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FREE Kindle eBook IRAQ WAR 2003: What Really Happened behind The Political Scenes (Save $9.99)

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With more than 600 citations, ranging from insider memoirs to the accounts of journalists, former government officials, policy wonks, military leaders, and news broadcasters, the 'Iraq War 2003: What Really Happened Behind The Political Scenes' develops a thorough analysis of what led the Bush administration use the 'War on Terror' to attack Iraq.
Both the Afghan and Iraq wars continue even now to haunt the economical undercurrents of American life like a hungry ghost contributing to our country's recession. What are the real costs of both wars and why were we led to believe otherwise? "If we fail to learn from history we are doomed to repeat it".

Sun Tzu, the ancient philosopher of war, stressed the importance of "Knowing Your Enemy". This being critical to victory in the War on Terror, the book examines why al-Qaeda attacked the US on 9/11.

Could those attacks have been prevented? What warnings from CIA and America's friends around the world preceded the terrorist attacks of 9/11 but ignored by the Bush administration, which then used them to support its agenda of taking out Osama bin Laden's natural enemy, Saddam Hussein, much to the chagrin of most of America's traditional allies around the world and to the benefit of both al-Qaeda and the government of Iran?

Why were Mullah Omar,Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri allowed to escape? Most know Mark Owen's "No Easy Day" and how Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011, but only a few are familiar with the details of how the military bureaucracy under the Bush administration interfered with CIA doing its job.

Why was al-Qaeda happy that the Bush Administration planned to invade Iraq? What was Osama bin Laden's strategic long-term plan for harming the USA and what role did George W. Bush play in helping it succeed? How did the Iraq war of 2003 unwound principally to the benefit of al-Qaeda and the Shia fundamentalists of Iran?

How did the War in Afghanistan, so successful in its opening weeks, become 'The Long War'? What are the most effective methods for fighting terrorism?

How did Saddam Hussein acquire his WMDs and how long, in the face of serious consequences for doing so, did he hold on to them?

America was prosperous working toward paying off its debts during the 1990's. What exactly would take now to undo the initial mistakes on the "War on Terror"?

Based on the theory of conservatism, were the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration real conservatives? This analysis alone is a must-read for those Republicans at-heart concerned over how their once party has strayed from its main-street principles with which it once resonated.
Its first few chapters focus on the opening months of the Afghanistan War and Osama bin Laden's escape in Tora Bora, then segue into the invasion of Iraq, telling how the Iraq War of 2003 unwound largely to the benefit of al-Qaeda and the fundamentalist government of Iran. The compelling narrative of 'Iraq War 2003: What Really Happened Behind The Political Scenes' is written almost in the manner of a novel that unpacks in an engaging and logical sequence detailed and documented information about a difficult time in modern American history.

The book ties together a considerable amount of information and provides a hopeful analysis by reminding us of where we have been. Patriotic concern - like the imprisoned lightning to which it subtly alludes - threads its way through the pages of this book, reminding its readers of the people, ideas, and inspirations that called for America to be its best.

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    • Yes, all those countries were in the shit because of US foreign intervention.

  • +3

    "How did Saddam Hussein acquire his WMDs and how long, in the face of serious consequences for doing so, did he hold on to them?"

    Ummmm… Because they were invisible?

    • There's your "official stories" regarding 9/11, Al Qaeda, Osama, Saddam, and the countless wars (still ongoing) and so on.

      Then there's the truth :)
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYOX0-QT8nI
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvay28lZiHU
      http://www.youtube.com/user/ae911truth
      etc, etc.

      • Please take your bullshit conspiracies elsewhere.

        • +7

          I see the propaganda is thick.
          Lovely debating skills by the way.

          I can debate you on each and every "conspiracy" but you won't hear it; you've already made up your mind and are ignoring the glaring evidence.

