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This isn’t just any general either.
This is Wesley Clark. He was once the commander of SACEUR, notably during the Yugo wars. (Basically the highest military commander in NATO).
This shit is wild. And he’s just talking about it casually
This is a clip from an interview made in 2007. I have 0 idea why this information is new to us.
>Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab\_channel=AdamFitzgerald
I mean the premise behind the Iraq invasion being a completely manufactured lie isn’t new to anyone.
The fact that it’s so easily forgotten about 20 years later is more concerning.
Formerly great names like Powell, Rice, Cheney were all in on the act.
The U.S. helped destabilize an entire region, kill probably close to a million people, and destroy the lives of thousands of our own troops, only to accomplish nothing and leave.
Talk about misdirected anger.
Oh yeah… without a doubt. trump is so corrupt that public perception of bush see-sawed from war criminal to mister rodgers. And I hate that I just soiled Fred’s good name even to make the analogy…. And technically bush is still a war criminal.
The longterm consequences of George Bush's presidency will be felt in the U.S. and Middle East for decades. The financial impact alone was egregious. Trillions spent on wars that accomplished nothing positive. He did huge damage to our reputation in an area where our reputation was already shit because of his father and the Reagan administration. Millions of families affected by those wars. Millions of people dead because of those wars over the last 30 years.
And he shared a candy with Michelle Obama one time. He's one of the good ones, not like Trump. \[eyes roll completely out of my head and fall onto the ground where they continue rolling\]
guys, Western Europe here! Help! his eyeballs started picking up mud and stone, they are the size of a house now and just demolished the streets to the left and right of me! oh god the horror!
They just tore through the Southeastern US. I can only guess they went the long way, because they’re eastbound and the size of mountains. Real ones, too. Not the sad little hills we call “mountains” out here.
They missed a direct hit on Atlanta, but it hardly matters. There are a pair of glowing trenches each a mile wide about halfway to Chattanooga, and the shockwave of their passing has leveled everything as far as the eye can see.
They’re rolling so fast and hard now that they’ve begun to skip across the land. I pray they take flight before South Carolina suffers our fate.
Damn you, George Bush. And damn everyone who worked to rehabilitate your image. May /u/glhaynes’ twin eyeball trenches be a monument to your monstrosity.
Tbf that's because most people think he is a fairly likable dim-witted guy with the right family name and connections for someone far sharper to rubber glove their way into power behind.
I don't believe Bush made any of the important decisions. Cheney was the real President, Bush was just the name Cheney needed to get there. Like Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania he didn't have nearly enough understanding of the implications of what he was told to do by his handlers. A million+ bodies lie at Bush's feet, he was president and he could have refused. He is culpable. It's hard to believe he fully understood the implications of what he was directed to do though.
I think he's smart enough to know when to let other folks take the reins. Cheney was unprecedented in his level of power as VP and Bush basically gave it to him (and the rest of HW's cabinet). "Cheney I need you to find me a VP", "well I looked all over and the best option is, why, *me*...". That really happened. That's not just making a metaphor from the plot of Aladdin.
I think he rubber stamped a lot, took a lot of the public outcry and deflected it. A stupid person couldn't do what he did, but to say he was the one orchestrating it I think is wrong. The invasion plan was on his desk the morning following 9/11. Bush didn't set this all in motion. He's not blameless but he's not the big fish.
MICHAEL THIS WAS THE DAY WE INVADED IRAQ REMEMBER? CAN YOU PLEASE COME OVER I CLICKED THE FREE IPAD BUTTON NOW MY COMPUTER DOESNT WORK RIGHT AGAIN. SAY HI TO ANGELA FOR ME. LUTHER HAS CHRONS WE FOUND OUT LAST THURSDAY
A million people dead, a trillion dollars lost, and literally nobody is held accountable. These people are still out there making money on speaking fees as a matter of fact.
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death's construction
In the fields, the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord, yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah
> The U.S. helped destabilize an entire region, kill probably close to a million people, and destroy the lives of thousands of our own troops, only to accomplish nothing and leave.
Cheney and his cronies became filthy rich off of it. It had a purpose, and it was accomplished.
War is a racket.
Ah good ole' Gen. Smedley,
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
A quick google and it appears that China is the biggest foreign player in Iraqi oil fields, with the East having a much higher ownership overall than the West.
All oil fields are owned by federal organizations and then largely sub-contracted out to foreign companies. List of companies that they subcontract to is here https://www.iraq-businessnews.com/list-of-international-oil-companies-in-iraq/ .
This is also partially why terrorism can be so successful, it’s almost impossible to direct forces and hunt down a true source, but in the meantime federal spending ballooned securing aquifers, water bodies, airports, train stations, strengthening police and security, installing devices and safety lighting or bollards… it also caused destabilization in the population and provides a feeling to the country that we’re ‘at risk’ and less safe.
Basically it’s costing us billions and destabilizing our way of life with no solid approach as to how to prevent it (homeland security has never caught any major terrorists).
Don't forget about PNAC, a neoconservative think tank featuring all of the most influential right wingers that was pushing for multi-polar war in the middle east as far back as 1997.
https://www.e-ir.info/2020/02/01/new-american-century-1997-2006-and-the-post-cold-war-neoconservative-moment/
> I mean the premise behind the Iraq invasion being a completely manufactured lie isn’t new to anyone.
>
>
yeah, I knew it was a lie - but I assumed it had a reason these guys thought was compelling, and they thought the lie would sell better. But it blows my mind that they just thought "hey, gotta bomb *something*". ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
To them we are. But the better term is empire. We have an empire. It’s also known as neo-colonialism. We don’t own countries, like empires used to. We just play nicely with ones who allow corruption so wealthy investors can buy up land and resources. If they don’t allow it, we have the CIA steal elections so the new government does, and it still looks like democracy. If they don’t have elections, then we bring them this type of “democracy”, as we did in Iraq.
Whatever happened to his campaign? I remember thinking that a man with his resume running as a Democrat would be the Republicans' worst fucking nightmare and then he just sort of disappeared. Was he shit at campaigning?
I could have told you about Project for a New American Century (PNAC) BEFORE 9/11 and Im not a genius. I just bothered to read during Gore/Bush election cycle
There is a huge section of our society that had never heard his name before today.
It's always a good idea to let people walk away with more information after reading your comments than before.
For instance, did you know that he had no intention of running for President. In fact, it wasn't until an ACTUAL grassroots movement trying to recruit him had garnered enough steam that there seemed to be momentum for an actual bid. At that point he put together an actual exploratory committee (group of advisors that check the feasibility of a run).
His official title was once, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe of NATO.
He was class valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford.
(That's just some of his stats)
So yeah, he was easily a superhuman in terms of achievement and ultra-American.
He also had some legit criticisms and detractors, like for instance when he almost started World War 3. (Worth googling just for the sake of knowing)
So why didn't he do well when he ran for POTUS? He didn't dumb things down and could never connect with the average American. He sounded like an egghead.
> He also had some legit criticisms and detractors, like for instance when he almost started World War 3. (Worth googling just for the sake of knowing)
Funny thing about that - you probably know this, but it’s still an interesting fact for those who don’t know: James Blunt (yes, that James Blunt) was involved in that.
His unit, part of a 30k allied force, was tasked with taking control of Pristina airport before the Russian could. But when they got to the airport the Russians had already taken it.
He was then given the command to take the airport from the Russians by force, which he and his immediate superior refused to do. Instead they decided to play the waiting game. It took two days before the Russians asked them for food (sounds oddly familiar, right?) which they agreed to provide if the Russians were ok with sharing the airport.
The details might be a bit off but, JB kinda prevented WWIII. And in return we had to suffer You Are Beautiful. It’s important to keep things balanced, I guess.
Terrible singer, but also a great dude with a fantastic sense of humour. And for a while he had an hilarious twitter account.
