Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq

Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq

At A congressional hearing examining the march to war in Iraq, Republican congressman Walter Jones posed "a very simple question" about the administration's manipulation of intelligence: "How could the professionals see what was happening and nobody speak out?"

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, responded with an equally simple answer: "The vice president."

MotherJones has broken down the time line of just how Americans were scammed into waging the second Iraq war, based on little more than lies and outright deception by our political leaders.

I know many will criticize this post and the original article for being 10+ years after the fact, and that GW Bush is no longer in office, but mistakes and deceptions of this magnitude need to be addressed continually or we'll never learn from them. The facts are, we as a nation are still heavily burdened by these lies, and we'll continue to be for another generation as the costs really begin to hit home.

The Timeline spans from August 1992 to March 2003 (when the invasion began), and covers in detail a number of the deceptions and lies told by the Bush Administration.

The entire timeline can be seen at:
Motherjones.com - Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq

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reply to post by Blackmarketeer

So... now that it has been over looked this time so far, I would like to say that I remember this time line and most of what transpired along the way to "justify" the reason why America had to finish off Iraq (from what was begun by "dad"). Thanks for bringing the truth about it. One mention I would make is that the MEDIA is culpable for faithfully parroting whatever the party line was, without doing any of their own investigation, right_down_the_line. Oh, they gave a good show of it, but really they were just Pavlov dogs for TPTB.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


To be truthful, I have a hard time of believing anything MJ sez. They are a liberal mag afterall.

If you can provide a actual timeline,,,,well...the we'll talk. I'm only partionally buying it.

And besides...it's over. Well until the next decade or so.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


No question the war against Iraq was based on lies. People like me risked their lives to bring accurate intelligence to the civilian authorities that was both correct and unabridged. We withheld nothing, and didn't in any way shade or flavor it to make a commander in chief more or less likely to do this or that. The job of the intelligence community is to just give the facts. What are the known resources, the projected abilities, and the most difficult is what are they likely to do? That one is always the toughest to figure out. No doubt Saddam was a loose cannon. But after the first gulf war, which we had little choice but to win, he was in effect impotent and not a threat to the west.

I can not help but come to the conclusion that GW Bush started a war because Saddam tried to kill his father. Would it piss me off? Sure. I might have tried to have him assassinated but a war? No. But then people like me then didn't make policy. Thank God the current President is not an idiot. Given the current Republican crop, the current guy has an abundance of common sense. Thank God.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

Of course there will be complaints about using Mother Jones as a possibly biased source, and I wonder about the big gap in the timeline before 1998.

May I suggest using The Guardian as a source for a better timeline? Iraq timeline - Guardian (UK)

reply to post by charles1952


Sorry mate but that Guardian timeline leaves out a huge amount of material, and doesn't make any mention of the LIES used by Bush and Cheney to secure their war.

Points covered;

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) - founded by Cheney, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, and other top neocons. The PNAC was among the single greatest driving forces to push us to re-invade Iraq, and involved a host of Military-Industrial CEOs as they planned "nation building" at the expense of the American taxpayer and Iraqi resources.

Ahmed Chalabi - President of the Iraqi National Council who "conned the neo-cons", and provided the Iraqi defector "Curveball" whose stories proved complete fabrications regarding bio-weapons and aluminum fuel rods.
MI6 calls "Curveball" a fabricator.
German Intel. calls "Curveball" a fabricator.

Cheney's secret Energy Task Force which involved disgraced companies like Enron on how to divvy up Iraq. (Cheney Energy Task Force Docs Feature Iraq Oil Fields)

Pentagon pre-war documents like: "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" - Cheney and the DoD were already parceling out the Iraqi oil fields long before we invaded.

Secretary of State Colin Powell: Saddam "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

A month before 9/11 the CIA flies to Crawford to call Bush's attention to an intel briefing document ("Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."). Bush replies, "All right, you've covered your ass now." Then IGNORES the briefing while deciding how best to attack Iraq.

