The United States and the United Kingdom claimed that Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction posed a threat to their security and that of their regional allies. The Iraq war, which started in March 2003, was led by the Anglo-American power elite and it was based on lies.

The facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.*

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

It was one big lie. In 2004 the US-led Iraq Survey Group, ISG, concluded...

Iraq destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile in 1991, and only a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions were discovered by the ISG. Hussein's regime abandoned its biological weapons program and its ambition to obtain advanced biological weapons in 1995. While it could have re-established an elementary BW program within weeks, ISG discovered no indications it was pursuing such a course.*

In his final word, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has “gone as far as feasible” and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion.*

The Anglo-American power elite also claimed that Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaeda. But in April 2007 former Director of Central Intelligence for the CIA, George Tenet, was asked whether Iraq made any sense in regard to the 9/11 Attacks, he answered: In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none, ... It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period.*
In March 2008 the Pentagon released a study capturing 600,000 Iraqi documents concluding: This study found no "smoking gun" (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda.

There were no links.

President Bush and seven top officials made 935 false statements leading up to the Iraq war.* That's a lot of lies for getting the support for an unjust war. And of course the mass media, owned and controlled by the power elite, played along with the scheme. One reporter wrote about Powell's statements that Much of what he said about Iraq's threats to the United States was false. But the media coverage gave the opposite impression, and most of the pundits and journalists who promoted the justifications for the war paid no price for their failures.* Another reporter said that The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management.*

Already in 2001 it was evident that the Iraq war was going to happen because the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the leading think tanks owned and controlled by the ultra-rich, forewarned in one of its reports...

Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to U.S. allies in the Middle East, as well as to regional and global order, and to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil market. ... The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia and with key countries in the Middle East to restate the goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies. ... Iraqi reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade.*

The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.

In Iraq you've got a nation that's got the second-largest oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It will generate billions of dollars a year in cash flow if they get back to their production of roughly three million barrels of oil a day, in the relatively near future.

Iraqi oil played a major role in the lead up to the war. In 2000 Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to Euros. After the US bombed Iraq and replaced Saddam the newly installed Iraqi US puppet regime returned oil sales from the Euro to the US Dollar. In 2011 The Independent reported that plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq.* In 2013 CNN reported: Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with winners: Big Oil.* In 2014 The Guardian reported that maximising Persian Gulf oil flows to avert a potential global energy crisis motivated Iraq War planners - not WMD or democracy.* See also Iraqi oil supply was considered to be 'vital' to British interests *.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was advised prior to the invasion, "that the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests came from al-Qaeda and related groups, and that this threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq." The International Institute for Strategic Studies agreed, saying in late 2003 that the war had swollen the ranks of al-Qaida and galvanised its will by increasing radical passions among Muslims.*

In April 2004 one of the architects of the Iraq War, Paul Wolfowitz, said: There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.* However, nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state.* The Iraq war was a complete humanitarian disaster. Population-based studies produce estimates of the number of Iraq War casualties ranging from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 (Iraq Family Health Survey) to 1,033,000 excess deaths (2007 Opinion Research Business survey).

Many legal experts now describe the US-UK attack as an act of aggression, violating international law. One study concluded that the use of military force by the Bush Administration against the regime of Saddam Hussein does not meet the ethical criteria for "preemptive war" set forth in the classical Just War tradition. In September 2004 even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, when asked whether the war was illegal, said: Yes, I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.*

Despite a clear opposition of the Dutch population to participation of the Netherlands in the Iraq war the Dutch government participated in the Iraq war. Scholar Philip Everts explained that the influence of the Netherlands has declined over the years, specifically because of the increasing membership of the major international organizations of which it is a member (EU and NATO). What this means is that the Netherlands is essentially a puppet state of more powerful international bodies.

In the picture former Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende and former minister of foreign affairs Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who would later be promoted to Secretary General of NATO, visited US President Bush on 3 September 2003. They met in order to discuss the Iraq War and Dutch participation. Puppet states must follow orders from above, otherwise the superpower will simply force it...

This article in german magazine Der Spiegel from December 2002 says that US Congress accepted a law which threatens the Netherlands, and any other NATO member, with an invasion if any American citizens were to stand trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The power elite of the United States place themselves above the law, including international law.

On 18 March 2003 the Dutch government announced: The Netherlands supports a war with Iraq politically, not militarily. According to PM Balkenende there is not enough support from the Dutch parliament or the Dutch population.* However...

