Erik Uden 🦣🍑:coffefied: on Nostr: On this day ( #OTD ) 21 years ago U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a ...
On this day ( #OTD ) 21 years ago U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a model vial of anthrax to the United Nations Security Council accusing Iraq of a chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. This was later found out to be a complete lie and the own investigation and intelligence of the United States did not support this claim nor many others the George Bush administration at the time made. Despite all this, these very lies lead to and justified the Iraq War (second Gulf war).
This war resulted in the violent deaths of 210,519 civilians, over 300.000 people if you include “combatants”. These are only the number of people who died directly from a bullet being put in their head, the number of casualties due to the fallout of this war, meaning those who died whilst fleeing, died due to lack of access of medicine or food and water, are not even included in that number. The total number of civilian deaths caused by this war is estimated to be in the millions. These numbers had to be leaked because the U.S. government themselves said:
“We don't do body counts”
​- General Tommy Franks
The leaker of these stats was WikiLeaks
under the leadership of Julian Assange, who since has been forced to live in exile, hide, and currently, this very day, is under trial by the UK High Court most likely resulting in being extradited to the United States where he will not receive a fair trial, or only as fair as John McAfee got or Edward Snowden will get. Silenced, killed, buried, kept outside of the public eye in order to not expose the embarrassment and colonial intentions of this mass killing event they call war.
All of this — all of this started with a simple vial and presentation in front of the United Nations. Do you think anyone involved in pandering these lies has ever been arrested or prosecuted similarly as the people who exposed them? Of course not. And while this convoluted story revealed itself in front of the public eye we completely forgot that this was the second time the U.S. fabricated lies in order to justify a war in Iraq and it was done by George Bush's father.
With every whistleblower prosecuted, dead, or too afraid to speak up, who will be there to expose the next wave of lies?
This war resulted in the violent deaths of 210,519 civilians, over 300.000 people if you include “combatants”. These are only the number of people who died directly from a bullet being put in their head, the number of casualties due to the fallout of this war, meaning those who died whilst fleeing, died due to lack of access of medicine or food and water, are not even included in that number. The total number of civilian deaths caused by this war is estimated to be in the millions. These numbers had to be leaked because the U.S. government themselves said:
“We don't do body counts”
​- General Tommy Franks
The leaker of these stats was WikiLeaks
under the leadership of Julian Assange, who since has been forced to live in exile, hide, and currently, this very day, is under trial by the UK High Court most likely resulting in being extradited to the United States where he will not receive a fair trial, or only as fair as John McAfee got or Edward Snowden will get. Silenced, killed, buried, kept outside of the public eye in order to not expose the embarrassment and colonial intentions of this mass killing event they call war.All of this — all of this started with a simple vial and presentation in front of the United Nations. Do you think anyone involved in pandering these lies has ever been arrested or prosecuted similarly as the people who exposed them? Of course not. And while this convoluted story revealed itself in front of the public eye we completely forgot that this was the second time the U.S. fabricated lies in order to justify a war in Iraq and it was done by George Bush's father.
With every whistleblower prosecuted, dead, or too afraid to speak up, who will be there to expose the next wave of lies?