Up to 1m people dead. 4m refugees. The infrastructure of the country destroyed. Many areas of the country without supplies of clean water and electricity. A massive decline in public health. Women's rights put back centuries. A total breakdown of law and order.
And what does 'Neo' Con Coughlin think about the situation in Iraq? He thinks that "British forces leave Iraq a far better place than they found it".
In Coughlin's Daily Telegraph article there is not one mention of Iraq's (non-existent) WMD programme. Interesting that, given that before the war, Iraq's phantom WMDs is all that Coughlin and his fellow neocons wanted to talk about.
Instead, we are told that the war was about overthrowing "Baathist gangsters" and bringing "democracy" to Iraq.
All neo-cons are conspiracy theorists, and Coughlin is a conspiracy theorist of the highest (or rather, lowest, order).
He's peddled the untruths that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, that Iraq had WMDs that could be assembled within 45 minutes- and he's also published a false claim re Iran's nuclear energy programme- which has led to him being reported to the Press Complaints Commission. Now he's peddling the lie that the invasion of Iraq has made the Iraqi people better off.
There are plenty of scandals regarding the Iraq war. But not the least of them is that those who propagandised for the war and who in doing so, printed blatant falsehoods are still, five and a half years on, up to their old tricks.
I've labelled Coughlin a 'wally', but of course he is far worse than that. He is a pimp for war, propagandising for military conflicts in which other people- but not of course himself or his family- will do the dying.
6 comments:
He and his like should be on the end of a rope, and that would include most of the BBC. The current wisdom promoted on BBC radio is that the journalist who is currently being tortured for throwing his shoes at Bush " couldn't have done that under Saddam Hussein...so that's one improvement..."(presenter of R5 live drive show 4-6pm yesterday - consistent a-hole).
The Iraqi Ba’ath Party was multiethnic and secular. It had not been founded by Saddam Hussein, and his was a constant battle to keep control of it.
To ban its erstwhile members from office is to ban anyone who has ever run anything, and amounts to a blanket ban on Sunni Arabs and on Christians.
And to have destroyed it is almost certainly already to have destroyed the only body that would have been capable of producing a multiethnic, secular democracy in Iraq when the old man died, as he would have done soon enough.
Neil,
Coughlin is a joke, although neither tasteful nor funny.
The Guardian was digging into his links to MI6 as long ago as 2000. In February 2004, he reported that the Iranians were going to unleash hell on the Libyans. In June 2004, the Iraqis' future was 'bright'. The link that I used to have to the 'Telegraph' article where he suggested ETA and al Qa'eda 'pooled resources' in order to perpetrate the Madrid train bombing seems to have tanked. In September 2004, the Iranian mullahs' were within touching distance of developing five nukes, but by January 2006 that timeframe had changed to a further three years.
I could go on...and on...and on...
A worthy winner of your award.
Arguably, you can't leave it to a country like Britain, which has effectively abandoned democracy, to bring democracy anywhere else.
He and his like should be on the end of a rope, and that would include most of the BBC.
...says the resident Stalin apologist.
Thank you for your coverage. I made a New Year's Goal to track down and document the 'smoking gun,' lies used to falsely justify the Iraq War
A Coughlin article in the Telegraphy claiming Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa is a critical part of the twisted path of this Big Lie that led the USA and others into false war, causing - as you point out - the death of perhaps even a million people or more.
If this is not a war crime I don't know what is.
I'll check back to your site periodically and it valuable work you're doing. Keep it up.
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