You know the worst part of everything? None of these people will see justice. Not even the people lowest on the pole. None of these people will face the consequences of their actions. It’s infuriating
The section at 12:13 reminded me of a joke we used to make: "How did the U.S. know Iraq had chemical weapons? Because the U.S. still has their receipts."
So then did he have WMDs or not. You're just saying rn that he did. But clearly you're against the war, so I don't know why you would say that. Though personally I don't believe a country possessing WMDs is just cause for invasion, if it were, it is very likely both our countries would be invaded lmao. (I'm US, but three arrow's has a European audience so maybe you're french or British)
@@oracle8192 I'm pretty sure the reason why they didn't want them to have wmd's was because Saddam was a bloody dictator who gassed thousands of Kurds like in Halabja
@@oracle8192 The joke isn't that Iraq had WMDs (they did not) but that the U.S. is the kind of power who'd *sell* WMDs to a dictator and then be arrogant enough to think it has the moral high ground.
As you get older and study the continuities and discontinuities from the Reagan era to the Bush era, you'll realize that the right wing slowly and quite deliberately destroyed the entire planet's chance at a more peaceful and prosperous 21st century. The world isn't just like this. You were robbed, by evil people, most of whom are still alive. Don't forget it.
No Child Left Behind was a disaster and the only reason he didn't take much of the heat for the '08 recession is because it kicked off at the very end of his last term.
As an Iraqi who lived both wars, it really hurts me seeing those people making excuses or defending the Bush administration. I lost my best friends, two of them and a cousin in 2006 and I'm still suffering from multiple traumatic experiences, this video makes me feel better, thanks for the efforts.
Thank you for sharing your story. The Iraqi people have been pushed around for too long by Saddam and then by Bush. It’s such a shame that a country like the US has the most capabilities to enforce justice around the globe instead chooses to exploit countries in the name of ‘Freedom and Democracy’
I marched against the war prior to invasion in Belfast 2003. I was absolutely shattered mentally. I and everyone I knew had done everything they could possibly think to voice opposition and try to stop it. But long before the day of invasion it had become quite clear that this had absolutely nothing to do with the UN reports or of sending in more inspectors to find the truth as a sort of justification. The UK's attorney generals position was that it required a second UN resolution for our war to to be legal, there was absolutely no grounds on the basis of regime change. But the inevitability was obvious, Bush and Blair displayed an absolute unified conviction. If Bush was going in, then we certainly were. I cried for hours when "shock and awe" started, I felt the most helpless in my life. My country was illegally going to war with people on the other side of the globe, they had done nothing to hurt me and my family, or the UK in any way for that matter. I knew the vast loss of innocent lives to come, let alone the years following complete devastation of infrastructure. I've spoken to many Iraqis since then and their stories break my heart. During occupation the absolute casual brutality of US marines and army is hard to imagine. They utterly terrorised the local populace, proudly declaring their racism and bigotry. There was one Iraqi who was a kid at the time. He described how the local US military base would at any time raid an entire area and demand that every single person come to the door and raise their hands as anyone hiding is considered a hostile threat. His uncle had a disability that made navigating stairs difficult and slow. As they started the raid the uncle was sitting alone on the other side of the house. He was a child and his mum made him hide in a cupboard at the top of the stairs to protect him from these American barbarians. But he started panicking and making noise, so a US soldier shot into that cupboard door. It thankfully missed him, but it passed through into the other room and killed his uncle. The US soldiers had absolutely no remorse and said it was entirely his own fault as they had explicitly told them to come to the door with arms raised. I cried my eyes out speaking to him, the worst thing is he blamed himself throughout adolescence since it was only because he made noise his uncle died. What an unimaginable thing to be done to a child. Another guy mentioned how his cousin or uncle one day was driving as normal, but the US humvees as operational practice just speared across the roads and traffic pushing other cars out of the way. His relation drove through a blind intersection where one of these Humvees was coming ploughing through with him suddenly being about to crash. The Americans immediately opened fire, absolutely ravaging the car with 50cal and other rounds. They justified it on the basis that he drove with the same suspicious behaviour as a car bomber. What really horrifies me to this day is that the US still treats these soldiers as heroes, thanking them for their service. When a single US soldier died it heralded a great ceremony on the injustice of their young hero being murdered by freedom hating terrorists. I don't remember a single time where they gave remembrance for the dead Iraqis. I never hear of stories like I recounted being told in the US, taking recognition of the routine horrific war crimes their military committed. I haven't met any Iraqis who lived in British occupied territory like Basra, so I can't pass similar judgement on their behaviour. But one thing is for sure, the soldiers coming back to the UK weren't heralded as heroes. The Iraq war protests were the largest in all of British history, it had massive public opposition. We don't thank them for their service, they didn't make the UK safer or prevent weapons of mass destruction. They weren't the good guys delivering freedom to Iraq. I am to the bottom of my soul sorry for what my country did to yours. I tried my best, but I always think wasn't there something more I could have done that would have stopped the madness? I'm unapologetically sorry for the trauma and death you and your family suffered. I wish whatever improbable perfect future possibility for Iraq becomes reality.
@@beardedchimp I am not Iraqi so I can't be the one to forgive you. But you protested against the war,didn't fall for propaganda. Surely you are abstained from responsibility or guilt.
@@beardedchimp you didn't need to write a huge essay insisting that you cried about the war so much and recounting third-hand accounts about shit that OP actually experienced to show sympathy.
@@Doomer_Optimistit’s good to write about your feelings. He probably should have wrote all that in a journal or the notes app, but he got it off his chest.
Shaun has a good 8 video playlist entitled, "How PragerU lies to you." Several other content creators have multiple similar videos. It has kind of become a cottage industry on the ewe tube.
@Rembrandt972 Dan has also done a few of them himself. Between Shaun and Dan they do a good job at debunking the really racist garbage PU makes and tries to sell as "truth".
Something important to note: WMD is a deliberately fuzzy political term. It's not a term embraced by generals and strategists because it covers such disparate things. The purpose of WMD as a term is to allow one to place "chemical weapons that several countries have" and "super dangerous by very rare nuclear weapons" under the same umbrella, implying that if you have one, you should be treated as having the other.
I'd argue that a chemical weapon that could disperse its contents over a sufficiently large area in a concentration adequate enough to remain effective could reasonably constitute a WMD due to the potential to indiscriminately harm civilian life. That said, mustard gas and other chemical weapons, as horrific a weapon as they are, aren't usually delivered by means that would raise them to that level (said level being comparable to a "low yield" nuclear bomb). I'd equally argue that most modern biological weapons, also horrible terrible things, shouldn't be raised to that level either. Nowadays, humans using biological weaponry largely tend to favor the spores or toxins that have particularly lethal outcomes for the target(s) over the infectious agent itself (for the simple reason that you don't want to accidentally have your own weapon jump over to your own forces after the next contact with the enemy). In the past, wide scale biological weaponry seems to have been depressingly common (smallpox blankets given to previously unexposed populations for example).
@@The2012Aceman Burn pits aren't about WMD, they're about the fact that burning military trash by dousing it in jet fuel tends to produce toxic smoke. Heck, breathing ANY smoke is bad for your lungs.
Remember that time George W Bush said: “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” He quickly corrected himself, saying, “I mean Ukraine,” but he proceeded to chuckle and mutter “Iraq, too”.
That was the first time he ever publicly admitted the Iraq War was unjustified, which is amazing because 5 years earlier in a CNN interview (I think) he staunchly defended his decision to invade Iraq (I wonder what changed his mind within the next 5 years).
I'm Iraqi, I was born in the late 80s so I've lived through a lot of that unrest. One thing no one talks about is the policy of the US after the war, like maybe they came to my country out of some misguided paternalistic sense, it's like when they accidently hit a shelter full of women and children back in the first gulf war, so many mistakes! but then having made that mistake they decided to double down! the interim government they set up, was a disaster, like Ahmed Al-Chalibi mentioned in this video, the guy who they knew to be unreliable, yeah he ended on that council. Paul Bremer decided it's a good idea to dismantle the Iraqi army, polis force and media, causing so many journalists rightly pissed off and many ex-military to be unemployed and angry over night, guess those guys all peacefully integrated in society! The constitution written during that time is a mess, it made our election system easy to manipulate, so much for democracy! It's not all the US fault of course, us Iraqis share the blame for how some of that turned out, but all I'm saying when the US was so dead set on invading, should have had a plan for the fallout!
I'm sorry you lived through that. As an American, I believe wholeheartedly that the Iraq War was purely a money grab. Key figures in the Bush administration had deep ties with the "defense" industry. 9/11 gave them an opportunity to rob the public blind, laundering trillions of dollars among friends through defense contracts. As a young adult at the time, it seemed like everyone around me lost their minds, and couldn't understand why they didn't see through it the way I did. There was purposefully not a plan. Permanent instability means permanent opportunity to keep laundering money under the pretense of national security.
One of the things I never understood was why the Bush policy was a complete De-Baathification (which is what you (Noor Ahmed) were referring to when you mention "Paul Bremer decided it's a good idea to dismantle the Iraqi army, polis force and media, causing so many journalists rightly pissed off and many ex-military to be unemployed and angry over night"). De-Baathification was particularly absurd because nearly everyone who was competent and educated in Iraq was a member of the Baath Party; you simply had to be a member in order to be in any university-graduated profession or government office. And as you point out, firing the fourth largest military in the world and nearly every competent person is a recipe for insurgency creation. Al-Qaeda Iraq (the antecedent for Islamic State) only began achieving large-scale military victories when former generals in the Iraqi Army (who were unemployed and enraged after De-Baathification) joined al-Qaeda Iraq and directed its forces. De-Baathification directly led to the success of that particular insurgent group. Just as a counterpoint, when the US overthrew Axis-aligned Italy in WWII, only the most senior fascists were removed, to allow the main part of Italian infrastructure to remain intact. It shows that the US knows how to remove the leadership of a government without targeting all party members and, therefore, removing all competent individuals from governance. Just for some absurd reason, that was not even considered here.
