\nSeptember 065, 2017 – consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n
In both cases, the U.S. government also exploited its power over global information to spread lies about the targeted regimes as justification for the invasions — and the world community failed to do anything to block the U.S. aggressions.<\/p>\n And, on a grim personal note, the two leaders, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, were then brutally murdered, Hussein by hanging and Gaddafi by a mob that first sodomized him with a knife.<\/p>\n So, the neoconservatives who promoted the Iraq invasion supposedly to protect the world from Iraq’s alleged WMDs — and the liberal interventionists who pushed the Libya invasion based on false humanitarian claims — may now share in the horrific possibility that millions of people in North Korea, South Korea, Japan and maybe elsewhere could die from real WMDs launched by North Korea and\/or by the United States.<\/p>\n Washington foreign policy \u201cexperts\u201d who fault President Trump’s erratic and bellicose approach toward this crisis may want to look in the mirror and consider how they contributed to the mess by ignoring the predictable consequences from the Iraq and Libya invasions.<\/p>\n Yes, I know, at the time it was so exciting to celebrate the Bush Doctrine of preemptive wars even over a \u201cone percent\u201d suspicion<\/a> that a \u201crogue state\u201d like Iraq might share WMDs with terrorists — or the Clinton Doctrine hailed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s acolytes enamored by her application of \u201csmart power\u201d<\/a> to achieve \u201cregime change\u201d in Libya.<\/p>\n However, as we now know, both wars were built upon lies. Iraq did not possess WMD stockpiles<\/a> as the Bush administration claimed, and Libya was not engaged in mass murder<\/a> of civilians in rebellious areas in the eastern part of the country as the Obama administration claimed.<\/p>\n Post-invasion investigations knocked down Bush’s WMD myth in Iraq, and a British parliamentary inquiry concluded that Western governments misrepresented the situation in eastern Libya where Gaddafi forces were targeting armed rebels but not indiscriminately killing civilians.<\/p>\n But those belated fact-finding missions were no comfort to either Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, nor to their countries, which have seen mass slaughters resulting from the U.S.-sponsored invasions and today amount to failed states.<\/p>\n There also has been virtually no accountability for the war crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations. Bush and Obama both ended up serving two terms as President. None of Bush’s senior advisers were punished – and Hillary Clinton received the 2016 Democratic Party’s nomination for President.<\/p>\n As for the U.S. mainstream media, which behaved as boosters for both invasions, pretty much all of the journalistic war advocates have continued on with their glorious careers. To excuse their unprofessional behavior, some even have pushed revisionist lies, such as the popular but false claim that Saddam Hussein was to blame because he pretended that he did have WMDs<\/a> – when the truth is that his government submitted a detailed 12,000-page report to the United Nations in December 2002 describing how the WMDs had been destroyed (though that accurate account was widely mocked and ultimately ignored).<\/p>\n Pervasive Dishonesty<\/b><\/p>\n The dishonesty that now pervades the U.S. government and the U.S. mainstream media represents another contributing factor to the North Korean crisis. What sensible person anywhere on the planet would trust U.S. assurances? Who would believe what the U.S. government says, except, of course, the U.S. mainstream media?<\/p>\n Remember also that North Korea’s nuclear program had largely been mothballed before George W. Bush delivered his \u201caxis of evil\u201d speech in January 2002, which linked Iran and Iraq – then bitter enemies – with North Korea. After that, North Korea withdrew from earlier agreements on limiting its nuclear development and began serious work on a bomb.<\/p>\n Yet, while North Korea moved toward a form of mutual assured destruction, Iraq and Libya chose a different path.<\/p>\n In Iraq, to head off a threatened U.S.-led invasion, Hussein’s government sought to convince the international community that it had lived up to its commitments regarding the destruction of its WMD arsenal and programs. Besides the detailed declaration, Iraq gave U.N. weapons inspectors wide latitude to search on the ground.<\/p>\n But Bush cut short the inspection efforts in March 2003 and launched his \u201cshock and awe\u201d invasion, which led to the collapse of Hussein’s regime and the dictator’s eventual capture and hanging.<\/p>\n Gaddafi’s Gestures<\/b><\/p>\n In Libya, Gaddafi also sought to cooperate with international demands regarding WMDs. In late 2003, he announced that his country would eliminate its unconventional weapons programs, including a nascent nuclear project.<\/p>\n Gaddafi also sought to get Libya out from under economic sanctions by taking responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Scotland, although he and his government continued to deny carrying out the terror attack<\/a> that killed 270 people.