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after. fifteen years and thousands of lives and limbs lost trillions of dollars squandered what have we learned in the fifteen years since the united states invaded iraq i'm holland cook in washington this is the big picture on our t. america. thank you. lincoln chafee was the only republican in the united states senate to vote against the iraq war after his time in the senate mr chafee served as governor of rhode island as a republican before he joined the democratic party. americans felt

newly vulnerable after nine eleven the crowd cheered president bush on the bullhorn at ground zero to do something with the understandable public sentiment but why iraq governor how did congress get rolled on this. it wasn't long after the twin towers came down in the pentagon was hit that of all things the invasion of iraq came up and regime change in iraq and it made no sense at the time but once you did some homework and looked back at the project for the new american century what they were saying about wanting regime change in iraq and wanting to have frankly a pearl harbor which they said would then justify a new prologue which would justify this invasion it started the pieces start to come together and how did we get rolled everybody the media and playing on anger which we had after nine eleven and. just the media got behind it and the vote in

the senate was seventy seven to twenty three only twenty three of us overwhelming vote in the senate to invade iraq which had nothing to do with nine eleven as we know and there were no weapons of mass destruction which we now know also president bush addressed the nation the night before the invasion back in two thousand and three. i want to merican and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm. a campaign on the harsh terrain of revolution as large as california could be longer and more difficult than some predict. and helping iraq is achieved the united stable and free country will require our sustained commitment before iraq we baby boomers were on the verge of that lasting peace which in our lives we had never known vietnam was in the rearview mirror there berlin wall came down but president eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex is our system addicted to war

well president eisenhower didn't issue that warning on its last moments in office as he handed over the reins to president kennedy he used that moment to warn us about the military industrial complex and here was a veteran of bloody bloody conflict as well as a two term successful president saying be aware we need a knowledgeable and alert citizenry to be aware of this military industrial complex and then of course vietnam happened and then this age of lasting peace was fractured by the worst decision in american history to invade iraq and we're living with the consequences now we heard that some of those quotes from president bush before the invasion and the opposite has happened it's been fifteen years of bloody turmoil in the region as well as the refugees flooding into europe and destabilizing europe about american credibility you travel widely and even before

this twitter president iraq changed the way the usa was perceived around the world what do people elsewhere think of us now post iraq. oh boy it's been now fifteen years and of course that's the biggest lie that we've ever told there were no weapons of mass destruction and sadam hussein didn't even have a tank or an airplane it was just a total. lie to the world that we had to go and then these weapons of mass destruction instead of letting the inspectors do their job on split so i regret that all these years later we haven't done a better job of repairing that credibility damage that we've done. it just hasn't changed since then i dipped my toe into the water of the presidential race in two thousand and sixteen to talk about restoring american credibility and there was no appetite from the media to have that discussion judy

officials at the state department wrote a memo to then secretary of state hillary clinton nearly ten years after we sent baghdad into shock and awe outlining a strategy bringing iraq to peak oil producing status in the memo noted iraq has the capacity to increase sustainable production from the current two point six million barrels per day up to four million of oil in the next five years governor was the war in iraq about oil. i'm sure that was part of it but it's a look back at the project for the new american century in what they wrote so-called neo cons i do think they wanted what they called the skittles approach to the middle east they want to break it up and they thought that would be if the sunni and the shias were fighting each other the they wouldn't be fighting us or some

such crazy scenario put it hasn't worked out that way it's been a huge mistake and the american unfortunately the american media and stablish meant does not want to have a discussion about this huge mistake with its oil with its the skittles approach to the middle east in the real tragedy now is these refugees coming into europe we read about it today fifteen years later the rise of far right wing political parties in russia because of the flood of these refugees that's the ramification that's i think going to be the worst ramification of all these bad decisions that have been made governor lincoln chafee thank you for your time tonight and on behalf of all my fellow rhode islanders thank you for your service. thank you. as the iraq invasion loomed lonely voices inside the pentagon were wary one was michael maloof who served as senior policy analyst in the office of secretary of

