Tag: iraq

Tony Blair and The Iraq War: Digging Deeper into the Death of David Kelly

In little more than two weeks, we mark the 20th anniversary of the Welsh scientist and authority on biowarfare, Dr David Kelly. [1]

Listeners to this station will remember a discussion about the man in March 2023, the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Our past guest, Dr David Halpin outlined some of the reasons he, Dr Stephen Frost, and a list of determined skeptics doubted the official story of his passage due to suicide and were mobilizing in support of not just public hearings, but a public inquest to get to the bottom of his death, which they suspected was a murder which benefited the government of the UK, and Prime Minister Tony Blair in particular. [2]

The oft repeated assertion among many such skeptics, including Liberal-Democrat MP Norman Baker, was the claim that weapons of mass destruction was a key to a motive behind his elimination. Iraq supposedly still had WMDs. They could be launched at the insistence of Big Bad Saddam to cause tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people in some innocent country – maybe even America! But David Kelly, acclaimed and high profile weapons instructor that he was, publicly challenged this claim. Hence, ripping away the fundamental reason for going to war with Iraq.

However, there may be another motive that could potentially lead to an even darker agenda. Dr. Kelly was the head of biological defence at the Government’s secretive military research establishment  in Wiltshire, England. He was the brain behind much of the West’s germ warfare programmes. . [3]

If Dr. Kelly was knowledgeable of anything untoward, and was willing to blab to the public, might that also be a reason for doing him in? After all, soon after the suspicious releases of anthrax letters post 9/11, followed an astonishing level of deaths of top scientists in the field of microbiology. Was Kelly a target? Or unfinished business? [4]

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The CLASSIFIED ‘Mosul Orb’ UAP Case: A New Chapter in Government Secrecy Tactics Unfolds

The Pentagon has maintained its silence on the leaked image of the so-called “Mosul Orb” depicting an alleged Unidentified Aerial [Anomalous] Phenomena or UAP seen over an active conflict zone in Iraq back in 2016. The case has been left unaddressed and unconfirmed by the Department of Defense (DoD) since the image and case details first appeared online in January 2023, despite the significant public interest UAP have generated, and the fact that the Pentagon has previously offered commentary on past leaks related to the same. The Pentagon would only say that, “We’re not going to comment on remarks by unnamed sources alleging leaks from a classified report,” in a statement received about the “Mosul Orb” by The Black Vault in January.

The “Mosul Orb”, obtained and released by investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, shows what has been alleged as a UAP, captured by an MC-12, medium-to-low altitude, twin-engine turboprop aircraft over Mosul, Iraq, on April 16, 2016.

However, a new response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The Black Vault (23-F-0389), may indicate the classified and sensitive nature of the “Mosul Orb” case, which sheds light on why the Pentagon refused to comment. The DoD states in a FOIA denial letter received today by The Black Vault, that information relating to the case is “classified,” and it also relates to an ongoing “law enforcement investigation.”

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The Iraq War Is (And Will Always Be) Undefendable

This spring marks the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. After an initial frenzy of war fever in the early years of the war, support for the war has since largely evaporated. Nearly two thirds of veterans now say the war was “not worth fighting.” Two thirds of American adults say the same thing. Even among Republican veterans, only a minority say the war was worth it.

These numbers are not surprising. The U.S. obviously failed to achieve its stated objectives in Iraq, and the reasons given to justify the initial invasion were either exaggerations or outright lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was never any threat to Americans. Years after the initial invasion, the U.S. regime still couldn’t keep the lights in in Iraq, suicide bombings became an epidemic, and the war paved the way for the spread of the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

In fact, the war has been such an obvious failure that its supporters are now routinely on the defensive. We’ve come a long way from the days when war supporters were denouncing all dissenters as traitors or Saddam-lovers, or as being “with the terrorists.” Today, many of the war’s supporters studiously avoid mentioning the war at all. But many others have been forced to express “regrets” or even offer half-hearted apologies.