<\/p>\n But these efforts to normalize Libya’s relations with the West failed to protect him or his country. In 2011 when Islamic militants staged an uprising around Benghazi, Gaddafi moved to crush it, and Secretary of State Clinton eagerly joined with some European countries in seeking military intervention to destroy Gaddafi’s regime.<\/p>\n The United Nations Security Council approved a plan for the humanitarian protection of civilians in and around Benghazi, but the Obama administration and its European allies exploited that opening to mount a full-scale \u201cregime change\u201d war.<\/p>\n Prominent news personalities, such as MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, cheered on the war with the claim that Gaddafi had American \u201cblood on his hands\u201d over the Pan Am 103 case because he had accepted responsibility. The fact that his government continued to deny actual guilt – and the international conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a judicial travesty – was ignored. Almost no one in the West dared question the longtime groupthink of Libyan guilt.<\/p>\n By October 2011, Gaddafi had fled Tripoli and was captured by rebels in Sirte. He was tortured, sodomized with a knife and then executed. Clinton, whose aides felt she should claim credit for Gaddafi’s overthrow as part of a Clinton Doctrine<\/a>, celebrated his murder with a laugh and a quip, \u201cWe came; we saw; he died.\u201d<\/p>\n But Gaddafi’s warnings about Islamist terrorists in Benghazi came back to haunt Clinton when on Sept. 11, 2012, militants attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA station there, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.<\/p>\n The obsessive Republican investigation into the Benghazi attack failed to demonstrate many of the lurid claims about Clinton’s negligence, but it did surface the fact that she had used a private server for her official State Department emails, which, in turn, led to an FBI investigation which severely damaged her 2016 presidential run.<\/p>\n Lessons Learned<\/b><\/p>\n Meanwhile, back in North Korea, the young dictator Kim Jong Un was taking all this history in. According to numerous sources, he concluded that his and North Korea’s only safeguard would be a viable nuclear deterrent to stave off another U.S.-sponsored \u201cregime change\u201d war — with him meeting a similar fate as was dealt to Hussein and Gaddafi.<\/p>\n Since then, Kim and his advisers have made clear that the surrender of North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal is off the table. They make the understandable point that the United States has shown bad faith in other cases in which leaders have given up their WMDs in compliance with international demands and then saw their countries invaded and faced grisly executions themselves.<\/p>\n Now, the world faces a predicament in which an inexperienced and intemperate President Trump confronts a crisis that his two predecessors helped to create and make worse. Trump has threatened \u201cfire and fury\u201d like the world has never seen, suggesting a nuclear strike on North Korea, which, in turn, has vowed to retaliate.<\/p>\n Millions of people on the Korean peninsula and Japan – and possibly elsewhere – could die in such a conflagration. The world’s economy could be severely shaken, given Japan’s and South Korea’s industrial might and the size of their consumer markets.<\/p>\n If such a horror does come to pass, the U.S. government and the U.S. mainstream media will surely revert to their standard explanation that Kim was simply \u201ccrazy\u201d and brought this destruction on himself. Trump’s liberal critics also might attack Trump for bungling the diplomacy.<\/p>\n But the truth is that many of Washington’s elite policymakers – both on the Republican and Democratic sides – will share in the blame. And so too should the U.S. mainstream media.<\/p>\n Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here<\/a> or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>).<\/i><\/p>\n Reproduced from Consortium News: https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/09\/04\/how-regime-change-wars-led-to-korea-crisis\/<\/a> <\/i><\/p>\n Related:<\/strong><\/p>\n Deterrence Believers Shoud Cheer the North Korean Bomb<\/B><\/BIG><\/p>\n By Craig Murray EXTRACT:<\/p>\n How did we get here? In the 1950s the USA dropped 635,000 tonnes of bombs on North Korea including 35,000 tonnes of napalm. The US killed an estimated 20%<\/A> of the North Korean population. For comparison, approximately 2% of the UK population was killed during World War II.<\/p>\n That this massive destruction of North Korea resulted in a xenophobic, American-hating state with an obsession with developing powerful weapons systems to ensure national survival, is not exactly surprising. The western media treat the existence of the Kim Jong-un regime as an inexplicable and eccentric manifestation of evil. In fact, it is caused. Unless those causes are addressed the situation can never be resolved. Has any western politician ever referenced the history I have just given in discussing North Korea? <\/p>\n Full Article:<\/I> ~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n What the Media isn\u2019t Telling You About North Korea\u2019s Missile Tests<\/B><\/BIG><\/p>\n By Mike Whitney Here\u2019s what the media isn\u2019t telling you about North Korea\u2019s recent missile tests.