@@oremfrien Yeah that was some strange reasoning there , you are correct about how every educated person pretty much had to be a party member, hell they had like a "supporter of the party" tier that doesn't make you a full member and that was mandatory for all high schools, I was two years away from being forced into that tier myself when the war happened, my parents were low level members as well because otherwise they wouldn't have jobs, so de-Baathification was a ridiculous and terribly misused system, a lot of doctors, university professors and scientists lost their jobs to it, not to the same level as the military or the media, but it was still devastating and not really done with any due process, it's not like every Baath party member had a trial or a hearing or anything, they lost their livelihoods overnight and in some cases had a target on their backs. Also I have to point out, the Baath isn't the Nazi party, there was nothing inherently evil about its rhetoric, the crimes of the regime were usually done under some coverup and didn't have any type of public support so it's even more baffling they decided every single soldier or some mislead journalist just doing their duty deserve punishment.
@Noor Ahmed I think in hindsight, the entire goal of the people the US put in charge was to loot as much as possible before their house of cards inevitably collapsed.
I’m tired of videos without cited sources in general! 😂 Edit: Even this wasn’t exactly ideal-Dan put his sources but always didn’t specify when and where he used them. I would advocate just putting a little footnote number in the corner of the video. As they come up.
Glad you got into the media environment during that time. As an American, I’ve never seen such a pervasive and all encompassing propaganda machine in this country (and that’s saying something!) quite like the lead up to the war in Iraq. Many otherwise well meaning liberals were either convinced or bullied into tepid approval of the war. For those who were politically aware during that time, it really can’t be understated how toxic the discourse was and how pervasive the propaganda was. Even many that were against the war ended up falling for parts of the propaganda even if they were still against an invasion in the end.
Absolutely agree! When I wonder how Russians can justify Putin's invasion of Ukraine I only have to remember how immersed we were back then in the propaganda. I know lots of people who still rationalize their support for that war with "It wasn't our fault. They lied to us." But there were plenty of brave people back then who pushed back and spoke out, just like the brave Russians who allow themselves to get arrested in order to oppose Putin's war. I know it's not exactly the same, but it's damn close.
@@mykehog6646 NATO invaded a sovereign country? You do realize the 'nato did it' excuse is like saying a domestic abuse victim deserved the beating because they had the audacity to talk to a third person.
As a non american who lived and worked in the U.S. from '99 to '04 one tragedy of the aftermath of 9/11 was the world, by and large, was with you. There was a genuine tide of support with vigils and pledges of assistance from the most unexpected places (the p.l.o. for example.) Americas moral supremacy was assured. But bit by bit, well you know what happened. I just remember finding it infuriating that so many people could see where the us governments actions were leading and were powerless to do anything about it. America seemed to go from everyone big tough, friendly and sonetimes goofy neighbour, to the guy in your street that spends all day twitching the drapes. From "Have a nice day!" To "What the fuck are you looking at?"
Lol! The idea that no country doubted the existence of Iraq's WMDs is so funny to me, I vividly remember the "Freedom Fries" meme, it was iconic. Incidentally, when they said WMDs they clearly meant nukes, which the PU guy is obviously tiptoeing around with his chemical weapons focus.
When he said "they had WMDs they used chemical weapons", I had to search what WMD meant, because for me it was a synonym of nukes ^^' And what does it mean? Well, nothing precise, there's still debates about what is a WMD, but during the Cold War it was primarily used as a synonym of nukes. And after the Cold War, the term was abandonned, except to qualify the weapons that Iraq must dismantle. Fun fact, in 2013, the FBI defined the bombs of the Boston marathon as WMD.... so apparently, if Iraq had modified a pressure cooker into a bomb, they'd have a WMD :p
I faintly remember a speech by a German politician about how they did not feel comfortable supporting this war considering the lack of evidence. The minister for the exterior literally said "I am not convinced." A year prior, in 2002 the chancellor won the election after promising that they wouldnt enter the war. Yeah, no 'doubting' going on here... Funnily enough, the head of the conservative party at the time disagreed, saying the danger wasn't made up but real and should be fought. Who was this leader? Angela Merkel.
@@krankarvolund7771 I thought chemical weapons were always considered WMDs. Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear. That being said, the U.S. heavily implied that Iraq had, or was pursuing, nuclear and/or radiological weapons. It was so messed up. I have a friend who was an Iraqi who fled the war and its outcome, and at first she said she was hopeful, hoping to see Saddam deposed, justice for the countless he murdered, and a democratic government imposed, but that just didn't happen, because, while the U.S. could've made that all happen, it just didn't care. While she's happy to have seen Saddam go, she's horrified at how the U.S. did it, and the immense suffering the U.S. brought the people of Iraq.
@@saudade7842 From what I've seen, it was briefly used to describe super-weapons that would be build in the future (in the future of 1945 ^^), but that does not describe mustard gaz or sarin that are like WW1 tech. And it's only after the First Gulf War that americans began to include chemical weapons as WMDs and use that word as "The weapons the bad guys have and we want to see destroy".
@@krankarvolund7771 At first it referred to any weapon that could kill a ton of people, including chemical weapons (in fact, the first known usage of the term predates nuclear weapons). Then, during the cold war, it was mostly applied to nuclear and radiological weapons since that's what everyone was afraid of at the time, and now the usage is more limited to cbrn weapons in general. The lie wasn't the usage of the term WMDs, it was shit like yellow cake, and the constant implications, and outright statements that the Iraqi govt had nuclear and/or radiological weapons programs that posed an actual threat
Thanks for doing this one. I have a lot of personal trauma surround the invasion of Iraq. The day after it was announced I stood up during morning assembly at my high school and said that the war was certain to go terribly, that a stable democracy couldn't be built through the barrel of a gun and that the lies told to start this war would bite us all in the ass for decades to come. I was bullied relentlessly for the next two years by not only other students, but by the faculty as well. I was called a traitor daily and told repeatedly by adults that I should be drafted, beaten or executed. The bullying only got worse as the war went badly and I had to change schools. I think a lot of the revisionism surrounding the war is related to people desperately trying to avoid feeling shame over the psychotic way they behaved towards others for years. I think a lot of people have fully melted their brains trying to avoid thinking about the behavior they engaged in after 9/11 in what has been a decades long cognitive decline brought on by fully committing to hysterical panic in the aftermath of a terror attack. These people need to be shamed forever.
It's strange revisionism too. Sometimes it seems it is all a front because that it what is prudent now. Fake revisionism. This kind of shined through when the Blackwater prisoners were back in the news. They were talked about as political prisoners almost
That would explain why so much of the post-9/11 years seem to have been thrown down thr memory hole. It's surreal when you lived through it, how crazy it all was, and people now just don't care.
Yeah but those without shame can't experience it my man. It's anathema to them. You're talking about history, the past, and your perspective on it at that.. Now is not a good time to talk about these things. I'M dealing with ____ right now. I guess we remember things differently Etc etc etc
I'm glad that with so much insanity going on just in the past 10 years, people still haven't forgotten about the atrocities in Iraq. It's really tempting for people to focus solely on current events.
What I find especially grotesque about their justifications for the 2003 invasion of Iraq is that the goal of making Iraq a non-threat to surrounding countries had already been accomplished in Desert Storm. Iraq's military was thoroughly destroyed, with a substantial portion of its equipment lost (in particular the air defense assets and much of their armor), and Saddam was thoroughly convinced that any action against his neighbors would be met with international sanction. He was unable to reignite hostilities with Iran (lacking the international support which made it possible in the first place), Syria was suddenly more powerful after the losses he suffered, and Jordan was not a viable target due to geographic limitations. Kuwait and the Saudis had US military assets on standby to crush any attempt he might make with US air power as well. From the perspective of conventional war, Saddam wasn't a threat. He didn't have any actual connections to jihadi groups (or at least had fewer than our erstwhile allies in the Saudi government), and the WMD lies were absurd in numerous ways.
Desert Storm also destroyed Iraq’s civil infrastructure and salted it with depleted uranium. Plus a decade of economic sanctions. In 2003 Iraq wasn’t even close to recovering.
@@DemagogueBibleStudy Depleted Uranium is harmful due to it being a heavy metal. Tungsten carbide will do the same. All armies in the world use hard heavy metal penetrators. Iraq will "salt" land, Russia will "salt" land, the UK will "salt" land, Canada will "salt" land. This is not an argument. The US uses depleted uranium because there's a good supply of it due to nuclear power industry sequestring the enriched uranium and the DU being a "waste" product.
And Desert storm had an actually good justification, unlike this conflict. It’s been one if the times America has actually been in the right with its wars
@@dankuser8303 lmfao 🤣 you realize the gulf war was based on lies aswell, Kuwait was not innocent at all, the Kuwaiti ambassador got his daughter to lie to the UN about how she seen Iraqi soldiers kill Kuwaiti infants and how Iraq was commiting genocide and atrocities, all rubbish, then what followed in dessert storm was numerous war crimes by US forces, it was about oil. Basically ever war started by the US since WWII has no good justification and has resulted in numerous atrocities and dead innocent people, hating on communism, Money, weapons and oil have been the 4 main reasons why the US has invaded countries, the US is a bigger threat to world peace than Russia and China combined.
An interesting fact about Joschka Fischer’s (German foreign minister during Iraq ‘03) speech mentioned in the first video: he delivered that line in English, in the presence of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. That might not be super interesting on its face, but up until this point in the speech, Fischer had been speaking exclusively in German and Rumsfeld had been listening through a translator. Fischer purposefully spoke in English not just to address Americans in general, but Rumsfeld specifically. He wanted him to know exactly what he meant, and exactly how he felt about the war and it’s justifications. Hence why it caused a diplomatic crisis: it was a calculated and intentional comment by Joschka Fischer speaking to Rumsfeld and tangentially to America’s most jingoist politicians, stating clearly that Germany would not send its soldiers and people to die in an unjust war.
