And so, Jose Maria Aznar finally realized that the biggest pretext used to launch the Iraq invasion, which he fully supported, was merely fiction. Unfortunately, he realized this some four years after the beginning of one of the cruellest wars and two years after the United States officially admitted the absence of evidence of such weapons.

The newspaper also cites other statements from Aznar given when he was responding to a student’s question during a lecture he gave at the Pozuelo de Alarcon on the book Camino a la Democracia (On the road to democracy). “Everybody thought that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but there were no weapons of mass destruction. Everyone knows that, as well as I do…now. I have the problem of not having been smart enough as to have become aware of that before.”

Such a tangled language could make us burst out laughing if it were not for the hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers that have been killed in the war, the tens of thousands wounded and mutilated, the destruction of the country of the Thousand and One Nights and of its richness, and the suffering of a nation that is torn apart because of the simple-mindedness of men like Aznar.

Aznar goes on to say, “But when I ignored it, nobody knew about it either. Everybody thought the weapons were there, you know?”

What a conclusion!, especially by someone who was the president of Spain when the war for oil was in the works, when Bush ignored the 60 UN inspectors who, for months searched for the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Before the invasion was launched, the Head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) Hans Blix had said that 400 inspections had taken place on Iraqi soil during the previous three months without having found any weapons of mass destruction. And add to that the sophisticated equipment used by the team of inspectors, which included unmanned planes, portable artefacts to detect biological pathogens and radars.

Millions of people around the world, including 90 percent of the Spanish people, opposed the war and intelligence reports contradicted the official US statements. If that were not enough, there were heads of state who still believed, or the US initially forced them to believe, that there were weapons, but who still, based on common sense, opposed the invasion.

That was not the case of Aznar, on the contrary; he passionately promoted and defended the thesis launched by Bush and his acolyte Tony Blair, which added another ingredient to help prepare the media manipulation of the voter’s emotions in search of support for the final strike: the terrorist seal stamped on the Iraqi government and the demonizing of Saddam Hussein.

Maybe some other day, while giving another lecture and following his own logic, Aznar could say that he was not able either to foretell the horrible massacre that he helped materialize against a nation which, first was armed by the United States in its own interest when Iraq was at war with Iran, and which later Washington disarmed under the promise of not invading it, to finally submit it with impunity to the most sophisticated military technology.

What modesty the former Spanish President has to admit “not having been smart enough to become aware of that before.” Nevertheless, the victims, Iraqi, US, British, and Spanish soldiers, in the name of the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction were sent (and are still being sent) under unprecedented shrapnel, death and terror.

And all this for the sake of oil. Do not forget, or better to day, do not lie about what you knew so well about, Mr Aznar.

Author: Esteban Ramirez Alonso

Source
Cuban Agency News
La Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) es una división de la Agencia de Información Nacional (AIN) de Cuba fundada el 21 de mayo de 1974.

Cuban News Agency