In response to USA Today’s (08/27, 6A) article, “Iraq: Events That Shaped the War,” the following is a timeline which “looks back at the conflict’s history” – without glossing over “key moments”:
2001 (January): Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill: ‘”It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this.’” Memo: “‘Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.’” “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
2001 (February): National Security Letters – “long before the supposed urgent need for those records.”
2001 (February): Powell: “[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.”
2001 (March): “Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.”
2001 (September 12): “Richard Clarke had written that . . . President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and ‘testily’ asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response he wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement and got it signed by all relevant agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying ‘Please update and resubmit.’”
2001 (December): Torture (Opinions as Cover written, after the fact)
Powell: “I’m not aware of anything that we discussed . . . that was not considered LEGAL.”
Tenet: “It was authorized. It was LEGAL, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”
Bush: “We had LEGAL Opinions that Enabled us to do it.”
2002 (January): State of the Union Address: “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.”
2002 (July): Downing Street Memos: “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
2002 (August): Cheney: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
2002 (September): Rice: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
2002 (September): “Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.”
2003 (January): State of the Union Address: 16 words: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” (Niger: Based on forgeries.) (Deflected to “British government” as a means of cover.)
2003 (January): Bush ‘Plotted to Lure Saddam into War with Fake UN Plane.’
2003 (January): Another forgery: “One of the greatest lies in modern American political history.”
2003 (February): U.N. Security Council Presentation by Colin Powell: “We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.” “He remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.” “He is so determined that has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries.” (Even though it was “bullshit,” with sections based on new information as a result of torture.)
2003 (February – March): Katherine Gun (eventually) “faced two years imprisonment in England for the ‘crime’ of telling the truth.” The “U.S. had mounted a spying ‘surge’ against U.N. delegations . . . in an effort to win approval of the Iraq war resolution.”
2003 (February): Saddam complies, again: Hans Blix, chief United Nations weapons inspector: “Iraq’s promised destruction of its Al Samoud 2 missiles is ‘a very significant piece of real disarmament.’”
2003 (March): No WMD. Weapons Inspectors Kicked Out. 48 hours.
2003 (July): The Weapons Inspectors were allowed full access. Every demand was met. Nothing of relative significance was (would, or could be) found. Yet, the entire world would still be constantly barraged with a complete rewriting of History through outright LIES and Orwellian Manipulation: “We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power,” Bush told reporters on July 14, 2003 – and then repeated this LIE, over and over throughout the following years.
Summary (2004): [Karl Rove] said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Posted by SeaClearly 