Which for the record Germany didn't, at least not in the Irak. I remember that time, and back then it was fairly clear from the get go that the justifications of the US were fairly flimsy.
yes agreed and they're always informative I like the rigorous academics he has clearly gone through to make each point, Feels Like A Little Light In The Burning World Drink Water Much Love!!
As a person whom was deployed to Iraq in 2003, I can reassure you that any assessment/justification made by anyone that we were there for a good reason is flawed and false. Thank you for the effort you put into these videos.
Thank you for your service. I had the good fortune to work with some vets (just kids really) in a wounded warrior program in 2010-2012 in San Diego. It was supper rewarding to see them get on with their lives and have a chance to enjoy and succeed at being young adults. In the back of my mind I always wondered if they really knew how we were lead into war post 9/11. I didn't press the issue. I was just happy to get them some tech and IT skill and pick out some good school choices with them.
@@kwarra-an for what reason ? I've never supported Russian military action post WWlll . And for the record I've voted democrat my entire life. My grandpa and 3 great uncles served in WWll in the US Army to earn their citizenship. My dad is a 14 year veteran. My cousin who was the same age as me served as an intel officer for SEAL TEAM ONE and died on base (Coronado Island) in 2001 serving his country. One can support vets (the actual people) and not be pro-war. The military doesn't get to pick and choose which wars are fought. They train and answer the call. In the case of the Iraq War it was pretty clear GWB was manufacturing the evidence and reasons to invade. I'm grateful my dad never got called up (although his unit was told many times to get ready to deploy) I'm also grateful my cousin didn't die fighting a immoral and unjust war. He died doing what he loved and in the prime of his life. He'll forever be 29.
@@cborkowski American soldiers are just as guilty and culpable in their illegal wars as Russian soldiers are (actually, they're more guilty, because the Russians right now have a small excuse in that they're conscripted). You're letting your family's history and your American exceptionalism get in the way of seeing things clearly.
To be fair, Andrew Roberts also wrote a gushingly admiring biography of Napoleon (aka the only world leader to ever reimpose slavery after it had been previously abolished). So its not just English speakers he champions against charges of war crimes. He's also a big fan of defending french speakers, german speakers, spanish speakers (sometimes), Italian speakers... Ya know, all sorts of people.
Not exactly gushing; Roberts does criticize Napoleon on a number of points, including his reintroduction of slavery, his ego going into the Russian campaign and afterwards, his multiple affairs with women, his sometimes antisocial personality when he wasn't dealing with policy or his soldiers, and how he handled the Egyptian campaign. I would say he was just slightly kinder to him then most British historians would give him credit for. Plus it's one of the most detailed and enthralling biographies of Napoleon I've ever seen not just looking at his battles, it's a good book.
@@devonmolina5200 I found Roberts' biography of Napoleon to be gushing hero worship. Roberts' head is so far up Napoleon's ass it is incredible. Roberts' belongs in the long tradition of worshippers of the most holy and divine Napoleon, whose worship of power is quite something. Roberts' is simply another in the long, very long, list of members of the Napleonic cult. The simple fact the book is called Napoleon the Great is perverse enough. Napoleon was both brilliant and a fool. A incredibly smart general and an idiot diplomat. Although the spectacle of Roberts writhing in exctasy at the feet of Napoleon does remind me of the 20th century adoration of certain dictators, Stalin and Mao come to mind. Power worship never dies.
Thank you for not just going right to "war for oil" like so many people do, it's such an inaccurate framing. The motivations were more subtle...though certainly not any more excusable! The oil was just the cherry on top of a much more messy political sundae. I'm gonna have to give To Start a War a read sometime, it sounds like a well-researched deep dive into the topic. Thanks for putting that book on my radar.
If it wasnt for the oil, the countries would broke and we would care about as much as we do about Africa. It's like saying the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Sure you can make a case for state rights, but take slavery out of the picture and it all crumbles
@@michaelm8460 If you believe that, then you didn't listen to a thing Three Arrows said. This isn't like the Lost Cause myth, there's way more going on here than a war for oil. Again, if they just wanted the oil, there was a way to buy it. Their objectives were way more ambitious than seizing control of Iraq's oil. As for your example of Africa, have you *seen* the imperialisms China has been doing there? Are you keeping up with that? Don't tell me the nations of the world don't care about Africa. Heck, before Ukraine, Russia was trying to get in on that too. Maybe you need to do more research on what's going on in the world, you're clearly not keeping up. If you think the nations of the world aren't taking an interest in Africa... * *shakes head* *
@@michaelm8460 From the perspective of the House of Saud, it was terribly nice for the USA to remove a regional rival. The kingdom isn't very suited to actually fight wars but likes any US security guarantees it can get. Instead they can focus on preventing the next palace coup. The classic reason for a british presence in Aden, Egypt etc is the Suez Canal. Even when Saudi Arabia was just a bunch of pretender kings, this shipping lane was of massive importance.
This is unrelated to the video. But I stumbled across the iron dice podcast about 3 weeks before I went on a trip from Australia to Europe over Christmas. I was in Germany for a large part of it. Both in the north in Berlin and in Bavaria. Your podcast was very eye opening to what historically had occurred and all the ways in which that has culminated in the modern day culture and life in the areas in the county. I was very glad I discovered the podcast before I went.
Whew. Theres a trip down memory lane. My young opposition to the Iraq War was one of the first stepping stepping stones in my exit from the evangelical church. I remember having arguments on some of these points with other 20 somethings in the back of a church van.
@@SusCalvin I was involved with the Southern Baptists at the time. I can't speak to what the other denominatons were preaching, but the church I went to and the various campus ministry groups I frequented were all strongly in favor of the war. I remember hearing sermons about how the Bush presidency was ordained by God, how the God of the old testament was not opposed to war and often commanded the ancient Israelites to wage war, and that the 6th commandment actually translated to "thou shalt not murder" instead of "kill" arguing that there was a huge difference. I remember sermons about how people who were opposed to the war were worldly and not holy. For most of the individual Christians I knew at the time their unquestioning support for the war was similar to most of the population, only with a veneer of church created thought terminating cliches.
@@stephenwilliams163 "I remember sermons about how people who were opposed to the war were worldly and not holy." reminds me of Steven Miller dismissing somebody for being "cosmopolitan". It's as though bringing any kind of context into these things is a sin all its own.
I served in the first Gulf War in the US Army but my cousin he was a Navy corpsman attached to a marine rifle company and he serve a number of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said they knew they wasn't accomplishing anything over there and they were basically going in circles.
USA during the iraq war 1:invade Iraq and destroy everything 2:bring in pro American people in the goverment and just hope they do it right 3:???????? 4: profit.
Probably didn’t help that there was no objective or plan either. Like, how did conquering Iraq even secure oil supplies? I’d argue that the consequences of that action made doing so even more precarious than it would have been dealing with Saddam!
We did find chemical weapons, but from a defunct program not related to what the Bush admin was claiming. It was so bad, that troops injured by said chemical weapons were denied treatment for it, because it wasn't being logged.
None of the journalists from that era had to, to preserve their career. Kinda shows the expanding rot of our media institutions. Frankly, it might hurt the ongoing relationship they have, being mouthpieces for the most hawkish sects of our government, if they ever did.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre being framed as necessary to "pacify the region" is making me really angry... It was Baisakhi! They were there to celebrate the new year!
1:09:35 - Literally the same line of thinking as "Russia didn't intend for so much death and distruction to happen in Ukraine. If Ukraine gave up everything would be fine"
Question: Who the hell is making that argument? Seriously I am a right-leaning Libertarian and I have NEVER heard this or something remotely close said by anyone I know or watch/listen to. Where are you getting this?
Damn, your closing words were really enlightening. It may be easy to laugh off PragerU, but what videos like this do is a slow erosion of certainty, feeding bits of digestible justifications until the abhorrence we should feel towards the Iraq War is stripped away by technical discussions.
America is doing the absolute opposite thing that Germany did after WW2 We get our atrocities drilled into our head even to this day, to make sure we never make the same mistake again, but even then, people are starting to forget.....
The French may have had to endure two decades of surrender jokes and insults by butthurt Americans over it, but apart from staying out of the pointless mess they also get to claim the moral high ground over the brits on this one. So I think it evens out a little.
@@trustyvault13canteen32 Yea, Germany only "stayed out" in the sense that they didn't commit any forces of their own, Germany is of course a vital part of NATO's entire military infrastructure.
@@trustyvault13canteen32 stayed out like Switzerland was neutral in WW2. didnt commit fully, but made sure it it gets a slice of the pie while holding moral high ground.
I had to take a phone call while this was on and left it playing in the other room, and as a big fan of Overly Sarcastic Productions I was extremely confused about how they got involved half way through this video Seriously though, great video and thank you for sharing your work
For anyone wanting more extensive accounts of the realities of the Iraq war, both in Iraq and between key figures in the US, Blowback is an incredible podcast that covers the Iraq war in season two. They also cover the Cuban missile crisis and the Korean War in seasons one and three respectively. All from a leftist standpoint, with incredible personal accounts from Cubans/Iraqis/Koreans on the ground at the time.
I love how they got H. Jon Benjamin to play Saddam, hysterical. Kind of wish they had more of the improv attitude they had in the first season but it was probably easier to do with the first season considering they could actually relate to it.
Thank you, Dan and co. As an American my country’s history (even just during my lifetime) leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Putting truth to these events offers me a tiny peace of mind. I hope all your works endure.