          As usual, a handful of corporations profit from the death and destruction of millions, and you simply feel it's about "democracy and freedom", like the mainstream press has taught you. Nations can be looted for lucrative resource contracts benefiting a handful of corporations while the taxpayer slave pays for all the destruction and the nations themselves go bankrupt and the lovely bankers benefit from any conflict and any side of the countless wars going on, while the Afghanistan heroin trade goes on, protected and endorsed by the military and the money gets laundered through US banks (also discussed in the mainstream media if you care to look).

          I challenge you to disprove anything in those videos. I've looked into the facts; you haven't. And we are all suffering civil rights abuses as a result of the fraud perpetuated on us through our changed laws since 9/11, something you won't see until it's too late it seems.

          A real shame such ignorance gets upvoted, but not unexpected.

        • +2

          Do you listen to Alex Jones in Texas?

        • -4

          I won't watch your stupid videos, but i'll disprove what you said -

          The only way that what you suggest can possibly happen is for -

          a) There are a lot of people involved to pull it all off
          or
          b) There are a few very, very smart people pulling it off.

          a) Not possible - when you have too many people involved in a conspiracy, it's highly likely it'll leak like a sieve. Just as Noam Chomsky (a favourite of the lunatic left) and see what he says about the 9/11 conspiracy theroies.

          b) Also not possible. No one's that intelligent to plan like that and stupid enough to want destruction for more money at the same time. In fact, no one's smart enough full stop.

        • +2

          @cheepwun, I agree with you but there is no point of debating here, people only see what they want to see. Plus this is ozbargain not a news channel.

        • Yes, I know, but i'm just waiting to Godwin's law to come into effect on OzBargain for once :) Unless it's already happened?

        • +1

          @zo1dberg I am replying to cheepwun.

        • …while the Afghanistan heroin trade goes on, protected and endorsed by the military and the money gets laundered through US banks (also discussed in the mainstream media if you care to look).

          Anyone notice we haven't heard much of the Northern Alliance in the MSM in the last few years? These allies of the US helped turn a generation of Russian youth into heroin addicts in the 1980s.

          In 1998 a Clinton delegation went to Afghanistan to negotiate with the Taliban. The US wanted port access to the oil and gas pipelines coming from the Caucasus region. For obvious reasons, they couldn't approach Iran but an acceptable route detoured slightly before heading south through Afghanistan and terminating off Pakistan, in the Arabian Sea.

          Negotiations didn't go well. The ultimatum from State Dept. delegates of "grant our request and we'll shower you in gold. Deny us and be showered in bombs." didn't get much play in the MSM, but it's there if you look for it.

          What is well known is that ~80% of the worlds heroin supply comes from Afghanistan. What isn't commonly known is that not only do they cultivate poppy in certain regions that can support the crop, they have whole production facilities that output the blocks for export. First major incursion operations in Afghanistan started in the north, where support was greatest and old assets came back into play.

          The Taliban are so conservative, they make the Neocons look like hippy frat boys. Among many other things, they forbade alcohol, drugs, western music, dancing and films during their rule. Occasionally it is alleged they use the drug trade (or Narcopol) to raise the funds needed for the insurgency. The fact is, they don't need the money, and Taliban strongholds can't support any plant growth, such are the mountainous/arid/rocky conditions.

          I still have an old (2006) interview with an ambassador from a neighbouring country who witnessed the export of the final product northwards via Uzbekistan, destined for markets in Russia, the EU and elsewhere.

          What is inevitable, is that once ISAF withdraws, the domestic forces will be toppled quite easily. As most would know, their attitude is "you have the watches, we have the time." Soon thereafter, once all the stored H is sold, you'll see supplies dry up and prices will skyrocket again.

        • "I've looked into the facts; you haven't."

          Oh trust me, I have. The conspiracy videos, the forum postings it all seems very convincing. You'll come to some sense in about two years. There's really nothing for me to disprove. The burden of proof lies on you and aligning a bunch of half truths, coincidences etc doesn't really amount to anything.

