their hubris crowds out critical thinking. I don't think they wanted this, but yes, there are merchants of death who will benefit monetarily.

"They'll greet us as liberators (paraphrased)":

How conveeeenient then was September 11, 2001.

("Idealistic," my Aunt Fanny.)

I think we need to make that a HUGE point. ?YOU guys who want it so bad - YOU go over there and get the party started. YOU do it. YOU first. You missed out last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, too (Vietnam for many of you!). By all means, LEAD THE WAY! Suit up and head on over there! That means YOU, bill kristol. That means YOU, dick cheney. That means YOU, charles krauthammer. That means YOU, george will. That means YOU, billo. That means YOU, guy-whose-name-rhymes-with-VANITY. That means YOU, Pox Noisies! That means YOU, all you assholes who got it wrong the first time and are STILL getting it wrong today! YOU! YOU FIRST!!!"

God, I'd give almost anything to be able to go on camera somewhere and say that to their faces, for the record, and ON the record!

Of any battle. Them and their spawn - their sons and their daughters. No deferments. Just grab your shield and spear and go fight like you want the rest of us to fight, and die.

"But we're too important! We need to coordinate this mayhem; we need to talk to the press and we need to spout the lies. Our stockholders need us to show them how we are profitting through these actions. Our children are too busy in their nice colleges and jobs at our friends' companies.

You and your children are only worth the military script with military benefits, post war healthcare, and military burials."

for instance, Senator Leahy in his pre-vote IWR speech, predicts it. Many of us saw something like this coming.

If it's the one he gave the night of the vote, I watched it and he set me up for a tremendous crash. I am very bitter about the casual attitude of Democrats in Congress when Bush/Cheney wanted to go to war.

need to re-read Leahy's words. "The resolution now before the Senate leaves the door open to act alone, even absent an imminent threat." Those that voted for the resolution knew what was in store. To now say they didnt is a lie.

I remember the speeches - no one can use the excuse that they didn't know what they were voting for. They knew.

The willingness to 'forget' that vote is shocking to me. To dismiss the historically tragic results, which were PREDICTED, of the support for the liars is simply STUNNING. Anyone who voted for that war, and that vote WAS for the war despite the weasel language we get to excuse it, should be ashamed to show their faces, let alone run for president.

I supported Obama because of his opposition to that war.

Yes, we knew. And so should they have known, they DID know, it's impossible to think they did not. They voted for it because they miscalculated politically. To vote for war for political reasons is simply shameful.

were lost and up to 5 million Iraqi's lives were ruined. Not to mention the damage it did to our Democracy and economy. There is no excusing their vote to give the Republicans carte blanche authority to wage war.

Which is worse? Republicans that cant wait to kill Iraqi's or Democrats that slap them on the back and say "Go to it with my blessing."

Goering was in the docks facing death. His pronouncements (self-serving dog shit) in the dock should be taken as...self-serving dog shit.

World War II is a complex web. Yes, the Versailles Treaty and the insistent humiliation and punishment of Germany are factors, but that doesn't preclude placing the responsibility of that war smack of Hitler's craven, narrow shoulders.

Your post is disgusting.

I bow to your superior Intellect!
Why Bother.

to bolster your argument?

No bowing necessary.

that I participated in those futile "marches" against the incipient illegal invasion.

That's just it. We have learned but the oligarchy our beloved country has become doesn't care. Profits are everything. Whether it's 12,000 deaths a year for the gun industry or 220,000 a year for big tobacco or a million deaths in Iraq for the warmongers as long as there's a profit it's all good for the rich bastards. Hell ain't big enough for them.

and it makes me very sad. "Diving for dear life. When we could be diving for pearls." That's a line from Elvis Costello's poignant song Shipbuilding. He wrote it when Great Britain was ramping up for the Falklands invasion. I suppose all one could hear there, then, was rally round the flag and that you were unpatriotic if you opposed the invasion. We sure heard a lot of that prior to the Iraq invasion (a war against the wrong country). Most sad to me is that those who seemed to do the biggest cheerleading for that war at the time now seem to not remember or even respect us dissident voices.

Oil contracts.

Fear of terrorism

The attitude that it's "OURS". "We won it fair and square".

Then there's the ever annoying "White Man's Burden" as if the "primitives" over there are too stupid to do anything for themselves.

The last one usually is spouted by someone who once mixed smoking with working on a carb and lost their eyebrows.

Refused to prosecute those responsible for starting it in the first place.

Complain all you want but until people are punished for creating the mess in the first place, they will continue until someone puts a stop to it.

So we might as well kick back, pop some corn and enjoy the show because perpetual war is what we get!

How we were treated by republicans, calling us traitors for even questioning the war or the POTUS during "war time".

Look how the republicans have devolved under POTUS Obama. The hate is frightening and the attacks so much worse.
We should NEVER Forget what republicans can do.

and certainly they are the biggest miscreants, but there's been plenty of dem complicity.

and I said so at the time when so many on DU were cheering on the defeat of Khadafi. So there's blindness here on DU as well.

knew Libya was fubar too.

I remember getting soundly attacked when I said our involvement in Libya, and the fall of Khadafi, would end in disastrous consequences for that country. I spoke as one who had actually been in Libya, and was accused of being a dictator lover. It gives me no pleasure to see my worst predictions coming true.

but some are too terrible to fix.

I'm lookin' at you, Ms Clinton.

that it will take generations to clean up after Bush. Generations made more by the Teabaggers and other internal American enemies.

Thanks for the thread, cali.

not ONE.

and many had the courage and integrity to vote against it.

I always say I hate it when I'm right.