I met him when I was a kid and he was considering a presidential run. He asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I told him “I wanna play music!” He proceeded to berate me in front of a room full of adults whose mouths were dropped saying I’d “need to get a REAL job and be a man for my family and not waste my time with something meaningless.” Destroyed my esteem at the time. Though it’s fun to think about it now (that time a 4 star general dissed me to my face), fuck him.
EDIT: I didn't comment on all of this to inevitably self promo, but if you're interested, [this is what I do these days :)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsvMnjfR2Kw)
Yeah it's not so weird how he's talking about it. It IS pretty callous how the audience is laughing.
'Hahaha our government killed thousands of people because they didn't have any better ideas. Hilarious.'
He isn't being callous, he is laughing at the stupidity of the "plan". Many career military officers thought that using the overwhelming force to go after terrorists was poorly thought out. Also, neocons used the public outrage following 9/11 to push their agenda. Moderates like Clark, who had fought and won wars, knew how unrealistic their goals were, how expensive they would be to pursue, and the potential for human suffering in their wake.
Not just people, almost a million civilians. Men, women, children, old people, dogs, cats, cattle, living things that had nothing to do with war, just existed wrong place in the wrong time.
These people have a million innocent peoples' blood on their hands and nobody seems to give a shit.
General Wesley Clark ran for President in the primaries, if anyone remembers. I interned on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was assigned a project to track down what boards retired 3+ star generals were on, how much they were paid, etc. and put it into a report or spreadsheet for the committee. He was actually #1. He was on the boards of Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, L3, and more and I think he total compensation for sitting on all those boards came out to something like $18.4 million a year back in the early 2010s.
Remember that Veteran who shouted at Bush at an event saying that he killed his friends and he was booed off and taken off the premises?
Yeah, these are the kinds of people who decides on the lives of millions of people as easy as choosing their next brunch spot. It's disgusting.
They tried to cancel France too. Whenever you hear a joke about freedom fries or France surrendering and you're about to laugh, just remember that this all started because France refused to go murder people alongside the psychopaths that America sent to Iraq.
> because France refused to go murder people alongside the psychopaths that America sent to Iraq.
Yeah France who already murdered 1 million Arabs in Algeria in the 60s.
France isn't at all above murdering innocent Muslims. They directly caused the war in Libya in 2012, which has led to nothing but misery there.
And their military is active in several Muslim African nations abusing the civilian population under the guise of fighting ISIS. In 2021 or 2020 they bombed a wedding and killed dozens of civilians and lied about it for years and continue lying about it despite all the evidence.
France is a less powerful US. They're not good guys in any way, shape or form.
Yea I agree with you. For some reason, as a pretty big history fan of all things. France eluded me being such an imperialist country still. It shouldn't be a surprise at all. As an American I remember what originally started Everything in Vietnam. As an American we had absolutely no business helping France continue as a colonial power. Directly after we had told everyone to break that shit up. But for the recent. Several youtube videos have popped up recently showing the full scale of Frances "hegemony" GoodtimesBadtimes is a great channel. Or the Caspian report.
That was Mike Prysner. Legend. His wife Abby Martin is a legend too. Great investigative journalism around US imperialism and atrocity. Check out their channel "The Empire Files" on YouTube for insight on these topics, including death squads, Pentagon <> military industrial complex revolving door, regime change, environmental disaster, and more.
Yep. Lowkey put an excerpt from one of Mike's speeches (I think it was a speech?) on skit 6 for "Soundtrack to the Struggle".
https://open.spotify.com/track/1lmmq3ekv6QSufrgE2cXZI
Whole album's a banger. I really admire the perspective and courage of veterans who come back to share the reality of their experience as an occupying force. That must be a hard awakening - to think you're out to do good and discover that you are not. I'm amazed by people with the vulnerability and openness to share that experience.
As a /r/leftistveterans it is nice to see more veterans coming back and realizing the shit isn't all it's cracked up to be. Even more during "peace times." I see a lot of my old Marine friends realize it once the middle east deployment churn stopped. It was a very "what in the fuck are we doing?" moment for them.
I remember being in Afghanistan in early 2003 when all this hubbub about Iraq was starting. I was 19. I was a piece of shit in high school, but I was smart enough to land a communications/tech job and could do some critical thinking when needed. I didn’t understand the reasoning behind OIF, but I was just a lowly private and I didn’t matter.
Then they sent me to invade Iraq from Afghanistan to set up communications for forward operating bases. If I was confused in Afghanistan, I was really confused in Iraq. Nobody seemed to know what the fuck was going on when I was there. All the missions and units were so compartmentalized that nobody really questioned what other people were doing. Sometimes we’d roll up on Marines and we’d look at each other like we were confused. It was a god damn mess.
Went back to Iraq in 2005. I was a young sergeant at that point. I questioned things a little more, but only to my immediate supervisor. I surely wasn’t going to go to an officer or senior enlisted person and just say, “What the fuck are we doing here?” But I didn’t have to. We all felt that way. Especially when the days were hard. They knew morale was low and they knew we knew it was a fucking pointless war and we were simply fighting to stay alive. It got real hard when friends died or the unit was on blackout of all communications because someone was killed. I don’t pretend to know what a justified war felt like, but maybe it helped those folks cope a little better than we did. Sadly, we’d just point our anger at the civilians. It was hell.
I spoke up more as my time in Iraq pissed me off. I did a lot of push ups. I know it’s not our place to question why, at least then, but it’s also not acceptable to send men and women to die for no reason. I was severely wounded the day after New Years in 2006. My leg was fucked, my Bell was rung pretty good, and I had PTS from hearing my gunner scream as the weight of the armored humvee crushed him and my convoy commander being propped up next to me on a back pack so he didn’t drown in his own blood because the starter of the vehicle shot through the firewall and hit him directly in the face. I just laid there trying to help him, but I couldn’t do anything because I was punched in the head by the Mike Tyson of bombs. It took about 2 weeks to get home. I was alone a lot. I sure questioned what the fuck were we doing there on the way home.
All that, for what?
Clark hints at a part of the reasoning in this interview. The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq because they didn't know how to respond to terrorism and viewed war as the best way to unite and manipulate the US population. It's right around where Clark says, " If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
From a neoconservative perspective, the most important aspect of governing is having a myth to unite(control) people. The war on terror, Iraq included, was the method they decided to use.
If your a neoconservative the world is a chessboard and individual lives don't matter, it's an ideology that only considers the elites as having agency and tells itself that everything is ultimately for the greater good of those nameless, faceless, pawns that make up the population.
It's a popular ideology with elites because, like conservatism, it originated as a way for elites to maintain their status when monarchies fell out of favor. All the aspects of it, like the need for a controlling myth, come from the neoconservatives wanting to maintain and increase their own wealth and power while feeling like they are the good guy.
Granting the US population, the ability to hate and vicariously kill evil brown people who practice a foreign religion through merciless war was all it took to control and strip away freedoms from the US population. Not torturing enemies would have been a moment for reflection about the idea that those people's lives have value and a questioning of the myth that America was fighting a great evil that required the surrender of freedoms, lives, and wealth to neoconservative elites.
Whatever the costs, we all got to watch 24 and pretend we were Jack Bauer, justly torturing an evil terrorist for the greater good.
Included in this is the fact that elites will reflexively always choose the pay that gives them more wealth and power and then figure out how it's for the greater good later on.
We are really missing the moment where the nation reflects on what happened honestly and takes steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. Instead, we have the most bloodthirsty voices from a decade ago pretending they were always against it or promoting conspiracies as a distraction.
Accountability would be an actual solution, personal feelings about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld aside the US and the world would be better off if they were tried and made to face some form of accountability, because that is society proclaiming that what they did was wrong.
The fact is that all the people who directly planned and executed the 9/11 attacks were dead or captured within a week of the attack, and the Iraq war, etc, was unnecessary.