defense welcome well thank you very much describe your role in the back channel back and forth as saddam hussein was offering we could send thousands of f.b.i. agents to look for weapons of mass destruction and other unconditional terms to avoid war you were in the loop on that yeah between january and march of two thousand and three which was the critical period. my office actually i was working for the. undersecretary of defense for policy and reported directly to. a deputy of the deputy secretary of defense wolfowitz and i had received a communication from a lebanese american. based in beirut who was in contact with the syrians and also was in touch with the people who were directly in contact with us so i was saying saddam hussein basically offered six unconditional terms and they wanted

they they by then the syrians by then had severed their ties with the cia that was there back to what they wanted because they saw that war was imminent they wanted to open up a back channel to the policy people in the pentagon who were going to be launching this thing and they wanted to stop it and what happened was that i received the points basically sent them up to the deputy secretary and it to two of the six we could have immediately. tested for one of feeds and one was to send in five thousand actually it was troops to look for the. weapons of mass destruction and we could have walked in ready sickly we could have walked in and secondly was to turn over. a terrorist who was in baghdad his name was just seem ability seem he was involved in the one nine hundred ninety three bombing of

the world trade center and he was basically living in high off the hog on the baghdad government nobody at the pentagon wanted to hear a word of it and what about the state department no state department there were again lonely voices over there we tried to move those points up and and we there was an effort to try and test this channel initially and then they backed off what we didn't know at the time was that. the same terms had been presented to through the cia channel and they were rejected and policy people weren't even aware of it so you basically had the cia acting as policy folks and rejecting rejecting this they the cia basically had determined that there were weapons of mass destruction that was there that was their determination based upon a national intelligence estimate and october two thousand and two and then bush himself president bush with them briefed by george tenet the cia director at

the time and he basically said it was a slam dunk we had the evidence and with cia saying this we always heard well we the people in the pentagon made up the intelligent right but in fact it came out of the cia wasn't it wasn't the pentagon and and consequently what was initially supposed to be looking for terrorist links which was my job right. on a special detail to the undersecretary turned into this weapons of mass destruction in my office i was then director of technology security operations and we monitored had been monitoring for years. exports from the u.s. and elsewhere in the world going into iraq and we could not find. and any discernible operational w m d you'll find an occasional something on the shelf in a lab somewhere but you've got all this specific information who is your contact at

state my contacted state was john bolton well there you go meanwhile inside the state department retired army colonel ann wright who served in the united states embassies around the world was protesting the inevitable on the eve of the iraq invasion colonel wright resigned in protest her letter of resignation went viral on the internet so i received over four hundred e-mails from colleagues in the state department saying well what you are doing your resignation is very important but that kids in college i doubt mortgages i can't resign but there was a lot of dissension within the u.s. government on that decision to invade and occupy iraq now she got marginalized at state when the big chill came to you at the pentagon describe how your life changed well i basically was i lost my clearances it was isolated within my office i

was. i basically had to retire and the trouble some parallels with the situation in north korea. in terms of yeah i see that but so far there's there's an opening for discussions at least. they haven't gone gone the route to of i wanted to go ahead and do preemptive work. preemptive strikes was the policy at the time and to take preemptive preemptive policy toward going after iraq first then syria then iran this and then also saudi arabia because of their ties are the time to assess who's so with korea at least there's talk there's talk about talking yeah but you have three. carrier battle groups out there right underscoring the point so that even before before we

invaded iraq deputy secretary wolfowitz had intentions before he took that position of wanting to take out saddam hussein and this was the mantra and basically the pentagon was being used as a to carry out to implement the policy of the a surrealist at the time thank you michael maloof a pleasure as john bolton joins team trump many are wondering about the next iraq this is the big picture on r t america. they're bred for a single purpose. they have a super. training very young.

