In 2003, most Americans favored invading Iraq. Today most people claim they had opposed it. https://t.co/eDCXZ1NqfX pic.twitter.com/TicsgyjObQ
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) May 21, 2015
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What’s on the agenda as we wrap up the (for some of us) extended weekend?
jeffreyw
I like pie.
beltane
It looks to me like a significant number of Americans did not even want to answer the question of whether or not they supported the Iraq invasion.
Walker
Does that second poll include people too young to vote in 2003?
srv
We need to stop reliving the past and think about the future. He’re is some irrefutable level headed thinking:
Big ideas. Or you can have a UN Ambassador who thinks history is made by youtube videos.
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: What kind of pie is that?
stinger
@Walker: Probably, and I’m also thinking that the original poll included some “olds” who supported the war and have died in the 12 years since. Still….
Fred
I marched against the war because I couldn’t think of any thing else to do, even though I knew it was a futile effort. But then I could be mis-remembering the whole thing and actually been a gung-ho asshole.
rikyrah
I am among those who was against it…..originally.
Chris
Matt Taibbi had this covered years ago, in what I still consider to be the best article written about the teabagger phenomenon;
ETA: different part of the Bush agenda, but same basic principle.
Amir Khalid
As the cliché has it, denial is not just a river in Egypt.
@srv:
And how does the Yosemite Sam of diplomacy think America should deal with the big new Shiite state (and ally of Iran) created by the American invasion of Iraq? Would his preferred dealings involve less-than-friendly military action?
Germy Shoemangler
I remember thousands of people marching against the war and getting zero media coverage.
And then eight teabaggers with their fingers up their noses held a Rally™ and the News was all over it.
jeffreyw
@PurpleGirl: Blackberry, Mrs J had yet to apply the crumble topping. We’ll have it with vanilla ice cream or crème fraîche.
askew
Lots of Dems have “evolved” their views on Iraq since they voted for it – Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, etc. This is an unfortunate both sides issue.
Chris
@srv:
So Bolton wants to further the disintegration of the Iraqi state and ignore the fact that this disintegration is exactly what ISIS rose up out of in the first place.
Arclite
@rikyrah: As was I. It was obvious at the time Saddam would never attack the US. 1. He only wanted to be the big fish in his little pond. 2. he knew the dangers of waking the US dragon. He wasn’t stupid.
Unfortunately, knowing that required knowing something about the ME and its history, something the vast majority of Americans knew nothing about at the time.
Baud
@askew:
True, but that’s not what the poll asks.
Howard Beale IV
BREAKING: The Rage Furby decides to threaten Twitter to be reninstated…or else.
I would imagine the resident BJ counsel will look at this and either grin to LMAO.
But since the Rage Furby went ahead and created two sock accounts methinks Twitter legal will look at this, shred it and use this as toilet paper.
Corner Stone
I plan on acting like a climate change denier and burying my head in the sand when GS v Rockets happens later tonight.
Baud
@Howard Beale IV:
Great letterhead.
Roger Moore
@stinger:
Yeah, still not even close to enough to explain the discrepancy.
Ajabu
As one old enough to remember the run up to Vietnam – and how the consequential clusterfuck destroyed what would have been a hell of a domestic legacy for Johnson – and, not incidentally, ushered in Nixon and began the downslide to where we are today. (Goddamn, that’s a long sentence)
I was completely against any involvement in the Middle East at all, especially Iraq, where Saddam, like it or not, was holding the secular pie together.
End of my run on sentence rant…
Corner Stone
@Germy Shoemangler:
As has been widely documented, if little reported, the Tea Party groups were fully funded astro turf assemblies with a few ignorant bigots out front for media fodder.
MattF
@srv: You’re following Marc Theissen’s advice– since polls say that Americans want to go after ISIS, that should be the Repub position. And enough of this rehashing what happened in the past! Nobody wants to hear about Saddam Hussein! Or WMDs! Or Dick Cheney! Or mistakes that may or may not have been made! Nobody cares!
Making all new mistakes is sooo much better.
Corner Stone
@Baud: I sometimes wonder if it’s a perverse thrill to be an attorney representing someone like CCJ. I mean, in a lesser than version of representing a Larry Flynt style of asshole.
srv
@Amir Khalid: They would just be a weak buffer state. Real Men want to go to Tehran, not back to Baghdad.
@Chris: Iraq doesn’t exist. That’s been true for 12 years now. At least Bolton admits that.
Or Obama and Hillary can keep skull fucking that Jeffersonian Democracy on the Euphrates cat fancy.
Chris
@srv:
And we should not only trust the people who made it that way, we should help them make sure nothing gets fixed.
Ah yes. I keep forgetting Obama was the one who sold us that mirage back in 2002/2003.
Germy Shoemangler
@Corner Stone: I have never, never, never ever seen a fundraiser for the teaparty. No bake sales, no go fund me’s, no begging for donations.
They had busses, they had transportation, they had pre-written petitions. Some “mysterious” benefactors were picking up the check all along the way.
And yet they tried to pass themselves off as grassroots.
Amir Khalid
I saw a Rick Perry story on the Huffpo (He’s going all out on retail politics in Iowa; yawn). It occurred to me that, in the absence of actual policy differences, everyone in the 2016 Republican presidential field is running on nothing but their personal brand. So when that party’s debate reality show starts up, all you guys are going to hear is variations on “I’m the woman!”, “I’m the Jersey tough guy!”, “I’m the establishment’s man!”, “I’m the Libertarian!” etc.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I distinctly recall 12 years ago discussing the case for this war with my ‘winger boss. I said I didn’t see the case for it on the evidence given. He said well, they know more than they’re telling us. I said they’re trying to get our support based on the evidence released, and I don’t see it. He supported the war and I didn’t. He probably still supports it. I could ask. My wife worked for him for the next 11 years.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: It’s always been personal for the wingers. They have no actual interest in policy.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
Policy differences are basically made verboten by the teabagger primarying mechanism, so you take what you can get.
ETA: @MattF: that too, actually, great point.
Major Major Major Major
Didn’t the same thing happen with Watergate, nobody could seem to recall having voted for Nixon?
Part 13 of my big fish story is up, also too.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
@efgoldman:
This attorney’s day to day work is probably full of drudgery, so there may be some legitimate thrill in “taking on Twitter.”
srv
@Chris: Great leaders have visions. Sometimes they don’t pan out. Adjustments must be made.