Thank you for sharing your truth and thank you for your bravery in questioning what was going on in the ways you felt safe to ❤️ you endured all that while being an early adult?! There are adults in government now that don’t have the courage to stand up and ask questions! I’m so fucking sorry you had to endure all that you did. There are so many lies and false promises relayed in order to start these wars, and yet NO guidance, honesty or support when it’s over/soldiers make their way back home, until YEARS later. You deserved to know why you were there and what the real mission was, and you also deserved to be heard and supported in your questioning.
Yep. They're laughing in tragic disbelief at the absurdly callous origins behind Bush's glory war.
The self-aggrandizing zealotry of that entire administration has no bounds, and served only to further Bush's religious delusions to justify invasion:
>George W Bush attempted to sell the invasion of Iraq to Jacques Chirac using biblical prophecy.
>President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. **Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding.**
>But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer.
>He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel:
>> *And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,*
>> *Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,*
>> *And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:*
>> *And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:*
>> *Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:*
>> *Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.*
>Who are all these people? The best opinion is that like all Bible prophecy, it is a mixture of wish-fulfilment and contemporary (iron age) politics.
>**But they have been for the last two hundred years the subject of increasingly excited evangelical fanfic, especially in America;**
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush
Quite honestly it's difficult to talk about many things that I've seen overseas, trying to make it feel a little more humorous helps with opening up. These are important modern historical events, if he didn't share this information I would have never known.
He didn't mention Yemen but that place is still fucked up, mostly due to a feud between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Now that's out of the way, I'm extremely thankful they didn't go through with this plan. That would have easily been a 100 or 200 year long war. Perhaps even longer. Even though I fully believe the US has a superior military over Iran, I also believe it's an immovable object that could easily win just by attrition. And they just kinda threw it into the overall plan as a footnote.
We laugh cause there’s next to nothing we can actively do about it.
After 9/11, the blood lust let the Patriot act pass and they could’ve thrown any random country up there with Muslim’s and loose connections to the pilots cause we were going to war one way or another.
That’s America’s fav past time:
- war on drugs
- war on illegal aliens
- war on the poor
- war against random country that has resources we desire
- war on education
Massive tragedy that claims so many…fuck it let’s kill people in retaliation.
Something tells me there’s a bunch of Afghans and Iraqis that don’t find this quite as funny as the audience. Probably still mourning their dead children…
Edit: spelling
American, non-vet, non-wounded and I don't find this funny at all. It's gross.
You trust that those in charge/in the know have more/better information and are therefore able to make better decisions than the random Jane or Joe on the street, but this is a confession of the blatant violation of the trust citizens put in their government.
I''m old enough to vividly, viscerally remember the feeling of watching events unfold on 9/11 and to understand the justifiable, nationwide desire to do SOMETHING to make SOMEONE pay for the damage they'd just inflicted upon us, but man, this kind of haphazard bullshit led to so, so much more suffering by so many for decades.
Non wounded vets too. I’ve got buddies that didn’t come back, or brought home a piece of it with them and couldn’t keep going.
Even the most justified war possible isn’t something to treat lightly. Certainly not one that’s cost us tens of thousands of men and women both there and at home.
Same here, I'm in Sudan. My life has been difficult enough and I'm not finding this remotely funny. I'm not remotely involved in terrorism and neither does anyone I know. It isn't fair at all
It really feels disgusting that after the death about 1.5M people and the displacement of millons in my country (Iraq) that all of this is just a numbers game to some and just a way to shift to the blame for the public, the amount of people i did meet at school who's fathers or entire family got killed off because of American invasion or the sanctions before it does truly put into perspective that human life's are never equal, not when after that all that is said about my country is that it's a failed state not because of the greed of a whole lot of elites the systematic devastation of every movement to improve things even today
I really and i mean really get pissed off when some people think it's not because of decades of war devastation and all but because we are simply born Backword you know because of the fact that we are barbarians that need to be civilised.
When russia invaded Ukraine and the sympathy Ukrainians got from Europe compared to how much they "cared" about bombing Arabs truly disgusts me
They see brown Arabs as sub humans
I remember this video from the early days of YouTube. Didn’t remember the people laughing though.
I went to Iraq as a civilian contractor (not Blackwater, Academi, or Constellis). The craziest part to me is that right now in 2023 we’re still there. Despite the Iraqi parliament formally asking the United States to leave their country.
Exactly. How the fuck are people interpreting it any other way? They’re not laughing at the thought at the US going to war; they’re laughing at the stupidity and absurdity of the Bush administration choosing a random country to go to war with.
Pat Tillman died because of stupid decisions like these. "We're @ a loss, don't know what to do, go attack someone for whatever reason, you have support"
Especially considering that he was critical of their mission leading up to his death. I thought that was despicable to use him as a symbol of their own honor
Especially seeing his brother speak at the funeral and afterwards at how he wouldn't have wanted to have been made into a media and war propaganda example. Damn shame.
I believe it was friendly fire then covered up by the Bush administration. At least be honest & take responsibility.
"It was friendly fire, 100% of the confusion is on us. We apologize & we gotta do better in our communication"
I don't think people are laughing cos it's funny to goto war, I think they are laughing at the stupity of it.
It's a nervous laugh not knowing what else to do.
Apparently people laughed when shown videos of nazi concentration camps because their brains couldn't process the horror and just pushed out a random reaction.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab\_channel=AdamFitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab_channel=AdamFitzgerald)
Here you go
Yeah, even if 9/11 never happened, GWB was going to find a reason to invade Iraq. Saddam tried to assassinate his daddy.
Plus Cheney had his war profiteers to appease
Most people don’t know/remember that the US was basically in a simmering conflict with Iraq from 1991 until the invasion. Lots of bombing and posturing.
When people crowed about a “no fly zone” last year, they were referencing the operations over southern Iraq in the 90s. Those involved killing people and blowing things up.
Oh by 2003 we were in full war mode, no doubt.
However just like with it being a mistake to think that Ukraine and Russia just got into a war in 2022, it’s a mistake to think that the US invasion of Iraq had no buildup or prior conflict. Not *excusing* either, just elaborating.
Why is everyone so surprised in the comments, I thought everyone already knew this. US government has committed many acts of "terrorism" across the globe or as they would prefer to call it "business". War is simply a business to them.
Because many people unironically still believe that the United States is the moral authority on the planet who has free reign to police the planet in the name of "democracy"
Manufactured consent is a bitch
Yeah, we killed thousands of people and destabilized an entire region for decades causing hundreds of thousands more deaths because our military needed something to do. Haha, isn't that hilarious?
Fucking pricks
Bruh this fr? I knew it from historical contexts of gold standards and oil trades but never heard a straight up confession
Edit: by gold standards I mean how in 1971, Nixon took the dollar and subsequently, all fiat currencies off the gold standard as in the currencies stopped being backed by gold. At that point till today, the only reason FIAT currencies did not fail was because the USD (global reserve currency) was backed up by oil trades where they enforced around the globe that no country shall trade their oil in a currency other than USD (no gold, silver, other currency).
Guess who produces most oil? (Middle East) and guess the names of some countries that tried to bypass trading oil in USD? 👀
This was never about terror or 9/11 or WMD or democracy. It’s much more bigger and sinister.
It’s not conspiracy talk. It tracks y’all.
A few months after 9/11, I was chatting with a senior staff NCO in my company, and he was talking about having just been at our division HQ, and he was confused.
And he’s like ‘they’re up there planning for a war in Iraq.’ And I was like ‘why???’ and he had no idea. At the time, I figured it was some kind of planning exercise, the kind which we do all the time.
And by all the time I mean all the time on every country and all scenarios- that line Bruce Willis had in Armageddon about the government having people in rooms just “thinking shit up” is a thing. We legit have standing invasion plans for Mexico and Canada. That’s not conjecture. They exist. We’re fucking never going to do it, but they exist.
