Wars Start With Made-up Reasons

“Remember the Maine.”  A ship’s powder blows up and we go to war.  Those that said there were no horrible weapons in Iraq included ALL the head inspectors.  All the horrible connections claimed between Iraq and terrorism were refuted shortly after each one was made.  Meetings in Germany, aluminum tubes – geez.  Uranium from Africa.  Even the infamous Zarquawi was in the CIA controlled area of Iraq before the war started - geez.

What’s the real motive?  Our government took us to war, not for our safety, but for the oil.  Not oil for us, but for their own profiteering.  How much of the Iraqi oil has not had any accounting?  How much reconstruction money went to friends of the White House?  How many one-room schools were rebuilt for millions of dollars?  We got counts of how many schools were worked on, but not on how many kids were in school.  How many billions have been skimmed from the Iraq War money and from the Iraq oil money?

In 2001 we imported about $60,000,000,000 worth of oil.  That’s total from all countries around the world.  We are spending much more that that each year in this war.  Hence, we doubled our “spending on oil”.

The strong pick on the weak because they can?  In most circumstances lying about crimes make the crimes worse.  If one gets in an accident where another party is injured, leaving the scene is a hit-and-run, much worse than the accident itself.  Our military in Iraq did not start tracking the Iraqi injuries until 2 years into the conflict.  “How many Iraqis have been killed?”  When our president answered that (only one time did he answer that), the administration worked hard to say that it was not an official count.

The worst offense has been the sanctions after the first gulf war.  These included the denial of Iraq the chlorine to chlorinate their water.  The greatest achievement in the 20^th century was the development of clean water systems.  The destruction of the Iraqi system caused, each month, about 20,000 Iraqi youth and infants to die from normally prevented diseases. That’s murder comparable to the holocaust.

Peace Requires Justice, Not Revenge

Those that participate in massacres can be put on trial.  There have been attempts at this.

Henry Kissinger, for example, will not go to France because the courts, there, will question him on his role in the then secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.  Oh, yeah.  Remember the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” that became the excuse to get us extra involved in that war?  Do you think anyone is still claiming that to be an incident to start a war for self-defense reasons?  The famous Pentagon Papers showed that our role in Vietnam was actually continuous since WWII.  For example, we paid France to keep their troops there.

Pinochet was extradited to Chile and is now on trial.

The current Israeli invasion of Lebanon:

Only Israel had the ability to escalate the current conflict there.  What is the cost to the civilians of Lebanon to have all their bridges destroyed?  Yes, ALL their bridges.  Two days of bombing and ALL the bridges are gone.  Imagine some country having the ability and audacity to destroy all OUR bridges.  Geez.  Only the U.S. makes it possible for Israel to do that.

Who thinks that Israel hasn’t gone into Lebanon secretly during the past years and acted in ways that would provoke a retaliation of some kind?  The strategy from Israel is to simply provoke an excuse to make their neighbor extra weak.

By the way, isn’t there actually an official dispute on the true border between Israel and Lebanon?