What’s Obama’s vision for Iraq and Syria?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Germy Shoemangler:
‘Opinions differ’. Why should the media state that public opinion, and especially public demonstrations are strongly against a war when showing apparently conflicting sides makes better TV? It’s no longer their job to inform. They’re just in the advertising business full time and an eyeball is an eyeball.
Cacti
Opposed it vehemently in 2003, and everything bad that I had predicted has come to pass as of 2015.
I’ll never forget the general feeling of public blood thirst in the air in the early days of the war, and in the months leading up to it.
Valdivia
Nothing is as astounding to me as the fact that the cheerleaders and promoters of this war are still being called on to offer opinions about foreign policy in general but more so about the situation in the Middle East.
The fact that there is no price to pay for being wrong about everything (also economic policy and healthcare) is what exemplifies the Village to me.
Amir Khalid
@srv:
Here’s my suggestion: “Leave bad enough alone.”
Chris
@srv:
LMAO, now I know you’re trolling.
“Great leaders have visions?” That’s your excuse?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It hasn’t had it yet until some right winger utters the sentence “Obama’s / Hilary Clinton’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003”
Nutella
@Chris:
Apparently srv’s “great leaders” hear voices, too.
Eric U.
I was talking to one of my neighbors about the war, and tried to convince him to be against it. But they have WMD, he said. So some people were lied into the war, that’s for sure. I tried to convince him they didn’t have WMD, but that didn’t work
I didn’t foresee the region falling apart like it has, this is much worse than what I thought was going to happen
NotMax
Proto-teabaggery?
Check out the middle segment (approx. 8:20 – 17:50) of a 1950s episode of People Are Funny.
srv
@Amir Khalid: @Chris: When Obama or Hillary have to send troops back in, as they inevitably will, their predecessors’ acknowledgement that the ME needed to be remade will be seen as visionary.
The more ground that is lost, the more that will have to be made up.
Chris
@srv:
Their predecessors’ vision that the Middle East had to be remade is the reason the region is in the shape it’s in. Without that vision, there wouldn’t be an ISIS to worry about.
Dave C
As they say, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
Pogonip
@rikyrah: Me too! And when I said it made no sense to me, I got really tired of hearing, “What, are you liberal?”
Harrumph.
raven
@Eric U.: I bought the WMD line when Powell gave it.
Bystander
I think it’s one thing to instigate a war by lying and faking evidence and something wholly other to acquiesce to the fakery. No matter how HRC or Kerry voted, they didn’t start the fire and were never the cheerleader that Lieberman was.
While I’m revealing how shallow my patriotism is, am I alone in being offended by the barrage of commercials exhorting me not to forget the wounded soldiers who need PT, counseling, and financial assistance and pledging monthly support to Mark Wallberg’s charity? Why are we not able as a nation to take care of our veterans? Why are they treated like charity cases rather than the people to whom the entire country, including billionaires, owe a debt of recompense?
Why do I ask?
johnnybuck
I opposed the war at the time, but I never actually blamed Democrats who voted for the AUMF. The blame for the war, and the disastrous prosecution thereof rests squarely with the Bush administration. Just because they had permission to use force didn’t mean they had too.
Patrick
@Eric U.:
This to me was beyond obvious. The UN inspectors did not find any WMD’s. At some point they got so frustrated that they practically begged Dick Cheney to share his information as to where the WMD’s were. Dick Cheney refused. At that point, whether it was your neighbor or anybody else, it didn’t take brain surgery to figure out Bush/Cheney had both been lying. And this was before the war started.
It is too bad that the whole region had to be thrown into chaos and that thousands and thousands of people had to die before people figured out the truth.
J R in WV
@efgoldman:
That is a wonderful modification to the typical southern Karo corn syrup pecan pie. I quit using Karo after the first time I made a pecan pie even though I was out of Karo and used Maple syrup instead.
The Mrs J prefers walnuts, as she thinks they are a little less sweet than pecans, and that the bitterness or sweet absence balances the extra sweetness of the Maple syrup. I think either nut works with tree syrup, myself. And I’ve won a couple of pie baking contests with that recipe.
You can add some kind of brandy or whiskey to that recipe too. Umm good.
aimai
@efgoldman: There are many gorgeous looking recipes for just that in the various Alice Medrich dessert cookbooks, or on epicurious. My sister in law makes a killer one that might be from the Tate (cookies) cookbook.
Amir Khalid
@srv:
The Middle East certainly needs to be remade, but by itself, on its own terms, and for its own benefit. Not by America or any other foreign power. All foreign powers want to do is play Risk with other people’s countries and lives.
Major Major Major Major
Stop feeding the troll, guys.
aimai
Not only did oppose the war at the time,and protest it too, but I don’t know anyone I consider a friend or a relative other than my stupid right wing sister in law who did support the war. Geography and social relations make a big difference. What I guess I’m trying to say is that not everyone who supported the war did so for reasons, rathr than feelings. And as they have gotten farther away from the emotions that led them to be susciptible to mass hysteria and stampeding and shrugging their shoulders they have been able to more quietly think through the issues. Its not surprising that people prefer to think of themselves as being on the right side of history.
Baud
@johnnybuck:
Same here.
@top
This poll reminds me of the meme about the number of people who claim to have been to Woodstock.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I think you all are making an incredible leap in assuming Rage Furby has an attorney. I mean a real one, you know, that’s passed the bar in some state.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
But MOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
D58826
@srv: Isn’t this what Joe Biden was laughed out of Washington for suggesting about 10 years ago? Well Bolton does prove that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Unfortunately he didn’t see the light it until it was way to late.
Bart
I posted a lot of politics-related stuff back then on a forum, and 95% of what I predicted came true. Back then I was vilified for daring to point out how Colin Powell’s presentation tot he UN was a load of already debunked shite, for pointing out that Iraq was going to be a mess and that you’d be longing for Saddam after he was gone.
Amazingly, 15 years on, I can only be amazed how much worse it all turned out. Historians will look back on that invasion as the start of an astonishing series of events that ended up in an unimaginable human tragedy. Right now were having a massive refugee crisis, we’re losing numerous valuable archeological sites, a whole region is just collapsing and every six months things just get worse and worse.
I don’t think anyone back then imagined it was going to be this bad, and plenty of us were dismissed as tinfoil wearing doomsayers at the time.
Arclite
@Eric U.:
Did you point out that lots of other nations like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, etc. etc. had weapons of mass destruction too, but we weren’t invading them?