As an American millennial myself , never stop learning about the history of American foreign policy. I know its difficult and depressing but it’s so important to know the patterns of “justification” used.
Because his histography isn't completely dogshit. His biography on Napoleon is one of the best ones you can find if you want to know about how Napoleon was like instead of looking at his battles.
Well the term historian isn't legally protected iirc, so until some administration does that, we've got to deal with that Klansman's bullshit with rigorous debunks
Good? I’m glad the US is fighting for materialistic reasons instead of degenerate theism, and in the process we destroyed the ability of muslims to do the same.
I think the old-school colonial powers would have thought the USA was bad at it. You didn't really extract a lot of resources from Iraq compared to the cost of the US presence.
as a gen z kid, everything i learn about george bush makes me furious we don't talk about his administration all the time. the fact that some people old enough to remember this shit barely seem to care is fucking crazy!!
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -Orwell
Great break down of what Prager U is really saying. This video deserves several rewatches in order to fully absorb the facts you laid down about the Iraq war throughout.
Another great video. I just started watching the Slow Burn Podcast season about the Iraq invasion and this fits very well with that. I was working for someone in Congress on the Armed Forces Committee in late 2002 (I got to handle all the phone calls before the AUMF vote) - it was already inside knowledge that the forces were deployed in September 2002 and ready to invade. Everything that came between then and March was just advertising to sell the war, and the whole WMD "crisis" was very obviously manufactured. But the media by and large was selling what the Bush admin was providing, and it seemed like everyone had collectively lost their minds. The rest is history - can't believe that was 20 years ago.
dan, quote fischer properly. it's 'let's go to war because there are reasons and so on and i don't believe in them'. i know this because i repeat it every time i experience an interpersonal conflict.
THE. BEST. ARROWS. IN THE FUCKING. GAME. Also, this video is insane to me. Do they really think there aren’t people who remember? It wasn’t that long ago this all happened, and there is an entire generation that *knows* they were lied to about this! Who is the audience for this?
The target audience is younger generations who don't remember because they weren't around and older generations who have already been subjected to so much Fox News that they'll swallow this BS hook, line and sinker. Really the goal is to supply arguments and a smoke screen for the people who still tell those lies and muddy the waters of history. Because history can be changed in people's minds if you just repeat the lies often enough.
Such a waste of life, money, energy, time, we could be decades ahead of where we are now, it that war didn't take all the attention and time and life. Great vid as always!
Another great video, as always. Thank you for lending your insight and analysis to this important topic! I think the importance of the Bush regime is often overlooked in shaping the world we now inhabit.
Being Iraqi, it’s funny whenever I hear about Saddam funding Al-Quaeda. Back when I was a kid in the fighting hotspot during the war, where the Al-Quaeda presence was heavy and they were chanting about American destruction and all, so the GG -A local American army force in the place- just handed them like a thousand bucks to each member and they all immediately joined the US army. Dunno if this relates to the topic at hand, but it was funny at the time.
I still remember being so confused and frustrated about the WMD argument because of course Iraq would have used them if they had them; they were being invaded! It's such a self-evident point it's ridiculous to this day people act like it was a reasonable conclusion.
"Unfortunately, I don't have the time to address every thing said in the video.* Me: Looks at the over 1hr run time. Damn. Must've been a lot of bullshit there to unpack.
That is the lefts dilemma: the right can spew bullshit for 5 minutes, and it takes an hour to debunk it. Plus..the bs usually leaves its audience usually with a nice feeling of self assured smugness and catchy truisms..while the truth leaves you with conflicted feelings, facing a nuanced and complicated world...
I can’t believe he started with the Iran-Iraq war. You know the war in which Reagan provided a huge amount of protection and support for Iraq as it used chemical weapons, and also simultaneously was engaged in an arms trade with Iran.
Dan, you are a blessing. Subjects like this make me feel so emotional and angry (as an American) but it's crucial information and it's nice to have this channel calmly explaining and suffering through it with us.
You keep putting out riveting videos that absolutely must be seen. Thanks. I watched all this unfold at the time, and the deceptions were so obvious, but people wanted to be deceived... Even when the true situation wasn't immediately obvious, the official story was so completely bonkers. And people just kept waiving flags around. I can tell from the sound of your voice at the end, you understand the crushing sense of frustration. Anyway, thanks for what you do. It's important.
16:57 Not only that, the US directly intervened against Iran and conducted Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian navy, which was the largest of the five major US naval surface engagements since the Second World War.
One of my favorite jokes from the Dubya Era was: "I know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, I have the receipts from when my daddy SOLD them to him!"
You know the worst part of everything? None of these people will see justice. Not even the people lowest on the pole. None of these people will face the consequences of their actions. It’s infuriating
Lack of consequences seems to be a running theme as of late.
@@mannhouse8014 We need several generations of the reverse of that, frankly.
Yup. Dick Cheney will live to 120 and get streets named after him.
never say never
Join a communist party and let's fucking bring the justice to them.
The section at 12:13 reminded me of a joke we used to make: "How did the U.S. know Iraq had chemical weapons? Because the U.S. still has their receipts."
That's a Bill Hicks joke, from the first Gulf War.
LOL
So then did he have WMDs or not. You're just saying rn that he did. But clearly you're against the war, so I don't know why you would say that. Though personally I don't believe a country possessing WMDs is just cause for invasion, if it were, it is very likely both our countries would be invaded lmao. (I'm US, but three arrow's has a European audience so maybe you're french or British)
@@oracle8192 I'm pretty sure the reason why they didn't want them to have wmd's was because Saddam was a bloody dictator who gassed thousands of Kurds like in Halabja
@@oracle8192 The joke isn't that Iraq had WMDs (they did not) but that the U.S. is the kind of power who'd *sell* WMDs to a dictator and then be arrogant enough to think it has the moral high ground.
As the joke went Bush was positive Iraq had WMDs his father still had the receipts.
It was funny watching Bill Hicks at the time and nothing had changed in the interim since his death.
This was very well made and researched. As someone who was born after 9/11 I never really understood the hate Bush and Cheney got. Now I do.
We can regale you with countless stories about those evil fucking war criminals whenever you’d like, whipper-snapper.
@@michaelgj23 I just read the Abu Ghraib wikipedia article... I think I'm good for now lmao
I can recommend the Podcast 'Blowback' Season 1 about the Iraq War, they go into a lot of the Points 3 Arrows makes in this video in more detail
As you get older and study the continuities and discontinuities from the Reagan era to the Bush era, you'll realize that the right wing slowly and quite deliberately destroyed the entire planet's chance at a more peaceful and prosperous 21st century. The world isn't just like this. You were robbed, by evil people, most of whom are still alive. Don't forget it.
No Child Left Behind was a disaster and the only reason he didn't take much of the heat for the '08 recession is because it kicked off at the very end of his last term.
As an Iraqi who lived both wars, it really hurts me seeing those people making excuses or defending the Bush administration.
I lost my best friends, two of them and a cousin in 2006 and I'm still suffering from multiple traumatic experiences, this video makes me feel better, thanks for the efforts.
Thank you for sharing your story. The Iraqi people have been pushed around for too long by Saddam and then by Bush. It’s such a shame that a country like the US has the most capabilities to enforce justice around the globe instead chooses to exploit countries in the name of ‘Freedom and Democracy’
I marched against the war prior to invasion in Belfast 2003. I was absolutely shattered mentally. I and everyone I knew had done everything they could possibly think to voice opposition and try to stop it.
But long before the day of invasion it had become quite clear that this had absolutely nothing to do with the UN reports or of sending in more inspectors to find the truth as a sort of justification. The UK's attorney generals position was that it required a second UN resolution for our war to to be legal, there was absolutely no grounds on the basis of regime change.
But the inevitability was obvious, Bush and Blair displayed an absolute unified conviction. If Bush was going in, then we certainly were.
I cried for hours when "shock and awe" started, I felt the most helpless in my life. My country was illegally going to war with people on the other side of the globe, they had done nothing to hurt me and my family, or the UK in any way for that matter. I knew the vast loss of innocent lives to come, let alone the years following complete devastation of infrastructure.
I've spoken to many Iraqis since then and their stories break my heart. During occupation the absolute casual brutality of US marines and army is hard to imagine. They utterly terrorised the local populace, proudly declaring their racism and bigotry.
There was one Iraqi who was a kid at the time. He described how the local US military base would at any time raid an entire area and demand that every single person come to the door and raise their hands as anyone hiding is considered a hostile threat.
His uncle had a disability that made navigating stairs difficult and slow. As they started the raid the uncle was sitting alone on the other side of the house. He was a child and his mum made him hide in a cupboard at the top of the stairs to protect him from these American barbarians. But he started panicking and making noise, so a US soldier shot into that cupboard door. It thankfully missed him, but it passed through into the other room and killed his uncle.
The US soldiers had absolutely no remorse and said it was entirely his own fault as they had explicitly told them to come to the door with arms raised. I cried my eyes out speaking to him, the worst thing is he blamed himself throughout adolescence since it was only because he made noise his uncle died. What an unimaginable thing to be done to a child.
Another guy mentioned how his cousin or uncle one day was driving as normal, but the US humvees as operational practice just speared across the roads and traffic pushing other cars out of the way. His relation drove through a blind intersection where one of these Humvees was coming ploughing through with him suddenly being about to crash. The Americans immediately opened fire, absolutely ravaging the car with 50cal and other rounds. They justified it on the basis that he drove with the same suspicious behaviour as a car bomber.
What really horrifies me to this day is that the US still treats these soldiers as heroes, thanking them for their service. When a single US soldier died it heralded a great ceremony on the injustice of their young hero being murdered by freedom hating terrorists. I don't remember a single time where they gave remembrance for the dead Iraqis. I never hear of stories like I recounted being told in the US, taking recognition of the routine horrific war crimes their military committed.
