CBS Falsifies Iraq War History

by Robert Parry

In a world of objective reality, a reporter would simply say that the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and did this even after UN inspectors, completely unopposed by Saddam, had failed to find any WMD.

On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq even sent to the United Nations a 12,000-page declaration explaining how its WMD stockpiles had been eliminated. Plus, in the fall 2002, Hussein's government allowed teams of U.N. inspectors into Iraq and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.

Those inspections only ended in March 2003 when President George W. Bush decided to press ahead with war -- despite the U.N. Security Council's refusal to authorize the invasion, and despite its desire to give the U.N. inspectors time to finish their work.

But none of this reality is part of the Orwellian history that Americans are supposed to believe. The officially sanctioned and Orwellian U.S. account, as embraced by Bush in speech after speech (and now embraced by Mitt Romney as well), is that Saddam Hussein "chose war" by defying the U.N. over the WMD issue.

In line with Bush's version of history, "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley asked FBI interrogator George Piro why Hussein kept pretending that he had WMD even as U.S. troops massed on Iraq's borders, when a simple announcement that the WMD was gone would have prevented the war.

"For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking," Pelley said in introducing the segment on the interrogation of Hussein about his WMD stockpiles. "Why did he choose war with the United States?"

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