One chilling moment in the film comes in an interview with retired General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command. In August 2002, the Bush-Cheney administration opened its propaganda campaign for war with a Cheney speech at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The veep made a stark declaration: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." No doubt, he proclaimed, Saddam was arming himself with WMD in preparation for attacking the United States.
Zinni was sitting on the stage during the speech, and in the documentary he recalls his reaction:
It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that's when I began to believe they're getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq.
That Zinni quote should almost end the debate on whether the Bush-Cheney administration purposefully guided the nation into war with misinformation and disinformation.
But there's more. So much more.
As I am sure many of you know David Corn, of Mother Jones, wrote the book that this documentary is based on with fellow journalist Michael Isikoff. It is definitely going to be "must see TV" for those of us who were railing against this war from the very beginning, and will hopefully provide an incentive for journalists to revisit this issue and perhaps, fingers crossed here, somebody will actually have to answer for why this country was lied into a war, and why so many thousands of our military members were sent to their deaths under false pretenses.
As you can probably tell I am already amped up to see this and if you are as well feel free to leave your impressions here.
The fact that the day after 9-11 Bush insisted they find a Saddam connection speaks volumes.
ReplyDeleteI think my PTSD from the Bush years has just flared up.
ReplyDeleteI keep seeing faces that are long buried in my memory and it reminds me of how this thing unfolded, and how obvious it seemed that it was preplanned from the start.
Isn't it something that 12 years later, the heart rate escalates and I scream at the television just as I did then. Anyone paying attention KNEW it was crap, Jesse!
DeleteI know people who lost their lives because of it and have seen their families grieve to this DAY. And for WHAT???
I opposed that stupid and illegal war, and I was very alone. Since I have a Fargo accent, I was even stalked by people hoping I could be deported, but since it was my GRANDPARENTS who came from Norway, that wasn’t possible. I will NEVER forgive some of the supposedly intelligent people who supported that obviously bogus war. I guess they wanted to be part of the (Bush) cool kids. The opportunistic wretches were never part of the military, and I was unwavering in pointing that out. God help me, I still hate those people.
DeleteThis entire war was pre planned. Cheney had an energy meeting at the WH (supposedly the "people's house")where they divided up the oil fields of Iraq between US companies like Enron. To this day the minutes of that meeting are sealed. This entire fiasco was planned to enrich war mongers and greedy companies in THIS country. Now look at McCain, Graham and the rest of the gop rattling on about Benghazi, where 4 Americans were killed. What about the thousands lost in these manufactured wars? Lives lost from just about every country in the world. How do these people sleep at night? I imagine Cheney hangs upside down from rafters somewhere, wearing a cape.
DeleteThe war was absolutely pre-planned in 1997. Just Google "PNAC".
DeleteThis document was generated from the conservative think tank Plan for a New American Century with all the players-Wolfowitz, Kristol, Abrams et al.They even put their signatures at the end of the document. It lays out the goals and strategies to take control of the oil resources in Mid-east and predicting an invasion could only be justified by a "new Peal Harbor attack" (to wit WTC 911).
You are so right deebeee. Look carefully at the shot of the pentagon early in the first segment. There is no plane wreckage.
DeleteThere was no plane. Further, there was no plane at Shankesville.
And President Obama wet to a memorial there.
He knows. We know. PNAC and urban renewal.
Anyone with any skill at research or physics knows.
Hell, the whole world knows.
We did this to our own.
Everytime I see Kindasleazy Rice on I scream "lyin bitch", Dumbya and Dickhead "lyin asshole"
ReplyDeleteI do, too! Special place in hell for all of 'em.
DeleteYeah. I knew in February of 02. Zinni didn't figure it out until August? I didn't even need their propaganda, just had to look at what they were doing.
ReplyDeleteIvyfree
I'm watching it now, and it's giving me agita.......I saw Fahrenheit 911 back in the day, and I am getting the same sick to my stomach feeling. For 8 years of the Bush administration , I literally changed the channel anytime one of those 4 sleaze bags pictured above came on the tee vee, and I still do today.
ReplyDeleteAmen, VV!
DeleteMissed the first part 15 min. left..will it be shown again tonite??
ReplyDelete9:00 PST
DeleteYes at 9:00 PST. I missed part of it as well so have it set to record.
DeleteYou can watch it on-line at:
Deletehttp://maddowblog.msnbc.com
I hope she uses the video of Rummy leaving the White House after the decision to attack was made. He walked like he had a severe woody.