I haven't met any Iraqis who lived in British occupied territory like Basra, so I can't pass similar judgement on their behaviour. But one thing is for sure, the soldiers coming back to the UK weren't heralded as heroes. The Iraq war protests were the largest in all of British history, it had massive public opposition. We don't thank them for their service, they didn't make the UK safer or prevent weapons of mass destruction. They weren't the good guys delivering freedom to Iraq.
I am to the bottom of my soul sorry for what my country did to yours. I tried my best, but I always think wasn't there something more I could have done that would have stopped the madness? I'm unapologetically sorry for the trauma and death you and your family suffered. I wish whatever improbable perfect future possibility for Iraq becomes reality.
@@beardedchimp I am not Iraqi so I can't be the one to forgive you. But you protested against the war,didn't fall for propaganda. Surely you are abstained from responsibility or guilt.
@@beardedchimp you didn't need to write a huge essay insisting that you cried about the war so much and recounting third-hand accounts about shit that OP actually experienced to show sympathy.
@@Doomer_Optimistit’s good to write about your feelings. He probably should have wrote all that in a journal or the notes app, but he got it off his chest.
Great concept. You can do a PragerU vs Reality on virtually anything subject.
Shaun has a good 8 video playlist entitled, "How PragerU lies to you."
Several other content creators have multiple similar videos. It has kind of become a cottage industry on the ewe tube.
@Rembrandt972 Dan has also done a few of them himself. Between Shaun and Dan they do a good job at debunking the really racist garbage PU makes and tries to sell as "truth".
@@rembrandt972ify thanks for the info. I'll look into it
They still have the decency to debunk myths that the Civil War was fought over state rights.
truly
To quote HBomb, it's that guy who makes videos... Very occasionally.
And I love it every time we get one!
Agreed. I’ll take whatever I can get.
My favourite hbomb clip is still the "SELL THE HOUSES TO WHO BEN? FUCKING AQUAMAN?"
@@LuluTheCorgi 🎶good-bye hors-es / you don't exist at all🎶
THREE ARROWS IS A RACIST AND ANTISEMITE! STOP WATCHING!
Something important to note: WMD is a deliberately fuzzy political term. It's not a term embraced by generals and strategists because it covers such disparate things. The purpose of WMD as a term is to allow one to place "chemical weapons that several countries have" and "super dangerous by very rare nuclear weapons" under the same umbrella, implying that if you have one, you should be treated as having the other.
I'd argue that a chemical weapon that could disperse its contents over a sufficiently large area in a concentration adequate enough to remain effective could reasonably constitute a WMD due to the potential to indiscriminately harm civilian life.
That said, mustard gas and other chemical weapons, as horrific a weapon as they are, aren't usually delivered by means that would raise them to that level (said level being comparable to a "low yield" nuclear bomb).
I'd equally argue that most modern biological weapons, also horrible terrible things, shouldn't be raised to that level either. Nowadays, humans using biological weaponry largely tend to favor the spores or toxins that have particularly lethal outcomes for the target(s) over the infectious agent itself (for the simple reason that you don't want to accidentally have your own weapon jump over to your own forces after the next contact with the enemy). In the past, wide scale biological weaponry seems to have been depressingly common (smallpox blankets given to previously unexposed populations for example).
Machine guns, when first developed, where called WMD, so yeah, it's "fungable"
Yes, this is why we can simultaneously believe that Iraq had no WMDs, but also believe that the troops got cancer from burning all those WMDs.
@@The2012Aceman Burn pits aren't about WMD, they're about the fact that burning military trash by dousing it in jet fuel tends to produce toxic smoke. Heck, breathing ANY smoke is bad for your lungs.
@The2012Aceman
A lot of the military members who have a disease attribute it to the BURN PITS not wmd
As an aggressively British man, I approve of this message.
You my friend, are criminaly underrated. First person that makes econ look interesting to me. Also always great to see two great channels intersect.
THREE ARROWS IS A RACIST AND ANTISEMITE! STOP WATCHING!
@@Palon1983has some decent stuff but still a bourgeois economist who misreads Marx!
@@marxwasright25 You mean UE argues for policies that wouldn’t cause scarcity and stagnation? Based!!!!!
@@paulspringwood7190 citation needed
Remember that time George W Bush said: “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” He quickly corrected himself, saying, “I mean Ukraine,” but he proceeded to chuckle and mutter “Iraq, too”.
How was someone not JFKd him yet. Smh kids these days
Freudian Slip
Character development irl
THREE ARROWS IS A RACIST AND ANTISEMITE! STOP WATCHING!
That was the first time he ever publicly admitted the Iraq War was unjustified, which is amazing because 5 years earlier in a CNN interview (I think) he staunchly defended his decision to invade Iraq (I wonder what changed his mind within the next 5 years).
"The Bush administration was either lying or were stupid"
PragerU: "Stupid! They were stupid!"
That's a false dichotomy. They were repeatedly proven to be both.
@@MrPiccolokuit's a Transformers joke. I think.
THREE ARROWS IS A RACIST AND ANTISEMITE! STOP WATCHING!
Both
@@justinthomas7222 Funny G1 starscream
I'm Iraqi, I was born in the late 80s so I've lived through a lot of that unrest. One thing no one talks about is the policy of the US after the war, like maybe they came to my country out of some misguided paternalistic sense, it's like when they accidently hit a shelter full of women and children back in the first gulf war, so many mistakes! but then having made that mistake they decided to double down! the interim government they set up, was a disaster, like Ahmed Al-Chalibi mentioned in this video, the guy who they knew to be unreliable, yeah he ended on that council. Paul Bremer decided it's a good idea to dismantle the Iraqi army, polis force and media, causing so many journalists rightly pissed off and many ex-military to be unemployed and angry over night, guess those guys all peacefully integrated in society! The constitution written during that time is a mess, it made our election system easy to manipulate, so much for democracy! It's not all the US fault of course, us Iraqis share the blame for how some of that turned out, but all I'm saying when the US was so dead set on invading, should have had a plan for the fallout!
I hope Three Arrows highlights this comment.
I'm sorry you lived through that. As an American, I believe wholeheartedly that the Iraq War was purely a money grab. Key figures in the Bush administration had deep ties with the "defense" industry. 9/11 gave them an opportunity to rob the public blind, laundering trillions of dollars among friends through defense contracts. As a young adult at the time, it seemed like everyone around me lost their minds, and couldn't understand why they didn't see through it the way I did. There was purposefully not a plan. Permanent instability means permanent opportunity to keep laundering money under the pretense of national security.
One of the things I never understood was why the Bush policy was a complete De-Baathification (which is what you (Noor Ahmed) were referring to when you mention "Paul Bremer decided it's a good idea to dismantle the Iraqi army, polis force and media, causing so many journalists rightly pissed off and many ex-military to be unemployed and angry over night"). De-Baathification was particularly absurd because nearly everyone who was competent and educated in Iraq was a member of the Baath Party; you simply had to be a member in order to be in any university-graduated profession or government office.
And as you point out, firing the fourth largest military in the world and nearly every competent person is a recipe for insurgency creation. Al-Qaeda Iraq (the antecedent for Islamic State) only began achieving large-scale military victories when former generals in the Iraqi Army (who were unemployed and enraged after De-Baathification) joined al-Qaeda Iraq and directed its forces. De-Baathification directly led to the success of that particular insurgent group.
Just as a counterpoint, when the US overthrew Axis-aligned Italy in WWII, only the most senior fascists were removed, to allow the main part of Italian infrastructure to remain intact. It shows that the US knows how to remove the leadership of a government without targeting all party members and, therefore, removing all competent individuals from governance. Just for some absurd reason, that was not even considered here.
@@oremfrien Yeah that was some strange reasoning there , you are correct about how every educated person pretty much had to be a party member, hell they had like a "supporter of the party" tier that doesn't make you a full member and that was mandatory for all high schools, I was two years away from being forced into that tier myself when the war happened, my parents were low level members as well because otherwise they wouldn't have jobs, so de-Baathification was a ridiculous and terribly misused system, a lot of doctors, university professors and scientists lost their jobs to it, not to the same level as the military or the media, but it was still devastating and not really done with any due process, it's not like every Baath party member had a trial or a hearing or anything, they lost their livelihoods overnight and in some cases had a target on their backs.
Also I have to point out, the Baath isn't the Nazi party, there was nothing inherently evil about its rhetoric, the crimes of the regime were usually done under some coverup and didn't have any type of public support so it's even more baffling they decided every single soldier or some mislead journalist just doing their duty deserve punishment.
@Noor Ahmed I think in hindsight, the entire goal of the people the US put in charge was to loot as much as possible before their house of cards inevitably collapsed.
Thanks for writting the bibliography you used in this video. Im tired of watching videos without references of this war
I’m tired of videos without cited sources in general! 😂
Edit: Even this wasn’t exactly ideal-Dan put his sources but always didn’t specify when and where he used them. I would advocate just putting a little footnote number in the corner of the video. As they come up.
@@warlordofbritannia Philosophy Tube does exactly that and I love it
@@zerologic7912
AtunShei is another channel that does this
There is a source and citation desert filled with promotional material under every PragerU video to fall in line with it's esteemed academic title
@@TheHikariLP
Ah. How Chicago Manual Style.
Glad you got into the media environment during that time. As an American, I’ve never seen such a pervasive and all encompassing propaganda machine in this country (and that’s saying something!) quite like the lead up to the war in Iraq. Many otherwise well meaning liberals were either convinced or bullied into tepid approval of the war. For those who were politically aware during that time, it really can’t be understated how toxic the discourse was and how pervasive the propaganda was. Even many that were against the war ended up falling for parts of the propaganda even if they were still against an invasion in the end.
