Was he wrong though? I recall plenty of people were against the war in principal, and loads of people were sceptical of the government’s WMD line (am speaking from a British point of view). But there was not as I recall any actual evidence that the wmd thing was made up. David Kelly (UK weapons expert) leak didn’t happen till after the invasion. As well as the invasion itself obviously turning up no evidence. But before there were no leaks or counter claims. It was just down to whether you trusted the government or not. Which is what I think Sam’s right about - if that’s what he’s saying.
A lot of people knew it was utter bullshit then. Millions of people protested the war and close to 50% of people were opposed it in many of the countries which participated.
Sam Harris’s whitewashing of his cheerleading of a war which resulted in a million deaths and destabilisation of an entire region is sheer cowardice.
UN weapons inspectors prior to the invasion found no evidence of WMDs. If I recall correctly, there were also quite a few leftist publications that were correctly calling out the lies told. Don’t have time currently to dig.
I think it definitely is the more widespread story that the lies were only identified after the fact, especially with publications like the NYT carrying water for the Bush administration.
There was never any good evidence, it was always “trust the CIA!”
Well, if you put it that way… no.
Iraq is nowhere near Afghanistan either.
And the US has international weapons inspectors in Iraq annually after the first war. They posed no threat to us… we still had a frickin no fly zone over half the damned country, what were they going to do?
David Kelly, British weapons inspector who lead multiple UN missions to inspect Iraqi facilities (and deal with their bullshit) first hand…
didn’t believe their mobilisation was advanced
thought many of the exaggerations the US and UK came up with were utter bullshit
didn’t believe there was any Al-Qaeda connection
didn’t believe chem weapons could be fired in 45 minutes
But DID
state the “concealed” Iraqii chemical weapons program was real
said “8,500 litres of anthrax VX, 2,160 kilograms of bacterial growth media, 360 tonnes of bulk chemical warfare agent, 6,500 chemical bombs and 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents remained unaccounted for”
believed Saddam was committed to deception around the program and had provably recovered chemical weapons equipment from decommission sites after inspectors had left
stated Saddam’s use of chemical weapons was inevitable
stated only regime change could stop it
And this is the guy conspiracy theorists think got assassinated because he was too opposed to the governments. Even he argued that what he’d seen showed Saddam should be forcably toppled…
Was he wrong though? I recall plenty of people were against the war in principal, and loads of people were sceptical of the government’s WMD line (am speaking from a British point of view). But there was not as I recall any actual evidence that the wmd thing was made up. David Kelly (UK weapons expert) leak didn’t happen till after the invasion. As well as the invasion itself obviously turning up no evidence. But before there were no leaks or counter claims. It was just down to whether you trusted the government or not. Which is what I think Sam’s right about - if that’s what he’s saying.
A lot of people knew it was utter bullshit then. Millions of people protested the war and close to 50% of people were opposed it in many of the countries which participated.
Sam Harris’s whitewashing of his cheerleading of a war which resulted in a million deaths and destabilisation of an entire region is sheer cowardice.
UN weapons inspectors prior to the invasion found no evidence of WMDs. If I recall correctly, there were also quite a few leftist publications that were correctly calling out the lies told. Don’t have time currently to dig.
I think it definitely is the more widespread story that the lies were only identified after the fact, especially with publications like the NYT carrying water for the Bush administration.
There was never any good evidence, it was always “trust the CIA!”
Well, if you put it that way… no.
Iraq is nowhere near Afghanistan either. And the US has international weapons inspectors in Iraq annually after the first war. They posed no threat to us… we still had a frickin no fly zone over half the damned country, what were they going to do?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_no-fly_zones_conflict
Fascinating history, but the war against Iraq never really ended. We were constantly bombing Iraq on the daily 1999 through 2003.
David Kelly, British weapons inspector who lead multiple UN missions to inspect Iraqi facilities (and deal with their bullshit) first hand…
But DID
And this is the guy conspiracy theorists think got assassinated because he was too opposed to the governments. Even he argued that what he’d seen showed Saddam should be forcably toppled…