Jeremy Scahill: Democrat Leaders Are Also to Blame for the Iraq War
  • March 20, 2013

Jeremy Scahill: Democrat Leaders Are Also to Blame for the Iraq War

Jeremy Scahill: Democrat Leaders Are Also to Blame for the Iraq War

Following Bill Clinton’s cruel economic sanctions, Joe Biden and John Kerry were complicit in the “non-debate” during the run-up to the invasion.

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On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Nation Institute fellow Jeremy Scahill explained to MSNBC’s Martin Bashir the fallout of the conflict, including $800 billion wasted and 4,475 US personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqis killed.

“I don’t see this as the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War,” Scahill said. “This was a war that started in 1991 and was waged consistently by the United States, and it was a bipartisan war.”

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton led a long bombing campaign and imposed a brutal regime of economic sanctions that disproportionately targeted the Iraqi people, Scahill said. Then during the lead-up to the war, key members of the current administration, notably former senators Joe Biden and John Kerry, failed to debate its rationale and question unfounded claims of weapons of mass destruction.

—Alec Luhn

Jeremy Scahill’s book Dirty Wars will be published on April 23, and his documentary film of the same name won a top prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

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