Operation Iraqi Freedom

George Tenet & John McLaughlin of the CIA gave Powell false intelligence from the interrogations of an unnamed prisoner that there were links between Iraq and Al Qaida. They stated that “a high-level Al Qaida detainee had just revealed under interrogation substantive contacts between Al Qaida and Baghdad, including Iraqis training Al Qaida operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons”. Wilkerson later said that the source was Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi who recanted after stating that he was just telling the tortures what they wanted to hear.

Lawrence Wilkerson states that in 2004 he found out that the confession under threat of torture from Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was preformed in Egypt with no US intelligence to backup that it even happened. So the intelligence that led the United States to war with Iraq under George W. Bush was preformed with no US officers as witnesses to the confession. Also the torture preformed in this foreign country did not fit under the treaty of the Geneva Convention.

Based on a false confession from an unknown al-Qaeda member (later known to be Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi) Bush gives a speech declaring that “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases.”

The United States claiming that Iraq had trained members of al-Qaeda how to make bombs, bio-weapons, and was involved in the attacks of 9-11 (all lies) launches it’s attack against the country.

In a speech at Kansas State University Banfield speaks out on how the cable news networks coverage of the Iraq and Afghan war is “sanitized” and one sided. The comment that probably got her in the most trouble was when she said “some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic”. This comment at a time when MSNBC was trying to re-brand it’s self by firing the anti-war Phil Donahue and replacing him with chicken hawks like Joe Scarborough and Mike Savage in an attempt to catch up on viewer ship of Fox News.

For the remainder of Banfield’s contract with MSNBC they sidelined her. Banfield said in an article years later: “I was office-less for ten months, No phone, no computer. For ten months I had to report to work every day and ask where I could sit. If somebody was away I could use their desk. Eventually, after ten months of this, I was given an office that was a tape closet. They cleared the tapes out and put a desk and a TV in there, and a computer and phone. It was pretty blatant. The message was crystal clear. Yet they wouldn’t let me leave. I begged for seventeen months to be let out of my contract. If they had no use for me, let’s just part ways amicably - no need for payouts, just a clean break. And Neal wouldn’t allow it. I don’t know what his rationale was - perhaps he thought I would take what I felt was a very strong brand, and others felt was a very strong brand, to another network and make a success of it. Maybe that’s why he chose to keep me in a warehouse. I will never forgive him for his cruelty and the manner in which he decided to dispose of me”.

An American tank targeted the Palestine Hotel where according to Fox News article “hundreds of journalists and an Arab television network” were housed. Three journalists were killed. Two other media outlets were hit that same day in bombing raids.