It’s a film about money. $23 billion wasted, stolen, embezzled, or just lost down the back of a very big sofa in the desert. Daylight Robbery, 2008
Billions of dollars were being stacked on pallets and flown to Iraq. The bombs had stopped falling, now it was time to bombard the country with cash. Some of it US taxpayer’ dollars, some Iraqi funds seized during years of sanctions. ibid.
How did Halliburton win such fat contracts in Mr Bush’s war? As America was counting down to war, a contract worth potentially $7 billion landed on the desk of a top official at the Pentagon ... There was only one company bidding for the contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil industry: Halliburton. ibid.
Official reports also highlighted the confusion between military and civilian chain of command, and the lack of oversight of CACI personnel ... No CACI employee has been convicted of abuse at Abu Ghraib. ibid.
The Americans handpicked the Iraq government from civilians they had known from before the invasion. ibid.
Baghdad September 2001: A few days after 9/11 Iraq’s intelligence service received a secret message from a trusted emissary: ‘America wants Iraq to commit to the war on terror against Al-Qaeda’. The Iraq War I: Regime Change, BBC 2013
Removing Saddam almost certainly meant war. ibid.
Although Saddam strongly denied possessing banned weapons most governments thought he was lying. ibid.
Huge anti-war demonstrations were held in sixty countries. ibid.
In London about one million people took to the streets. ibid.
Many of Tony Blair’s supporters thought war would be illegal. ibid.
The Commons voted for war: almost two-thirds of Labour MPs backed Tony Blair. ibid.
America ruled – and the country slid ever closer to disaster. Iraq War II: After the Fall
Within months thousands would join the fight against the Americans. ibid.
The UN mission left Iraq ... But without the UN [Paul] Bremer was stuck. ibid.
These photos leaked: American soldiers abusing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison. The insurgency received a massive boost. ibid.
Three years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, America still has 130,000 troops in Iraq. But by the summer of 2006 President Bush’s plan was looking hopeless. The Iraq War III:
Under Saddam’s regime the Shia majority was oppressed. ibid.
Al-Sadr had won a huge following among Shia throughout Iraq with his fierce opposition to American occupation. ibid.
The battle for Baghdad began: al-Qaeda attacked the Shia in Sadr City with a car bomb killing sixty-two. ibid.
Extremist factions were taking control of the streets. ibid.
Sunni demonstrations continued to grow. Maliki sent in the troops. ibid.
This isn’t a film about war. This isn’t a film about Iraq. It’s a film about money. $23 billion wasted, stolen, embezzled or just lost down the back of a very big sofa in the desert … Will the whole truth about the profits of war ever come out? Panorama: Daylight Robbery, BBC 2008
Billions of dollars were being stacked on pallets and then flown to Iraq. ibid.
Iraq was a get-rich-quick opportunity that attracted some real chancers. ibid.
‘They are the essential war-profiteers. They make money out of chaos.’ ibid.
A war in which private contractors ended up outnumbering soldiers. ibid.
In Iraq most contracts were cost-plus. ibid.
There was of course something special about Halliburton, something controversial – Dick Cheney. ibid.
It’s the corporate excesses in Iraq that have angered those who expected better. ibid.
Pentagon audits found that Halliburton overcharged by $108 million for supplying and trucking fuel. ibid.
Ten years ago the Iraq War began: we were told it was necessary to get rid of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction – WMDs. Tony Blair assured us the intelligence was beyond doubt. In fact, it was anything but ... British and American intelligence got it so wrong. Panorama: The Spies Who Fooled the World, BBC 2013
Curveball – the codename of American Intelligence’s best source. ibid.
To the White House Curveball underpinned their case, but doubts were growing. ibid.
The second spy who fooled the world – an Iraqi defector from Saddam’s intelligence service who made his way to Jordan. ibid.
The intelligence was never that certain ... There were no WMDs. ibid.