        • Yeah I've dealt with folks like you before.
          Plug your ears and "la-la-la-la!"

          Only when it's all over the mainstream media will you then claim I knew it all along.

          Did you vote for Howard and his anti-sedition laws?
          Bet you did.

      • +2

        LOL the conspiracies really give the governments too much credit. If in the case any one of them were true, with zero information leaked, 100% success rate, it would be the most successful project the government has undertaken, ever.

        • +2

          The most successful government project undertaken ever is your apathy.

          Our governments are OWNED by a handful of corporations pulling the strings. That's who sponsors them, that's who allows those we 'ELECT' to be SELECTED before they can ever be pushed to the top. It's simple: it takes lots of money and they need the backing of those who put them there.

          Or do you think they actually represent YOU?

          Let's start with one basic thing here. Are these deaths coincidental?
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvay28lZiHU

          If you vote yes, please stop there. If you vote no, please continue the discussion. And I can discuss every single point you wish to, SHOULD YOU WISH TO.
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33drnfzFbHk

        • -4

          I am saying that it would be a huge undertaking for any large organisation to expect each and every person involved or with knowledge of a conspiracy to keep quiet.

          However I'm not going to address every single point with you. I do not have access to any original documentation and don't believe youtube videos and random blogs are solid enough evidence to base any opinion on.

        • Lol watch those negs roll in! Ok I take it back, if you can't trust youtube, who can you trust?

        • Gubmint? No matey. Dozens of little satellite shelf companies.
          Lots of private sector involvement. Compartmentalisation of tasks.

          Ever heard the saying "one hand doesn't know what the other is doing"?
          Well, imagine each and every finger not knowing what the other is doing.

          When Larry Silverstein ordered WTC7 be pulled (demolished) in the late afternoon of 9/11, most of the paper trail was eliminated. The same guy held the insurance policy for the WTC…

        • But they left just enough clues for you to figure it out. Watch your back mate.

        • lol if I still smoked those special herbal cigarettes I might be paranoid right now.

        • You should be paranoid. They've killed everyone who knew the truth and were ready to talk. You're next on the list.

        • Where were you 2001-2007? Playing xbox? Because they were my "active" years :)

          My job as pioneer long completed, I bathed in vindication for 3 years.
          Anything "they" do now is too little, waaaaay too late.

        • Err gratz! Well at least we both found OzBargain in the end. And it was Playstation actually ;)

        • Cheers Alan! Yes it's certainly nice here.
          I bought an xbox in 2003 and hardly used it until four years later. So I'm a few years behind, but the upside is cheap games :D

    • and yet Howard, Bush, Blair, etc still say that the war was justified.

      I guess they cannot back down from their positions for fear of being called to account by The Hague :)

  • +3

    From Sun Tzu the ancient philosopher of war to Bush…. how times have changed

  • +2

    As long as we're getting political here…

    Late Night Live's recent guest - author of "Dirty Wars"
    tells of how folks get their names added to "kill list"
    (meaning that they're to be killed on sight; no joy…)

    We should really end this kind of thing, by Referendum!

    My 2.2 cents only. YMMV.

    PS Did I hear the PM speaking -emotionally- (eg, crying)
    when addressing Parliament about the NDIS - on this AM's
    "Papers update with James Carleton" on RN, on Thu morn'g
    Cf podcast: "Breakfast - 130516.0643" (one of several to
    be had; select "Breakfast - separate stories podcast").

    Another PM crashing?

    How to build more resilience into AUs politicians? How to
    make them -stop- harassing each other in "Question Time"?

    My 2.2 cents only…

    • How to make them -stop- harassing each other in "Question Time"? I says the kids are hungry; give them lollies pop

    • -4

      Only Women's Monthly readers, Home and Away viewers and reality-TV addicts were taken in by Gillard's ludicrous faux-emoting when talking about the next $8 BILLION her cronies are poised to steal from the domestic livestock each year.