Absolutely agree! When I wonder how Russians can justify Putin's invasion of Ukraine I only have to remember how immersed we were back then in the propaganda. I know lots of people who still rationalize their support for that war with "It wasn't our fault. They lied to us." But there were plenty of brave people back then who pushed back and spoke out, just like the brave Russians who allow themselves to get arrested in order to oppose Putin's war. I know it's not exactly the same, but it's damn close.
@@kguyton1 not putins war..nato started it..facts matter..get some
@@mykehog6646 NATO invaded a sovereign country? You do realize the 'nato did it' excuse is like saying a domestic abuse victim deserved the beating because they had the audacity to talk to a third person.
As a non american who lived and worked in the U.S. from '99 to '04 one tragedy of the aftermath of 9/11 was the world, by and large, was with you. There was a genuine tide of support with vigils and pledges of assistance from the most unexpected places (the p.l.o. for example.) Americas moral supremacy was assured. But bit by bit, well you know what happened. I just remember finding it infuriating that so many people could see where the us governments actions were leading and were powerless to do anything about it. America seemed to go from everyone big tough, friendly and sonetimes goofy neighbour, to the guy in your street that spends all day twitching the drapes. From "Have a nice day!" To "What the fuck are you looking at?"
@@mykehog6646 ok troll
Lol! The idea that no country doubted the existence of Iraq's WMDs is so funny to me, I vividly remember the "Freedom Fries" meme, it was iconic. Incidentally, when they said WMDs they clearly meant nukes, which the PU guy is obviously tiptoeing around with his chemical weapons focus.
When he said "they had WMDs they used chemical weapons", I had to search what WMD meant, because for me it was a synonym of nukes ^^'
And what does it mean? Well, nothing precise, there's still debates about what is a WMD, but during the Cold War it was primarily used as a synonym of nukes. And after the Cold War, the term was abandonned, except to qualify the weapons that Iraq must dismantle.
Fun fact, in 2013, the FBI defined the bombs of the Boston marathon as WMD.... so apparently, if Iraq had modified a pressure cooker into a bomb, they'd have a WMD :p
I faintly remember a speech by a German politician about how they did not feel comfortable supporting this war considering the lack of evidence. The minister for the exterior literally said "I am not convinced." A year prior, in 2002 the chancellor won the election after promising that they wouldnt enter the war.
Yeah, no 'doubting' going on here...
Funnily enough, the head of the conservative party at the time disagreed, saying the danger wasn't made up but real and should be fought. Who was this leader? Angela Merkel.
@@krankarvolund7771 I thought chemical weapons were always considered WMDs. Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear. That being said, the U.S. heavily implied that Iraq had, or was pursuing, nuclear and/or radiological weapons. It was so messed up. I have a friend who was an Iraqi who fled the war and its outcome, and at first she said she was hopeful, hoping to see Saddam deposed, justice for the countless he murdered, and a democratic government imposed, but that just didn't happen, because, while the U.S. could've made that all happen, it just didn't care. While she's happy to have seen Saddam go, she's horrified at how the U.S. did it, and the immense suffering the U.S. brought the people of Iraq.
@@saudade7842 From what I've seen, it was briefly used to describe super-weapons that would be build in the future (in the future of 1945 ^^), but that does not describe mustard gaz or sarin that are like WW1 tech. And it's only after the First Gulf War that americans began to include chemical weapons as WMDs and use that word as "The weapons the bad guys have and we want to see destroy".
@@krankarvolund7771 At first it referred to any weapon that could kill a ton of people, including chemical weapons (in fact, the first known usage of the term predates nuclear weapons). Then, during the cold war, it was mostly applied to nuclear and radiological weapons since that's what everyone was afraid of at the time, and now the usage is more limited to cbrn weapons in general. The lie wasn't the usage of the term WMDs, it was shit like yellow cake, and the constant implications, and outright statements that the Iraqi govt had nuclear and/or radiological weapons programs that posed an actual threat
Thanks for doing this one. I have a lot of personal trauma surround the invasion of Iraq. The day after it was announced I stood up during morning assembly at my high school and said that the war was certain to go terribly, that a stable democracy couldn't be built through the barrel of a gun and that the lies told to start this war would bite us all in the ass for decades to come. I was bullied relentlessly for the next two years by not only other students, but by the faculty as well. I was called a traitor daily and told repeatedly by adults that I should be drafted, beaten or executed. The bullying only got worse as the war went badly and I had to change schools. I think a lot of the revisionism surrounding the war is related to people desperately trying to avoid feeling shame over the psychotic way they behaved towards others for years. I think a lot of people have fully melted their brains trying to avoid thinking about the behavior they engaged in after 9/11 in what has been a decades long cognitive decline brought on by fully committing to hysterical panic in the aftermath of a terror attack. These people need to be shamed forever.
It's strange revisionism too. Sometimes it seems it is all a front because that it what is prudent now. Fake revisionism. This kind of shined through when the Blackwater prisoners were back in the news. They were talked about as political prisoners almost
Gotta love american brainwashing
That would explain why so much of the post-9/11 years seem to have been thrown down thr memory hole. It's surreal when you lived through it, how crazy it all was, and people now just don't care.
Mad respect for standing up and speaking the truth in front of all of your peers like that.
Yeah but those without shame can't experience it my man.
It's anathema to them.
You're talking about history, the past, and your perspective on it at that..
Now is not a good time to talk about these things.
I'M dealing with ____ right now.
I guess we remember things differently
Etc etc etc
It’s interesting seeing them rewrite the history many of us were there for.
republicans love to do it like they try to do with January 6th
I'm glad that with so much insanity going on just in the past 10 years, people still haven't forgotten about the atrocities in Iraq. It's really tempting for people to focus solely on current events.
A lot of US politics can be traced back to 9/11 and the Iraq invasion. We still have troops there.
What I find especially grotesque about their justifications for the 2003 invasion of Iraq is that the goal of making Iraq a non-threat to surrounding countries had already been accomplished in Desert Storm. Iraq's military was thoroughly destroyed, with a substantial portion of its equipment lost (in particular the air defense assets and much of their armor), and Saddam was thoroughly convinced that any action against his neighbors would be met with international sanction.
He was unable to reignite hostilities with Iran (lacking the international support which made it possible in the first place), Syria was suddenly more powerful after the losses he suffered, and Jordan was not a viable target due to geographic limitations. Kuwait and the Saudis had US military assets on standby to crush any attempt he might make with US air power as well. From the perspective of conventional war, Saddam wasn't a threat. He didn't have any actual connections to jihadi groups (or at least had fewer than our erstwhile allies in the Saudi government), and the WMD lies were absurd in numerous ways.
Surrounding countries aka israel, the west couldn't care less about any of the other countries.
Desert Storm also destroyed Iraq’s civil infrastructure and salted it with depleted uranium. Plus a decade of economic sanctions. In 2003 Iraq wasn’t even close to recovering.
@@DemagogueBibleStudy Depleted Uranium is harmful due to it being a heavy metal. Tungsten carbide will do the same. All armies in the world use hard heavy metal penetrators. Iraq will "salt" land, Russia will "salt" land, the UK will "salt" land, Canada will "salt" land. This is not an argument. The US uses depleted uranium because there's a good supply of it due to nuclear power industry sequestring the enriched uranium and the DU being a "waste" product.
And Desert storm had an actually good justification, unlike this conflict. It’s been one if the times America has actually been in the right with its wars
@@dankuser8303 lmfao 🤣 you realize the gulf war was based on lies aswell, Kuwait was not innocent at all, the Kuwaiti ambassador got his daughter to lie to the UN about how she seen Iraqi soldiers kill Kuwaiti infants and how Iraq was commiting genocide and atrocities, all rubbish, then what followed in dessert storm was numerous war crimes by US forces, it was about oil.
Basically ever war started by the US since WWII has no good justification and has resulted in numerous atrocities and dead innocent people, hating on communism, Money, weapons and oil have been the 4 main reasons why the US has invaded countries, the US is a bigger threat to world peace than Russia and China combined.
An interesting fact about Joschka Fischer’s (German foreign minister during Iraq ‘03) speech mentioned in the first video: he delivered that line in English, in the presence of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. That might not be super interesting on its face, but up until this point in the speech, Fischer had been speaking exclusively in German and Rumsfeld had been listening through a translator.
Fischer purposefully spoke in English not just to address Americans in general, but Rumsfeld specifically. He wanted him to know exactly what he meant, and exactly how he felt about the war and it’s justifications. Hence why it caused a diplomatic crisis: it was a calculated and intentional comment by Joschka Fischer speaking to Rumsfeld and tangentially to America’s most jingoist politicians, stating clearly that Germany would not send its soldiers and people to die in an unjust war.
Which for the record Germany didn't, at least not in the Irak. I remember that time, and back then it was fairly clear from the get go that the justifications of the US were fairly flimsy.
Always appreciate a new vid from Three Arrows. Especially in these increasingly disturbing times.
yes agreed and they're always informative
I like the rigorous academics he has clearly gone through to make each point,
Feels Like A Little Light In The Burning World
Drink Water
Much Love!!
@@theDevilsNippleOrnament thank you, you too!
@@theDevilsNippleOrnament you my friend are unfathomably based
As a person whom was deployed to Iraq in 2003, I can reassure you that any assessment/justification made by anyone that we were there for a good reason is flawed and false. Thank you for the effort you put into these videos.
Thank you for your service. I had the good fortune to work with some vets (just kids really) in a wounded warrior program in 2010-2012 in San Diego. It was supper rewarding to see them get on with their lives and have a chance to enjoy and succeed at being young adults. In the back of my mind I always wondered if they really knew how we were lead into war post 9/11. I didn't press the issue. I was just happy to get them some tech and IT skill and pick out some good school choices with them.
@@cborkowski do you thank the Russian soldiers for their "service" right now?
So, how does this make you feel knowing this now?