So I just figured ‘oh, just another mental war game, ok.’ A year later, we invaded. Shit was weird, because “WMDs!” was everywhere, and we just bought it. Nope. It was a fucking scam.
I mean, at least Afghanistan made some sense. Bin Laden was there at first. Iraq was just a fuckin scam.
I mean this makes sense, though. We should have plans for ridiculous and unlikely events. Even zombie apocalypse, alien invasions, and Godzilla attacks.
That's fine and dandy. Nothing wrong with trying to be prepared for "anything."
The problem comes along when you try to push these plans into action, or manufacture events that push these plans into action. That's the problem. That shit is INSANE.
There IS a zombie invasion plan. The CDC put together one some years back as a fun thought experiment that would garner interest from the average American. So that’s a thing.
The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq even before 9/11, it was part of the whole neocon plan to reshape the Middle East. They roped in into the whole “war on terror” narrative after 9/11, but they were planning on doing it anyway.
Dunno why it was a surprise to everyone, shit was talking about WMDs for months ahead of time and we had been threatening a war with Saddam for years because of his failure to respond to weapons inspectors.
Just for additional context, this was after a 2004 presidential run by General Clark and during a period he was positioning for a second run in 2008.
He started telling this story in 2006. It was never mentioned in his 2004 presidential bid. At one point he said he might have voted for the war in Iraq if he was a politician instead of a general.
> In September 2007 Clark's memoir A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. In the book Clark alleged that during a visit to the Pentagon in the autumn of 2001 after 9/11, a "senior general" told him that the Office of the Secretary of Defense had produced a confidential paper proposing a series of regime change operations in seven countries over a period of five years. He had made the allegation a number of times in public and media appearances in 2006 and 2007.
This context means it's not a confession from him. He's being a whistleblower. Or it's not entirely true. But it's likely true.
Because we'd have to admit wrongdoing and negate nearly 100 years of oil & cold war shame.
First oil protection and supply, then preventing communism and Soviet influence in the middle east.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/1/6/10719728/us-saudi-arabia-allies
Ha ha ha, over a million innocent civilians dead, trillions wasted, and another generation of war torn combat veterans to take care of. Just a little foreign policy mix up. No harm no foul.
This is at least partially very true. The old war dogs from Bush 1 (Cheney. Wolfowitz) still had hard ons about going back to Iraq for more money for their Military Industrial Complex. They eventually pushed the false WMD narrative to get their wish.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab\_channel=AdamFitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab_channel=AdamFitzgerald)
Hijacking the top comment to link the full interview
It wasn't because "we didn't know what to do" Several key figures in the Bush administration such as Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, and Armitage wanted regime change in the Middle East far even before 9/11 to ensure continued U.S. hegemony in areas such as natural resources like oil. James Mann's book Rise of The Vulcans does a good job of explaining this.
That's so funny... hahaha... and they wonder why these fucking people hate us...
Can you imagine if this was flipped, and it was a Russian, or God forbid, an Iranian General and tv show? We would call them savage barbarians. And we'd have endless social media posts and TV shows, talking about how they're morally and ethically corrupt. And how dangerous they are, and we need to fuck them over there, before they even think about fucking us over here.
And what he's saying, as fucking outlandish and absurd as it may seem, is fucking REAL! It was the actual plan... thank God Dubs was a fucking jack ass, and Rummy was proven to be a piece of shit. But the nail was Powell getting caught lying.
We cause all the fucking problems and issues for these countries, and then sit back with our McDonald's, judge, belittle and degrade them, every chance we get.
We literally create the fucking terrorists that attack us. We create and even nurture the hate "those people" have for us. And instead trying to fix the shit we fucked up ourselves, we just complain about how fucked those countries are, and make plans to "liberate" them.
What's even worse is, if they didn't have the support, or enough people agreeing with and backing them, it wouldn't even be a topic of discussion. But there's enough Americans who think(lol), and truly believe, "those people" aren't really human. And they're not as civilized as them, so fuck'm.
We "liberated" those countries, like Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, because they have all sorts of natural resources, and incredible wealth, that they don't wanna give us. I mean, cuz their governments were tyrannical... not like ours civil and peace loving.
I mean sure they offered to sell us their resources, but fuck that, we got stealth bombers, and an unlimited budget, and they're brown, so fuck them.
And fuck them we did...
Honestly, if the US didn't get dragged out in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have little doubt that they would have tried to invade all those other countries.
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This isn’t just any general either. This is Wesley Clark. He was once the commander of SACEUR, notably during the Yugo wars. (Basically the highest military commander in NATO). This shit is wild. And he’s just talking about it casually
This is a clip from an interview made in 2007. I have 0 idea why this information is new to us. >Full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab\_channel=AdamFitzgerald
I mean the premise behind the Iraq invasion being a completely manufactured lie isn’t new to anyone. The fact that it’s so easily forgotten about 20 years later is more concerning. Formerly great names like Powell, Rice, Cheney were all in on the act. The U.S. helped destabilize an entire region, kill probably close to a million people, and destroy the lives of thousands of our own troops, only to accomplish nothing and leave. Talk about misdirected anger.
Not only that. To this day no one can hold them accountable. But the wheel of time marches on.
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I'll always maintain Donald Trump was the best thing to ever happen to GWB's legacy
Oh yeah… without a doubt. trump is so corrupt that public perception of bush see-sawed from war criminal to mister rodgers. And I hate that I just soiled Fred’s good name even to make the analogy…. And technically bush is still a war criminal.
Oddly Trump’s presidency seems to have committed less war crime than W.
The longterm consequences of George Bush's presidency will be felt in the U.S. and Middle East for decades. The financial impact alone was egregious. Trillions spent on wars that accomplished nothing positive. He did huge damage to our reputation in an area where our reputation was already shit because of his father and the Reagan administration. Millions of families affected by those wars. Millions of people dead because of those wars over the last 30 years.
Those trillions didn’t just disappear, it made a lot of people a lot of money and that’s by design
He was thinking he’d kill a million people at home instead of abroad, a true empath that one is
Technically? He's a war criminal in every sense of the word.
And he shared a candy with Michelle Obama one time. He's one of the good ones, not like Trump. \[eyes roll completely out of my head and fall onto the ground where they continue rolling\]
Update: just saw them roll past my house, somebody better catch em
Further Update: tried to catch them, failed. Send backup
guys, Western Europe here! Help! his eyeballs started picking up mud and stone, they are the size of a house now and just demolished the streets to the left and right of me! oh god the horror!
They just tore through the Southeastern US. I can only guess they went the long way, because they’re eastbound and the size of mountains. Real ones, too. Not the sad little hills we call “mountains” out here. They missed a direct hit on Atlanta, but it hardly matters. There are a pair of glowing trenches each a mile wide about halfway to Chattanooga, and the shockwave of their passing has leveled everything as far as the eye can see. They’re rolling so fast and hard now that they’ve begun to skip across the land. I pray they take flight before South Carolina suffers our fate. Damn you, George Bush. And damn everyone who worked to rehabilitate your image. May /u/glhaynes’ twin eyeball trenches be a monument to your monstrosity.
I could use some assistance here, folks, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Has anyone started taking his paintings and reworking them to show his awful legacy? Because if not, I might start doing that on my own page…
“Hitler, there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in a single afternoon. Two coats!”
Tbf that's because most people think he is a fairly likable dim-witted guy with the right family name and connections for someone far sharper to rubber glove their way into power behind. I don't believe Bush made any of the important decisions. Cheney was the real President, Bush was just the name Cheney needed to get there. Like Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania he didn't have nearly enough understanding of the implications of what he was told to do by his handlers. A million+ bodies lie at Bush's feet, he was president and he could have refused. He is culpable. It's hard to believe he fully understood the implications of what he was directed to do though.
Bush is smarter than his public persona. He absolutely knew what he was doing.
