Both Wars Started Over LIES

We've known for quite a while now that the Bush administration lied to the American people so he could have a reason to invade Iraq. He first tried to float the "yellow cake" uranium story, saying that Saddam was buying bomb material in raw form from Africa. That lie was exposed almost immediately by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson (resulting in the Bush administration "outing" his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent).

But the Bush administration had a back-up lie to depend on. They had an Iraqi informer codenamed Curveball, who was telling them that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. Curveball has since admitted that he was lying to the government, and in his recent book Donald Rumsfeld claimed the Bush administration was fooled by the Iraqi. But the German government disagrees. They said they knew Curveball wasn't reliable, and they claim the American CIA knew that too.

But the Bush administration didn't care that Curveball was lying. He was telling them what they wanted to hear, and they jumped on it as an excuse to invade Iraq -- something Bush started planning in his very first month in office. But it turns out that Iraq wasn't the only war started with a lie.

The Bush administration says they had to invade Afghanistan because the ruling Taliban government wouldn't turn over Osama bin Laden to be tried for the 9/11 terrorist bombing of the Twin Towers in New York. The American people bought into that argument, since nearly every American wanted to see Osama tried for that heinous crime.

The only problem was that story wasn't true. As the recent WikiLeaks posting of U.S. "secrets" has shown, the Taliban was willing to turn Osama over to the World Court in the Hague for a trial. They just didn't want to send him to America because they were afraid he wouldn't get a fair trial. And they were right. The tortures and kangaroo courts at Guantanamo Bay have conclusively proven that.

Would the American people have accepted a fair trial before the World Court? We'll never know because the Bush administration never told them of the offer from the Taliban. Again, Bush wanted to go to war and he was willing to lie to the American people so he could do it. He was wrongly convinced that he could win both wars easily, and he wasn't going to let anything or anyone stand in the way of either war.

Bush may not rise to the level of Hitler or some other vicious state criminals, but he is a war criminal -- ordering the torture of prisoners and lying to start two unnecessary wars prove that. Since the Obama administration doesn't have the political courage to try Bush, maybe he (and Cheney and Rumsfeld) should be tried in the Hague before the World Court. To not try Bush somewhere is an admission that there are some people who are above the law.