@@kwarra-an for what reason ? I've never supported Russian military action post WWlll . And for the record I've voted democrat my entire life. My grandpa and 3 great uncles served in WWll in the US Army to earn their citizenship. My dad is a 14 year veteran. My cousin who was the same age as me served as an intel officer for SEAL TEAM ONE and died on base (Coronado Island) in 2001 serving his country. One can support vets (the actual people) and not be pro-war. The military doesn't get to pick and choose which wars are fought. They train and answer the call. In the case of the Iraq War it was pretty clear GWB was manufacturing the evidence and reasons to invade. I'm grateful my dad never got called up (although his unit was told many times to get ready to deploy) I'm also grateful my cousin didn't die fighting a immoral and unjust war. He died doing what he loved and in the prime of his life. He'll forever be 29.
@@cborkowski American soldiers are just as guilty and culpable in their illegal wars as Russian soldiers are (actually, they're more guilty, because the Russians right now have a small excuse in that they're conscripted). You're letting your family's history and your American exceptionalism get in the way of seeing things clearly.
"did George bush lie about Iraq?"
Yes. He did. It's pretty simple to dispute.
To be fair, Andrew Roberts also wrote a gushingly admiring biography of Napoleon (aka the only world leader to ever reimpose slavery after it had been previously abolished). So its not just English speakers he champions against charges of war crimes. He's also a big fan of defending french speakers, german speakers, spanish speakers (sometimes), Italian speakers... Ya know, all sorts of people.
It almost sounds like he's an all-sorts-of-people supremacist.
@@dylanschmidt9056 And hey, those people all just happen to be white. WOuld you look at that, what a funny and odd coincidence?
Not exactly gushing; Roberts does criticize Napoleon on a number of points, including his reintroduction of slavery, his ego going into the Russian campaign and afterwards, his multiple affairs with women, his sometimes antisocial personality when he wasn't dealing with policy or his soldiers, and how he handled the Egyptian campaign. I would say he was just slightly kinder to him then most British historians would give him credit for. Plus it's one of the most detailed and enthralling biographies of Napoleon I've ever seen not just looking at his battles, it's a good book.
It’s pretty incredible that Napoleon is being boiled down as the guy who reinstated slavery. Like… the guy did a bunch of stuff
@@devonmolina5200 I found Roberts' biography of Napoleon to be gushing hero worship. Roberts' head is so far up Napoleon's ass it is incredible. Roberts' belongs in the long tradition of worshippers of the most holy and divine Napoleon, whose worship of power is quite something. Roberts' is simply another in the long, very long, list of members of the Napleonic cult.
The simple fact the book is called Napoleon the Great is perverse enough. Napoleon was both brilliant and a fool. A incredibly smart general and an idiot diplomat. Although the spectacle of Roberts writhing in exctasy at the feet of Napoleon does remind me of the 20th century adoration of certain dictators, Stalin and Mao come to mind.
Power worship never dies.
Thank you for not just going right to "war for oil" like so many people do, it's such an inaccurate framing. The motivations were more subtle...though certainly not any more excusable! The oil was just the cherry on top of a much more messy political sundae.
I'm gonna have to give To Start a War a read sometime, it sounds like a well-researched deep dive into the topic. Thanks for putting that book on my radar.
If it wasnt for the oil, the countries would broke and we would care about as much as we do about Africa. It's like saying the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Sure you can make a case for state rights, but take slavery out of the picture and it all crumbles
@@michaelm8460 If you believe that, then you didn't listen to a thing Three Arrows said. This isn't like the Lost Cause myth, there's way more going on here than a war for oil. Again, if they just wanted the oil, there was a way to buy it. Their objectives were way more ambitious than seizing control of Iraq's oil.
As for your example of Africa, have you *seen* the imperialisms China has been doing there? Are you keeping up with that? Don't tell me the nations of the world don't care about Africa. Heck, before Ukraine, Russia was trying to get in on that too.
Maybe you need to do more research on what's going on in the world, you're clearly not keeping up. If you think the nations of the world aren't taking an interest in Africa... * *shakes head* *
@@DrTsshaFine, what would the middle east be without oil?
@@DrTssha and America still drones and executes military raids different parts of Africa (like Somalia for example) to this day.
@@michaelm8460 From the perspective of the House of Saud, it was terribly nice for the USA to remove a regional rival. The kingdom isn't very suited to actually fight wars but likes any US security guarantees it can get. Instead they can focus on preventing the next palace coup.
The classic reason for a british presence in Aden, Egypt etc is the Suez Canal. Even when Saudi Arabia was just a bunch of pretender kings, this shipping lane was of massive importance.
This is unrelated to the video. But I stumbled across the iron dice podcast about 3 weeks before I went on a trip from Australia to Europe over Christmas. I was in Germany for a large part of it. Both in the north in Berlin and in Bavaria. Your podcast was very eye opening to what historically had occurred and all the ways in which that has culminated in the modern day culture and life in the areas in the county. I was very glad I discovered the podcast before I went.
Whew. Theres a trip down memory lane. My young opposition to the Iraq War was one of the first stepping stepping stones in my exit from the evangelical church. I remember having arguments on some of these points with other 20 somethings in the back of a church van.
What was the different church stances on the war?
@@SusCalvin I was involved with the Southern Baptists at the time. I can't speak to what the other denominatons were preaching, but the church I went to and the various campus ministry groups I frequented were all strongly in favor of the war. I remember hearing sermons about how the Bush presidency was ordained by God, how the God of the old testament was not opposed to war and often commanded the ancient Israelites to wage war, and that the 6th commandment actually translated to "thou shalt not murder" instead of "kill" arguing that there was a huge difference. I remember sermons about how people who were opposed to the war were worldly and not holy.
For most of the individual Christians I knew at the time their unquestioning support for the war was similar to most of the population, only with a veneer of church created thought terminating cliches.
@@stephenwilliams163 "I remember sermons about how people who were opposed to the war were worldly and not holy." reminds me of Steven Miller dismissing somebody for being "cosmopolitan". It's as though bringing any kind of context into these things is a sin all its own.
I served in the first Gulf War in the US Army but my cousin he was a Navy corpsman attached to a marine rifle company and he serve a number of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said they knew they wasn't accomplishing anything over there and they were basically going in circles.
USA during the iraq war
1:invade Iraq and destroy everything
2:bring in pro American people in the goverment and just hope they do it right
3:????????
4: profit.
🛢️
Probably didn’t help that there was no objective or plan either. Like, how did conquering Iraq even secure oil supplies? I’d argue that the consequences of that action made doing so even more precarious than it would have been dealing with Saddam!
It seems like a pattern to me...
@Just a turtle ceased to be a significant factor after the mid 90's
20:58 "Germany, being probably the country next to France" mate it definitely is
*woosh*
@@ReplicatorFifth palpatine_ironic.jpg
Judy really went with the Alex Jones defense method of just saying what you are accused of in a sarcastic way.
Wow, we never found any WMD's, but at least we found another banger three arrows vid! 😁👍
its all abt what we learned along the way
We did find chemical weapons, but from a defunct program not related to what the Bush admin was claiming. It was so bad, that troops injured by said chemical weapons were denied treatment for it, because it wasn't being logged.
🤣
How Judith Miller doesn’t just apologize is beyond me.
None of the journalists from that era had to, to preserve their career. Kinda shows the expanding rot of our media institutions. Frankly, it might hurt the ongoing relationship they have, being mouthpieces for the most hawkish sects of our government, if they ever did.
🎯🏆
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre being framed as necessary to "pacify the region" is making me really angry... It was Baisakhi! They were there to celebrate the new year!
1:09:35 - Literally the same line of thinking as "Russia didn't intend for so much death and distruction to happen in Ukraine. If Ukraine gave up everything would be fine"
“Stop fighting back, we are trying to liberate you”
-Definitely not an unjustifiable, imperialistic war
@@warlordofbritannia "Why'd you make me hit you?!"
@@kyleshea384
“You were asking for it! You provoked me!”
"Young nations like you should not go out in a short skirt like that all alone at night."
Question: Who the hell is making that argument? Seriously I am a right-leaning Libertarian and I have NEVER heard this or something remotely close said by anyone I know or watch/listen to. Where are you getting this?
Damn, your closing words were really enlightening. It may be easy to laugh off PragerU, but what videos like this do is a slow erosion of certainty, feeding bits of digestible justifications until the abhorrence we should feel towards the Iraq War is stripped away by technical discussions.
America is doing the absolute opposite thing that Germany did after WW2
We get our atrocities drilled into our head even to this day, to make sure we never make the same mistake again, but even then, people are starting to forget.....
of course those "technical discussions" are flawed top to bottom, starting with the most abhorrent premises.
Also props to France and Germany for staying out of this one.
The French may have had to endure two decades of surrender jokes and insults by butthurt Americans over it, but apart from staying out of the pointless mess they also get to claim the moral high ground over the brits on this one. So I think it evens out a little.
Wasnt Ramstein vital to drone usage in Iraq? Or am i getting things mixed up here?
@@trustyvault13canteen32 Yea, Germany only "stayed out" in the sense that they didn't commit any forces of their own, Germany is of course a vital part of NATO's entire military infrastructure.
@@trustyvault13canteen32 stayed out like Switzerland was neutral in WW2.
didnt commit fully, but made sure it it gets a slice of the pie while holding moral high ground.
Also, as we know now, the BND provided US forces with military intelligence (without the knowledge of the German public).
Wooooo
So excited for another video from you! Theyre always fire.
I had to take a phone call while this was on and left it playing in the other room, and as a big fan of Overly Sarcastic Productions I was extremely confused about how they got involved half way through this video
Seriously though, great video and thank you for sharing your work
The timing of this upload is impeccable! I have been hyper fixating on the Iraq War and Hussein all of this week because of my neuro divergence :)
Damn that’s interesting. How many hours have you been fixating on this?