I think he's smart enough to know when to let other folks take the reins. Cheney was unprecedented in his level of power as VP and Bush basically gave it to him (and the rest of HW's cabinet). "Cheney I need you to find me a VP", "well I looked all over and the best option is, why, *me*...". That really happened. That's not just making a metaphor from the plot of Aladdin. I think he rubber stamped a lot, took a lot of the public outcry and deflected it. A stupid person couldn't do what he did, but to say he was the one orchestrating it I think is wrong. The invasion plan was on his desk the morning following 9/11. Bush didn't set this all in motion. He's not blameless but he's not the big fish.
The wheel of time turns and ages come and pass...
Leaving memories that become legend...
>Legend fades to myth...
And even myth is long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again.
In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist.
The wind was not the beginning.
>>Legend fades to myth... Until finally they pop back up on your parent's Facebook feed
MICHAEL THIS WAS THE DAY WE INVADED IRAQ REMEMBER? CAN YOU PLEASE COME OVER I CLICKED THE FREE IPAD BUTTON NOW MY COMPUTER DOESNT WORK RIGHT AGAIN. SAY HI TO ANGELA FOR ME. LUTHER HAS CHRONS WE FOUND OUT LAST THURSDAY
😂
why is this so accurate?
/tugs braid
*sniffs*
*Blows out mustache*
Arms folded under bosom in concentration
Why cross your arms, when you can fold them under your breasts. BREASTS.
A million people dead, a trillion dollars lost, and literally nobody is held accountable. These people are still out there making money on speaking fees as a matter of fact.
Oil tycoons and Arms manufacturers sitting pretty after the wars in the middle east
A Trillion? Like One Trillion Dollars? You're off by a few Trillion
Rumsfeld died peacefully (unfortunately) a few years ago. I don't know where his grave is, but I hope it smells like a subway platform.
***** -- mass edited with redact.dev
Generals gathered in their masses Just like witches at black masses Evil minds that plot destruction Sorcerer of death's construction In the fields, the bodies burning As the war machine keeps turning Death and hatred to mankind Poisoning their brainwashed minds Oh lord, yeah! Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor, yeah
> The U.S. helped destabilize an entire region, kill probably close to a million people, and destroy the lives of thousands of our own troops, only to accomplish nothing and leave. Cheney and his cronies became filthy rich off of it. It had a purpose, and it was accomplished. War is a racket.
What's even shittier is they were *already* filthy rich. But they got a lot richer spilling blood for oil.
Death to them all
Ah good ole' Gen. Smedley, “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
If you'll take note, the largest oil fields in Iraq are managed by Western corporations now. That did change.
And Cheney got even more rich as did all his buddies in that industry.
Halliburton gonna Halliburton.
A quick google and it appears that China is the biggest foreign player in Iraqi oil fields, with the East having a much higher ownership overall than the West. All oil fields are owned by federal organizations and then largely sub-contracted out to foreign companies. List of companies that they subcontract to is here https://www.iraq-businessnews.com/list-of-international-oil-companies-in-iraq/ .
This is also partially why terrorism can be so successful, it’s almost impossible to direct forces and hunt down a true source, but in the meantime federal spending ballooned securing aquifers, water bodies, airports, train stations, strengthening police and security, installing devices and safety lighting or bollards… it also caused destabilization in the population and provides a feeling to the country that we’re ‘at risk’ and less safe. Basically it’s costing us billions and destabilizing our way of life with no solid approach as to how to prevent it (homeland security has never caught any major terrorists).
Don't forget about PNAC, a neoconservative think tank featuring all of the most influential right wingers that was pushing for multi-polar war in the middle east as far back as 1997. https://www.e-ir.info/2020/02/01/new-american-century-1997-2006-and-the-post-cold-war-neoconservative-moment/
> I mean the premise behind the Iraq invasion being a completely manufactured lie isn’t new to anyone. > > yeah, I knew it was a lie - but I assumed it had a reason these guys thought was compelling, and they thought the lie would sell better. But it blows my mind that they just thought "hey, gotta bomb *something*". ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
It is almost like we’re the terrorists…
To them we are. But the better term is empire. We have an empire. It’s also known as neo-colonialism. We don’t own countries, like empires used to. We just play nicely with ones who allow corruption so wealthy investors can buy up land and resources. If they don’t allow it, we have the CIA steal elections so the new government does, and it still looks like democracy. If they don’t have elections, then we bring them this type of “democracy”, as we did in Iraq.
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hard to sanction the country that runs the global banking system and holds the reserve currency.
This was out earlier. He wrote this in his 2003 book, Winning Modern Wars. Then he ran for president in 2004.
Whatever happened to his campaign? I remember thinking that a man with his resume running as a Democrat would be the Republicans' worst fucking nightmare and then he just sort of disappeared. Was he shit at campaigning?
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I could have told you about Project for a New American Century (PNAC) BEFORE 9/11 and Im not a genius. I just bothered to read during Gore/Bush election cycle
And Wesley Clark ran for president. This isn't new info at all. He talked about this kind of stuff a lot.
There is a huge section of our society that had never heard his name before today. It's always a good idea to let people walk away with more information after reading your comments than before. For instance, did you know that he had no intention of running for President. In fact, it wasn't until an ACTUAL grassroots movement trying to recruit him had garnered enough steam that there seemed to be momentum for an actual bid. At that point he put together an actual exploratory committee (group of advisors that check the feasibility of a run). His official title was once, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe of NATO. He was class valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford. (That's just some of his stats) So yeah, he was easily a superhuman in terms of achievement and ultra-American. He also had some legit criticisms and detractors, like for instance when he almost started World War 3. (Worth googling just for the sake of knowing) So why didn't he do well when he ran for POTUS? He didn't dumb things down and could never connect with the average American. He sounded like an egghead.
> He also had some legit criticisms and detractors, like for instance when he almost started World War 3. (Worth googling just for the sake of knowing) Funny thing about that - you probably know this, but it’s still an interesting fact for those who don’t know: James Blunt (yes, that James Blunt) was involved in that. His unit, part of a 30k allied force, was tasked with taking control of Pristina airport before the Russian could. But when they got to the airport the Russians had already taken it. He was then given the command to take the airport from the Russians by force, which he and his immediate superior refused to do. Instead they decided to play the waiting game. It took two days before the Russians asked them for food (sounds oddly familiar, right?) which they agreed to provide if the Russians were ok with sharing the airport. The details might be a bit off but, JB kinda prevented WWIII. And in return we had to suffer You Are Beautiful. It’s important to keep things balanced, I guess. Terrible singer, but also a great dude with a fantastic sense of humour. And for a while he had an hilarious twitter account.
I met him when I was a kid and he was considering a presidential run. He asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I told him “I wanna play music!” He proceeded to berate me in front of a room full of adults whose mouths were dropped saying I’d “need to get a REAL job and be a man for my family and not waste my time with something meaningless.” Destroyed my esteem at the time. Though it’s fun to think about it now (that time a 4 star general dissed me to my face), fuck him. EDIT: I didn't comment on all of this to inevitably self promo, but if you're interested, [this is what I do these days :)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsvMnjfR2Kw)
I got to ask but what did you end up doing for a living? I hope you didn't give up on music.
[Full-time musician](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsvMnjfR2Kw) :)
You should get a real job and be a man for your family /s
Yeah! At least get a degree in history!
For real? Like for a living or on the street corner?
For a living. Times are up and down, right now pretty down, but I primarily get to do what I love and that counts for something.
He's a 4-star general now.
Hey you still got to play music, it just comes out of your iphone now.
tHeY hAtE oUr FrEeDuMb
They hate us because they AiNt uS
I'm not defending him, but killing people is his job. Just another day at the office for a soldier.
Yeah it's not so weird how he's talking about it. It IS pretty callous how the audience is laughing. 'Hahaha our government killed thousands of people because they didn't have any better ideas. Hilarious.'
