They wanted this war and they fucking did it.

but they did it anyway

citizens and elected Congresspeople, allowed fear and anger to rule.

That's how we got the patriot acts.

That's how we got the war on terror.

That's how we bankrupted the nation. That's how we caved and regressed economically, politically, socially, and on civil liberties.

Some of us who knew it was a con said so. Many didn't, because "9/11 changed everything."

Too many people never saw, or refused to see, the way 9/11 was used to push emotional buttons, move people past rationality, and manipulate politics in favor of an administration that, until then, had no legitimacy and wasn't getting anywhere.

Too many people allowed themselves to be used.

In all fairness, even those who saw, who knew, never believed it could be taken as far as it was; as far as it still is.

The writing was on the wall with the 2000 Selection. 9/11 and the bogus "war on terror" distracted too many from that. Too many ALLOWED it, and allowed those who stood up, who spoke out, who tried to act, to be marginalized and ignored. AND THEY ARE STILL ALLOWING IT.

Signed too.

Kick.

thousands of DUers became aware of the fraudulent casus belli that developed into the travesty of invasion and occupation of Iraq. I was merely a lurker back then, but I demonstrated against the war for a good number of days in the small city where I was living at the time. I would still have opposed the war without their work, but I believe the antiwar movement - both here and around the world - took some cues from this book.

that it was all one big lie. Thing that really bothers me is that with all the evidence, Dem's like John Kerry and Hilary Clinton voted for the war resolution.

I still can't get over that.

It was a sad moment in our history.

Last edited Sun Feb 17, 2013, 01:48 PM - Edit history (2)

was going to be in the control of Republicans.

They had the choice of voting for that resolution -- which said Bush had to discover WMD before he took action -- or to let that resolution die; and let it be replaced by a new resolution in January that would give Bush a completely free hand.

In retrospect, since we know Bush ignored the restrictions in the bill they passed, it's clear they made a mistake. But it wasn't at the time.

and they didn't know he would simply ignore them.

please...

Locks only stop honest people.

The mistake was not here, the mistake was in not impeaching him when he broke that law, which is another topic, not this one.

Had they not passed the bill and he went in anyway, by this logic it would also be their mistake. That's a lose lose situation we would enforce. That's not a correct path for us.

and easier to argue against the war. I read it before I found DU. I had been reading his stuff on Truthout voraciously.

I remember driving in my car early Fall 2002, and hearing Bush mention Iraq in the context of 9/11 for the first and my jaw literally dropped open. "What the fuck?!" I said out loud.

Later that year, I was in The Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC and saw a bunch of the books on display at a news stand and thought "Maybe the message is getting through."

Oh, well...

I am not in favor of the prison at Guantanamo, but if it exists, the Bush-Cheneyites should be housed there.

had just graduated from high school with my older son was killed in Iraq. He was friends with my sons, and my nieces and nephews. The biggest piece of him that was recovered was one of his hands. And for what?

I think Vince Bugliosi's book on the need to prosecute Bush et al should be re-released, in a package with Mr. Pitt's book.

I would love to see some protests.

We knew it was crap. We knew it was DEADLY crap.

Now maybe a few more people will find out.

And did not have a lot of credibility at the time. Maybe that is still the case but history has proven us to be correct on almost all counts.

It will be interesting to watch the corp-media avoid this like the plague.

On one weekend before the war there were an estimated 30 million people worldwide that demonstrated against this war. It was highly unpopular until Bush put the troops in harms way and the people supported the troops though not the policy.

it's out in the open even for the choking ostriches who don't want to see..
10 years later
what are we going to do about it?

I have given up on that our government will investigate, arrest, and try the perpetrators.
As our numbers grow can we collectively hold some feet to the fire?

Other than that, I have screamed and bitched and held up signs and I'm simply sick and tired of "still having to protest this sh*t!"

Last edited Sun Feb 17, 2013, 12:06 PM - Edit history (2)

Don't forget the money laundering, all that money soaked with the blood of Americans and Iraqis. And burning up the future of generations of both to profit a few:



Going Broke Under Bush - How the US Sent $12 Billion in Cash to Iraq, and Watched it Vanish

How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish - Special flights brought in tonnes of banknotes which disappeared into the war zone



An armed guard poses beside pallets of $100 bills in Baghdad. Almost $12bn in cash was spent by the US-led authority...