      I can't remember who said "Sincerity is everything in politics. Once you can fake that, you've got it made", but there's nothing more depraved than a tax-feeding megalomaniacal sociopath pretending to get all choked up at the prospect of getting more cash in the door. Where are Gillards tears for dead Iraqi and Afghan children?

      The NDIS is simply a useful excuse to ram the blood funnel of the taxation vampire-squid down the throats of the public - because (as the propaganda will claim) if you're against that, you must hate the lame, the halt, the divvies and the unfortunate.

      How many of those are there in Australia, that it takes $8b a year to 'help' them?

      Do not be fooled - if there are a million NDIS-worthies in the country (i.e., 10% of the not-already-dependent population) I will "go he for tiggy"… but even if there was, nobody is planning to give them $8k a person. The VAST bulk of the money will go to paying yet another vast layer of bureaucrats and office-wallahs - jobsworths who are unfit for employment in the private sector.

      • +4

        I for one would like to hear more about this 'vampire-squid.'

        • +1

          I've seen enough to know where this is going

      • A Thatcherite by the name of Diogenes? Now, I've seen it all.

      • -3

        Whilst we're at it, don't forget the NBN - there's another white elephant which we'll all be fleeced for in the not too distant future.

        • Lemme guess zo1dberg; Exclusive Brethren or Young Lib?

  • …no idea…what can I achieve adding my theories to this debate. The best I could do it to simply download this free book…..may be read ONE day!!

  • +6

    What really happened was… in the 1980's during the Iran-Iraq War, the US and a whole host of European nations sold Saddam the precursor chemicals and dual-use technology necessary to make Chemical/Biological agents with the full knowledge that they would be employed to devastating effect against Iranian military and civilian targets, as well as most infamously in the Halabja attack which killed 6,000 or more Kurds. Iran never retaliated in kind against the Iraqis. A Dutch businessman (Hans van Anraat) was to my knowledge; the only guy ever convicted of selling Iraq the chemical precursors, some of which were used on civilians.

    This is just a microcosm in the spectrum of military and strategic assistance the US offered in to Iraq the 1980's against its new found enemy in the Islamic Republic of Iran amongst many, many other forms of aid such as satellite mapping and topography of Iranian targets, training Iraqi Republican Guards at US Special Forces Bases (no joke), and millions in military hardware ranging from APCs to Helicopters. In short doing everything but pulling the trigger for them.
    It's worth mentioning that Iran of course, did not initiate the border dispute on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway which led to the war, and actively tried to negotiate a truce several times to no avail.

    Then Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 after the Kuwaitis began slant-drilling across the border, into Iraqi oil fields using equipment once again, bought from the West. Kuwait refused to hear Iraqi negotiations on the issue, and Kuwait responded by increasing oil production (thus driving down global prices) and costing Iraqi some $14 billion in 1990 by under-cutting them; a form of economic warfare Iraq could not afford after its disastrous stalemate against Iran. Kuwait's bravado in the face of a looming conflict with the Middle East's largest standing army at the time was due to one, sole reason: US assurances that the West would intervene in case of an Iraqi invasion. Even before Gorbachev "torn down that wall", military analysts in the West realised that in order to sustain America's ridiculous defence budget and geo-political hegemony after the fall of the Soviet Union, new enemies would have to be drafted into the "fight against monolithic evil" around the world. Iraq was seen as a good candidate (traditionally a Soviet-bloc ally despite becoming the West's main man in the Middle East during the 1980's) and much urging was given to the Kuwaitis to lure Iraq into a confrontation.

    There were numerous publicised policy papers and opinion prices published during the early 1990's by leading neo-conservatives, even going back to 1989, that highlight this shift in thinking amongst Washington's top brass, with the coming end to the Cold War. Charles Krauthammer's "Universal Dominion" (1989), Dick Cheney's and Wolfwitz's Defense Planning Guidance in the years 1992-1994, and Richard Perle's "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" (1996).
    These documents parallel the PNAC's "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" published in the year 2000, which basically outlined a blueprint for starting wars in multiple theaters simultaneously and spending insane amounts on military modernisation; all of which came to fruition after 9/11.