This is all certainly insufficient. A “sufficient” response would be a Church-committee-like Congressional investigation of the war and its supporters. This would be followed by legal authorization of lawsuits against the personal property and estates of government officials who prosecuted the war. This would be followed by a tidal wave of lawsuits by maimed soldiers and the families of Americans killed in the war. Foreigners would be able to sue in federal court, as well. George W. Bush and Paul Bremer should be facing financial ruin as should the heirs of Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell.

The odds of all that happening are about zero, unfortunately. The more attainable goal at hand, however, is to fight to ensure that the Iraq War and its supporters are never rehabilitated by historians, and the war does not go down in history as some sort of “noble but misguided” conflict. Nor should it be forgotten.

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Orb-Shaped UFOs Seen Over Iraq In Stunning Video Released By Pentagon

The US Pentagon has released video of an orb-shaped UFO flying over Iraq. All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office director Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick explains at a hearing of the Senate subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on April 19, 2023.

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They’re Rebooting “Axis Of Evil” On The 20th Anniversary Of The Iraq Invasion

The western political/media class has suddenly resurrected the phrase “Axis of Evil” in recent days to refer to the increasing intimacy between Russia and China, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Famed Iraq War cheerleader Sean Hannity appears to have kicked things off last week, saying on his show that “a new Axis of evil is emerging” between China, Russia and Iran, a slogan that has since been echoed numerous times this week.

On Tuesday former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Fox News that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are “two dictators that have said they are unlimited partners,” asserting that “This is the new Axis of Evil, with Iran being their junior partner.”

Also on Tuesday Representative Mike Lawler tweeted, “Xi’s meeting with Putin in Moscow is deeply concerning and highlights the growing threats posed by this new axis of evil,” and on Thursday he tweeted, “We are dealing with a new axis of evil and failure to stop Putin in Ukraine will have far-reaching implications as Russia pushes further into Eastern Europe and China moves against Taiwan.”

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The Urbanity Of Evil: 20 Years After The US Invasion Of Iraq

Vast quantities of lies from top U.S. government officials led up to the Iraq invasion. Now, marking its 20th anniversary, the same media outlets that eagerly boosted those lies are offering retrospectives. Don’t expect them to shed light on the most difficult truths, including their own complicity in pushing for war.

What propelled the United States to start the war on Iraq in March 2003 were dynamics of media and politics that are still very much with us today. Soon after 9/11, one of the rhetorical whips brandished by President George W. Bush was an unequivocal assertion while speaking to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Thrown down, that gauntlet received adulation and scant criticism in the United States. Mainstream media and members of Congress were almost all enthralled with a Manichean worldview that has evolved and persisted.

Our current era is filled with echoes of such oratory from the current president. A few months before fist-bumping Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman—who’s been in charge of a tyrannical regime making war on Yemen, causing several hundred thousand deaths since 2015 with U.S. government help—Joe Biden mounted a pulpit of supreme virtue during his 2022 State of the Union address.

Biden proclaimed “an unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” And he added that “in the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are rising to the moment.” Of course, there was no mention of his support for Saudi autocracy and war.

In that State of the Union speech, Biden devoted much emphasis to condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine, as he has many times since. Biden’s presidential hypocrisies do not in any way justify the horrors that Russian forces are inflicting in Ukraine. Nor does that war justify the deadly hypocrisies that pervade U.S. foreign policy.

This week, don’t hold your breath for media retrospectives about the Iraq invasion to include basic facts about the key roles of Biden and the man who is now secretary of state, Antony Blinken. When they each denounce Russia while solemnly insisting that it is absolutely unacceptable for one country to invade another, the Orwellian efforts are brazen and shameless.

Last month, speaking to the UN Security Council, Blinken invoked “the principles and rules that make all countries safer and more secure”—such as “no seizing land by force” and “no wars of aggression.” But Biden and Blinken were crucial accessories to the massive war of aggression that was the invasion of Iraq. On the very rare occasions when Biden has been put on the spot for how he helped make the invasion politically possible, his response has been to dissemble and tell outright lies.

