The Christian Science Monitor uncovered evidence of Republicans lying in 2002 to go to war.<\/p>\n
When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf \u0096 to reverse Iraq\u2019s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait,\u0096 part of the administration’s case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid\u0096September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.<\/p>\n
But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border \u0096 just empty desert.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a pretty serious fib,\u201d says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story.<\/p>\n
Shortly before US strikes began in the Gulf War, for example, the St. Petersburg Times asked two experts to examine the satellite images of the Kuwait and Saudi Arabia border area taken in mid-September 1990, a month and a half after the Iraqi invasion. The experts, including a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who specialized in desert warfare, pointed out the US build-up \u0096 jet fighters standing wing-tip to wing-tip at Saudi bases \u0096 but were surprised to see almost no sign of the Iraqis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat [Iraqi buildup] was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn\u2019t exist,\u201d Ms. Heller says. Three times Heller contacted the office of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney (now vice president) for evidence refuting the Times photos or analysis \u0096 offering to hold the story if proven wrong.<\/p>\n
The official response: \u201cTrust us.\u201d To this day, the Pentagon\u2019s photographs of the Iraqi troop buildup remain classified.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Source: CSM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Christian Science Monitor uncovered evidence of Republicans lying in 2002 to go to war. When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf \u0096 to reverse Iraq\u2019s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait,\u0096 part of the administration’s case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia. Citing … Continue reading “Lying to go to war”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2176,3387,3231,1479,2126,2649,1808],"class_list":["post-15048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-democrats","tag-george-w-bush","tag-kuwait","tag-oil","tag-republicans","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-war"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15049,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15048\/revisions\/15049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}