Mike in NC
@Germy Shoemangler: The Tea Party types came out to rally with their tidy flags, hats, signs and t-shirts. All of which magically appeared on the buses scheduled to carry them to the protest marches.
Suzanne
@Corner Stone: I look forward to watching Stephen Curry play with his food before he eats it tonight.
I was always against the Iraq war. I was in college on 9/11, and I remember going home the following weekend to spend some time with my mother and my cousin, who was in the Air Force at the time. And I remember saying that now everyone is shitting their pants, and feeling like a tough guy, and that we were going to go get embroiled in something completely stupid. My cousin disagreed. And I was right.
Mandalay
@johnnybuck:
And nobody in Congress had to give them permisssion. Barbara Lee had more foresight, wisdom and cojones than everyone else in Congress and the Administration combined:
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
I was against it in 1990, again in 1992, again in 2000, and again in 2001. My position didn’t change inbetween those dates.
MattF
@BillinGlendaleCA: Whoa. You mean he’s just making dumb threats? Well, that would be unworthy and uncharacteristic. What kind of an idiot do you think he is?
Old joke:
Duck walks into a pharmacy.
Duck: I’d like a box of condoms, please.
Pharmacist: Should I put that on your bill?
Duck: What kind of a duck do you think I am?
MattF
Oops. Referred to a place where you fill Rx’s, and now I’m in moderation.
Mike in NC
Flying home tomorrow after a fun week in the Sunshine State. Good eating, good drinking, good friends. Hot as blazes, though. Today we went to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa to beat the heat, and it was very nice. Was prepared to buy regular passes, but my wife asked the clerk if they offered a Memorial Day discount for retired military. Turns out presenting an ID card got us both in for free.
bk
@Corner Stone: Larry Flynt had a constitutional argument. This idiot doesn’t.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Chris:
If that’s from the same article I remember, Tabbai also went to say the Tea Party were a political movement that was basically full of sh*t…
Smart man, Matt Tabbai…
gbear
I had a ‘Just say NO to war with Iraq’ sign on my front porch and a neighbor up the block had the same sign on her fence. On the day the war started, someone snuck up in my yard and painted ‘GO’ over the NO. Luckily I had some housepaint that matched the sign color and I could fix almost all of the damage. I left that sign out until after W’s “Mission Accomplished’ stunt. Fucking wanker…
Redshift
@Germy Shoemangler: A local Democrat I know used to go to Teabagger meetings around here because they were pretending not to be Republicans and so their meetings were open to everyone. That was something he found very notable about them, too – they never talked about where the money was coming from, or budgeting, or anything like that. They just made plans for bus trips and events, knowing it would all be paid for.
The Teabaggers were puppets of the Kochs and their ilk from the beginning, and anyone among them who said they were a “grassroots movement” was in extreme denial. (And anyone in the media who said it should have “Follow the Money” tattooed backwards on their forehead so they see it in the mirror every morning.)
MomSense
@efgoldman:
Amen. Who would want to eat that awful corn syrup glop? I don’t even use any kind of corn syrup in pecan pie. That karo glop stuff is an abomination.
Brachiator
@srv: More neo conservative BS. The biggest fantasy is the nonsense that we can easily identify, install or control either moderates or a friendly authoritarian regime.
The other stupidity is that the US can install a puppet regime which will cater to our interests at the expense of the people of Iraq. This lunacy results in a push back of Islamic extremists.
By the way,not only do neocons still believe this crap, but it is common to criticism of Obama’s attempts to reach out to any moderate politicians as naive. “Remember the good old days when despots did what they were told for US money and kept extremists in check?” These good old days were only a pressure cooker waiting to explode.
Sadly, the one bright spot, the Kurds may well deserve support. Unfortunately, they get pressured from both Turkey and Iraq, and I don’t think that they can prosper with the US as their main ally without some major shifts in attitudes.
In short, partition with Syria and fantasy authoritarians in charge is just a delusional neocon wet dream.
RSA
I opposed the 2003 invasion, and I’ve checked my memory by looking at my archived Usenet posts from that period. (It turns out that I believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs but thought that invading constituted a greater risk of things going bad. Hard to say if that was right or not, but same outcome.) And like @GHayduke (formerly lojasmo), I was against the first George Bush’s adventures in Iraq, which I guess is a more controversial position, but maybe growing less controversial with time.
kc
Ha. A few years ago my father said, re invading Iraq, “I knew it was a bad idea.”
My jaw just dropped. I remember him yelling at me pre-invasion: “We have to do something! They attacked us!”
Shee-it.
Mike in NC
@Bystander: It should come as no surprise that while Bush was still in office, all sorts of charities suddenly popped up asking for donations to provide stuff to the troops overseas. I got all sorts of such crap in the mail. Finally somebody did a little bit of digging around (“journalism”) and found out that many of these charities were simply scams, and a number of them had personal connections to members of the Bush Administration.
johnnybuck
@Mandalay:
yeah… like that was gonna happen
J R in WV
I had a very right-wing boss on 9/11, who listened to Gush Limberger every afternoon. That morning he came into my office and said “A plane flew into the World Trade Center!” I thought he was nuts, then I asked, ‘You mean a Cessna or something?”
“No” he said, “a big airliner!” Then we heard the sounds of TV news, and one of the guys had a tiny portable TV in his cube, with the network news on, and we saw the fire on the first tower; there were 6 or 8 guys standing in a 12×12 cube! And then we all saw another plane, and it hit the other tower.
I was dumbstruck. After a little while I told the boss I had to go home, and did. I watched fuzzy broadcast TV all day.
But I was never in favor of attacking Iraq. The fighting in Afganistan was winding down a little, and I thought we had done what we needed to do over there. We should put the effort into fixing Afganistan, and leave the rest the fuck alone.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when Powell said what he said to the UN on live TV, and I couldn’t believe that the TV people sucked it up like it was Chicken Pot Pie! “UUMMM Good stories!”
Bush and Cheney and Powell and Rice should all be imprisoned for their war crimes, and Yoo and the lawyers who approved new “interrogation standards” like drowning, but it won’t ever happen. They won’t live long enough for the politics to swing around that far. Unless, maybe… how many hearts do you think they will give Cheney?
Grrrr.
MattF
@Bystander: Well, there’s also Jeb!’s claim that disputing the Bush narrative about how we got into war is disrespectful to the sacrifices that the troops made. That just really made me angry.