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Bush-Era Neocons Should Shut The Fuck Up About Iraq (And Everything Else)

David Frum and Max Boot, two neoconservatives who helped grease the wheels for the invasion of Iraq, have some thoughts they’d like to share with us as we approach the 20th anniversary of that horrific and unforgivable war. Both of these perspectives can be read in widely esteemed mainstream publications, because everyone who was responsible for inflicting that war upon our species has enjoyed mainstream influence and esteem to this very day.

Both men concede in their own ways that the war was a mistake, while simultaneously cheerleading the US proxy war in Ukraine that has brought humanity closer to nuclear armageddon than it has been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both men mix their Iraq War retrospectives with war apologia, historical revisionism, and outright lies. And both men should shut the fuck up. About everything. Forever.

Frum’s article is posted in The Atlantic, where he is a senior editor, and it is titled “The Iraq War Reconsidered“. Frum is credited with authoring George W Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil” speech, which marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of US military expansionism and “humanitarian interventions” in geostrategically valuable nations after 9/11.

In just the second sentence of his article Frum opens with an absolute scorcher of a lie, saying “an arsenal of chemical-warfare shells and warheads” were discovered in Iraq to suggest that the weapons of mass destruction narrative had been proven at least somewhat true. As The Intercept’s Jon Schwartz explained back in 2015, the only chemical weapons in Iraq were either (A) munitions sealed in bunkers at an Iraqi weapons complex by UN inspectors in the nineties and left there because they were too dangerous to move, and (B) some old munitions that had been lost and forgotten after the Iran-Iraq War. In neither of these cases is it true that Saddam Hussein was hiding any weapons of mass destruction.

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Pentagon says U.S. will keep military presence in Iraq, 20 years after invasion

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the U.S. will maintain a military presence in Iraq, 20 years after the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew President Saddam Hussein.

Austin made the announcement during an unannounced trip to Iraq on Tuesday – two weeks shy of the 20-year anniversary of the invasion.

He said after a meeting with Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani that U.S. forces would remain in the country “at the invitation of the government of Iraq,” Austin according to Reuters.

“The United States will continue to strengthen and broaden our partnership in support of Iraqi security, stability and sovereignty,” he said also said.

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‘Ain’t Your Grandma’s Rocket’: ‘UFO Footage’ Filmed by US Drone Over Iraq Emerges Online

The “UFO” in question was apparently filmed by a US military drone operating in Iraqi skies, with the footage recorded in May 2022.

As public interest in UFOs dies down after it became apparent that there was nothing extraterrestrial about the flying objects the US military downed in American and Canadian airspace last month, a batch of images supposedly depicting a UFO in Iraq has emerged.

The images appear to be stills from a video recorded by a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in the vicinity of Baghdad in May 2022.

These images feature some sort of flying object that has no visible wings or fins, with a source in the US Air Force reportedly saying that the object also had no visible propulsion and appeared to be “under intelligent control.”

Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who disclosed this visual information on his and investigative journalist George Knapp’s podcast, said the object seen in the video definitely “isn’t your grandma’s rocket.”

“It shows an anomalous object which has been designated as UAP by our own air force,” he told one UK newspaper, with the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) being how UFOs are often officially referred to nowadays.

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The Pat Tillman Story Was Hijacked During the Super Bowl

Advocates of peace, truth, and basic human decency on Sunday excoriated the National Football League’s “whitewashing” of former Arizona Cardinal and Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan by so-called “friendly fire” and the military’s subsequent cover-up – critical details omitted from a glowingly patriotic Super Bowl salute.

As a group of four Pat Tillman Foundation scholars chosen as honorary coin-toss captains at Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona were introduced via a video segment narrated by actor Kevin Costner, viewers were told how Tillman “gave up his NFL career to join the Army Rangers and ultimately lost his life in the line of duty.”

The video did not say how Tillman died, what he thought about the Iraq war, or how the military lied to his family and the nation about his death. This outraged many viewers.

“Obviously the army killing Pat Tillman and covering it up afterwards is the worst thing the U.S. military did to him, but the years they’ve spent rolling out his portrait backed by some inspirational music as a recruiting tool is a surprisingly close second,” tweeted progressive writer Jay Willis.

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