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We all know that leaders lie us into war. Here are a few examples:
In 1899 the Maine was sunk by the Spanish in a harbour in Cuba?
That was a lie that led to the bloody Spanish-American war and the
occupation of the strategic islands of the Philippines.
Japan�s attack on Pearl Harbour was a total surprise? That was a lie.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html
North Vietnam had fired upon a US warship in the Gulf of Tonkin?
That was a lie that led to the deaths of millions of people.
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html
US troops had no combat role in Central America in the 1980s?
That was a lie.
http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/war/doc/w_doc05.html
Iraqi soldiers were tossing babies out of incubators? That was a lie.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html
Iraqi troops in 1991 were massing on the Saudi border? That was a lie.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.htm
Saddam's attack on Kuwait was a total surprise? That was a lie.
http://csmweb2.emcweb.com/durable/1999/05/27/f-p23s3.shtml
100,000 people in mass graves in Kosovo? That was a lie used to justify
the NATO bombing of Belgrade for 78 days and nights.
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2000/tst031300.htm
Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction? Yet another lie in a long list of lies.
Truly it has been said, "In war, truth is the first casualty."
But there have always been brave souls on the inside whose conciences couldn't
support the intolerable weight of having to lie and the terrible consequences
of those lies - the piles of corpses, the physical and mental suffering of
civilians and soldiers, the long-term health effects of the chemically
and radioactively toxic weapons used, the destruction of property, the
profiteering of the war-racketeers.
Daniel Ellsberg is a good example of an "insider coming out".
During the Vietnam war he held a senior position at Rand, a premier U.S.
"think-tank". As such, Ellsberg was privy to a top-secret study of America's
Cold War involvement in Southeast Asia, which he knew revealed rampant
"miscalculation, bureaucratic arrogance and deception" by U.S. policy makers.
In 1971 he released this 7,000 page document which became know as the "Pentagon Papers"
(note: all five volumes are available in the Curtin University library).
Ellsberg's main regret is that he did not release this pivotal paper in 1965,
which could have saved years of bombing and hundreds of thousands of lives.
During the recent Iraq war there have been many "insiders coming out", revealing
truths and half-truths that they have learned in their positions in the
"belly of the beast".
Below is a brief list of some of these dissenting voices.
Richard Clarke - counter-terrorism czar under Bush I, Clinton & Bush II.
Has revealed that the Bush administration was more concerned with invading Iraq
and toppling Saddam Hussein than it was in preventing terrorism. This is since
early 2001, before September 11.
Andrew Wilkie - former analyst with Australian Office of National Assessments (ONA)
Said much of the "intelligence" about Iraq's weapons capabilities was "garbage grade",
and the war on Iraq was totally unjustified. He resigned in protest just before the war.
Andrew Wilkie (Greens) is competing for the seat of Bennelong (John Howard's seat)
in the upcoming federal elections.
The Australian Senate
On October 7 2003, in a rare move, censured Howard for misleading the public in
justifying sending Australian troops off to war, and for not revealing that he
had intelligence reports warning joining the war in Iraq would raise Australia's
profile as a target for terrorism.
Jane Errey - formerly in Australian Defense, Democrats (??)
Said government wanted her to write a faulty intelligence report about Iraq's WMD
in order to justify war.
Scott Ritter - former senior UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq
Said White House claims about Iraq's WMD programs and "imminent threat" to the
security of the U.S. was a lie.
Hans Blix - former UNSCOM chief weapons inspector
Said his team needed more time to determine Iraq's weapons capabilities. Didn't
feel war was justified in the circumstances.
Clare Short - former UK Development Secretary
Claimed there was never intelligence proving Iraq to be an immediate threat to the
U.S. or the U.K., but Blair had promised Bush he would meet his timetable for war.
Robin Cook - former UK Foreign Secretary and recently the leader of the House of Commons
Claims the British government went to war for reasons of US foreign policy and
Republican Party politics. WMD was just a cover.
David Kelly - Murdered (?) British weapons of mass destruction expert.
Died in suspicious circumstances during the "Dodgy Dossier" affair and amidst
allegations of having said Blair "sexed up" claims about the threat Iraq posed.
Joseph Wilson - former US ambassador
Revealed that Bush's claims of Iraq trying to obtain uranium from Niger were
based on crude forgeries that were known to be forgeries.
Valerie Plame - CIA officer and Joseph Wilson's wife
Criminally exposed by the Bush administration as a CIA officer in retribution for
her husband's revelations about the forged Niger uranium documents.
Katherine Gunn - Whistleblower about bugging at the United Nations
Revealed that the delegations at the UN headquarters in New York were targets of
illegal bugging and increased surveillance, especially in the lead-up to the war on Iraq.
Many diplomats at the UN assume they are being bugged as a matter of course.
Ray McGovern - former CIA analyst
Said the shoddy U.S. intelligence used to "justify" the war on Iraq was "95% charade".
Lt. John Oliveira - former top US Navy public affairs/media officer
Until recently he regularly defended the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but now
he is publicly criticizing the invasion he was once paid to defend.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/26/1551246
Catherine Austin Fitts - Former Assistant Secretary of Housing
Says that U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is a liar and guilty of
gross criminal negligence re. September 11.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/040904_fitts_letter.html
Major Doug Rokke - former DU Team health physicist and U.S. Army DU Project Director
Has revealed the dangers of Depleted Uranium, a chemically and radioactively toxic
heavy metal which will kill for generations, hundreds of tonnes of which have been
spread over Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.
Cynthia McKinney - former Georgia Congresswoman
Has seriously questioned the official government story about September 11 and claims
that democracy in America is under serious attack.
Dennis Halliday & Hans van Sponeck - former U.N. Food for Oil Co-ordinators in Iraq
Say that the U.S. policies of embargo on Iraq contributed to the deaths of
500,000 Iraqi children and were both illegal and immoral.
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/ - People vs Total War Tribunal
Even "pro-war" insiders still loyal to the Bush/Blair regimes have said some pretty
revealing things. Here are some examples.
Paul Wolfowitz - a leading pro-war U.S. neo-conservative civilian
Told Vanity Fair magazine, 'For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue,
weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on'.
G.W. Bush - U.S. pResident by virtue of stealing the election in Florida
Has publicly admitted there is no evidence that there were links between
Saddam Hussein and September 11 or Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
Colin Powell & Condoleeza Rice - video footage taken in 2001 shows them talking candidly
about the non-existence of WMDs in Iraq and the success of containment policies.