The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent... (more)

The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee...

Many more details for those who forgot or who never knew at the link:

http://www.democrats.com/How-the-US-Sent-12-Billion-in-Cash-to-Iraq-and-Watched-it-Vanish

More details to see who has the money:

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=coalition_provisional_authority_1&printerfriendly=true

Sorry, couldn't help myself...

Obama explained why life in America was going downhill because of the wars. The defeat of Hagel is a disappointment to me as he was going after the MIC. Now the Sequester is likely to occur and it will be devastating for millions and make a backlash.

It will cut ruthlessly and inefficiently. Obama wanted those workers to go into green energy and infrastructure, both social and physical, but we'll see if it happens.

Here's a video of him talking in 2007 and it is identical to the town halls in my area with our representatives in the Bush years. I posted the website with the Cost Of War counter here a few months back, but can't take much longer with this now. See the details of the sort we discussed in his speech:

Not sure how the 80 billion estimated back in 2007 was worked out,saved, when the war in Iraq was transferred to other regions in the middle east....But this is a lot of money.... money that is going towards the deficit that is causing austerity programs for Americans...

They were given concessions, patents and manufacturing equipment, most of it sent over wholesale. It was in order to make good on a debt they knew would never be paid for the wars, because our TPTB don't believe in taxes.

Now the Chinese get the mineral and resource contracts as well as control of ports worldwide. They have MFN status and have played price fixing games until they gained monopolies of industries. We gave it to them because we owe...

It is correct that it is a small part of our national debt, and private debt is much worse than public debt will ever be. The threat is woven into our society on a level few want to think about. Pensions and other assets are managed by people we love to hate. There is blood on it. But what are we to do since we have given our wages and votes to this so long?

I think the same thing was done to the auto industry because of the Vietnam war debt. All wars must be paid for by future generations. These countries deserve to be paid and none of that money was given for love. Nor was it given without promise of something.

China uses their human capital and pollute their country to buy our debt, but there's no reason for them to wait, since TPTB refuse to pay taxes. Even though they have reaped the benefits more than anyone else, we enabled them by buying into the garbage they spew on the media.

Many Americans are wealthy far beyond their education from wars, something most of us are in denial about as we don't want to acknowledge that their interests in these affairs aren't altruistic. These are your hard-core libertarian teabag voters and they have done well.

Lots of good info in them; much of which is new to me.

Five days a week, eight hours a day.

He has some great pics of long lines of people waiting in front of that shipping containers where his "office" was. He also says that the $12B number is a total low-ball. He is also retired military, a gung-ho patriot and a dyed-in-the-wool 'pub.

4.5 stars on Amazon.

Great stuff!

were delivered...trying to stop the Invasion?

Maybe someone else here on DU will remember. Was a huge thread here that went on all night with the reports on the boxes being delivered. All the efforts of "MoveOn" leadership and members to barrage Congress with phone calls and letters. Those efforts went on after the invasion and into the 2004 election. "Win with Out War" coalition and so many others joining forces.

I along with others even personally E-Mailed Laura Bush hoping the reasons I gave would convince her husband to stop the invasion.
How innocent we were. But, those of us from Vietnam Generation and Nixon Scandals still thought that "the people" could make a difference.

I look back on it and remember the huge protests in London and even in Spain and across the US (Not just CA and NYC...but even in North Carolina) with us out on the street protesting and a huge march in NC State Capitol with candlelight vigils that went on and even after the Invasion the Vigils still go on in NC.

....the coming war in Iraq. To bastardize a phrase spoken by Admiral Farragut during the US Civil War, "Damn the truth, full speed ahead".

The NeoCons have a website entitled Plan for a New American Century, otherwise known as PNAC. If you go to the site, click on the following link:

Publications/Reports

....once there, click on Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, a document which was written in September 2000, before the Presidential Election of November 2000, and the US Supreme Court 5-4 decision that made George W. Bush the president in December 2000.

Read this very important document....it is a blueprint for everything the NeoCons wanted to do, and have accomplished, since 2000.

