Tell the Truth for a Change, Jeb

Gov. Jeb Bush repeated one of the biggest falsehoods of our time during the recent presidential candidate debate: “we were misled (into the Iraq War)  by faulty intelligence.”

US intelligence was not “misled.”  It was ordered by the real, de facto  president, Dick Cheney, to provide excuses for a war of aggression against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

PM Tony Blair, forced British intelligence services to “sex up”  reports that Iraq had nuclear weapons; he purged the government and the venerable broadcaster BBC of journalists who failed to amplify Blair’s lies.  Bush and Blair reportedly discussed painting a US Air Force

The most original answer came from George W. Bush:  nefarious Iraqi freighters were lurking in the North Atlantic carrying “drones of death” that would attacking sleeping America.   This hallucination was based on a single report  that the bumbling Iraqis were working a  children’s model airplane that, in the end, broke and never flew.  What inspired such a phantasmagoria?  Pot, too much bourbon, LSD, or thundering orders from Dick Cheney to find a damned good excuse for invading Iraq.

For Cheney and his oil pals, conquering Iraq would secure the Arab world’s biggest oil reserves for Uncle Sam and offer a central military base in the region.  For Washington’s bloodthirsty neocons, pulverizing Iraq would remove one of Israel’s most determined enemies, crush the only Arab nation that might challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly, and cost Israel nothing.   Invading Iraq produced the slow disintegration of the Mideast so long sought by militant Zionists.

It all worked brilliantly, at least from Israel’s viewpoint.  Not, however for the US.  Bush’s invasion shattered Iraq, led to al-Qaida and ISIS,  and left Washington saddled with a $1 trillion-dollar bill instead of the $60 million cost estimated by Wolfowitz.   The Mideast is in a tailspin, Palestinians are totally isolated, and Egypt, the region’s key nation, run by an Arab-fascist military dictatorship.

Tyler Drumheller was the only senior CIA officer to stand up and tell Americans they were lied into an unnecessary, illegal war.  Today, we have Iraqi déjà vu  anew as the lie factories and fear mongers work overtime to promote war with Iran.