<\/p>\n Last Monday, the DPRK fired a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan\u2019s Hokkaido Island. The missile landed in the waters beyond the island harming neither people nor property.<\/p>\n The media immediately condemned the test as a \u201cbold and provocative act\u201d that showed the North\u2019s defiance of UN resolutions and \u201ccontempt for its neighbors.\u201d President Trump sharply criticized the missile test saying:<\/p>\n What the media failed to mention was that, for the last three weeks, Japan, South Korea and the US have been engaged in large-scale joint-military drills on Hokkaido Island and in South Korea. These needlessly provocative war games are designed to simulate an invasion of North Korea and a \u201cdecapitation\u201d operation to remove (Re: Kill) the regime. North Korea\u2019s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un has asked the US repeatedly to end these military exercises, but the US has stubbornly refused. The US reserves the right to threaten anyone, anytime and anywhere even right on their doorstep. It\u2019s part of what makes the US exceptional. Check out this excerpt from an article at Fox News:<\/p>\n \u201cWe are improving our readiness not only in the air, but as a logistical support team,\u201d Col. R. Scott Jobe, the 35th Fighter Wing commander, said in a statement. \u201cWe are in a prime location for contingency purposes and this exercise will only build upon our readiness in the case a real-world scenario occurs.\u201d (US, Japanese troops begin joint military exercise amid North Korea threat\u201d, Fox News)<\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n Monday\u2019s missile test (which flew over Hokkaido Island) was conducted just hours after the war games ended. The message was clear: The North is not going to be publicly humiliated and slapped around without responding. Rather than show weakness, the North demonstrated that it was prepared to defend itself against foreign aggression. In other words, the test was NOT a \u201cbold and provocative act\u201d (as the media stated) but a modest and well thought-out response by a country that has experienced 64 years of relentless hectoring, sanctions, demonization and saber rattling by Washington. The North responded because the Washington\u2019s incitements required a response. End of story.<\/p>\n Full Article: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n South Korea’s defense minister suggests bringing back tactical U.S. nuclear weapons<\/a><\/p>\n China demands “immediate stop” to THAAD deployment<\/a> North Korean delegation arrives in Russia, to be joined shortly by South Korean President<\/a> The U.S.-led aggressions against Iraq and Libya are two war crimes that keep on costing, with their grim examples of what happens to leaders who get rid of WMDs driving the scary showdown with North Korea, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry September 065, 2017 – consortiumnews.com It is a popular meme in the U.S. … Continue reading How \u2018Regime Change’ Wars Led to Korea Crisis<\/span> 
<\/a>It is a popular meme in the U.S. media to say that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is \u201ccrazy\u201d as he undertakes to develop a nuclear bomb and a missile capacity to deliver it, but he is actually working from a cold logic dictated by the U.S. government’s aggressive wars and lack of integrity.
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\nIndeed, the current North Korea crisis, which could end up killing millions of people, can be viewed as a follow-on disaster to President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and President Barack Obama’s Libyan intervention. Those wars came after the leaders of Iraq and Libya had dismantled their dangerous weapons programs, leaving their countries virtually powerless when the U.S. government chose to invade.<\/p>\n
\nSeptember 03, 2017<\/I><\/p>\n
\nwww.informationclearinghouse.info\/47743.htm<\/A><\/p>\n
\nSeptember 4, 2017<\/I><\/p>\n\u201cThreatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime\u2019s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table.\u201d<\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n
\u201cMore than 3,500 American and Japanese troops kicked off a weeks-long joint military exercise Thursday against the backdrop of an increasingly belligerent North Korean regime. The exercise, known as Northern Viper 17, will take place on Hokkaido \u2014 Japan\u2019s northern-most main island \u2014 and will last until Aug. 28\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nwww.counterpunch.org\/2017\/09\/04\/what-the-media-isnt-telling-you-about-north-koreas-missile-tests\/<\/A><\/I><\/p>\n
\nChina on Wednesday demanded an immediate stop to deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in the Republic of Korea (ROK).<\/p>\n
\nThe Eastern Economic Forum is a unique meeting which will be attended by delegations from Russia, China, Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia, South Korea and North Korea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"