Why the West went to War

 

Back in the days before the mass media and the watchful eyes of the free press it was reported that the first of the world wars was started by the unfortunate assassination of a leading member of a monarchy. Apparently the news was so devastating that the rest of that gullible generation up-sticked and went on a multi-million murder spree. Of course, with today's independent media and a more sophisticated audience, no such calamity could ever occur.

 

Fortunately for us the West, which is, apparently, the UK and the US, goes to war in the name of democracy and world peace. So the second invasion of Iraq was for a far more worthy cause than a dead Arch-Duke. Thanks to the three page spreads full of close-ups of suspicious buildings in all the papers and a repetition of what looked suspiciously like a computer game from the television, we all were thoroughly convinced that here were 'weapons of mass destruction'. So well did we envisage these weapons that we soon got to calling them WMD and knew their addresses. I'm afraid I must confess that most of us did not actually have a clue as to what a 'weapon of mass destruction' was, but the 'mass destruction' left a lot to the imagination. But here was a proper reason for warfare.

 

 

Still three quarters of us weren't quite convinced and a few tens of thousands dead later the WMD failed to materialise. Headline after headline proclaimed the embracing fact, adding that though such weapons hadn't actually been found it was still better safe than sorry, at least the world was rid of a horrible dictator. After digging a pathetic fellow out of a pit in the ground and exhibiting him for a few months we were told that he was going to build them anyway. To stop this for sure they hung him.

 

 

Democracy? Whilst the sophisticated 'words of war' greased humanities conscience America put the most advanced war-machine that the world has ever seen into action with the result that by today hundreds of thousands have died and a whole nation lives in terror and squalor. Yet, here in the West, we have our dignity. We protested and said no, and argued that the Americans were mistaken about the way to achieve democracy. At least the war was still about democracy? Well no. Apparently not. Apparently it was because an unemployed refugee said that Saddam was building mobile bio-weapons. Tyler Drumheller, who claims to be an ex-American Central Intelligence Agency Official, shrugged his shoulders and said, "he was playing the system for what it was worth."

 

 

Could it be that the system he was playing was not worth a lot let alone living up to the intelligence adjective in its name? We are now told that the then Secretary of the US State, Colin Powell, based his reasoning for war on this man and was dutifully followed by Britain's more evangelical Tony Blair.

 

 

So the story of the Iraq invasion is that Rafid Ahmed Alwan told the CIA that Saddam Hussein had Bio-weapons and was planning to use them. Obviously in this situation the many thousand strong intelligence gathering operation that was going on in Iraq and the many teams of the Atomic Energy Authority who where poking around were completely wrong footed. On the word of this unknown, unqualified, unemployed and desperate refugee the West went to war.

Thank goodness it was over something more serious than the reasons for World War One; for we could never be that gullible.