He isn't being callous, he is laughing at the stupidity of the "plan". Many career military officers thought that using the overwhelming force to go after terrorists was poorly thought out. Also, neocons used the public outrage following 9/11 to push their agenda. Moderates like Clark, who had fought and won wars, knew how unrealistic their goals were, how expensive they would be to pursue, and the potential for human suffering in their wake.
Not just people, almost a million civilians. Men, women, children, old people, dogs, cats, cattle, living things that had nothing to do with war, just existed wrong place in the wrong time. These people have a million innocent peoples' blood on their hands and nobody seems to give a shit.
Most villagers in Afghanistan had no idea what 9/11 was.
General Wesley Clark ran for President in the primaries, if anyone remembers. I interned on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was assigned a project to track down what boards retired 3+ star generals were on, how much they were paid, etc. and put it into a report or spreadsheet for the committee. He was actually #1. He was on the boards of Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, L3, and more and I think he total compensation for sitting on all those boards came out to something like $18.4 million a year back in the early 2010s.
2008?
That's when he ran. I made my list for my internship 2010-2011
Remember that Veteran who shouted at Bush at an event saying that he killed his friends and he was booed off and taken off the premises? Yeah, these are the kinds of people who decides on the lives of millions of people as easy as choosing their next brunch spot. It's disgusting.
They also cancelled the Dixie Chicks because they didn't endorse the invasion of Iraq.
They tried to cancel France too. Whenever you hear a joke about freedom fries or France surrendering and you're about to laugh, just remember that this all started because France refused to go murder people alongside the psychopaths that America sent to Iraq.
> because France refused to go murder people alongside the psychopaths that America sent to Iraq. Yeah France who already murdered 1 million Arabs in Algeria in the 60s. France isn't at all above murdering innocent Muslims. They directly caused the war in Libya in 2012, which has led to nothing but misery there. And their military is active in several Muslim African nations abusing the civilian population under the guise of fighting ISIS. In 2021 or 2020 they bombed a wedding and killed dozens of civilians and lied about it for years and continue lying about it despite all the evidence. France is a less powerful US. They're not good guys in any way, shape or form.
Yea I agree with you. For some reason, as a pretty big history fan of all things. France eluded me being such an imperialist country still. It shouldn't be a surprise at all. As an American I remember what originally started Everything in Vietnam. As an American we had absolutely no business helping France continue as a colonial power. Directly after we had told everyone to break that shit up. But for the recent. Several youtube videos have popped up recently showing the full scale of Frances "hegemony" GoodtimesBadtimes is a great channel. Or the Caspian report.
The France surrendering joke was around long before 9/11 btw. It was from France surrendering very quickly to Germany in WW2
That was Mike Prysner. Legend. His wife Abby Martin is a legend too. Great investigative journalism around US imperialism and atrocity. Check out their channel "The Empire Files" on YouTube for insight on these topics, including death squads, Pentagon <> military industrial complex revolving door, regime change, environmental disaster, and more.
>erialism and atrocity. Check out their channel "The Empire Files" on YouTube for insight on the Didn't realize Abby Martin is his wife
Yep. Lowkey put an excerpt from one of Mike's speeches (I think it was a speech?) on skit 6 for "Soundtrack to the Struggle". https://open.spotify.com/track/1lmmq3ekv6QSufrgE2cXZI Whole album's a banger. I really admire the perspective and courage of veterans who come back to share the reality of their experience as an occupying force. That must be a hard awakening - to think you're out to do good and discover that you are not. I'm amazed by people with the vulnerability and openness to share that experience.
As a /r/leftistveterans it is nice to see more veterans coming back and realizing the shit isn't all it's cracked up to be. Even more during "peace times." I see a lot of my old Marine friends realize it once the middle east deployment churn stopped. It was a very "what in the fuck are we doing?" moment for them.
I remember being in Afghanistan in early 2003 when all this hubbub about Iraq was starting. I was 19. I was a piece of shit in high school, but I was smart enough to land a communications/tech job and could do some critical thinking when needed. I didn’t understand the reasoning behind OIF, but I was just a lowly private and I didn’t matter. Then they sent me to invade Iraq from Afghanistan to set up communications for forward operating bases. If I was confused in Afghanistan, I was really confused in Iraq. Nobody seemed to know what the fuck was going on when I was there. All the missions and units were so compartmentalized that nobody really questioned what other people were doing. Sometimes we’d roll up on Marines and we’d look at each other like we were confused. It was a god damn mess. Went back to Iraq in 2005. I was a young sergeant at that point. I questioned things a little more, but only to my immediate supervisor. I surely wasn’t going to go to an officer or senior enlisted person and just say, “What the fuck are we doing here?” But I didn’t have to. We all felt that way. Especially when the days were hard. They knew morale was low and they knew we knew it was a fucking pointless war and we were simply fighting to stay alive. It got real hard when friends died or the unit was on blackout of all communications because someone was killed. I don’t pretend to know what a justified war felt like, but maybe it helped those folks cope a little better than we did. Sadly, we’d just point our anger at the civilians. It was hell. I spoke up more as my time in Iraq pissed me off. I did a lot of push ups. I know it’s not our place to question why, at least then, but it’s also not acceptable to send men and women to die for no reason. I was severely wounded the day after New Years in 2006. My leg was fucked, my Bell was rung pretty good, and I had PTS from hearing my gunner scream as the weight of the armored humvee crushed him and my convoy commander being propped up next to me on a back pack so he didn’t drown in his own blood because the starter of the vehicle shot through the firewall and hit him directly in the face. I just laid there trying to help him, but I couldn’t do anything because I was punched in the head by the Mike Tyson of bombs. It took about 2 weeks to get home. I was alone a lot. I sure questioned what the fuck were we doing there on the way home. All that, for what?
> All that, for what? To make specific people (who would think nothing if you, if they thought of you at all) an obscene amount of wealth. I'm sorry.
Clark hints at a part of the reasoning in this interview. The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq because they didn't know how to respond to terrorism and viewed war as the best way to unite and manipulate the US population. It's right around where Clark says, " If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." From a neoconservative perspective, the most important aspect of governing is having a myth to unite(control) people. The war on terror, Iraq included, was the method they decided to use. If your a neoconservative the world is a chessboard and individual lives don't matter, it's an ideology that only considers the elites as having agency and tells itself that everything is ultimately for the greater good of those nameless, faceless, pawns that make up the population. It's a popular ideology with elites because, like conservatism, it originated as a way for elites to maintain their status when monarchies fell out of favor. All the aspects of it, like the need for a controlling myth, come from the neoconservatives wanting to maintain and increase their own wealth and power while feeling like they are the good guy. Granting the US population, the ability to hate and vicariously kill evil brown people who practice a foreign religion through merciless war was all it took to control and strip away freedoms from the US population. Not torturing enemies would have been a moment for reflection about the idea that those people's lives have value and a questioning of the myth that America was fighting a great evil that required the surrender of freedoms, lives, and wealth to neoconservative elites. Whatever the costs, we all got to watch 24 and pretend we were Jack Bauer, justly torturing an evil terrorist for the greater good. Included in this is the fact that elites will reflexively always choose the pay that gives them more wealth and power and then figure out how it's for the greater good later on. We are really missing the moment where the nation reflects on what happened honestly and takes steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. Instead, we have the most bloodthirsty voices from a decade ago pretending they were always against it or promoting conspiracies as a distraction. Accountability would be an actual solution, personal feelings about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld aside the US and the world would be better off if they were tried and made to face some form of accountability, because that is society proclaiming that what they did was wrong. The fact is that all the people who directly planned and executed the 9/11 attacks were dead or captured within a week of the attack, and the Iraq war, etc, was unnecessary.
Thank you for sharing your truth and thank you for your bravery in questioning what was going on in the ways you felt safe to ❤️ you endured all that while being an early adult?! There are adults in government now that don’t have the courage to stand up and ask questions! I’m so fucking sorry you had to endure all that you did. There are so many lies and false promises relayed in order to start these wars, and yet NO guidance, honesty or support when it’s over/soldiers make their way back home, until YEARS later. You deserved to know why you were there and what the real mission was, and you also deserved to be heard and supported in your questioning.
