Warnings About Latest Genocidal Mess Unfolding in Iraq Were Tossed Aside By Many, Including Canada’s Stephen Harper

A Brief by Doug Draper

In the lead-up to the U.S. Bush/Cheney administration’s 3003 invasion of Iraq, it is important to remember that there were some high-profile political voices in the United States that predicted the murderous mess still infesting that hapless region of the world today.

Ted Kennedy leaves his Hyannis, Massachusetts home for last time in late August, 2009. Photo by Doug Draper

One of those voices was the senior U.S. senator from Massachusetts Ted Kennedy, who died following a courageous battle against brain cancer five years ago this past August 25^th. 

In his memoir True Compass, completed in his final days and published a month (five years ago this September) after his death, Kennedy recalled his reasons for opposing the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq; “The administration had told ‘lie after lie after lie’ to per trigger and perpetuate ‘one of the worst blunders in the history of U.S. foreign policy’. The war failed the ‘last resort’ principles for reasons too obvious to dwell on here. …

“On the question of proportionality, ” Kennedy continued, “did the harm inflicted outweigh the good achieved? I pointed again to the loss of American and Iraqi olives, the collapse of Iraqi civil society, the self-fulfilling prophesy of terrorists flooding into the ravaged country and using it as a base, the heightened tensions with the entire Islamic world, and our loss of international prestige generally.” 

It is now more than 11 years since Kennedy, along with a handful of others, including former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential contender Howard Dean, the elderly senator from West Virginia Charles Byrd and a young senator from Illinois Barack Obama, first issued those warnings But very few, including the hawkish Hillary Clinton, who was a senator for New York at the time, and even some of the most prestigious papers in the United States like the Washington Post and New York Times, took these warnings seriously. 

Now we have a murderous band of religious zealots and psyches called Isis or Isil showing every potential of growing to a point where they could commit acts of genocide on a Hitler scale if they are not wiped out. And wiping every murderous wack job in this bunch out is the only option now U.S. President Barack Obama and the rest of the civilized world have left in the wake of the mess the reckless policies the Bush-Cheney junta unleashed.

And for any Canadians who might want to get smug and blame the U.S. for all of this, it should never be forgotten that Canada’s current prime minister, Stephen Harper, slammed the Liberal government of the day for not joining the Bush/Cheney ‘coalition of the willing’ for the Iraq invasion when he was our country’s opposition leader.

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