“The credibility of the United States on intelligence is really low right now. If that intelligence is going to cause U.S. forces to die and bleed in combat, the U.S. to deploy military force, I’m going to be very skeptical of that intelligence. Very skeptical.”
— Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell in the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003.
By Mehdi Hasan
Deconstructed Podcast (6/20/18)
CALLS FOR MILITARY ACTION against Iran grew louder this week in response to the Trump administration’s claims that the Islamic Republic was responsible for attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Many analysts and politicians, both in the U.S. and abroad, expressed skepticism of those claims. But the U.S. media appears to be falling into a familiar pattern, providing a sympathetic platform for the administration without fundamentally questioning its premises.
What can we learn from the last push for a war in the Middle East 17 years ago? Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell during the run-up to the Iraq War, joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss the lessons of recent history.