The SAME DAY that Al Qaeda hits the WTC, Rumsfeld comes to a cabinet meeting with a plan to include IRAQ in retaliation for the attack. "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]."

John Yoo, rewrote War Powers Act shredding the constitution in the process, allows the US to strike anyone, anywhere in the world, no Congressional declaration of war needed. "[T]he government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties."

Yoo is also the guy that declares that the "laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, do not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan.", and begins incorporating torture in interrogating prisoners - Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, "Palestinian Crucifixion", starvation, forced standing, sweatboxes, sexual abuse/humilation are put into practice, even by untrained enlisted personnel at military prisons in Iraq and Gitmo and secret CIA prisons.

Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (caught in Pakistan), is tortured to the point he fabricates tales he thinks his captures want to hear, including tales of Al Qaeda operatives receiving chemical weapons training from Iraq. The DIA and CIA summaries note his 'confession' "lacks details and suggests that he is most likely telling interrogators what he thinks will 'retain their interest.'" Bush Admin. still uses it as part of their war rhetoric.

Joe Wilson (diplomat) denied Bush's allegation of Saddam buying yellowcake in Niger, and the subsequent outing of his wife as a CIA agent by someone in Cheney's office. (Plamegate)

Another pre-war summit, this one with Carlyle Group, United Defense Ind., Bechtel, and a host of other Military-Industrial bigwigs, titled "Focus on War and Economy" - "There's money to be made in Iraq". This best sums up why we went to war in Iraq.

Hans Blix who denies finding any 'smoking guns' in Iraq. Team Bravo disprove all of "Curveball's" bio-weapons sites. Blix tells UN Iraq is cooperating with weapons inspectors.

And the numerous memos from MI6, German Intel., and even our own Intel. agencies that deny or refute White House claims about Iraq.

All Bush, Cheney and his neo-con crew did was extract nearly a trillion dollars in profit from their little venture into Iraq, and none of them give a damn about the murder they committed, against American or allied soldiers and especially not against the Iraqi population.

It's impossible to touch on all the points raised in the OP article in a single post, just as the OP article itself can scarcely touch on all the points of deceit spanning spanning nearly the entire Bush administration.

Maine
Lusitania
Pearl Harbor
Bay of Pigs
Nayirah

All lies....

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

Dear Blackmarketeer,

Thanks for your thorough review. I appreciate that you took the time to write it.

I was not as clear as I meant to be in posting the Guardian timeline, perhaps I was so ill prepared that I shouldn't have posted at all.

The Mother Jones timeline looked incomplete and slanted. As I looked at other examples of the history of that time, it seemed like The Guardian had a more news focused and comprehensive piece of work, so I linked to that.

I'm not sure that I agree with the interpretations of events in your posts, but is that now a field primarily for historians and slightly less so for policy makers?

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952


Cheers!

I'm sure the previous history between Iraq and the US - the 8-year Iraq-Iran war, and the Invasion of Kuwait by Iraq involved the usual duplicity by all sides, but there has never been such a systematic approach to fabricating our way into war than this.

That s a very good timeline.

What I do not get really: what are facts like al qaeda bombings and the beheading of daniel pearl doing on the timeline?? They are in no way related to the Iraq invasion.

And to the folks who say, get over it, it s ten years ago:

First it s not over for many people, involved Iraqis and Americans are still suffering from terible losses, physical an emotional wounds.

Second: the exact same spiel is played again. It s Iran this time instead of Iraq, but the exact same stupid game.

reply to post by svetlana84


The Pearl beheading didn't have anything to do with Iraq, but you wouldn't have known that from the media and government propaganda blitz we were being subject to back then. All terrorists were the same we were being told, terrorist beheadings were all part of the narrative that helped lead us into attacking Iraq.

reply to post by TDawgRex


if "it" is over then why do we still have troops abroad ?

o yea because it isn't.

reply to post by LucidDreamer85


By "it", I meant we no longer have tens of thousands of troops in Iraq.

The rest are scattered all over the globe however.