Seven Years Ago Today...

[filkertom]

... an idiot lied us into war.

So far, it has cost us thousands of US lives, tens of thousands of US injuries, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Iraqi civilian lives, millions of Iraqi civilian displacements, and three-quarter of a trillion dollars.

His philosophical cohorts had been pushing for that war for a long time. They finally got it, and ever since then they've been beating the drums to extend it to another country they say is even scarier.

As long as this war continues and the idiot and his cohorts are not tried for the war crimes they appear (and even admit) to have committed, our country is, by its own definition, a rogue nation. In other words, we're the bad guys.

U.S. out of Iraq.

Comments

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[the-misha.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

I would say he was more lied to than lying himself...but the people who manipulated him told him things he wanted to hear.

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

Agreed...I've always thought that he wasn't inherently evil, but too weak and stupid to stand up to/stop the inherently evil people.

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

But... but... he was the decider.

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I wonder if he was capable of deciding what to have for lunch...

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

W <> A. Hoffman.

[fredhuggins.livejournal.com]

I know a few pretzels who might be able to answer your question...

Buck Stops at the Oval Office

[alverant.livejournal.com]

It was his responsibility to make sure the information was accurate. He had the most resources of anyone in the US to be sure and he failed. It's the President's job to make decisions based on the facts and not on what he wants the facts to be. He said he was the decider but he's not acting like it when the shit hit the fan.

Re: Buck Stops at the Oval Office

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

(Sarcasm mode: ON)
But he was the decider! He decided what the facts were! Never mind what the evidence said!
(Sarcasm mode: OFF)

The statement that caused me to give up was "We know where the WMDs are, but we can't tell anybody, or he'll move them." (A coffeemaker made of lard to anybody who can figure out how to get around this problem.)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

<croak>The king is a good man, but he has evil advisors.</croak>

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Word. And thank you.

[cathain.livejournal.com]

I think what gets to me is that the very day we invaded Iraq I began saying we were being lied to and that this war was not about "Al Qaeda", terrorism or "weapons of mass destruction". At that time, Iraq was one of the most non threatening nations in the region. It angered people and may have even contributed to my losing a job. At any event, I was shouted down and began to just stay silent and let public events bear out the truth of what I was saying.
I may have fallen off of a turnip truck but it wasn't yesterday.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Shoot, I was told the same thing by people who I thought were sane, rational human beings in the hours and days following the Twin Towers attack. Even then there was a clamor for the US to turn everything from Casablanca to Kabul into a sea of radioactive glass, and when I pointed out that we had no real idea what had happened yet, and that bombing them all and letting God sort them out would turn us into exactly the same kind of people who flew the airplanes into the buildings, I got shouted down and, to quote Paul Simon, "slandered, libel, I heard words I never heard in the Bible." From those who I had days before thought were my friends.

Sometimes it just sucks to be right.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

You too, huh?

I suppose that was one benefit of being unemployed at the time - I didn't have to talk to people who were running off at the mouth on a face-to-face basis. On the down side, I had plenty of time to be on USENET, and the weird sensation that I was, if not The Only Sane Man, certainly in the minority.

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

This.

It's sad to admit it but as yet Obama has not done the one thing I fervently wanted him to do which was end the war in Iraq. I hold him accountable for that now and will continue to do so until he's out of office or does what he said he was going to do.

[wickedladybear.livejournal.com]

this.

[laurensa.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

I ran across a review of the movie Green Zone that read:
"A good action movie, about the first Iraq War, ruined by Hollywood Leftist Politics. What a shame. Please Hollywood, GIVE IT A REST!

If you can get past the BS about the 'entire war' being trumped up over WMDs, then it is a good action movie."

Number one, I thought the "first Iraq War" was under Bush Sr.
Number two, yes, the war was about trumped-up claims of weapons of mass destruction. The whole reason we were told we had to invade now-Now-NOW was WMDs. The entire casus belli was taking out a dangerous man before he could use said weapons.

*sigh* The truth really DOES have a liberal bias, I guess.

Almost true

[capplor.livejournal.com]

There were a lot of reasons fielded, but most were patently absurd, even to Americans. Finally someone said, "IF they had WMDs, we would have to attack for our safety" and that was not absurd. Then the rest followed.

It really did look, from where I sat & watched the "Mainstream media," like a little kid trying one pitch after another until he could prove to his mother that he HAD to have the cookie. And the voters fell for it.

Re: Almost true

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

And we all know, nothing short of war can prevent a dictator from using his weapons.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

On topic, here's Richard Shindell's brilliant cover of Pete Seeger. I'm reasonably certain there's a reason he chose to cover this particular song at the time he did:

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Seeger was a great source of inspiration. With just a few tweaks "King Henry" became relevant again. Change the year and a couple of the lyrics and it fits Iraq as well as it did Vietnam.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Er...you have heard my "King Henry" filk ("Prince George"), right?

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. I don't remember hearing it, and I think I would have noticed.

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Remember, Sadam Husien was also lied to about WMDs. What general would stand up to him and tell Sadam the truth he did not want to hear.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Sadam wasn't exactly a reliable source of information. Bluffing is a time honored technique against an enemy.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you kind of get the idea that Saddam was living out a real-life version of "The Corbomite Maneuver."