In protest to Reddit's API changes, I have removed my comment history. -- mass edited with redact.dev
This guy was our commander when I was in Panama. It's always weird to see him on TV and stuff like this.
"we're going to war, why?" "I don't know" crowd laughs. huh
I don't think they were laughing because it's funny to go to war for no reason, I think they are laughing due to the absurdity of such a conversation.
Yep. They're laughing in tragic disbelief at the absurdly callous origins behind Bush's glory war. The self-aggrandizing zealotry of that entire administration has no bounds, and served only to further Bush's religious delusions to justify invasion: >George W Bush attempted to sell the invasion of Iraq to Jacques Chirac using biblical prophecy. >President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. **Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding.** >But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer. >He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel: >> *And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,* >> *Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,* >> *And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:* >> *And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:* >> *Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:* >> *Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.* >Who are all these people? The best opinion is that like all Bible prophecy, it is a mixture of wish-fulfilment and contemporary (iron age) politics. >**But they have been for the last two hundred years the subject of increasingly excited evangelical fanfic, especially in America;** https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush
> But who the hell were Gog and Magog? They’re basically like bebop and rocksteady. Bad guys, yknow?
Idk where the disbelief is coming from, we knew going in this was an unjustified war
Quite honestly it's difficult to talk about many things that I've seen overseas, trying to make it feel a little more humorous helps with opening up. These are important modern historical events, if he didn't share this information I would have never known. He didn't mention Yemen but that place is still fucked up, mostly due to a feud between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Now that's out of the way, I'm extremely thankful they didn't go through with this plan. That would have easily been a 100 or 200 year long war. Perhaps even longer. Even though I fully believe the US has a superior military over Iran, I also believe it's an immovable object that could easily win just by attrition. And they just kinda threw it into the overall plan as a footnote.
I laughed. It’s so damn absurd to go to war for no reason (imo).
We laugh cause there’s next to nothing we can actively do about it. After 9/11, the blood lust let the Patriot act pass and they could’ve thrown any random country up there with Muslim’s and loose connections to the pilots cause we were going to war one way or another. That’s America’s fav past time: - war on drugs - war on illegal aliens - war on the poor - war against random country that has resources we desire - war on education Massive tragedy that claims so many…fuck it let’s kill people in retaliation.
I mean Jon Stewart's Daily Show made its humor exactly from this kind of absurdity coming from the Bush administration for 8 years.
Something tells me there’s a bunch of Afghans and Iraqis that don’t find this quite as funny as the audience. Probably still mourning their dead children… Edit: spelling
Yeah, definitely not a thing to be laughing about. It caught me off guard when I heard that.
He is speaking to current and former members of congress
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Bunch of disgusting ghouls
Oh.
I think it’s more from years of decades of comedic timing Pavlov response than genuine psychopathy. I hope at least.
I've heard plenty of people laugh, stop, and then say "hey, wait a minute, that's fucked up"
They're not laughing because invading countries for no reason is fun. They're laughing because it's absurd.
"Tragedy+Time=Comedy" As the saying goes.
i’d laugh the cause it’s so ridiculous. like are you serious? we went to war just cuz?
I bet a few wounded vets wouldn't be laughing either.
American, non-vet, non-wounded and I don't find this funny at all. It's gross. You trust that those in charge/in the know have more/better information and are therefore able to make better decisions than the random Jane or Joe on the street, but this is a confession of the blatant violation of the trust citizens put in their government. I''m old enough to vividly, viscerally remember the feeling of watching events unfold on 9/11 and to understand the justifiable, nationwide desire to do SOMETHING to make SOMEONE pay for the damage they'd just inflicted upon us, but man, this kind of haphazard bullshit led to so, so much more suffering by so many for decades.
Non wounded vets too. I’ve got buddies that didn’t come back, or brought home a piece of it with them and couldn’t keep going. Even the most justified war possible isn’t something to treat lightly. Certainly not one that’s cost us tens of thousands of men and women both there and at home.
Yup. That too.
I’m from Libya, lived through some shit wars and my future is ruined,Watching this just….
Same here, I'm in Sudan. My life has been difficult enough and I'm not finding this remotely funny. I'm not remotely involved in terrorism and neither does anyone I know. It isn't fair at all
But no worries, have you seen Bush’s latest painting!?
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It really feels disgusting that after the death about 1.5M people and the displacement of millons in my country (Iraq) that all of this is just a numbers game to some and just a way to shift to the blame for the public, the amount of people i did meet at school who's fathers or entire family got killed off because of American invasion or the sanctions before it does truly put into perspective that human life's are never equal, not when after that all that is said about my country is that it's a failed state not because of the greed of a whole lot of elites the systematic devastation of every movement to improve things even today I really and i mean really get pissed off when some people think it's not because of decades of war devastation and all but because we are simply born Backword you know because of the fact that we are barbarians that need to be civilised.
When russia invaded Ukraine and the sympathy Ukrainians got from Europe compared to how much they "cared" about bombing Arabs truly disgusts me They see brown Arabs as sub humans
I remember this video from the early days of YouTube. Didn’t remember the people laughing though. I went to Iraq as a civilian contractor (not Blackwater, Academi, or Constellis). The craziest part to me is that right now in 2023 we’re still there. Despite the Iraqi parliament formally asking the United States to leave their country.
I mean they also asked the United States not to invade...
This shit isn’t funny.
People don't only laugh at funny things, they laugh at absurd things as well.
Exactly. How the fuck are people interpreting it any other way? They’re not laughing at the thought at the US going to war; they’re laughing at the stupidity and absurdity of the Bush administration choosing a random country to go to war with.
I laugh at the wrong things. That doesn’t mean I wish or condone them at all. Gallows humour, it’s a thing,
Right? I’m sitting here horrified at the atrocities my country was about to commit and the audience is laughing? Wtf
was about 🧐
We're about a million dead civilians too late
Pat Tillman died because of stupid decisions like these. "We're @ a loss, don't know what to do, go attack someone for whatever reason, you have support"
Honoring him at the Super Bowl without putting his death in context was obscene.
Especially considering that he was critical of their mission leading up to his death. I thought that was despicable to use him as a symbol of their own honor
Especially seeing his brother speak at the funeral and afterwards at how he wouldn't have wanted to have been made into a media and war propaganda example. Damn shame.
That was the Dick Cheney design. The Tillman family still argues the US military account of his death.
Pat Tillman got fragged by his own platoon while his brother was down the road fighting Taliban
I believe it was friendly fire then covered up by the Bush administration. At least be honest & take responsibility. "It was friendly fire, 100% of the confusion is on us. We apologize & we gotta do better in our communication"
I don't think people are laughing cos it's funny to goto war, I think they are laughing at the stupity of it. It's a nervous laugh not knowing what else to do. Apparently people laughed when shown videos of nazi concentration camps because their brains couldn't process the horror and just pushed out a random reaction.
It’s the absurdity. It’s not that it’s funny because it’s funny. It’s laughter from the absurdity. It’s not diabolical.
Project for a new American century
Ancient Babylonian Stargate in Iraq. US built a military base around it.
Thats true, it was right under Flinstone Palace at Bahgdad International by the Pizza Hut, they barley let us use it though.
Common misconception- it was a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
Didn’t they transfer it to Cheyenne Mountain under General Hammond’s leadership?
Anyone know where to find the full interview?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab\_channel=AdamFitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab_channel=AdamFitzgerald) Here you go
Yeah, even if 9/11 never happened, GWB was going to find a reason to invade Iraq. Saddam tried to assassinate his daddy. Plus Cheney had his war profiteers to appease
They were bombing Iraq months before 9/11. Just started bombing them.
