Powell Aide Says Case for War a 'Hoax'

PBS recently aired an interview with Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson (Ret), Chief of Staff at the Department of State from Aug 2002 - January 2005, addressing some of the skepticism surrounding the pre-war claims made by the Bush administration. Wilkerson claims in no uncertain terms that he "participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council." This is not the first time that Wilkerson has spoken out against the administration and intelligence community.

Comments

Re:Welcome to the real world guys.

[humina]

The trouble is that the other half are the ones running the country at the moment...

"You mean the half that wasn't involved in the unprovoked bombing of Afganistan during the Clinton administration? That didn't have anything to do with the problems we now face in the middle east does it? Or is it somehow different?"

He's talking about the half that funded and armed al qaeda to fight the soviets. Funding terrorist groups was the norm all in the name of fighting the cold war.

The clinton bombings were targeted at osama: http://www.cnn.com/US/9808/20/us.strikes.01/

Re:What difference does it make

[Doc Ruby]

I remember that Clinton signed the treaty for membership in the International Criminal Court, though he didn't submit it for ratification to the Republican Congress. And I remember that Bush nullified Clinton's signature when he took over a couple of years later.

I don't know what you remember, but the facts show there was a big difference.

Re:Welcome to the real world guys.

[good soldier svejk]

So you're claiming that the inspection crews being booted was a hoax? hahahaha!

It most certainly is an ex post facto hoax. Iraq never expelled UN inspectors. UNSCOM was expelled from Iraq in 1998, but it was Clinton who kicked them out, not Saddam. Iraq did temporarily expel American inspectors in 1997 after they learned that CIA infiltrators in UNSCOM had passed intelligence which the US used to facilitate a coup attempt. In response, UNSCOM chief Richard Butler withdrew all his teams to Kuwait. But the crisis was short lived and everyone was back to work in a week. Inspections limped along until December 1998, when Clinton decided his purposes were better served by bombing. The US then told UNSCOM they needed to evacuate for safety reasons and Director Richard Butler happily obliged. Go back and read the news reports of the day and you will see no mention of Saddam expelling non-American UNSCOM members. That factoid developed later. Several UNSCOM officials, including director Rolf Ekeus and David Kaye, have admitted that the US illegally used the inspection program for espionage.

"As time went on, some countries, especially the US, wanted to learn more about other parts of Iraq's capacity." The US even tried to find information about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. [Rolf Ekeus, Director of UNSCOM 1991-1997, Financial Times, 7/29/03]

Re:How to stop a suicide terrorist

[cosmo7]

IRA terrorism finally disappeared after 9/11. Up until then sympathetic Americans were happy to fund an organisation that bought weapons from Libya to kill people in England.