ReplyDeleteI doubt that he can! Maybe he was "serviced" by Jeff Gannon, the male prostitute who spent lots of time at the WH.
DeleteHo hum. More of everyone pretending they had no idea what Chen...er, Bush was up to. It was as plain as the nose on anyone's face from the beginning, and confirmed in the Plame kerfuffle.
ReplyDeleteThat nobody has been held accountable for this is criminal. The Iraq war should have happened.
ReplyDeleteYea, 6:01, that's my one beef with Nancy Pelosi. When Obama won in '08 and Nancy Pelosi came out right away saying there would be no investigation of the Bush Cabal for war crimes, that was disappointing.
DeleteHo hum. More of everyone pretending they had no idea what Chen...er, Bush was up to. It was as plain as the nose on anyone's face from the beginning, and confirmed in the Plame kerfuffle.
ReplyDeleteIt should have been TWO hours!
ReplyDeleteI said at the time this was escalating, "BULLSHIT!" It was Dubya taking out Hussein for dissing "daddy."
Not for dissing daddy,but to show that W was stronger than daddy
DeleteIt was interesting, as I knew it would be with Rachel narrating, but it wasn't anything that I didn't know. I lived it, for crying out loud!!! Who didn't? I was the one who was paying attention. Man, I hate Dick Cheney!! Hope the guy has very painful last days on this earth.
ReplyDeleteWell, the story has to be retold and retold often. When I think how many people consider President Obama to be the anti-Christ at best, I just remember George Bush and his buddies. Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that proclaimed: "Obama - the Enemy Within" and we have a neighbor whose plastic lawn chair is adorned with an enlarged plastic-coated photo of Josef Stalin. Where were these people when George Bush and his evil buddies were taking this country to war for NO REASON.
DeleteBeaglemom
Very disturbing to think that we trusted, well, some of us did. The way Rachel put it all together gives it a chilling perspective.
ReplyDeleteMy nephew-in-law was a Marine at that time and he came over to our house in early January and told us he was being sent to Iraq and that the war was to start March 17 (he was off by a couple of days). So much for Bush "trying to work something out."
ReplyDeleteWhat is more sickening than not one of those bastards have to answer for thousands of deaths.....they are still talking to the press. Rachel made that statement last week....why in the hell does any media (other than Faux) give these liars a platform? During the GOP convention...remember Condy Rice? It made me ill knowing that lying bitch was even considered as a VP pick. Bush/Cheny walked away from all of this....millionaires (Halliburton)and still able to rewrite history with books....taking this country from a surplus to a huge debt, trillions and thousands of deaths. May they all rot in hell.
ReplyDeleteI was furious to see that Charlie Rose was interviewing Dick Cheney and allowing him to spew forth lies and innuendo about President Obama on television last week.
DeleteBeaglemom
It pissed me off then and it pisses me off now.
ReplyDeleteLiars, cheats, frauds. MURDERERS.
Same here. AND they are cowards, as well. None of them will ever say they lied our nation into war. They manipulated us with fear.
DeleteHubris: Rachel Maddow Shocks America Into Remembering Bush’s War Crimes
ReplyDelete...When George W. Bush became president neo-cons filled his cabinet, and almost immediately they started looking for an excuse to go war with Iraq.
The new interview footage with some of the players ten years later makes this documentary special, but this is a story that should be told more often than once every five years.
Ten years later, the nation is still dealing with the consequences of the invasion of Iraq. The recent criticisms of drone warfare often leaves out the fact that the reason why the executive branch has expanded power is because Congress failed to act as a check on George W. Bush. Republicans and Democrats, by an overwhelming margin in the Senate and House, gave George W. Bush a blank check expansion of executive powers that will forever be cashed. (One thing that partisans on both sides of aisle often forget is that once power is expanded and the precedent is set, there are no givebacks.)
After 9/11, the Bush administration governed by fear. Their fear based politics took the country into a very dark place that led to preemptive war, torture, and domestic spying on American citizens among other things. In some ways, Hubris: The Selling of the Iraq War is mistitled. How the war on Iraq was sold to the country functions more as a subplot. Instead, Hubris is documentary about how the Bush administration built a web of lies that allowed them to take the nation into an war that was unrelated to 9/11.
http://www.politicususa.com/hubris-rachel-maddow-shocks-america-remembering-bushs-war-crimes.html
It's too bad there is no mainstream documentary on the lies and distortions of the events of September 11, 2001, which was the lead in to both wars. Remember, they were saying that Sadaam Hussein was behind the events of that day, and so much so that something like 40% of the American public believed he was the mastermind.