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

What gets me is, how did 2/3 of America buy INTO the bullshit, when it was so fucking obvious that Bush and his cronies were merely fishing for any excuse they could find to get the voters on board for an Iraq war?

March 2002: "We need regime change in Iraq." Voters: Um, hell no.

June 2002: "We have proof that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11." Voters: Maybe, maybe not, but until we see the proof we're not buying.

September 2002: "Iraq has WMDs and is trying to get nukes." Voters: Ugh! Scary! But we still don't want war- send in UN inspectors.

January 2003: "Iraq is hiding WMDs and nukes from the inspectors." Voters: OH MY! But that's not what the UN inspectors are saying... is it?

March 2003: "Hans Blix says we're getting unprecedented cooperation from Iraq. But "unprecedented" isn't the same word as "unrestricted," so we're invading now." Voters: Oh. Um. Gotta support the troops... and the President wouldn't lie to US... so down with Saddam!

It was, to me at least, such transparent bullshit that I still am at a total loss for words as to how cowardly Democrats like Hillary and Pelosi were to vote for the force authorization for Iraq.

(And how cowardly Democrats remain, that they aren't even considering repealing or amending the force authorizations for Afghanistan, Iraq, or the "war on terror.")

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

It was, to me at least, such transparent bullshit that I still am at a total loss for words as to how cowardly Democrats like Hillary and Pelosi were to vote for the force authorization for Iraq.

Not to mention the respect still garnered by Colin Powell, who's been trying to repair his reputation for the little show he put on at the United Nations....

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

I suspect that Powell could've been where Obama is now, but for his decision to play the Good Soldier.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

The Boston Globe's token conservative op ed columnist, Jeff Jacoby, a few days ago wrote a piece about how the fact that there are fewer bombings and we think we can see the end of the war means that Bush is completely validated in his heroic and courageous insistence on this necessary and moral war.

That was just the first graph -- I couldn't bear to read any more.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

We do need to get out of Iraq. On that I completely agree.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

Michigan Peaceworks is hosting a Peace Rally at the corner of South University and East University in Ann Arbor (SE corner of the Diag) on Saturday, March 20, from noon to 2 pm.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

No, a monster lied us into war.

The idiots are the ones who failed to stop him.

[fredhuggins.livejournal.com]

Uh...we ALL failed to stop him. Does that make us ALL idiots? Including you?

Are you sure you don't mean "the idiots who COULD have stopped him, but failed to do so?"

Sorry for the nitpicking, but it reminds me of Michael Ian Black's bit about "Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry" bumper stickers. "Like anyone's saying, 'Damn this war in Iraq! This is all Bob's fault!'"

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

And those of us who objected to the war six months before Bush ran in there screaming and waving his dick yelling "Mine's Bigger Than Daddy's!" were shouted down, called terrorists and traitors and French and Saddam-kissers. If not physically threatened, as I was once in a grocery store. (See, 'cause Bill Clinton's blowjob was a million-trillion times more immoral than Bush lying us into war.)

I too just sat back and watched the horror unfold after that. Watched as all the liberal peacenik hippy folks (oh, and every general with actual combat experience) were proven right.

There are days when I think all this happened to make damn sure America retroactively deserved 9/11.

[roycalbeck.livejournal.com]

1) What lies?

Every time I ask this, I get people equating "being wrong" with "being a liar". Folks also tend to ignore that Hans Blix showed the Iraqi military having undeclared WMDs on its records (Jan 2003 UNSCOM Report to UN Security Council).

2) What war crimes?

Every time I ask this, I get a load of claims that do not and never have qualified as "war crimes" under any historical standard, and by which standards most of the US Armed Forces of WWII should have been dragged out to a wall and shot.

Perhaps what they really mean is that we weren't "authorized" by the UN to go to war, ignoring the fact that there was no actual PEACE obtained from Iraq after '91. There was a cease-fire, whose terms (UN Resolution 687) Iraq never met --- even entirely disregarding the WMD provisions (which it was indeed found Iraq HAD violated). The UN, in '91, made the US a direct signatory to that cease-fire, and THAT gave us the authority to enforce it...same as with the No-Fly Zones and Operation Desert Fox.

3) What "millions" of dead and displaced?

The worst confirmable figures, from anti-war groups themselves, are in the neighborhood of 100,000 dead. That's from ALL violent deaths, to include non-military actions (such as a stampede during a religious procession). Even the Lancet Report, which claimed 600,000, admitted over two-thirds of those were from attacks on civilians by insurgents. And its figures were based on extrapolating the number of death certificates found in 1,000 households --- ignoring the fact that only about 50,000 actual certificates had been issued at that time.

By comparison, Saddam Hussein averaged 40,000 dead Iraqis per year, mostly due to the violence inherent in his regime. March 2003 - March 2010 = 7 years x 40k = 280,000 Iraqis who could have expected to die as an average of Hussein's record. So horrible of us to have prevented that, I know.

People who tromp around in the blood of the dead, for GODDAMN POLITICAL ADVANTAGE and little or nothing else, are political hacks who deserve to lose political power. They are the purveyors of hate and fear. And like true hypocrites, they see hate and fear in everyone but themselves.