Hell---I even had a website dedicated to exposing the PNAC.

This was planned in 1998....

They wanted a war. They got a war. And they reaped all the rewards of a war.

....I linked:

"Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor."

....and, on page 67....

"Absent a rigorous program of
experimentation to investigate the nature of
the revolution in military affairs as it applies
to war at sea, the Navy might face a future
Pearl Harbor – as unprepared for war in the
post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war
at the dawn of the carrier age."

9/11 was our "new Pearl Harbor". But, I can't get into the details of the run-up to 9/11, or the events of that morning, because I'll find this post "disappeared" as an attempt to discuss a "conspiracy theory". We can't have that, now can we?

People joining DU since 9/11 may not be aware of this important document and how it has been followed almost to the letter for the last 13 years.

I've seen this upclose. Get the media to put out a story with emotional affect to sell a 'product' to the public to generate consent for a contract. Generally the public doesn't know about these bills written up for corporate interests at all. The bills are usually to sell off a piece of the Commons to corporate groups and NGO or non-profits they use as advance front groups. In this case, it was the American people being sold off.

As Bush said in August 2001 about the time to introduce 'a new product line.' Yes, the Iraq war was a 'product' brought to you by the MIC, or more correctly in this case, minus the C = Congressional part of this equation. They thought it was time to enjoy 'the peace dividend' and 'make use of the Clinton surplus.' No way in hell those Bush boys were going to let that happen.

Thanks for remembering and posting those links.

The best archive for researching PNAC is sitting over on du2 and was laboriously compiled by one of my favorite du'ers, Stephanie, in 2003:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=110&topic_id=80

TYY

I remember that thread well.

WAS SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, ANOTHER PEARL HARBOR? IN WHAT SENSE?

We all know the first "official" story about the events of September 11, 2001. We were told that it was a sneak attack almost exactly like the one on Pearl Harbor more than sixty years ago. We were also told that despite the fact that U. S. intelligence had collected thousands, perhaps millions, of different bits and pieces of information, they had simply failed to put it all together in one coherent package. All of the terrible scenes of the destruction of the World Trade Center and people fleeing across Manhattan's bridges were brought to us in an unparalleled mainstream media event of round-the-clock reporting. I know that I personally will never forget that morning, nor the many weeks and months that followed.

Even before the first tower of the World Trade Center had fallen, the mainstream media began to openly speculate on who or what had done this to America. The names immediately pushed to the top of the list were Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, names with which most Americans had already become very familiar. We knew from what we had been told that they had the means, the motive, and the willingness to do this terrible act, and had actually planned and executed other terrorist attacks against Americans and American assets. All across the U. S., grief and shock turned to anger...and a very strong national desire to strike back at those that had done this awful thing.

Flash forward to the first couple of weeks of May 2002, and we’re starting to see a very different picture. We now know that Bush and his supporters knew that the terrorist attack was coming, and we’re learning more every day about just how much they really knew. Bush’s people are now spending quite a bit of time trying to blame the FBI, CIA, and others for either massive intelligence failures, or a failure to more fully inform Bush, or both. Additionally, Cheney is not only advising Bush not to hand over any of the intelligence briefings prior to September 11, 2001, he is also refusing to cooperate with the idea of convening an independent commission to investigate those terrible events.

Why? What are they hiding? What is it they don’t want us, the American people, to know?

Now, having said all of the above, consider for a moment the idea that the events of September 11, 2001, were ALLOWED to happen. Think about that concept for a moment.

One of the easiest ways to accomplish an objective is to allow some other event to happen that will set certain events into motion, or to have key security/military units stand down at a critical point in time, or both. Sometimes an objective can be accomplished by leaving a known spy in place and feeding that individual real data to find out where it goes, or false data to see if the opponent changes an operation that will allow you better access to data that you want. The variations are endless.

Think about the billions upon billions of dollars spent every year by U. S. civilian and military intelligence agencies gathering data in this country and overseas. Is it really believable that no one at the top of U. S. intelligence understood the true implications of the data that was being collected in advance of September 11, 2001? If your answer is “No”, then is it really believable that those same intelligence organizations would have failed to brief those in political control?