they months of intensive school. rats. and they save lives. fifteen years ago this month the united states in its so-called coalition of the willing to illegally invaded in occupied iraq and iraq continues to grapple with that fateful decision many call the invasion of iraq a blunder should we call it what it really is a crime. about your sudden passing i've only just learnt you were yourself and taken your last term. caught up to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry i could so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my chest. i

remember when we first met my life turned on each other. but then my feelings started to change you talked about more like it was again still some more fun to view those that didn't like to question our arc and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not leave a funeral the same as one enters the mind it's consumed with this one to. speak to us there are no other takers. claimed that mainstream media has met its maker. the utter. dr j. dilla berto served in the united states marine corps in operation enduring freedom and operation iraqi freedom he is

a fellow at the center for international policy and co-founder of veterans for rethinking afghanistan whose mission is reducing troop counts as they are and lobby in congress for non military solutions jake thank you for your service there and for what you're doing here and for your time tonight welcome. they certainly have a program iraq fifteen years later and year seventeen in afghanistan these countries are half a world away so these wars are a concept there and appropriation on capitol hill when you lobby members of congress what is that moment the story that you tell that never fails to show our senators and representatives. i think the most important thing that members of congress failed to recognize is when they visit to go on their war tourism efforts in kabul they tend to sit behind fourteen foot concrete walls with flak jackets and

they talk to you know colonels and you know generals but they don't really don't get in the field and speak to privates and corporals so in in lobbying efforts typically we engage them on the matter of well when and when you send an eighteen year old kid off to war and you're asking him to patrol the streets of baghdad or kabul or wherever else and then they get engaged in a. bit of combat or whether it's roadside bombs or or just day to day interactions was with afghans or iraqis that they failed to recognize that this young this young kid who is serving there has abyan asked to rebuild the country from people that mean a silly want their country to be rebuilt that may not necessarily want to be connected to the government in kabul or baghdad and you talk to them about their about the miss connect the disconnect between their local village and valley or their local precinct in in baghdad and the that disconnect with the corrupt abusive government

inside of kabul or baghdad so that usually registers very well yeah you're humanizing it beyond numbers and the number that always stops me in my tracks is twenty two the department of veterans affairs tells us that twenty two veterans commit suicide every day that's one every sixty five minutes what happened there in iraq and afghanistan that haunts them when they get back here. well i think what most people don't recognize is that when young people are deployed to war today their average trigger time the average time that they're in the field is far exceeding that out of world war two or any cond in combat or conflict the average soldier today's in conflict for about two hundred days were in world war two or something around forty days the impact of that is is. incredible because the amount of trauma that has seen the amount of trauma that is experienced as far gross and then i think what the average civilian cares to think

about the other thing i think the really important is that today there is a there's a crisis of moral injury so young young soldiers are being deployed to war that are engaging in conflict with people that they see in the villages in the valleys whether it's in afghanistan or iraq and as a result they get they get a moral crisis about whether they actually want to engage in this war believe in this war anymore and so as a result they bring that war home so when johnny comes home from war the moral guilt the moral injury follows them here it's not so much about did you see a blown up leg on the side of the road it's about your guilt and the shame you feel about for engaging in a complex conflict with young kids and women that were victims of war and that happens in any war every every war ever women and children the biggest victims of war but today because of the length of the war which is fifteen years in iraq and seventeen afghanistan because the amount of time that they're deployed to

war and the amount of conflict that they're they're engaged in it makes it worse than ever ever before so that's why we see twenty two soldiers and sailors and marines being killed or killing themselves every day and on top of that the overall guilt and shame of experience of being of being in a war that may or may not believe in the world now lives with the consequences of our destabilizing iraq afghanistan as a longest war in american history if it was your call what would be our best exit strategy the plan you ask congress to consider. so if i was president i would initially i would ramp up an international organizational approach meeting with the the u.n. security council then working with nato to do for. put together a strategy that were able to reduce terrorism in iraq and afghanistan terrorist organizations to take to suck the oxygen out of the room for them i would initially

then take that take that approach that was internationally acceptable come back to congress and propose propose it to the joint chiefs then have a reduction of size forces and obviously that this kind of strategy is something that can be can be done with some difficulties but the overall the overall problem here is that we cannot seem to work with our international partners to reduce terrorism because of conflicting international interests well thank you for what you do dr j. dilbert oh rethink afghanistan dot com thanks very much the academy award winning film the hurt locker begins with this quote the rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction for war is a drug that's from chris hedges book war is a force that gives us meaning chris hosts our tease on contact he's an author princeton university professor and a long time foreign correspondent chris welcome thank you post nine eleven we were

