Most sources estimate the number of dead at anything from 150,000 to half a million. Some reliable investigations have concluded that the number was actually far higher. As early as 2006, the respected medical journal The Lancet calculated that there had been more than 650,000 "additional deaths." As well as from direct violence, this figure also takes into account the consequences of the bombed-out infrastructure and the collapse of the health system. [...]
Despite other, more explicit warnings about the veracity of Curveball's testimony, it became the centerpiece of Powell's war propaganda. Ray McGovern is certain: "They didn't care whether Curveball knew what he was talking about. What they had was something they could put on the record, that they could give to these very imaginative and very professional graphics people working for the CIA, and they in turn could render drawings of these nonexistent mobile chemical weapons labs, which of course they did and which Colin Powell featured during his speech."[...]
And Attorney General Goldsmith is on record as saying that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action." None of these reservations, however, stopped Blair from going to war in the interests of the "special relationship" between the US and the UK.
No comments:
Post a Comment