"Following years of clandestine co-operation between US spies and Iraqi opposition groups, the US Congress came out into the open by approving the Iraq Liberation Act, which stated that US policy should seek to 'support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein'."
Curiously enough, the Act was signed by US President Clinton on October 31, 1998, and five years later a full-scale military campaign was launched by George W. Bush under an utterly false pretext.
While Washington "legitimized" the operation by saying Saddam Hussein, then Iraqi leader, had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and entered into an alliance with terrorists including al-Qaeda, all these statements did not stand up to scrutiny.
The point is that thirteen years of sanctions, a nearly total financial and trade embargo, imposed by the UN Security Council on the Iraqi Republic in 1990 did not undermine the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The UN sanctions became a political tool of the West and the people of Iraq suffered tremendously, Hans von Sponeck said.
"In 2002, 132 of every 1,000 Iraqi babies died before the age of five, according to UNICEF– second only to Afghanistan."
Only WMD and terrorism falsifications allowed Washington to unleash the war and overthrow the unwanted regime in Iraq.
The US Senate's assessment of CIA torture practices released in December 2014 confirmed that the US "war on terrorism" was justified by entirely false claims and revealed hideous details of interrogation techniques used by the American CIA servicemen on the occupied territories.
Alas, those responsible are still refusing to accept responsibility, the expert noted bitterly.
The data includes evidence provided by prisoners from Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo.
As the world is shifting from the US unilateralism to multi-polar international decision-making, the time has come to hold those responsible for crimes committed in the name of "regime change" and the "war on terrorism" accountable, underscored the expert.