Chris
@The Republic of Stupidity:
Not basically. Verbatim. “Full of shit. All of them.”
Karen in GA
I opposed it back then. I thought it was a hell of a coincidence that the advisors from the first Gulf War who wanted to go all the way to Baghdad were now advising GWB, right at the exact same time that Iraq magically became a much bigger threat to the US than they had ever been before.
sharl
@Chris: I found that 2010 Taibbi article on the Tea Party you referred to; he actually went into the dark heart of the TP Beast to research his piece. It looks like a worthwhile read. So few of the big media orgs were doing any serious journalism on the Tea Party back then (and I don’t think now, for that matter), that it was like finding potable water in the desert when one did run across a detailed account. Of all people, Code Pink actually did some pretty good journalism at one of TP’s rallies in 2010, getting a heap of abuse in the process (called commies, pinkos, etc.).
As CS said at #24, they’ve pretty much been an astroturf operation since 2009, if not earlier; I think that very un-journalistic tirade in February 2009 by CNBC’s Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was a transitional moment. There were some very small TP initiatives in Dubya’s final days – mostly organized by libertarian types – but grifters and big money people took control shortly thereafter.
srv
@D58826:
Sssshh. Dude was a total troll.
It just goes to show what’s old is new again, and soon enough the locals will have forgotten Bolton was for it before they were.
@Brachiator:
Well, his track record with folks like Mohamed Morsi didn’t quite work out…
I know, I know, hoocoodanode? Clearly, you haven’t been following Robert Gates’ accounts of shreiking while Obama through Mubarak under the bus (one thing and Troll Joe agreed on).
Corner Stone
@raven:
I feel about Powell the way you feel about LBJ.
Felonius Monk
For those who care about such things, there is this:
Muslim Televangelist Claims Masturbators Will Meet their ‘Pregnant Hand’ in the Afterlife
Apart from the rather wierd subject matter, what I find most intriguing is “Muslim Televangelist”. Would the Prophet approve? But then, why not? After all, it is 2015.
Amir Khalid
@J R in WV:
For me, Powell’s UN Security Council presentation succeeded in convincing me only that the US had no case at all for invading Iraq.There was nothing he said that would have withstood even the most casual scrutiny. My response at the time was, “If this is all they’ve got, then they’ve got nothing.”
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@srv:
Should he have one? Is Syriah his purvue? Should we invade? What do you think he should do there.
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: Booo!! Hisssss! BOOOO!!
Cervantes
@askew:
But the implication of the poll is that some folks are “forgetting” they ever supported the war in the first place.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@srv:
John Bolton posts here at Balloon Juice!
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Same here. I hoped they were right, but I didn’t believe they were.
Chris
@sharl:
I thought the key part of that article was Taibbi’s point “the Tea Partiers are sincerely against government spending – with the exception of the money spent on THEM. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what the movement is all about.”
Mandalay
@johnnybuck:
Yet you are the one giving everyone a free pass for supporting AUMF!
Anyone with brains and balls could have said no, but Barbara Lee was the only person in the whole of Congress to do that. Anyone who voted for AUMF needs to be reminded of that on a regular basis for the rest of their life.
Cervantes
Just heading home from the beach.
Howard Beale IV
@Major Major Major Major: At that point we’ve surrendered to the trolls and their tactics. In which case, there’s only one action to take-neutralization. That can get real ugly real quick depending on the method used.
Howard Beale IV
@Mandalay: Anyone who supported AUMF should be drafted into the military in 60 days and an election be called to fill their seat.
Amir Khalid
@Felonius Monk:
There do exist self-appointed religious authorities who believe television itself to be sinful, so by their lights this “Muslim televangelist” guy is himself a sinner. Me, I think his greatest sin is making shit up about what Islam forbids.
Mandalay
@Howard Beale IV: If you are running for president you have my vote. I like the cut of your jib.
Patrick
@Karen in GA:
Not all of them. Brent Scowcroft was against the second Bush’s war in Iraq. From his wikipedia page:
Scowcroft was a leading Republican critic of American policy towards Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion, which war critics in particular have seen as significant given Scowcroft’s close ties to former President George H.W. Bush.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
What good is religion if you can’t use it to validate your own views about what other people should or should not do?
srv
@Brachiator:
But no more neo-liberal Right-To-Protect BS?
You seem to be stuck on labels. Do you know who Victoria Nuland is, and who she works for? Do you know who she is married to?
Or how about Susan Rice? Here’s Obama’s National Security Advisor, emoting back in the day:
Clue.
Tree With Water
Baby steps are OK with me, where people coming to grips with the enormity of the Bush-Cheney (et.al) war crimes are concerned. Even ones conjured from wishful thinking.
The misinformation that serves to separate Americans from the bitter truth of the plot to wage war in 2003 can only be obliterated by one thing: simple truth telling. If it takes a little fluffing of the human ego and catering to memories of convenience before people acknowledge that truth, it’s OK with me.. If people need first believe they weren’t bamboozled before they can admit the terrible truth to themselves or speak it to others, there’s nothing wrong with that. It is of vital importance that the American people comes to grips with what really happened, if only for our own sake as We The People. It’s no exaggeration to claim it of vital import to the planet, either. And I, for one, think we have it in us..
BR
What I’m waiting to see is anyone in the media excerpt Obama’s great speech from 2002 about Iraq:
Stillwater
Did you read the article AL? More Democratic voters than GOP voters have “misremembered” their opposition. It’s actually a dig on liberals.
Baud
@Stillwater:
Not all Democrats are liberals.
Shana
@efgoldman: And chocolate!
Patrick
@Howard Beale IV:
Or how about at the very least the Congress people who supported this idiotic war and its pro-war
constituents have to pay for the damned thing. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
sdhays
I call bullshit. “Support” for the war was actually a lot more nuanced. For instance:
(From: Wikipedia:)
There was no final UN resolution. So, “days” before the invasion, support for the invasion was at 47%. Once the military was fighting in Iraq, the polls became effectively meaningless for a while since people who actually opposed the invasion nevertheless took the question as a proxy for “do you hope the invasion is successful – do you support the troops?”. Support for the war was incredibly weak among the populace, most of whom were confused by basic things like Iraq being involved in the 9/11 attacks and being an imminent threat to the continental United States. The war was very popular among the media, who amplified the administration’s war drumbeat. Yet, even with all of this, days before the invasion, only a plurality actually supported going to war.
