Rumsfeld comes clean

US Defence Secretary admits Washington was wrong

George W. Bush took the United States of America to war, a war in which he spent two hundred thousand millions of dollars, in which over a thousand US personnel lost their lives, in which thirty-five thousand civilians were murdered or were victims of grievous bodily harm in the most shocking act of state terrorism the world has witnessed since World War 2, for two reasons.

One reason was that Iraq posed an "immediate threat" to the USA and its allies due to its Weapons of Mass Destruction. The other reason was the proven terrorist link between Baghdad and Al-Qaeda, linking Iraq to the war on international terror and justifying the attack, at least in the hearts and minds of the US citizens, by the horrors of 9/11.

In September 2002, Donald Rumsfeld declared: "We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical and biological agent training. And when I say contacts, I mean between Iraq and al Qaeda".

Later, the US Defence Secretary stated that he knew where Iraq's WMD was stationed: "In Baghdad and Tikrit and north, south, east and west of there".

Now, after being confronted with the truth, Rumsfeld admits at the Council on Foreign relations in New York to having seen no hard evidence linking Baghdad to Al-Qaeda: ""To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

And on WMD: ""It turns out that we have not found weapons of mass destruction, and why the intelligence proved wrong, I'm not in a position to say."

So, what will the next lie be? First it was Weapons of Mass Destruction which posed an immediate threat. Then it was weapons systems being driven around the desert in vehicles. It turns out there never were any. Saddam Hussein was the one telling the truth, Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney are the liars.

Saddam Hussein never deployed his weaponry against a single US citizen. Bush murdered or maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis. That is the difference. The terrorist is Bush.

Then it was international terrorism - Baghdad and Osama bin Laden were one and the same thing. Now it turns out that this, too, was a load of hogwash from the beginning. So who stiffed the world, Saddam Hussein or Bush?

The next excuse has already been formed and indeed was placed before the council by Rumsfeld: the real reason why the USA and UK went to war is now that they wanted to prevent Iraq from gaining WMD.

This is not a justified casus belli, this is not a justifiable cause for war. This is the rule of law by the lynch mob, paramount to a crowd forming around a terrified passer-by, shouting "he's a witch!", dousing him in gasoline and setting fire to him, then claiming the street is a better place because the man concerned was a rapist.

Someone, somewhere has to form a legal case and make Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Cheney and Blair pay for their war crimes. Otherwise, where is the justice? Where is the rule of law? Where is the notion that international law even exists?

The more sinister twist to this tale is that all of the above-mentioned are standing for a further term in government.