For decades, the US and its Western allies have been violently and frequently meddling in the Middle East. Beginning with the clandestine overthrow of democratically elected leaders, moving on to financing violent extremist groups, and morphing into full blown invasions of entire countries, the Middle East has been the target of destruction since at least 1953.
On March 20, 2003 the United States launched one of its most brutal and murderous assaults in history as American military forces invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. America was not asked to be there, no one from Iraq attacked the US, and the entire invasion and subsequent slaughter was based entirely on lies.
As we reported years ago, a bombshell in the form of a leaked classified report—a “smoking gun” if you will—confirmed the utter deception carried out on the American people to support the invasion.
Turns out there were never any weapons of mass destruction and the tens of thousands of slaughtered civilians — turned into a fine red mist by US missiles — were murdered over the lies of a few individuals that were echoed by all mainstream media ad nauseum.
In May 2004, one year after the U.S. commenced a full-scale invasion of Iraq, the New York Times issued a half-baked apology for its abysmal coverage of the “intelligence” used to convince America that Iraq was a threat.
“Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge,” wrote the NYT editors. They also lamented their dependence on Iraqi defectors who made spurious claims to further the goal of regime change, like claiming Saddam Hussein was murdering babies.
By the time enough Americans realized they’d been duped—with the help of mainstream media from The New York Times to Fox News—it was too late. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other neocons hailing from the notorious Project for the New American Century (PNAC) had their agenda of military hegemony well underway, which is still going strong today.
Their propaganda campaign was so effective that at one point during the Iraq invasion, 70 percent of Americans believed it was Iraq who attacked us on 9/11. Seriously.
In just the first couple of months of the war, thousands of innocent civilians died at the hands of the military-industrial complex. Yet the mainstream media was parading the war on television as a great act of American heroism, necessary for maintaining the free world. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
As America patted itself on the back, the rest of the world saw the invasion for what it was, a brutal occupying force illegally invading another country while committing rampant war crimes.
Now, 19 years after that blood-soaked campaign began, the US is accusing Russia of war crimes as if this country’s past has been forgotten. Make no mistake, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is brutal, illegal, and wrong and many of the acts committed in Russia’s name should certainly be considered and investigated as war crimes.
But what Russia is doing in Ukraine pales in comparison to what the US did in Iraq, meaning that the US establishment — especially those who played a key role in the invasion of Iraq — have no business accusing any country of any war crimes without first looking in the mirror.
Full article: If we call Russia’s invasion a war crime, what do we call what the U.S. is doing to Iraq & Afghanistan?