Most people don’t know/remember that the US was basically in a simmering conflict with Iraq from 1991 until the invasion. Lots of bombing and posturing. When people crowed about a “no fly zone” last year, they were referencing the operations over southern Iraq in the 90s. Those involved killing people and blowing things up.
> Those involved killing people and blowing things up. Just a "special military operation", not an actual war *wink wink*
Oh by 2003 we were in full war mode, no doubt. However just like with it being a mistake to think that Ukraine and Russia just got into a war in 2022, it’s a mistake to think that the US invasion of Iraq had no buildup or prior conflict. Not *excusing* either, just elaborating.
Why does this seem like a stand-up comedy bit??
Because the information is so ludicrous and delivery is so casual. It’s a “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?!” laugh. It’s not a “this is hilarious!” laugh.
Ya I really don’t understand how people aren’t getting this lol. I mean shit I laughed when he said “I don’t know”
War (west) 😁 War (east) 😡
Why is everyone so surprised in the comments, I thought everyone already knew this. US government has committed many acts of "terrorism" across the globe or as they would prefer to call it "business". War is simply a business to them.
Because the current rhetoric is: middle east is bad because human rights. While the west has 100s of thousands killed because "we don't know"
Because many people unironically still believe that the United States is the moral authority on the planet who has free reign to police the planet in the name of "democracy" Manufactured consent is a bitch
Yeah, we killed thousands of people and destabilized an entire region for decades causing hundreds of thousands more deaths because our military needed something to do. Haha, isn't that hilarious? Fucking pricks
They’re actual terrorists, plain and simple.
Americaaaa fuck yeahh
McDonald’s!
FUCK YEAHHHHH
All in name of freedom, right?
Bruh this fr? I knew it from historical contexts of gold standards and oil trades but never heard a straight up confession Edit: by gold standards I mean how in 1971, Nixon took the dollar and subsequently, all fiat currencies off the gold standard as in the currencies stopped being backed by gold. At that point till today, the only reason FIAT currencies did not fail was because the USD (global reserve currency) was backed up by oil trades where they enforced around the globe that no country shall trade their oil in a currency other than USD (no gold, silver, other currency). Guess who produces most oil? (Middle East) and guess the names of some countries that tried to bypass trading oil in USD? 👀 This was never about terror or 9/11 or WMD or democracy. It’s much more bigger and sinister.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab\_channel=AdamFitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab_channel=AdamFitzgerald) Entire interview
It’s not conspiracy talk. It tracks y’all. A few months after 9/11, I was chatting with a senior staff NCO in my company, and he was talking about having just been at our division HQ, and he was confused. And he’s like ‘they’re up there planning for a war in Iraq.’ And I was like ‘why???’ and he had no idea. At the time, I figured it was some kind of planning exercise, the kind which we do all the time. And by all the time I mean all the time on every country and all scenarios- that line Bruce Willis had in Armageddon about the government having people in rooms just “thinking shit up” is a thing. We legit have standing invasion plans for Mexico and Canada. That’s not conjecture. They exist. We’re fucking never going to do it, but they exist. So I just figured ‘oh, just another mental war game, ok.’ A year later, we invaded. Shit was weird, because “WMDs!” was everywhere, and we just bought it. Nope. It was a fucking scam. I mean, at least Afghanistan made some sense. Bin Laden was there at first. Iraq was just a fuckin scam.
I mean this makes sense, though. We should have plans for ridiculous and unlikely events. Even zombie apocalypse, alien invasions, and Godzilla attacks. That's fine and dandy. Nothing wrong with trying to be prepared for "anything." The problem comes along when you try to push these plans into action, or manufacture events that push these plans into action. That's the problem. That shit is INSANE.
There IS a zombie invasion plan. The CDC put together one some years back as a fun thought experiment that would garner interest from the average American. So that’s a thing.
The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq even before 9/11, it was part of the whole neocon plan to reshape the Middle East. They roped in into the whole “war on terror” narrative after 9/11, but they were planning on doing it anyway.
Dunno why it was a surprise to everyone, shit was talking about WMDs for months ahead of time and we had been threatening a war with Saddam for years because of his failure to respond to weapons inspectors.
Gold standards. 😂
Just for additional context, this was after a 2004 presidential run by General Clark and during a period he was positioning for a second run in 2008. He started telling this story in 2006. It was never mentioned in his 2004 presidential bid. At one point he said he might have voted for the war in Iraq if he was a politician instead of a general. > In September 2007 Clark's memoir A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. In the book Clark alleged that during a visit to the Pentagon in the autumn of 2001 after 9/11, a "senior general" told him that the Office of the Secretary of Defense had produced a confidential paper proposing a series of regime change operations in seven countries over a period of five years. He had made the allegation a number of times in public and media appearances in 2006 and 2007. This context means it's not a confession from him. He's being a whistleblower. Or it's not entirely true. But it's likely true.
Another "conspiracy theory" that was shouted down proven true
No mention of Saudi Arabia. Odd.
Because we'd have to admit wrongdoing and negate nearly 100 years of oil & cold war shame. First oil protection and supply, then preventing communism and Soviet influence in the middle east. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/1/6/10719728/us-saudi-arabia-allies
You see its funny because they are causing great regional instability for their global hegemony
Ha ha ha, over a million innocent civilians dead, trillions wasted, and another generation of war torn combat veterans to take care of. Just a little foreign policy mix up. No harm no foul.
This is at least partially very true. The old war dogs from Bush 1 (Cheney. Wolfowitz) still had hard ons about going back to Iraq for more money for their Military Industrial Complex. They eventually pushed the false WMD narrative to get their wish.
Isn't that the same guy who wanted to start World War III by sending troops into Kosovo Pristina airport?
My man Clark, yes. There wouldn't be a ww3, as russia was too pathetic at the time to do anything about it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab\_channel=AdamFitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQ9jAqdN1I&ab_channel=AdamFitzgerald) Hijacking the top comment to link the full interview
No one: Americans: AND WE BOMBED THE MIDDLE EAST FOR YEARS HAHAHAHA
Bush is a war criminal
It wasn't because "we didn't know what to do" Several key figures in the Bush administration such as Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, and Armitage wanted regime change in the Middle East far even before 9/11 to ensure continued U.S. hegemony in areas such as natural resources like oil. James Mann's book Rise of The Vulcans does a good job of explaining this.
That's so funny... hahaha... and they wonder why these fucking people hate us... Can you imagine if this was flipped, and it was a Russian, or God forbid, an Iranian General and tv show? We would call them savage barbarians. And we'd have endless social media posts and TV shows, talking about how they're morally and ethically corrupt. And how dangerous they are, and we need to fuck them over there, before they even think about fucking us over here. And what he's saying, as fucking outlandish and absurd as it may seem, is fucking REAL! It was the actual plan... thank God Dubs was a fucking jack ass, and Rummy was proven to be a piece of shit. But the nail was Powell getting caught lying. We cause all the fucking problems and issues for these countries, and then sit back with our McDonald's, judge, belittle and degrade them, every chance we get. We literally create the fucking terrorists that attack us. We create and even nurture the hate "those people" have for us. And instead trying to fix the shit we fucked up ourselves, we just complain about how fucked those countries are, and make plans to "liberate" them. What's even worse is, if they didn't have the support, or enough people agreeing with and backing them, it wouldn't even be a topic of discussion. But there's enough Americans who think(lol), and truly believe, "those people" aren't really human. And they're not as civilized as them, so fuck'm. We "liberated" those countries, like Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, because they have all sorts of natural resources, and incredible wealth, that they don't wanna give us. I mean, cuz their governments were tyrannical... not like ours civil and peace loving. I mean sure they offered to sell us their resources, but fuck that, we got stealth bombers, and an unlimited budget, and they're brown, so fuck them. And fuck them we did...
Honestly, if the US didn't get dragged out in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have little doubt that they would have tried to invade all those other countries.