Even if a few of the toe suckers now claim to have lost that chills-up-the-leg feelin'.

Last edited Sat Jun 14, 2014, 09:44 PM - Edit history (1)

the source and it wasn't even that much of a stretch.

He even projected with his fool me once, fooledt bullish*.

The p(ps)os were so readable. It was about the financial potential for their buddies and they have laughed
and I mean laughed, all the way to the bank.

We need to make sure this never happens again.

We need to never stop saying: WE KNEW and WE TOLD YOU SO and challenge others to speak up with what they know.

The Tikkis and others

Other than the Bush admin, is that many members of congress "Knew" also but voted for the IWR anyway for political reasons. I won't name names.

Mega Kudos to Obama for being against it back in the beginning.

NOW she admits she was wrong? Gawd.

"It would destabilize the entire Persian Gulf and Middle East region."

familiarized myself with their agenda, I knew the stated reasons for going to war with Iraq were all total bullshit. The Iraq war was a foregone conclusion once the chimp was installed and 9/11 was just the New Pearl Harbor they needed to get the ball rolling. What we needed at the time was a free and honest press to report on these thugs and their plans. What we got was crickets and a resulting giant clusterfuck. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle -- all colluding war criminals spurred on by a cheerleading propagandizing press and most of the American public played for the easily led fools they are.

Broke his promise to give the investigators time, which was broadcast a day or two before.

I remember desperate hope, followed by shocked despair.

They kicked the invasion in high gear at the time because they knew there was evidence coming forward to contradict the propaganda that was being spewed. In a week or two those demonstrations and questioning by the many would have jeopardized their whole contrived war footing.

Yeah....all I remember is the feeling and that horrible moment, frozen in time.

at the time, but I knew that going into Iraq would be the stupidest damned thing the US could do. I remember hearing about it on TV. All I could do was bury my face in my hands and shake my head a little. I felt a horrible sense of dread. For good reason, obviously.

It's wonderful to know that there are so many others who felt and still feel the same as I do.

You wrote "the military-industrial complex will never give up the reins of foreign policy."

I'd add that the revelations of wholesale spying on the American people by the DIA, NSA, CIA and apparently by all the rest of the nation's intelligence community shows they won't give up the reins of domestic policy, as well.

They knew. And here we are. And thanks for a great post and thread, cali.

we knew the Iraqi government was held together 'somehow' by a dictator from the Bath party.
We knew Powell's show & tell was bogus.
We knew that millions of us protested this idiocy, but the M$M counted only thousands.
We knew we were right.

But the government of the people had been stolen by power brokers that saw a fortune waiting.

We got canned responses from our representatives telling us why they supported this theft.

And here we are a decade later. What has changed? Only the blame.
Facts are facts, but not according to those in charge.

But, I guess they haven't gone too far yet because they're still in charge.

Sometimes I wonder if this is the reason for the 2nd amendment...

but I remember it well and also that no one learned from that warning. Many of us honestly believed that WW2 would be the last war and we would never make more nuclear bombs after Hiroshima. Instead, fear and hate have continued to write our foreign policy and also greed. Think how many children we could have saved or the lives made better with the money we wasted in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
If we bomb Iraq we will be bombing not only people we wanted to help but also the millions of dollars worth of military equipment that WE sold or gave to them.

no one could have known. Just like the Kerry supporters.

Plenty of us knew, but revisionism is more useful to excuse politicians who were too cowardly to stand for what's right.

eom

friend I had gone to high school with at a class reunion and we thought the same thing at once. We're F--ked! At my right wing sister's house which made it worse. She lives in TX, and has yet to wake up! Amazingly we get along very well, but we CAN NOT talk politics or religion. I'm quite Liberal and suppose I'd say an atheist, she's a Fundamentalist Christian! I have 5 sisters, she's the ONLY ONE who went way off the ranch!!

I too feel so sorry for Obama now, even if he was never my 1st choice, but neither was Hillary. Hillary may have learned some lessons, but if I were given a wish for President it would be Sanders/Warren or vice versa!

This country is hardly recognizable to me anymore!!

AND STILL, they're crying out for MORE WAR! But these days there's so little that they do that surprises me. ANYTHING to screw Obama over is their only MANTRA. I heard someone say the other day, I think it was Michael Dyson, that if Obama walked across the Potomac they would shake their heads and say "he can't swim!" And each and every day they seem to do something MORE to prevent Obama from having any success and to keep their JACK BOOTS on the necks of "we the people"! A shame in so many UN-AMERICAN ways!

is when I started looking hard and long at my political beliefs. I did this because I knew the invasion was wrong. It did make me realize that I was really (at the time) center democrat, not a republican. As I have aged, I have become liberal.

eom

they could lie round the clock about everything they intended to do.

Al Jazeera was where you had to go to get the truth about lies, which continued for years and they BOMBED Al Jazeera, killed reporters and/or detained and tortured them.

What we have is a Propaganda Machine now. And it works. They learned that having a free press is a real threat to those who plan to lie to the people so they prepared to take over the media and they succeeded.

But they hadn't calculated on the Internet, back when they were working on the media takeover. So now they are moving to take that over also.

eom

Same crew here foaming at the mouth with loyalty to whatever makes them feel good. Fuck rational thought. They say it would be impractical to have trials against Dumbass...that Obama should stay out of it. FINE, take it up in world court and have him support the outcome!

Not like he is running again.

So sick of a few not caring about accountability and lying about current events. Rewriting history is sad, shouldn't be tolerated on DU.

F*** THEM ALL TO HELL

accountable

I squawked HARD about that fucking bullshit