USA and Western Media vigorously hyped up the fake intelligence report that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. The USA and its allies invaded Iraq but could not find those weapons.
After more than seven years of war, 4,400 U.S. casualties, and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians’ deaths, the United States officially ended its combat mission in Iraq on December 15, 2011.
Similarly, the USA and its Nato allies rushed to invade Afghanistan in the wake of a fake Intelligence report which suggested that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan. Which again proved to be a fake report.
The United States has spent about $2.26 trillion between 2001 and 2021 on the war in Afghanistan according to an analysis by Brown University’s Costs of War project. It’s estimated that 241,000 people died as a result of the war in Afghanistan. Most were Afghans. The largest number of deaths were for the national military and police, followed by opposition fighters and then civilians. The U.S. military had six civilians and 2,442 soldiers die as a direct result of the war, as well as nearly 4,000 U.S. contractors.
While the USA, its Nato allies and the world woke up to the horrendous consequence of the fake news reports and its destructive consequences, the trend is going strong in India. Rather it is reaching dizzy heights as some political parties, their IT cells and the mainstream Media are fine-tuning the art of pedaling the fake news and single-mindedly indulging in spreading such news to polarize the country’s population on communal lines merely to utilize it for election gains. Unfortunately, they are completely oblivious of its long term consequences.
Indian fake news peddlers do not let any opportunity missed to give a communal spin to any organic development be it Corona Pandemic where the Muslim community was demonized for its spread.
Now the development in Afghanistan is going to be a handy tool to these fake news peddlers to polarize the people to gain votes in the UP Assembly election in February 2022 – again oblivious of its long term consequences.
India is surrounded by countries inimical to India’s interests like China and Pakistan from North, East and West. The latest development in Afghanistan adds to our National Security woes. But the most worrisome factor is the mindless attack on the people’s unity inside the country. No foreign invader dares to attack a country where its people stand together, have unity among their ranks and live in harmony.
India is facing grave economic challenges, unemployment and ever-increasing fuel prices which are spurring the essential commodities’ prices sky high and beyond the reach of a common man.
In such a scenario the country needs a sagacious statesman leadership which wisely guides the whole nation out of these economic challenges and not those who like secondary school back-benchers give coded messages to their accomplices for ragging an individual or a group to spread hate and make their lives miserable.
After the USA officially ended the Iraq War, the British MP George Galloway’s monologue before the US Senators gives a peek into how the USA and its Western allies – particularly the UK – were carried away with the fake news report that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that it had a role in the 9/11 atrocity.
Here is George Galloway’s full monologue:
“I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11/2021.
I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraq people would resist a British and American invasion of their country. And that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end but merely the end of the beginning.
Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and a hundred thousand people have paid with their lives – 1,600 of them – American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.
If the world had listened to Kofi Annan whose dismissal you demanded; if the world had listened to President Chirac; if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement we would not be in the disaster that we are in today.
Senator, this is the mother of all smoke screens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes you supported from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq’s wealth.
Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in-charge of Baghdad The first 14 months when US $ 8.8 billion of Iraq’s wealth went missing on your watch.
Have a look at Halliburton and the other American corporations that stole not only the Iraq’s money but the money of the American taxpayer. Have a look at the oil that you didn’t even meter that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who-knows-where.
Have a look at the $ 800 million you gave to the American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Having a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee that the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanction busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own government.”