Brachiator
@srv: You seem to just be stuck, period. It is pointless to toss out quotes from Susan Rice about phantom WMD. She was not responsible for starting a pointless war. The invasion of Iraq was a catastrophe. The people you admire promise nothing but more of the same.
The neocons are the worst of the bunch. They know who they are and are happy with that label.
And I am on record here as condemning most Democrats and Republicans for inept and ignorant Middle Eastern foreign policy.
Baud
@Patrick:
The Hyde Amendment for war funding?
Lurking Canadian
@Valdivia: Not exactly. There’s no price to be paid for being wrong *the same way as everybody else*. Being wrong in a unique way can be damaging. Being right when everybody else is wrong is catastrophic.
But being wrong with the crowd is perfectly safe, indeed laudable.
Lurking Canadian
@BR: he said all that in 2002? Wow. Dude either reads some seriously left-wing periodicals or he really does have a time machine.
Brachiator
@Tree With Water: So the American people come to grips with what happened in Iraq, and then what? What great transformation are you looking for? When has it ever happened before?
I think there is value to having an honest history of what happened, but I don’t know that it would have any major impact on society.
Howard Beale IV
Le Sigh. Hate to bring this one up, but when he’s right, he’s right (In this case 75%-see -ed below): George Will:
Valdivia
@Lurking Canadian:
I guess you’re right. There were so many people who were wrong simply by not correcting the record I want to fault all of them: architects of the war, cheerleaders, and simple stenographers.
Eric U.
@sdhays: I don’t remember seeing poll numbers much over 50% until after the invasion. 52% sticks in support sticks in my mind. So are the numbers in the story post-invasion?
Baud
@Brachiator:
Agree.
Patrick
@Brachiator:
Amen. You always get the same bonehead answer from Cheney, Rumsfeld etc when they get defensive about the war. They always then claim the UK, Germany etc had intelligence that agree with the US and found that Hussein had WMD’s. Who the hell cares? They weren’t dumb enough to launch an attack that eventually destabilized the entire region. That’s the fricking difference.
stinger
@Mike in NC: Nice! And good on your wife for asking!
Chris
@Tree With Water:
Baby steps would be okay with me if I thought they were leading somewhere. I fully expect that in a generation, this war will have been mythologized into something we only lost because hippies, Democrats and liberal media.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Chris: Well, my memory of the article was getting a little fuzzy, but i never did forget the part I referred to…
And yes, Tabbai had it right at the time…
And since we’re discussing the Iraq mess, who’s responsible, and who’s full of sh*t, let’s not forget this golden oldie...
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
You could have been a mind reader.
At that point there really should not have been any discussion about it. And yet I knew we were going to go to war, that was the only Bush intention.
What we liberals really need to do is learn magic. That’s the conservative idea of governing, magic. It’s how all the “evidence” was conceived, it was the entire battle plan, the new government would happen by magic, everything would be grand, all by magic.
All of it, everything they believe in is supposed to work by magic. Money-see how it just appears-now that there is some magic, healthcare-got to be magic, children-that can’t be anything but magic!
catclub
@Amir Khalid:
Hey, hey, Ho, ho, Sykes Picot has got to go!
Baud
@Valdivia:
The Village is a little like Hollywood — there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
Stillwater
@Howard Beale IV: Will’s 2, 3 and 4 points are almost platitudes, with point 4 going strongly against the Bush admin’s honesty as well as “greeted as liberators” nonsense. His point 1 is the only factual claim he made, and it’s just false. So, I don’t know how we can say he’s right in his analysis. The only substantive point he made was incorrect.
Tree With Water
@Brachiator: To what end? To establish a consensus that the nation was betrayed by villains, while the villains are yet alive; and to watch them as they are left unmolested, to live in peace as they rot away their miserable lives in full awareness of their pariah status. Suffice to say the repercussions would be vast, and all for the good.
Valdivia
@Baud:
yep, I agree. As long as they’re pundificating the Village doesn’t care if what they say has nothing to do with reality! It’s how Palin ended up being the person who defined the ACA debate with her death panels stupidity (just one of many examples)
Mandalay
@Lurking Canadian:
Exactly. That’s why Clinton got the Democratic nomination over Obama in 2008. It didn’t matter at all that her views on Iraq were incorrect, because they were in line with those of most other politicians.
Exactly. That’s why President John McCain trounced Obama in 2008 – because Obama was catastrophically correct about Iraq.
Your theory needs a little work.
catclub
This was a pretty complete response to hoocoodanode.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/the-right-and-wrong-questions-about-the-iraq-war/393497/
Iraq was the target at Least as early as the afternoon of Sep, 11, 2001, if not earlier.
And it has links to all the other good rebuttals.
Valdivia
@catclub:
I have a lot of respect for Fallows. That is a great piece. Thanks for linking.
catclub
@Mandalay: an addition of ‘within the Village’ fixes those counterexamples.
Howard Beale IV
@Mandalay: I get even nastier.
Upon an AUMF/Articles of War declaration, in addition of the Congressional changes, there will be no outsourcing of any field operations of the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and Department Of State. All new operational fundings to support the AUMF/War Declaration must be voted on and signed by the President within 30 days of all requests submitted by all agencies. The funding for these operations will be provided for as a cumulative progressive wealth tax on all global assets held by United States-domiciled enties whose primary domestic US gross earnings are greater than 50%.
shell
@srv: Bolton??
HaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!!
sharl
This seems like a good time to resurrect another oldie-but-goodie, originally posted in 2004 by Dan Davies: The D-Squared Digest One Minute MBA – Avoiding Projects Pursued By Morons 101 (with notes on applicability to the Iraq folly)
Folks like Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman* have been linking Davies’ post for years (*hence the 2008 update at the link).
The three subheadings:
Southern Beale
And this, in a nutshell, is why I started blogging, demonstrating, writing letters to the editor, my Congressvarmints, you name it. I knew even before the invasion that it was being cooked up/trumped up for oil, and only for oil. And I knew it would be a disaster. And I knew, like I knew 2+2=4, that the day would come when everyone would claim they weren’t for the Iraq war. I knew it knew it knew it. And I knew that the day would come when would need to really prove we were against this war. That it wouldn’t be enough just to say it. We needed to be on the right side of history from the beginning.
And I started going to anti-war protests, even though the TBI was taking down names of people attending peace protests. Even though our idiotic news media would give as much if not more attention to the four counter protestors who inevitably showed as to the 200 anti-war protestors who were there. I just knew this was all going to go horribly wrong.