    Of course the lemon used to sell the public on a full spectrum ground invasion of Iraq and strategic bombing campaign (because of course once the Iraqis had been removed from Kuwait; the coalition had no legitimate reason to cross the border) was once again non-existent WMD's, just as it was in 2003. There's a reason why Saddam was never actually tried in court for Halabja nor any of the other numerous, documented chemical weapons attacks during the 1980's; it would all eventually lead back to the US and EU and indict numerous influential Western corporations/individuals.

    Then in 2003, just six months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept Euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar; Saddam also expressed interested to OPEC in setting up a petroleum exchange in the Middle East (rather than relying on the Western-based exchanges) to give a fairer percentage of profit to OPEC nations.

    It's worth noting Libya's Gaddafi, Iran's Mossadegh (overthrown by the CIA in 1953), and the current leader of Iran, Ahmadinejad, also all expressed interest in switching to a new currency to sell oil in and/or a Middle Eastern-based oil exchange.

    It was oil, but in the not in the way most people assume it have been the cause.

    • -1

      Wow, watch me cry a river for these unhinged murdurous arseholes. If only Saddam didn't switch to the Euro, he'd still be alive today! lol!

      • +3

        As long as you include essentially every Western head of state for the past 20 years with those "murdurous arseholes".

        It's also worth mentioning that Saddam came to power with CIA assistance after pan-nationalist President Abd al-Karim Qasim demanded that the Iraqi Petroleum Oil Company (which was 80% owned by the UK/US and received over 50% of the profits) cut a fairer deal for Iraq. He threatened nationalising Iraq's oil industry several times (the same fatal mistake Iran's Mossadegh made in 1953 against the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company).

        The same "behind-the-scenes" justifications are now being used to frame the upcoming war with Iran; whom to this day, 7 years after formal allegations were made of a WMD program, has not been conclusively proven to be developing WMD's and the US even rejected and Turkish/Brazilian/Iranian agreement for off-shore Uranium enrichment in which Iran would surrender tons of enriched fuel (over half its stockpile of it) to Turkey. In fact to the contrary the DNI's National Intelligence estimate has routinely stated (most notably in 2009) that Iran is at a minimum, 30 years away from true WMD capability and the necessary delivery mechanisms to threaten strategic interests in the Middle East (i.e. Israel).

        Iran has been the victim of an Israeli/US-sponsored terror campaign for at least the past 5 years, in which US State Department-designated terrorist organisations like the MEK and Baluchi/Azeri separatists are being funded and trained to carry out bombings and assassinations, which have already claimed hundreds of civilian casualties. Iranian scientists and leading military personnel wind up dead in Iran on a monthly basis. Iranian has routinely complained about even shot down US drones over its airspace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incide…. US and British spies have been detained numerous times in Iranian territorial waters and even once on the Iran-Iraq border. Not to mention the crippling economic sanctions that force Iran, a top oil-producing nation, to import petroleum due to technology importation restrictions. Over 20% of Iranians live below the poverty line.

        No other country would sit still for such blatant acts of war against it; and yet Iran is still the aggressor in this situation despite never having invaded another country for 200 years.

        • Extremely well said sir. Now wait for a Zionist to refute your undeniable explanations

  • +3

    Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance Team America, and then Team America goes out… and the corporations sit there in their… in their corporation buildings, and… and, and see, they're all corporation-y… and they make money.

    • +1

      Also I hear Matt Damon personally approves each war.

  • OP, please edit the title to let everyone know that this deal also includes some cashback in the form of loose change.

    Thanks.

    • Sorry I don't get you. What do you mean?

      • Wasn't being serious …

        I clicked on the deal expecting just a free eBook. But I also ended up scoring some loose change ;-)

    • [duplicate]

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