His story was broadcast around the world. The little boy almost fatally burned by Saddam Hussein’s forces. Alone but watched by millions, he was brought to the UK for life-saving surgery. Now, thirty years on, mysterious messages from Iraq that could change everything. Panorama: The Iraqi Orphan: 30 Lost Years, BBC 2019
The problem the United States faces is that almost all of its invasions violate international law, and sometimes, as in the case of Iraq, in a blatant manner. So how do the political elite and the news media reconcile this contradiction? Simple: they ignore it. It is virtually unthinkable for a mainstream US reporter to even pursue this issue. John Nichols & Robert McChesney
Obama is notoriously a liar. He promised that he would get out of Iraq by I think within sixteen months at some point. Webster Tarpley, author & historian
UK soldiers ‘freed from militia’: Two British soldiers whose imprisonment prompted UK troops to storm a Basra police station were later rescued from militia, the Ministry of Defence says. BBC online article 20th September 2005
Was Iraqi cabbie the source of the dodgy dossier? MPs’ report claims ‘intelligence’ on Saddam’s WMDs came from the back of a taxi. Daily Mail online article 8th December 2009
Britain apologises for terrorist act in Basra: rescue of SAS men who were planning to plant bombs. Globalresearch online news article 15th October 2005
Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra? ... Sophisticated devices used for bombs ... Shooting at civilians while dressed up as Arabs. Global Research feature article 25th September 2005
I mean look at Iraq right now. There are as many private contractors over there as there are soldiers, and they’re being paid a heck of a lot more than our military personnel are being paid. Richard Grove, co-founder 8thestate online, Jesse Ventura Show
The oil fires in Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War were not actually set alight by the retreating Iraqi troops; they were set alight by the American special forces. Ian R Crane, radio interview
You’re all being fed this bullshit that we’ve reached Peak Oil. That we’re running out of oil ... There is more oil on this planet than we know what to do with. One of the whole purposes of the Gulf Wars was to keep the Iraqi oil in the ground. ’Cause there is so much oil in Iraq that when Saddam was running the show there the concern was that Saddam, because he had so much oil, would put it on the market, and keep the price suppressed. And the US needs a high price in oil because oil is still currently just about traded in US dollars. And they need other countries to have US dollars so that they can buy US goods – arms. The US only has one product that it manufactures today in any volume – arms. Military equipment. That’s why the US needs war. It needs war because that’s the only industry that it’s got. Ian R Crane, lecture Liverpool 2008, ‘New World Order’
The Kuwait oil fires were started by the US Special Forces. Why? Who do you think was going to get all the money for putting them out? $7 billion paid for by the Emir of Kuwait. How do I know this? Because I was in Iraq two days after the end of hostilities; I was driving around the oil fields in the south of the country with a military escort ... and there were bodies of Iraqi soldiers around many of the wells. I mean, it was very obvious; they’d been defending the oil wells. It was the American Special Forces that had started the fires. ibid.
At the time the oil industry was in a bit of a recession. So this provided $7 billion’ worth of work for the US oil industry. It also meant that the Kuwaiti oil was kept off the market. And what a lot of people don’t realise is that the whole charade over Iraq for the last almost twenty years now has been about keeping Iraqi oil in the ground. All this myth that is put out about Peak Oil is for the gullible. Ian R Crane, interview Ross Hemsworth, ‘Now That’s Weird!’
During the past six years, the American Gulf War Veterans Association has received numerous reports from veterans stating that US forces – including Navy Seals, Marine Force Recon and Delta Force – were responsible for the setting of the oil well fires at the end of the Gulf War. truthseeking online article
The fact that there was an election last year, there may be an election in December and the fact that the constitution has been voted on, are not weigh-stations on the way to democracy: they are theatrical events structured for a US media consumption that have nothing to do with the state, the dreadful state, of everyday Iraqis’ lives. Dr Tony Dodge, University of London
The Saudis put up a $12 billion war chest hidden in a secret account in London for George Bush to use to prosecute the Persian Gulf War. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy
Thousands of priceless items were smuggled out of Iraq by US military personnel and contractors after the US seized Baghdad. Democracy Now! 13th July 2011