I’m beyond frustrated at this whitewashing of recent history, but I guess when the media is complicit, what can you expect. I mean, have we really forgotten the outing of Valerie Plame? Have we seriously forgotten how anyone who spoke out against the war was vilified in the press? Have we forgotten when Connie Chung told Martina Navratilova to shut up and go home?
So no, stop telling me that the nation was “acting on bad intelligence.” It wasn’t. Certain interests wanted their war, to hell with everyone else. And it became a huge mess and these assholes should not be allowed to dodge their responsibility now.
catclub
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
As little as possible. Limit the damage. Limit the spread of ISIS outside the region. Support Iraq if it can ever establish an Army.
I think Bolton is right on the Humpty-Dumpty theory of Iraqi sovereignty. The Kurds are not going back, and neither are the Sunnis. I think eastern Syria and Western Iraq become Sunni-land. (It is mostly oil poor.) Determining actual boundaries will cause proportionately more misery than partition did in India/Pakistan. Most of that misery will take place in Syria.
catclub
@sharl: I second that. Anyone who has not read it. Go.
I have linked it here, as has Aimai, I believe.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Rage Furby is the perfect name for him, and now I’ve got an image of The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns acting as his attorney.
Mandalay
@catclub:
Yes, fair enough. I hadn’t followed the thread all the way back – my bad. I agree that Villagers pay no price for being hopelessly wrong. My apologies to Lurking Canadian.
Schlemazel
Those who remember history are condemned to live through morons fucking it up once again.
I had to stop reading the other John COle because he was doing such a great job of telling us what was going to happen. I found it depressing as hell that someone who could get it so right was ignored (indeed, he was punished by wingers) while the arsonists of the Mideast poured mot gas on the flames.
There were about 5000 here in Minneapolis at one of the rallies I went to in 03. It got zero press. 5 or 6 people standing on a bridge with anti-war signs got time on the news though. Of course the “Support the Troops” rally got noticed too, about 500 people but that was supposed to be war neutral even though it was obviously just a skirt for the war mongers to hide behind.
catclub
@BR: Wow. I am amazed Obama does not quote that every single time he gets asked to do something stupid in Iraq.
shell
Can’t get it out of my head that it’s Sunday night. Keep thinking I’m gonna be seeing another episode of Game of Thrones.
FourTen
This makes me exceptionally upset. My character was called into question when I spoke out against the war in Iraq and I suffered emotionally from the scorn and ridicule that came at me inter-personally and from the media, but it’s not the denial-ism that disturbs me, its the IDEA THAT I WOULD FORGET AND FORGIVE THOSE WHO CALLED ME TRAITOR.
Anne
I was in undergrad in 2003, and I remember my roommate and I beating our heads against the wall at the drumbeat toward what we worried was the inevitable invasion. A couple of days before a nationwide protest was scheduled, my music history professor said he realized some of us would want to skip class to attend the protest, and that was fine. For those who did come to class, he would play Britten’s War Requiem as his own protest. So that’s what we did for the whole 90-minute class: sat and listened to Britten’s expression of pacifism. I liked that professor.
More trivially, what am I up to this afternoon? Just got a chimney of charcoal started, and I have a dry-brined tri tip ready to go. I’ll make a salad to go with it, and I made an apricot-cherry frangipane tart for dessert. All that plus a bottle of grenache and I’m looking forward to a pretty decent afternoon/evening.
BillinGlendaleCA
@catclub:
Nope, Mosul and Kirkuk. You’re right about the Sunni areas being poor, but those cities have a significant non-Kurd Sunni population and have oil.
redshirt
@Chris:
Precisely. The truth, or facts, seem to not matter at all anymore, as opposed to the spin machine, Fox News and its minions. It’s amazing, in its way.
Tommy
@catclub: The citizens of Iraq can not fight their way out of a wet paper bag. I recall hearing a General the other day say they were over run, they had to flee from ISIL. Stand and fight. I noted I come from a military family in other comments here and I got no love for anybody that won’t stand and fight.
We have given them arms. We have trained them. It might be time we let them fend for themselef!
Felonius Monk
@Amir Khalid: I think fundamentalist christians were pretty much opposed to television until the preachers discovered they could gather more fleece from the flock via television.
Tommy
@Anne: I thought invading Iraq was a good idea. I am not proud to say that, but a fact. I now don’t trust anything my government says to me. I question everything.
Cervantes
@Anne:
Good teachers make good students, and vice versa.
Britten dedicated War Requiem to four friends killed in the Great War. On this our Memorial Day let’s say their names once more: Michael Halliday, Roger Burney, David Gill, and Piers Dunkerley.
johnnybuck
@Mandalay: Well if you want to blame the democrats for the launch, and prosecution of the war, you have my sympathies.
That war was gonna happen regardless of the AUMF. It was decided long before that came to pass. It’s fine that you feel the need to blame Democrats (particularly certain democrats) I’m good with that. I don’t. I totally agree with what Obama had to say about it in 2002. I just wonder if Obama had been from, say, Georgia like Max Cleland and facing re-election that year if his words would have matched his actions.
Chris
@johnnybuck:
Yeah, my appreciation for Obama’s speech back then always had that one caveat.
Tree With Water
Gary Younge, in today’s Guardian:
“..Extracting a moral from this disaster would demand “unravelling the deeper meaning” of America’s military impulses, the popular consent it enjoys and the craven political assent it is accorded.
It would require an assessment of why so many Americans supported the war for so long, how an ostensibly independent media not only failed to challenge the state but actively capitulated to it, and why nobody has paid the price for any of these mistakes. In short, it would demand a reckoning with American power – how it works, as well as whom it works for, and to what end. (Britain’s pathetic collusion demands a whole other column.)
In the absence of such an account, a true war story is not possible, and so the political class would rather collude in a huge lie that will continue to infect the US body politic, as Vietnam did, until it finds remedy in the truth.
The point here is not to relitigate the war. The verdict on that front is clear by the number of those who once endorsed it and now disclaim it. The point is to reclaim the truth of the past in the hope of a better and more honest future. If those who lied us into the war can lie us out of it too, then we are no better equipped to stop them the next time..”
Karen in GA
@Patrick: I remember that. People were wondering if Bush the Elder was using him to warn his son not to invade. (I’m sure Scowcroft didn’t go public without the elder’s blessing.)
catclub
@Tommy: 1. Go read that link on Projects and Morons.