Once we are willing to at least consider the concept that September 11, 2001 was allowed to happen, then we have to ask why would it be allowed to happen? I think we know that the motive involved the further enrichment of the oil, energy, and defense industries. Major corporations like Enron, Unocal, and the Carlyle Group stood to gain enormous profits over the next fifty years if they could devise the means to gain control of the vast oil reserves of the Caspian Sea area.

But how would such a plan be enacted? Here is a possible seven-step process:

FIRST: Remove really smart and aggressive senior people from positions that may allow them to discover the plan, or failing that, bring them into the plan if no other option exists.

SECOND: Create bureaucratic roadblocks in the path of others that pass important information up the chain.

THIRD: Create cover stories gaining plausible deniability for key figures in the plan.

FOURTH: As the events unfold, orders customarily given under certain circumstances are not issued. Still other orders are given that send units in directions that are planned to be unfruitful. On September 11, 2001, jet interceptors failed to leave the ground for at least 26 minutes...long enough for at least two of the first three airliners to have hit their intended targets.

FIFTH: Have plans in place to create heroes of the victims, and to build public opinion in support of the goals of the plan.

SIXTH: Quickly push legislation through Congress that will protect the gains of the plan, and further the interests of the planners.

SEVENTH: Create an atmosphere of fear among the general populace and offer solutions to protect them at the same time.

Having read the seven points noted above, is the concept of allowing such a terrible event to take place really that far-fetched?

From May 26, 2003

http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/PNAC-Primer.htm

unfortuneately Scott Ritter .....well.... you know

I help pass out the book at the anti-war march in DC in October 2002.

We knew. It wasn't hard to figure out that there were no WMD especially when Blix and the UN repeatedly couldn't find anything but they were ridiculed and the news bubble repeated the ridicule to drive it home. We knew.

His credibility though about WMD's is still solid simply because he was dead right.

According to Cheney, we should have been treated as liberators. We weren't invading Iraq, we were liberating her people, and they love us for it. Don't they?

and looking up at him and saying, "Will, are you kidding me? You are going to need a "safe house" if this gets published."

An excellent book.

their money...

I've been thinking a lot about that book lately, about the protest anniversary this past Friday, and about the wretched anniversary coming up on March 20th.

Ten years.

P.S. The book image you have is the British version with the names reversed.

'Murica:

I have a very high leve of admiration for writers like yourself and politicians like Alan Grayson who are crazy eno...er, I mean ...have the courage to come here and share with us in the first person. I'd really like to see more of that here at DU.

Thank you for giving it a go Will, and all that goes with it .

forever grateful

and questioned about my patriotism in those dark days of 2002, 3, and 4. Living in red hell, it was if I was the only sane voice around. Of course, I (and we) were right on this. Those were some sad. sad days.

Dark, red days.

VERY dark red days. Blood red.

Proud to say I have that book. It will be passed along to one of my children.

Sept 2002....one year after 9/11/2001....America as a whole was screaming for revenge...Al Queda was a shadow that you couldn't attack directly...Iraq was...and George F-ing Bush knew it.

Anybody...Phil Donahue, and many others who questioned the war were summarily dismissed and replaced with appropriate cheerleaders for the war...

Will's book placed him squarely in the fringe and not the conventional wisdom "mainstream" of the day..

but

He was right.

to the war. And wasn't there a news reporter that lost his job because he wouldn't stop talking about the lies coming out of Washington?

To discredit Ritter?

Think we know why now?

That's when I knew CNN was irreparably damaged as a journalistic enterprise.

If one valued one's job and paycheck, one didn't make waves. It still makes me feel sick to my stomach. And DAMN we here tried so hard to warn people! SO HARD!!! And nobody wanted to listen. No one was paying any attention. Your patriotism was questioned immediately if you weren't in lockstep support of the bushies. I used to get mean, angry, menacing looks from pickup truck drivers on the Ventura Freeway because I dared to have bumper stickers in the rear window of my car that read "War is Not the Answer," "Dean for America, and "bush KNEW." Once my car was even keyed. And one of my tires was slashed. And that was the night my daughter borrowed my car. Only then did I take those bumper stickers off because I was afraid for her. Not so much for me, but if something happened to her at the hand of some knuckledragger, I'd never have forgiven myself.