I'm Indian and this guy defended the Amritsar massacre??? We know it as the jalianwalaa bagh massacre. Wow I officially hate pragerU.
That's what it took? Not everything else up to that point? You had to see that coming by now yeah?
As a fellow Indian I'm not surprised that they see all the non whites as lesser beings.
When a Three Arrows video hits the recommended, my day is made! And on a fantastic topic too! Thank you for sharing your knowledge
yeah i agree
Its a little dopamine hit that always delivers on quality
Drink Water!
Much Love!
Bro, love that I can put this on 1.75x speed and still understand it.
Thank you, it's the perfect speed
Love when Three Arrows takes down PragerU!
3 arrows does he best PragerU dismantles. Others to check out, Shaun, Knowing Better, Mr Beat, Philosophy Tube
"Aggressively British" is the best description of Andrew Roberts ever.
Oh God he's a Baron now.
Anglo-apologia pays well.
For anyone wanting more extensive accounts of the realities of the Iraq war, both in Iraq and between key figures in the US, Blowback is an incredible podcast that covers the Iraq war in season two. They also cover the Cuban missile crisis and the Korean War in seasons one and three respectively. All from a leftist standpoint, with incredible personal accounts from Cubans/Iraqis/Koreans on the ground at the time.
Actually both!
I love how they got H. Jon Benjamin to play Saddam, hysterical. Kind of wish they had more of the improv attitude they had in the first season but it was probably easier to do with the first season considering they could actually relate to it.
Iraq war/second gulf war can be described as “mission failed successful”.
or maybe the opposite? Of course the people who started it made off like fucking bandits, so maybe, ya.
Amazing video, time to relisten to season 1 of blowback(highly recommend blowback s1 for anyone wanting to know more about the 2003 iraq war)
Thank you, Dan and co. As an American my country’s history (even just during my lifetime) leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Putting truth to these events offers me a tiny peace of mind. I hope all your works endure.
As an American millennial myself , never stop learning about the history of American foreign policy. I know its difficult and depressing but it’s so important to know the patterns of “justification” used.
One of the few of the early "breadtube" creators around who I still give the time of day.
I'm baffled that the first historian hasn't been denounced and his title revoked.
He made a video with Douglas Murray defending Churchill
Because his histography isn't completely dogshit. His biography on Napoleon is one of the best ones you can find if you want to know about how Napoleon was like instead of looking at his battles.
Truly a vile man
The title of a historian shouldn't mean:" Tells the truth about history sometimes."
Well the term historian isn't legally protected iirc, so until some administration does that, we've got to deal with that Klansman's bullshit with rigorous debunks
Finding your channel has given me so much perspective historically and politically on different aspects of our world . Thank you for your content
The round up at the end was particularly powerful.
Good on you for bring sanity to a world of liars.
Miss you Dan 🫶
seriously such great content
Where he go?
One of my favorite phrases to emerge from the Bush era - we were fighting for G.O.D.
Gold
Oil
Drugs
Good? I’m glad the US is fighting for materialistic reasons instead of degenerate theism, and in the process we destroyed the ability of muslims to do the same.
I think the old-school colonial powers would have thought the USA was bad at it. You didn't really extract a lot of resources from Iraq compared to the cost of the US presence.
as a gen z kid, everything i learn about george bush makes me furious we don't talk about his administration all the time.
the fact that some people old enough to remember this shit barely seem to care is fucking crazy!!
bush was extremely hated by anyone with a brain by 2008
and then all the racists went apeshit over obama
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -Orwell
Always thrilled to have your content whenever we get it, man.
33:55 you gave the disclaimer and I still couldn't believe it. When Miller popped up my jaw dropped
Thank you for analyzing this. Really appreciate your insights.
so excited, it’s always a treat when you post ☺️
Great break down of what Prager U is really saying. This video deserves several rewatches in order to fully absorb the facts you laid down about the Iraq war throughout.
I am so glad that you are back baby. The podcast is good but your videos are your best work. Thanx Dan
Another great video. I just started watching the Slow Burn Podcast season about the Iraq invasion and this fits very well with that. I was working for someone in Congress on the Armed Forces Committee in late 2002 (I got to handle all the phone calls before the AUMF vote) - it was already inside knowledge that the forces were deployed in September 2002 and ready to invade. Everything that came between then and March was just advertising to sell the war, and the whole WMD "crisis" was very obviously manufactured. But the media by and large was selling what the Bush admin was providing, and it seemed like everyone had collectively lost their minds. The rest is history - can't believe that was 20 years ago.
Blowback podcast did an excellent retelling of it.
dan, quote fischer properly. it's 'let's go to war because there are reasons and so on and i don't believe in them'. i know this because i repeat it every time i experience an interpersonal conflict.
Glad to have you back Arrows
THE. BEST. ARROWS. IN THE FUCKING. GAME.
Also, this video is insane to me. Do they really think there aren’t people who remember? It wasn’t that long ago this all happened, and there is an entire generation that *knows* they were lied to about this! Who is the audience for this?
The target audience is younger generations who don't remember because they weren't around and older generations who have already been subjected to so much Fox News that they'll swallow this BS hook, line and sinker.
Really the goal is to supply arguments and a smoke screen for the people who still tell those lies and muddy the waters of history. Because history can be changed in people's minds if you just repeat the lies often enough.
Maybe young people?
Holy shit he is back!
Such a waste of life, money, energy, time, we could be decades ahead of where we are now, it that war didn't take all the attention and time and life. Great vid as always!
You can thank Israel.
truly excellent video. فيديو ممتاز جداً.
A REAL three arrows YT video. Oh boy!
Another great video, as always. Thank you for lending your insight and analysis to this important topic! I think the importance of the Bush regime is often overlooked in shaping the world we now inhabit.
For every problem the world faces, you're guaranteed to find American fingerprints and some corporation making tons of money.
Being Iraqi, it’s funny whenever I hear about Saddam funding Al-Quaeda. Back when I was a kid in the fighting hotspot during the war, where the Al-Quaeda presence was heavy and they were chanting about American destruction and all, so the GG -A local American army force in the place- just handed them like a thousand bucks to each member and they all immediately joined the US army. Dunno if this relates to the topic at hand, but it was funny at the time.
There are Americans who thought ISIS was allied to the Mexican drug cartels. We are a country crazy people.
I never understood what Saddam would do with al-Qaeda. Saddam sounds just like the kind of secular dictator the religious elitists in al-Qaeda hates.
wow. thank you so much for sharing that, it really demonstrates the awful lie of american media...
wow. thank you so much for sharing that, it really demonstrates the awful lie of american media...
I still remember being so confused and frustrated about the WMD argument because of course Iraq would have used them if they had them; they were being invaded! It's such a self-evident point it's ridiculous to this day people act like it was a reasonable conclusion.
"Unfortunately, I don't have the time to address every thing said in the video.*
Me: Looks at the over 1hr run time.
Damn. Must've been a lot of bullshit there to unpack.
That is the lefts dilemma: the right can spew bullshit for 5 minutes, and it takes an hour to debunk it.
Plus..the bs usually leaves its audience usually with a nice feeling of self assured smugness and catchy truisms..while the truth leaves you with conflicted feelings, facing a nuanced and complicated world...
Takes 10x as long to debunk a lie as it does to tell it
@@asagoldsmith3328 and that's why reactionary propaganda is so successful, unfortunately
You know it's a good day when Daniel uploads
I know nothing about this period of history, and my dad is a conspiracy theorist, so thank you so much for making this
I can’t believe he started with the Iran-Iraq war. You know the war in which Reagan provided a huge amount of protection and support for Iraq as it used chemical weapons, and also simultaneously was engaged in an arms trade with Iran.
🎯🏆
Dan, you are a blessing.
Subjects like this make me feel so emotional and angry (as an American) but it's crucial information and it's nice to have this channel calmly explaining and suffering through it with us.
Great vid. Brings back the memories of arguing and fighting with friends and family over this stupid war.
To quote a comment under an Hbomb Video, "This is *my* sleepover, and *I* get to pick the movie!"
The fact that Judith Miller would do a video for PragarU says so much about her integrity and judgement.
Thank you for the effort you put uno this.
always happy to see a three arrows video.
Came for البرادعي's name public execution, stayed for the wonderful content. You're doing god's work fr fr.
lets go, hr long masterpiece that ill listen to 20 times
Babe wake up, new Three Arrows video just dropped
Wooo! New video! You’re rad, dude.
Thanks three arrows for the consistency. Great to see the level of engagement.
"Want them coming back for more? Give em less"
You keep putting out riveting videos that absolutely must be seen. Thanks. I watched all this unfold at the time, and the deceptions were so obvious, but people wanted to be deceived... Even when the true situation wasn't immediately obvious, the official story was so completely bonkers. And people just kept waiving flags around. I can tell from the sound of your voice at the end, you understand the crushing sense of frustration.
Anyway, thanks for what you do. It's important.
"Doubt is not banned, it's just back-paged." is a quote that defines the misinformation era.
Thank you, as someone who grew up in a very conservative family this was all new information to me.
20 years ago this year. I was in my first year of University at the time. We even had doubts then.
I´ve missed you so much Three Arrows. Please keep making these videos
We miss you! ❤
He's back!
It’s the real one!
Why don’t you have a pin or a check or something I love your videos
Two words: Thank you!!
A new three arrows video i can rest. Btw the iron dice episode on the channel was still a nice listen.
THANK GOD! today was tiring but my boy three arrows is saving my evening
16:57 Not only that, the US directly intervened against Iran and conducted Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian navy, which was the largest of the five major US naval surface engagements since the Second World War.
One of my favorite jokes from the Dubya Era was: "I know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, I have the receipts from when my daddy SOLD them to him!"