2. I was pretty close to that, too. The argument that Saddam was not being totally transparent in disarmament, as South Africa was at the time, carried weight with me. What I did not realize then was that Iraq had Iran next door, and so did not want to show weakness, or that they were toothless. So uncertainty had to be in there, keeping the Iranians a little nervous.
BobS
@Schlemazel: My parents (then in their 70’s) and myself marched in Detroit in February 2003 with about 5000 other people on what was maybe the coldest day of the year — I seem to remember it being covered accurately on the local news. On the other hand, the Sept 2007 demonstration in Washington DC had 75K-100K protesting the war. When we got back to our motel in Fredericksburg later that night and watched the news, the couple dozen counter-protesters we walked past got more air time than the main demonstration — the camera angles also suggested a larger number than just the 20-30 people I saw.
Ernest Pikeman
@Tommy: Stand and fight? How precious.
Is it somehow surprising that the army US has been trying to build out of money and good wishes for the last 10 years has turned into a vast network of patronage and corruption? Who in their right mind signs up for it unless you’re desperate? Stand and fight for the inept kleptocracy or your unit commander who probably pockets part of your meager pay? Stand and fight when your opponents are frothing at the mouth, no quarter giving extremists, high on apocalyptic religion, and you know your own supply lines have been stolen and sold by your superiors?
Let’s all wag our fingers at the Iraqi army recruits! Tsk tsk boys, you should be ashamed of yourself! Tommy from Middle America says so.
Eric
The second poll does not show a majority opposed. It shows a plurality opposed.
jl
Looks like the memories of 12 percentage points of the people who actually supported the mess have gone foggy. I suppose not switching positions in retrospect should get them a (very) little credit.
Watching the senseless BS emitted by the GW administration, having access to other sources of news, it really shouldn’t have taken more than a few weeks to see it was lies and fraud all the way down.
I feel like i should make some comment about Memorial Day, but the post below on Ms. Lau is just too sad. I can’t think of anything to say. Very sad horrible waste. And think of the thousands and thousands more people from US, coalition and Iraq that did nothing at all to deserve death and maiming, but the monsters running the US dished it out, for nothing but lies and greed and pride.
gene108
@Howard Beale IV:
George Will was actually skeptical of the Iraq War, IIRC, and back then he could still rest on his laurels as being an intellectual right-wing thinker, i.e. he did not have to mindlessly endorse everything coming out of Koch Industries and Fox News and could levy criticism at Republicans, where he thought it would help them govern.
I’m either thinking of the Iraq War or the Bush Tax Cuts…but he was not a mindless cheerleader of Bush & Co. in their early days.
coin operated
I kept telling my wingnut buddies that “amateur warriors discuss tactics, professional warriors discuss logistics” and that Saddam had zero in the way of logistical ability to inflict damage on US soil. Saddam was neutralized by total air superiority and the no-fly zone…he was not a threat. It was from that prism that I looked at the administrations war plans and thought they were nucking futs.
BBA
I supported the Iraq war in 2003.
I was wrong and stupid.
I’ve come around to pacifism, of the sort espoused by G.B. Shaw on the eve of the Great War: “both armies should shoot their officers and go home.”
EriktheRed
My long weekend isn’t over just yet. I decided to take off not only the Friday before, but also the Tuesday after, Memorial Day.
schrodinger's cat
I was against the Iraq war from the very beginning.I even wrote a couple of op-eds in my college newspaper about it. It was during the run up to the war that I realized how much our MSM sucked.
Chris
@Ernest Pikeman:
Thanks. I thought of writing a similar response. I’m just so fucking exhausted with every smug little armchair warrior tsk tsking the Iraqis for their insufficient commitment to cleaning up George Bush’s mess that I decided to give myself a “forget it, it’s Chinatown” this time.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Including some who, in 2003, called me a traitor to my face. I won’t ever forget or forgive that.
Bill Arnold
@Lurking Canadian:
Or he tries to think things through carefully, and often succeeds.
I was opposed to the Iraq invasion, mainly because the inspectors were finding nothing, and because war is stupid, but didn’t do much to fight it.
My wife was much more clear headed. As the invasion approached, she became ever more certain that Saddam H didn’t have any significant WMDs (and that the GWB administration was lying), because there was no way would we invade if he did. (She was/is also in the “war is stupid” camp.)
The claims about a low-cost war were also a red flag, since any war and multi-year occupation was sure to cost closer to a trillion dollars than the ludicrous numbers that were being floated.
dww44
@MomSense: There have been many a great Southern pecan pie made with Karo syrup .It’s been around for more than 100 years and is entirely natural. Not the same as high fructose corn syrup. My Mom, my Aunts, and my Grandmother always had Karo in their pantries. Check this out.
http://www.karosyrup.com/faq.html
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Lurking Canadian:
I was able to form the same opinions reading past the first page of mainstream newspapers at the time.
Omnes Omnibus
The fact that Blix and company were in country conducting inspections was enough proof for me that the Iraqis were cooperating with the UN’s requirements. Thus no invasion was justified – at all.
Michael Bersin
I spent a lot of time with protest signs in 2003.
Michael Bersin
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Yep.
Omnes Omnibus
@Michael Bersin: Me as well.
Gvg
My experience seems oddly different than everyone elses. I wasn’t very political then and mainly hung out on a Gator fan football site called Virtual Swamp. it had an alliance with 2 rival boards for Auburn and Vol fans. the Auburn leader posted links showing the WMD evidence was lies. even odder he was normally pretty conservative and had a bit of racism he didn’t see but his links were good evidence. the links were mostly news stories in mainstream media including the NYT but for some reason of publicity never got as much attention as more sensationalist colleagues. the evidence especially about the yellow cakes Plame, Saddam faking being more dangerous than he was because of neighbors who might invade etc, was published. I guess people just weren’t in the mood to notice. the results made me pay more,attention to politics.
a few years later when the lack of WMd was finally obvious my parents and others I knew who had always read the news more than I did (maybe because generation Veitnam?) mentioned why didn’t the media report this before…Powells lies etc. I said it was reported just not as prominately. they didn’t believe me. I hadn’t saved links and couldn’t refind them.
that football conservative used to want Powell to run for president before the lies. he is still a conservative last I noticed but for some reason was to smart for those lies.
the support for the war always seemed fragile to me or else the lying about how easy and cheap it would be wouldn’t have been nessesary. bush knew any real cost estimates or long term troop estimates would tank support immediately. that is why I found the lies about cost the easiest to spot. talk about how many cops would be needed to run an occupation got shot down too. lots of people don’t know much about foreign countries or history, but more people should have known the cost estimates were straight up lies. ordinary people should have seen that as easily as I did.
fuckwit
Yep, the demographics have changed. I’ll bet the kids who were too young to be polled in 2003– and were perhaps worried about being drafted!– were against it then, but weren’t on the original poll. And a lot of old people who were gung-ho for war, have since died off and thus weren’t polled this time around.
