10th Anniversary of Colin Powell’s Infamous UN Presentation, Dissected
February 4, 2013

 
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Bush Administration AccountabilityTomorrow/Tuesday will be the 10th Anniversary of then Secretary of State Colin Powell’s infamous PowerPoint presentation before the UN detailing Saddam Hussein’s alledged preparations for war, by showing a series of slides (45 in all) consisting of satellite photos, drawings, and audio & video “evidence” that Iraq was pursuing an illegal weapons program prohibited under “Resolution 1441″… Saddam’s terms of surrender following the 1992 Gulf War. Not a single claim based on the images presented on that day turned out to be true, yet the United States (and 37 other countries) went to war based on those false claims. And to this day, no one has been held accountable for the consequences. I chose 15 of the most damning slides from the Powell Presentation, and with a bit of Googling, I was able to find out just what became of each. While reviewing these slides, keep in mind that the United States went to war, and nearly 4,500 American troops, 300+ coalition troops, not to mention and untold number of Iraqi civilians died based on the claims made in this presentation.

For some inexplicable reason, it seem to need mentioning for all the insipid Right-wing morons out there reading this that… Yes, Saddam was a bad man. Yes, he was evil & disgusting and rightfully earned his place in hell. This “debunking” is neither an excuse nor a defense of Saddam Hussein. But the world is FULL of evil dictators. More Iraqi’s died in the eight years of the Iraq War than Saddam Hussein had killed in his entire tenure as the brutal dictator of Iraq. The nation of Iraq was left in near ruins while thousands of Americans gave their lives and tens of thousands more returned with crippling injuries from fighting a war based on lies, all while a handful of very wealthy Defense Contractors… including one that directly financially benefited our Vice President… all became very very rich in the process.

Powell UN Presentation 2003
(14 key slides from Powell’s presentation with updates.
(GlobalSecurity has the entire 45 video of his 75 minute presentation here.)

Over the past decade, I also collected numerous videos detailing just how comically false so many of the claims made that day turned out to be (most are quite old, so forgive the quality):

(Two days before Pres. Bush stated in an interview that “we found… the mobile labs” he claimed were in Iraq, the DIA had already reported them as “the biggest sand toilets in the world.”)
Four months AFTER the invasion of Iraq, the Bush White House admitted that claims of Iraq having a nuclear program were bogus:
Three years later, an investigation by the Republican-controlled Senate finds there never was a Saddam/alQaeda link either:
In total, just under 4,500 U.S. troops and over 110,000 confirmed Iraqi civilians were killed (with some estimates topping 1million) in a war based on this (mis)information. To this day, not a single Bush Administration official has been held accountable for their role in drumming up this imaginary case for war (not to mention the crimes that followed. See: “Abu Ghraib”, etc.)

Sources: Info on UAV’s & Anthrax, Capabilities of Iraq’s Drones, Amiriyah, various debunking of several slides, Czech’s as source of training drones, Al-Zarqawi, “The U.N. Deception”, Al-Taji, “Weapons ‘capacity’ of Iraq challenged”, debunking of “Anthrax Jet” video, Al Musayyib “day-after” photo.

Postscript: As you can see, the winning blog theme was “Emerald Stretch”, which came as a bit of a surprise. I hope to tweak it a bit over the coming months. – Mugsy

 

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February 4, 2013 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Middle East, myth busting, Politics, Terrorism, War

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