iraq all the harder for me to accept.

This moral midget of a man dared to send people like your son to fight in an ill conceived war, fought for invalid reasons, and with the occupation of Iraq so poorly planed or resourced with sufficient troops, smirking that stupid smirk of his, with that photo op stunt of his landing on that Aircraft Carrier, like he was some kind of brave warrior, with that Banner hanging in the background, "Mission Accomplished" when we know now the Iraq War was like the proverbial iceberg, most of it had yet to be fought, 2/3 submerged in the war to come from 2004 until Obama got us the hell out of there in 2010.


There is a Veteran friend of mine out here in Santa Clarita, California, who served as a Force Recon Marine FORECON ( (those are some of the most elite infantry Marines we have and there are only three active duty companies of these Force Recon Marines, they are kind of viewed as the pinnacle of the elite Marine Forces), and he lost his younger brother in Iraq, an Army OH-58 Kiowa Pilot. HE HATES GWB to this day with a white hot passion, I cannot even talk to him in a normal conversation about the Iraq War or GW without causing him great distress. He PERSONALLY holds GWB responsible for the death of his brother because of the Iraq War. So we never discuss the Iraq war. It is a "trigger" for his PTSD that he suffers from due to his combat experiences as an Elite Force Reconnaissance Marine.

When in 12/08/2004 I read about SecDef Rumsfeld telling the men in the field in Kuwait who were complaining about going through trash dumps to find scrap metal to weld onto their trucks and Humvees, and begging for up armored vehicles and Armored Humvees that could protect them against the IEDs and other attacks they were experiencing in Iraq, and his utterly contemptuous and coldly bureaucratic answer was "you go to war, with what you have" that I knew the War in Iraq was going to get a lot worse before it got better, and that this war was going to be even more disastrous then I and the many Americans who protested the war before it began could have ever imagined. It also revealed for me how truly out of touch the Bush Administration was with how bad things had gotten in Iraq for the troops on the ground. Either they were in denial or they were purposefully being ignorant about how dire the state of affairs and the growing Sunni insurgency in Iraq had become:

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson: Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles? And why don;t we have those resources readily available to us?

Rumsfeld: It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, ah, you go to war with the army you have---not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.---You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up...

This is comical. It has been less than 15 years since OIF and people are gullible enough to believe that highly classified information is being released. Documents from WWII and the Korean War are gradually being released while many secrets from Vietnam are still not releasable.
[Edit to clarify] I believe that former POTUS GW Bush is a very honorable man. When he made the statement about no WMDs, he was letting the world no that the buck stopped at his desk and he was assuming responsibility for all that he and his administration had stated and the actions taken by our forces in prosecuting the war.
I understand that the focus of the questions to POTUS GW Bush about WMDs were focused along the lines of nuclear weapons, dirty bombs, etc. Nuclear weapons were the boogie man since the world had seen more than enough chemical weapon use. The fact that since the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam had been experimenting with various chemical agents on people groups within the Balfour declaration line borders of Iraq that were not his people was known. [End of Edit]
As far as weapons of mass destruction the extended families of the Kurds who were exposed to nerve gas in the north and the Shia who were exposed to chemical agents in the Pripet marsh region know better than to believe that Saddam and his regime did not have a weapons of mass destruction program.
While the Nigerian yellow-cake that was recovered was not going to be readily modified into weapons grade nuclear material, nuclear weapons are not the only weapons of mass destruction as those exposed to chemical agents, that survived, since WWI can attest to.