Better methodology would have been to reach THE SAME PEOPLE who were polled in 2003, and ask THEM the question again.
Otherwise you’re not measuring mendacity or selective memory or propaganda, you’re measuring demographic shifts.
fuckwit
@Michael Bersin: I was called a terrorist multiple times, only half-joking. It was a very scary time to be a pacifist.
One of my most vivid memories from that time, was marching down Market Street in October 2002, and looking up at the windows of the bank buildings for snipers who might be shooting at us. You see, the DC sniper was on the loose at the time, and nobody was sure what side he was on, if any side, if he was acting alone or part of a group in multiple cities, or what. I’m not sure I was the only person who wondered if the sniper was a part of a right-wing group trying to scare protesters from taking to the street. The timing sure was convenient.
I remember being surprised that the protesters were so far from radical hippies, but rather I was marching in a huge crowd of middle-class white families that look like they BARTed in from Walnut Creek and were on their way to a Giants game, and thinking “there’s no way that this government can ignore this kind of mainstream opposition!”. Of course, they did anyway.
I remember The Honorable Barbara Lee– the only person to vote against going to war in Afghanistan– getting the most rousing cheer I’ve heard when she spoke at a protest (might have been October 2002, might have been one of the later ones early in 2003).
Earlier in in 2002, I remember all those stupid fucking UNITED WE STAND signs. I made one with the United Nations flag, and put UNITED WE STAND on it and hung that in my window. I got nasty looks from the neighbors. At one point the flag-waving shit got so annoying I hung a Canadian flag in my window (I’m not Canadian, but someone gave me a flag they’d bought on a trip there).
I remember the vile shit the media pulled at Wellstone’s funeral, getting all up in indignation about the funeral of an activist progressive being oh-so-disgustingly tainted by mention of politics.
Literally, “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” by definition made anyone who didn’t have a hard-on for war into a terrorist. Humans are terrifying when they get into herd mode.
I lost friends over that war and I’ve not spoken with them since.
jl
@fuckwit: It seemed like a majority of even the liberal SF Bay Area was for the war. Not sure it that was true. I’d be interested if anyone knows of some polling.
I got a lot of outraged “Well, we have to do SOMETHING!” responses to my opposition to the invasion. I offered that we already had done ‘something’ that was more to the point: invaded and occupied Afghanistan. Regardless of the wisdom of that (I think it is debatable), I tried to argue better to make sure we finished that operation right before going off on wild goose chases.
Allan
Most of the people polled were Chris Matthews.
sm*t cl*de
Self-exculpatory amnesia is part of being human. It is what distinguishes us from something else that I can’t remember.
Michael Bersin
@fuckwit:
Yes, this. Yes. Yes.
November 2002 to December 2006 I participated in hundreds of vigils and marches. The number of participants ranged from one to hundreds.
Each protest and vigil was a constructive act for us, which, as so many others had said in this period, “sure beat doing nothing and watching the crap which passes for news on cable television.”
At times in our vigils we were presented with artifacts by other pro-peace protesters and by those supposedly in opposition to our views. Sometimes the contact was enlightening for all parties. As I started one of my vigils, standing on my own, I was approached by an individual who asked me, “Do you support our troops?” I replied that I didn’t want them to die needlessly. She asked me, “Would you wear a yellow ribbon?” I replied that I would. She removed the ribbon from her backpack and, since I was holding a protest sign, pinned it to my shirt. She then turned and walked away. For several years after that day I kept the ribbon on my desk. At the time I didn’t write about the conversation nor did I record the date it occurred, but I had that gift to remember the encounter.
Several times during that period we were threatened with physical violence and death, harassed, publicly excoriated, defended, praised, and publicly and privately thanked for “being there.” We learned the importance of our presence for those who supported us, yet who couldn’t participate, either out of fear or a sense of futility. It was important for us to say and for them to be able to hear, “You are not alone.”
In April 2004 I received a note from a student who had witnessed our vigils:
“For over a year you have stood underneath the Nation’s flag, backed by the Amendments [brass plaques on the flag pole base on the quad at the University], and protested an unjust war which is based off greed, power, corruption, and lies. You have suffered verbal bashings, threats of violence, and the wrath of the ignorant. Even in your darkest hour, you knew you were not alone. The educated, critical thinkers who do not readily accept the spoon-fed hype, were standing with you. I would like to personally thank you, as a member of the United States military, for believing in your Country, Constitution, and military enough to suffer through inclement weather and people, for believing in a cause which is right and just. It comforts me to know that there are people like you who know the difference between supporting our troops, and supporting an unjust war. You are one of the most patriotic Americans I know. Thank you for all that you do and stand for. Sincerely….”
Jinchi
@Walker:
And as a counter point, how many of the pro-war supporters are gone now?
I remember a pretty strong college-age anti-war contingent in 2003. Those people are now in their mid-30s.
This is how opposition looked just after the start of the war, when war-fever was highest.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2003/06/summer-iraq-lindsay
Shakti
I just remember being bemused. It seemed like bullshit and even if what he were claiming were true, it seemed to me that Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction had nothing to do with 9/11. I’m not even sure he made the link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida, to be honest.
I remember thinking, “Of course” when we invaded Afghanistan though, like it wasn’t the wisest but it made sense for vengeance. I didn’t quite understand how removing Saddam Hussein did anything to get rid of Osama Bin Laden.
I never approved of Shrub but I never imagined he would have been as bad as he turned out to be. My parents were TERRIFIED when I’d verbalize any anti Bush sentiments out loud.
Visceral
When I went to school on 9/11 (Pacific time zone), the rest of my class was already debating whether “Saddam” needed to be nuked or if conventional bombing would do. That Saddam Hussein and his regime were the guilty party and needed to be eliminated with extreme prejudice was simply taken for granted. W and Co may have lied their butts off to get us into Iraq, but they were building on a foundation as old as the Gulf War.