“There were 500 ways to do it wrong, and two or three ways to do it right”
In 2003, American politician and businessman, George W. Bush’s secretary of defence and the principal architect of the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld (THE UNKNOWN KNOWN) (FULL FILM), estimated that the war with Iraq would cost around $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is over 10 times that figure. So last weekend, also with the 2015 Paris attacks in the back of my mind, I decided, to research more on this topic, while looking at the “Three Trillion Dollar War infographic”, about the costs of the war in Iraq. Yes, folks your fine Tax Dollars at war – (VIDEO). The infographic was created by Good Magazine, based on the 2008 book: Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (Book) by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. The book was a New York Times and international best-seller and has been translated into 22 languages. Have a look at the video explanation of the infographic here. Academy award winning Director Charles Ferguson (Inside Job) (Final 20 minutes), made a film in 2007 called “No End in Sight" (TRAILER). The Documentary (culled 200 hrs. of Iraq footage) provides you with a comprehensive look at George W. Bush’ Administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, which happened on false pretences as we all know now (operation curveball), and its occupation of the country, which was a true debacle. But how and why did America’s leaders decide to invade Iraq? How did they formulate a strategy that went so far wrong? A lot things went wrong (lack of armered Humvees) (private contractors, cause of lack of troops in beginning) (Video Aegis Defense Services) (looting Baghdad, Iraq) (UN Nations HQ bombed – Sergio) etc. etc. which in return led to a lot of unrest, not only in Iraq, but it’s complete region. The quote above, “There were 500 ways to do it wrong, and two or three ways to do it right”, comes from Barbara Bodine. Bodine was the US Foreign Service officer and former ambassador to Yemen. “What we didn’t understand is that we were gonna go through all 500.”. The Doc. provides us with the best talking heads that where involved, and shows us a "catalog of bungling, a primer on incompetence” (Nytimes). Director Charles Ferguson does it all in an insightful, incredibly intelligent and thorough way, with a true level-headed examination of what really happened out there…. and basically is still ongoing today..… The Film was nominated at the 2008 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature. And had another 12 wins and 11 nominations. I highly recommend watching —— WATCH FULL FILM HERE—— You won’t be asking me 1 hour and 42min of your life back, trust me…… It was easily the most important film of 2007. Interesting side note is that, what’s not discussed in the film nor the book, is that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein met Donald Rumsfeld, then the CEO of Searle drugs, but was acting out as a special White House “peace envoy” of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983 (photo) (nytimes). Rumsfeld was there to win Hussein’s approval for a $2-billion oil pipeline. This to be built by the 4th-largest privately owned construction and civil engineering company called Bechtel. The pipeline had to run from the Euphrates oilfields in southern Iraq westward to Jordan and the Gulf of Aqaba. To try to win over Saddam, Rumsfeld provided Saddam with billions of dollars in cash, US weapons, and even help building chemical factories. In which in return, Saddam Hussein used against Iranian and Kurdish civilians. Then why George H. W. Bush’s Gulf War? It’s relatively simple actually…. Saddam Hussein told Donald Rumsfeld he was not interested in the Bechtel pipeline. Personally I believe if he had accepted that deal, he would have still been President today. And because Saddam had too many body doubles, it was simply to difficult to take him out. A reason was needed. The Gulf War began with an extensive aerial bombing campaign on 17 January 1991. The Coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs…..pissing off a lot of Iraqis and killing a lot of innocent people.Almost exactly the same deal making took place between Osama Bin Laden and Washington D.C. – "In the 1980s, Osama bin Laden left his comfortable Saudi home for Afghanistan to participate in the Afghan jihad, or holy war, against the invading forces of the Soviet Union – a cause that, ironically, the United States funded, pouring $3 billion into the Afghan resistance via the CIA.” (BBC) (FORBES) (ABC) ………. And we all wonder why there is Terrorism?? ”From all this coalition and US ’interfering’, we simply created a lot of Poverty, unjust civilian casualties, drone attacks —— overall unhappiness perpetuates unrest, which again leads to extremism. From extremism comes terrorism“ If you truly interested in understanding how people like Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Robert Mcnamara think... then please indulge yourself in-the one-of-a-kind provocative case study of these two controversial Defense Secretaries of modern times, in this power and the powerful thesis, from the 7th best active Director in the world, Errol Morris, “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara” – VIDEO and Donald Rumsfeld’s ”The Unknown Known” – VIDEO. "There are known knowns” (transcript) is a phrase from a response United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave to a question at a U.S. Department of Defense news briefing in February 2002 about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. Rumsfeld stated: ”Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.” Welcome to the Real World ….. A-One-to-Watch! Get the book while you at it! (BOOK) Photo copyright: The Unknown Known (2013) Company Credits: History Films, Moxie Pictures, Participant Media, The Weinstein Company, still frame + sneak peek Vice + Good Magazine.