DeleteOf course, if you do any research at all, you will learn that it was elements within our own government working with others who planned, orchestrated, and carried out the "attacks" of Sept. 11th, and not any Islamic terrorists at all. It was the false-flag nature of that operation that led people to believe it would be permissible to attack two Islamic nations, neither of which had anything whatsoever to do with it. Then the added canard of "weapons of mass destruction" was thrown in just to be sure. It is sickening.
More info on all of this is available at a multitude of sources, but I would suggest that Architects and Engineers for Nine Eleven Truth (http://www.ae911truth.org/) would be a good place to start, as well as any of David Ray Griffin's books. Also http://physics911.net/
I still don't take the NY Times for its part in moving the process along that allowed the Iraq War. Judith Miller was a known sleazy journalist and the NY Times allowed several articles by her to run on the front page, knowing full well her sources had not been verified. Never mind her Pulitzer Prize status. She was one of several journalist who were rewarded for a joint effort. The prize made her stories more credible, and therefore more dangerous. A curse on all the people who took us into that war. Plenty of us knew from the beginning that it was all a lie. It wasn't that hard to discover the truth, either. And so many suffered and died as a result.
ReplyDeleteAnd to this day there are people in this country who wonder WHY the Iraquis HATE us!
DeleteAnd you people still think that only the government should be armed.
ReplyDeleteAnd you think that Dems and Republicans are that different. Just two sides of the same coin.
Were you watching a different documentary? "Hubris" is about the lies and hoaxes that brought us very deeply into national debt and that destroyed countless lives. There are very serious differences between Democrats and Republicans and I, for one, am very thankful that I am not a Republican.
DeleteBeaglemom
No one thinks that "only" the government should be armed. And it is just stupid to say that there is no difference between republicans and Democrats.
DeleteGet some critical thinking skills. It will help keep you from posting stupid statements.
Yeah, if only the people, democrats, republicans and independents working in the twin towers on that fateful day were armed, they could have shot uhose planes before they hit the buildings!
DeleteI saw the documentary twice and still can't believe how stupid some people where!
ReplyDeletewww.dailykos.com/story/2005/02/18/93579/-Gannon-knew-about-quot-shock-and-awe-quot-hours-before
ReplyDelete"A news producer for a major network just told me that Gannon told the producer the US was going to attack Iraq four hours before President Bush announced it to the nation.
According to the producer, Gannon specifically told them that in four hours the president was going to be making a speech to the nation announcing that the US was bombing Iraq. The producer told me they were surprised that Gannon, working with such a small news outfit, could have access to such information, but "what did you know, he was right," the producer said today. The producer went on to say that Gannon often had correct scoops on major stories, including information about Mary Mapes and the Dan Rather BUSH/AWOL scandal that this news outlet got from Gannon before any had the information publicly."
http://www.salon.com/2005/02/15/guckert/
"Revelations that the bogus reporter worked as a gay escort are the latest twist in the affair that has the White House squirming -- and Democrats demanding explanations. "
Those of us who stood up and said, this is a war we need not be involved in, were accused of being unpatriotic. Accused of being traitor all sorts of things proven wrong.
ReplyDeleteWhen the talk was first brought to the attention of the people in the U.S. All I did was take one look the map of Iraq. Iraq had but one sea port, with no navy to speak of, no carriers for planes nd they were supposed to be a great threat to Us?
At the time they also had no missiles that could reach our shore,yet Shrub, and Comp. managed to freighten the population into doing his bidding. I.d call that. pure evil at work. We are now stuck with what is called the Patriot act,which is really no more then the Gov. being able to put citizens in jail, without provable evidence.
So far, even the Dem's have not done anything to change that. For that reason and that reason alone, I fear for my country and the citizens.
Hubris : Selling the Iraq War
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YZBO0fJPg3Y
George W. Bush: The 9-11 Interview (2011)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke_OgE_V6tQ
And yet, I remember only one person who actually stood up and publicly contradicted Bush - to the detriment of Valerie Plame, his wife.
ReplyDeleteYet another thing for which Cheney should be held accountable.
All those people saying W was deliberately ignoring them. How many went public at the time? And even worse, Powell, who was probably the most respected man in DC at the time, refused to say anything - and even worse, ASSISTED in the travesty.
He should have resigned and gone public.
Powerful show... and a good start for a public discussion of this treason.
ReplyDelete