On 22 March 2003 American general Tommy Franks speeched...

I'm pleased to be joined today by Air Marshal Brian Burridge of Great Britain, Brigadier Mauri McNern (ph) of Australia, Rear Admiral Per T. Demond (ph) from Denmark, Lieutenant Colonel Jan Blom from the Netherlands. Four coalition partners represented here with us, and as many of you would know, we have at our home in Tampa, Florida, the home of Central Command, 52 nations represented. What many of you may not know is that many of these nations are also represented in the command posts of our component commands located in a number of countries in the region.*

Behind Tommy Franks stood Dutch military lieutenant colonel Jan Blom. Of course this was not supposed to have happened and Dutch officials and their state media tried to make the public believe that it was just a silly misunderstanding of insignificance.*

Not much later, in December 2003, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer became Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau which is a Dutch order of chivalry open to everyone who has earned special merits for society. And again a little later, in August 2004, he was promoted to Secretary General of NATO, the military machine led by the United States.

In 2009, after criticism became untenable, the Dutch government started a commission to investigate the Iraq War episode, the so-called Commissie-Davids*. One conclusion from its report was that PM Jan Peter Balkenende and Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaap de Hoop Scheffer repeatedly lied about the American request for military support.* In 2011 Dutch news outlet RTL Nieuws reported that the Cabinet of the Netherlands did surely have plans to participate militarily in the Iraq War* based on newly discovered documents.

Eventhough the War in Iraq officially started in March 2003, already in June 2002 the United States had started Operation Southern Focus to maintain the Iraqi no-fly zones. See also The secret military support of the Dutch government to Bush’s war in Iraq *.

Balkenende was skilled enough to postpone the presentation of the special committee report until the end of October, meaning after the European elections, one source commented, before adding that even belatedly, the results of the inquiry may harm Balkenende’s presumed ambition of replacing José Manuel Barroso as Commission president. Officially, Balkenende has denied interest in the position. But the investigation could harm Dutch candidates for other top EU positions, including current NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. A document, written by legal advisers at the Dutch foreign ministry, reportedly warned de Hoop Scheffer – who was the Dutch foreign minister at the time – that there was no proper legal basis for the country’s support of the invasion.*

These professional liars proved their worth for the Anglo-American elite by leading the Netherlands into a dirty war against the will of the Dutch population, and afterwards they were rewarded with lucrative positions in the globalist organizations led by these elite. The same goes for other EU member states...

In spite of outspoken French opposition to the Iraq war (normative coding 5), the French government continued to provide overflight rights and logistical support. ... Answering US requests in late 2002, the German government confirmed that it continued to grant overflight and transit rights as well as use of military bases for the planned intervention against Iraq.

Many Europeans opposed the war in Iraq. Public opinion was clearly against any intervention in Iraq but many EU governments participated in the Iraq war. The elite of these EU member states supported the US and UK led regime change in Iraq in order to install another puppet regime in the world...

The entire US-controlled political process this year - the January 30 elections for a transitional government, the drafting of a new constitution and the referendum on October 15 - has been aimed at giving the veneer of legal legitimacy to the plunder of the country's oil and gas and the formation of a puppet government that will sanction an indefinite US military presence in Iraq.*

The Iraq war was meant to turn Iraq into another US puppet state in order to plunder its resources and strengthen dollar hegemony while the western propaganda machine tried to make the world believe the newly installed Iraqi US puppet government was democratically elected.

This picture shows the United States involvement in regime changes around the world. It includes Western Europe because after World War II Western Europe was basically occupied territory of the United States while Eastern Europe was occupied by the Soviet Union. US military bases were installed and European armies were subjected to NATO which is essentially a US led military alliance. US multinationals spread throughout western Europe. Atlanticism and Americanisation transformed Western Europe into a pro-American bastion. Later the European Union was formed, whose elite largely followed orders from Washington by for example sending their soldiers to its dirty wars against the will of the people.

This picture shows the Democracy Index of 2019. The power elite of these fake democracies in the western world have done more than enough to give democracy a very bad name.

In the morning of 1 May 2003 president George W. Bush bowed his head in prayer, and said: Today we recognize the many ways our country has been blessed, and we acknowledge the source of those blessings. Millions of Americans seek guidance every day in prayer to the Almighty God. I am one of them.* In the evening of that same day he speeched from the USS Abraham Lincoln off the Coast of San Diego, California: In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.*

Mission accomplished.

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