susceptible vulnerable to the war machine president eisenhower warned against the live t.v. show this turned into featured weapons technology shock and awe big explosions league greenwood was all over radio warbling that he's proud to be an american media suited up as m beds t.v. anchors were flag lapel pins you have written and spoken how in every war the press is part of the problem talk about that. well immediately signed on for the cause which is precisely what happened after nine eleven and any narrative that counters the official narrative. is essentially shut down or poor so far the margins that it's not heard even if that narrative is true so people for instance who raise legitimate questions the u.n. inspection teams and i should preface this by saying that i was in the middle east

i covered the first gulf war it went into quote with the marine corps and then stayed on as the u.n. inspection teams destroyed the stockpiles of chemical weapons that saddam hussein did have mostly within its artillery shells i was fully aware like most people who cover the middle east that the iraqi military was a shell of what it had been that it was no threat to its neighbors much less to the united states but to raise these kinds of truths were it was unpalatable to the media that was essential to doing their bit for. for the war mongers and that's true i'm afraid in almost every conflict whether or not in vision drones and these other shiny object new tech war machines do you think he would now recognize corporate media coverage frenzy as war profiteering.

well you know many of general electric for instance is the huge defense contractor and also controls the media platforms there's been a complete fusion of the media and the military industrial complex any time you turn on c.n.n. and assembly see any of these cable news shows you're only going to hear one side retired intelligence. brennan the former cia director just became a paid commentator on m s n b c so it's only these people platforms as quote unquote experts many times in fact most times these people are on the payrolls of these private security and defense contracting firms so they even have an economic interest in promoting war and dropping more cruise missiles which cost one point one million dollars apiece. so yeah there's been a complete. intersection between the interests of the war machine and the

commercial media there indistinguishable at this point earlier in the show we talk to some insider outliers from d.o.d. and state at the time when did you know you were leaving the new york times. well when i denounced the war a commencement in illinois it was a commencement speaker and i was lynched by the right wing media hour after hour the way they do and the new york times i had been the middle east bureau chief issued me a formal reprimand which is what you do under guild rules before you fire the employee saying that i could no longer speak about the iraq war which is something that i wasn't going to do an arabic speaker i spent seven years in the region much of that time in iraq and i think as somebody who was steeped in the politics and culture of the middle east i had a responsibility. to denounce what is arguably the greatest strategic blunder in

american history one that i mean what do we spend seven trillion dollars to essentially destroy the cohesion of the middle east and give rise to groups like al qaida and isis. what if anything di amiss about the life the life you lead is a foreign chorus well the life is not the work is interesting the lifestyle is awful i spent twenty years as a foreign correspondent in. it's constant movement it's lonely but it's fascinating so i miss. you know being in these kinds of places and. and witnessing the kinds of things that i witnessed and i was at my ended my career on the investigative team investigating al qaida was based in paris and covered al qaida in europe in the middle east so that's all fascinating but the lifestyle gets really old i don't miss that at all what if we

did not invade iraq what would be there now. well saddam hussein was on his way out to you he is heir apparent had been crippled the day is two sons but his heir apparent crippled an assassination attempt he was writing romance novels the country was disintegrating you would have probably ended up with another sunni military dictatorship but the whole idea that saddam hussein needed to be overthrown because he was a threat was completely fictitious thank you chris hedges from un contact you on r t the costs of war project based at brown university estimates that the war on terror has cost american taxpayers five point six t. trillion dollars since we invaded afghanistan in two thousand and one two years before we sent iraq into shock and awe that's pentagon spending plus future costs

such as supporting veterans twelve zeros is tough for work and stiffs like us to conceptualize so think of it this way thirty two million dollars per hour and your share is twenty four thousand dollars the average downpayment on a house all we are saying is give peace a chance that is the big picture i'm holland cook in washington question more. or. it's.

banks geysers financial survival. the girl i'd. love to use it is essential packs of four diabolus could call them might say stop to. use. this is a story.