It was such a bad time. I remember arguing with another one of the "karate moms" in the neighborhood, who just rock-solid insisted that cheney had served. I just-as-rock-solidly insisted otherwise. She refused to believe me - she was what you'd regard as a 1%er and she and her husband were CONservative and voted straight GOP, and I think she thought I was some hippie nut (even though she did like my art - and me too, when we weren't talking politics). It was only when a third neighborhood mom stepped in - a not-so-CONservative 1%er - who verified that I was correct, that cheney never served. And the first woman was visibly shaken, and suddenly started stammering "well, I'm being given wrong information. I'm getting wrong information." Referring to her brother-in-law or some other fellow limbaugh disciple who'd reassured her that yes, cheney had served. It reminded me of one of those old cartoons where the robot shorts out and goes "Tilt!" But did it change anything about her attitude? Did it give her a pause - to think and rethink what she'd been led to believe? Naaah. Not a chance. Wasn't moved to start questioning anything else. She was as relentlessly republi-CON as ever. And since I was one of those silly ol' tax-'n'-spend libruls, she certainly wasn't willing to take my word for it. It took a third person stepping in, independently, to set her straight.

BY THE WAAAAAY - keep in mind that we also have not just the willfully thick-headed but those, like I suspect john mccain is, who are too proud to get real for a moment and admit they were wrong. OH DEAR GOD NO! We can't POSSIBLY have that!!!!!! Must NOT be!!!!

NOBODY likes admitting they were wrong. It takes courage to do that. It takes courage to admit you swallowed the bullshit whole and did not consider raising a single question. It takes a lot of self-examination and honesty and very adult behavior to admit you fell for something without even considering ANY opposing views. Nobody wants to admit, or own up to the fact that they've been had. Which is exactly the case here. I suspect there's some manhood thing going on here with a lot of 'em. The whole Who's-the-Alpha-Male thing. This is a struggle I suspect john mccain has had for most of his life. He's the son and grandson of admirals and he was something like fifth from the BOTTOM in his own Annapolis Naval Academy graduating class. He cost the Navy (and us taxpayers) several jet fighters with his sloppy airmanship. And in one case, he damn near took out the whole carrier on which he blew a landing. Seems to me he had the same father complex dubya had - straining under the weight of a type-A high-achiever dad and the fear that li'l junior just didn't have what it took to fit into the old man's shoes and make them his own, and take his "rightful" place as the alpha male of the whole family. And as we've seen and had to suffer through - that makes for some screwy decisions and reckless behavior and costly waste and ill-advised actions and statements and cockiness that goes straight up the ass.

I think we're gonna see an even pricklier john mccain once this documentary airs. It'll just remind quite a few people across the country where he stood on Iraq, and how nobody with a shred of a brain can say that war was anything but a shitty idea and a lie.

I cannot think of a more thorough examination.

the greatest sedition is silence is the other book

Never forget.

Scott Ritter was one of those interviewed in it.

I've been on DU for years and never even knew about this. It is a damn shame this was not more widely circulated. But hell, Richard Clarke and others went before the media, went before CONGRESS and said the same things and nothing changed.

eom

integrity, and might find it worthwhile to ask the dead victims (on both sides) to forgive them, in their heads, if they haven't already, just in case they can hear.

Thanks for writing this book William Pitt; I saw it in an Australian book store years ago.

Was responsible for destroying 95% of Saddam's WMD prior to Saddam kicking them out in the 1990's. Too bad they were able to make hay with Ritter's alleged involvement with a young woman as a way to discredit his message. The lead inspector from Australia backed him up but somewhat timidly as a result.

sex crimes.

Scott Ritter's hubris was to put himself forward when he knew that he had skeletons in his closet that would overwhelm his message. I blame him for not recusing himself from the spotlight. He was an easy damn target, and he had to have known that.

The book itself is pretty good. It deserves a wide audience. I think Maddow must have read it, since she seems to borrow some themes from the book.

Not me. I know better.

Will Pitt, for better or worse, flvegan's got your back baby.

I knew. Every fiber of my being screamed that the propaganda was a lie.

Gods help our country, because we surely need it. We were effed over but good.