NewsRescue
The US-led invasion of Iraq was nothing like the current Ukraine crisis, according to John Kerry, Washington’s special envoy for climate change.
He appeared on Darius Rochebin’s Sunday evening show on LCI, who had previously interviewed him for a Swiss outlet in 2017. Rochebin shared a video clip from the conversation in which he addressed Kerry about the West’s accusation of Russian aggression in Ukraine. According to the French journalist, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression predicated on the fiction that Baghdad held weapons of mass devastation.
“No,” Kerry said. “Because there’s never even been, you know, a direct accusation process of President [George W.] Bush himself.”
He went on to say that there had been “abuses” throughout the conflict and that he had “spoken out against them.” When Rochebin specifically asked Kerry if the Iraq War was a crime of aggression, he rejected it twice.
“Not at all. You didn’t realize it was a lie at the time. “The evidence that was presented, people didn’t realize it was a lie,” the former diplomat stated, before telling Rochebin that he doesn’t plan to “re-debate the Iraq War” at this time.
Kerry also stated that he was against the war at the time and believed it was the wrong thing to do. He did, however, vote in the Senate to authorize the invasion. When Rochebin pressed Kerry on the obvious double standard, he started talking about “climate justice.”
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was accused by the Bush administration of possessing chemical and biological weapons, as well as being engaged in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The ‘proof’ for WMDs presented to the media and the UN Security Council was wholly faked, and no such weapons were ever discovered. Similarly, no link was ever established between Baghdad and Al-Qaeda.
Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ invaded and occupied Iraq without UN authorisation in 2003. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland sent soldiers for the attack, however Washington later claimed 44 other countries provided some form of assistance.
Kerry ran against Bush in 2004, but was defeated. He later served as Secretary of State in Barack Obama’s administration, and the current president, Joe Biden, named him as climate change envoy in 2021.
