Why give him any legitimacy whatsoever?

They were also afraid of their political careers.

they misled us once, maybe they can do it again.

There are a lot of people that profit from war.

Ethics and morals aside, it's great for the economy.

Well, it can be, and WW2 war production certainly brought us completely out of the great depression, BUT

Our Military Industrial Complex is getting better at blowing stuff up real good and inventing new and exciting ways to kill people more accurately. Drones mean we don't actually have to destroy the entire village to save it any more.

While our competitors come up with inventions and ideas that serve all of humanity and make a direct positive contribution.

Our MIC only produces stuff of a general economic benefit mostly by accident, when they find out their new weapons of death created some new spin off technology that could also be applied for peaceful purposes. The internet, for example, was created in part for purposes of national security. The original purpose was to keep government running and connected in the event of an American mainland nuclear attack. Satellites that are used for GPS is another MIC creation that eventually produced enough technology to benefit all us little people.

Our world economic rivals beeline direct to beneficial and economically stimulating technology as their primary goal. Occasionally we get lucky and some new heinous killing tech can also be used for peaceful and beneficial applications.

-90% Jimmy

Had the Iraq War been popular, they (including Hillary) would be saying what a genius Bush was.

Any Democrat In Name Only who uses that lame excuse needs to retire. That was Reagan's excuse in IranContra and so weak those like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry make me want to throw up in my own mouth. Every 16 year old knew the drumbeat to war was wrong and only spineless opportunists voted for it. If we nominate Hillary expect a divided party. She is craven and horrific. Anyone trying to convince us to vote for her might as well join the Republican party...Hell, Hillary used to be President of the Young Republicans...it's the last executive position she should hold. Let her eat cake with her family friend, Jeb Bush. Sincerely disgusted.

It seems impossible now. Smirking Chimp was a great resource in those days for McClatchy News reports and so was Scott Ritter for that matter.

of the Smirking Chimp. My sister talked me into coming over to DU. I do remember those days. I've said and been saying since the war in Iraq....if a little ol' Texas Gal like me could figure it out....then they most certainly knew....those that pushed for it, and those who voted for it.

Thank you for honoring Terry. I still miss his Bartcop site. One of the best people, ever.

RIP

He was nice enough to use a few of my emails as content on his site and I will be forever honored by that. Like the great Keith Olbermann, he was a beacon of hope in a sea of GWB desperation.

-90% Jimmy

From another refugee. (I didn't change my name.)



P.S. Frankly, I've got one foot out the door here. (And no, I won't let it hit me in the ass if I go all the way through.)

I've recently rediscovered it again and spending a bit of time there. I know I won't be able to tolerate the "Hillary" wars here when she does the unexpected and runs so I'm dangling a foot out the door too.

- like being misled by TPTB is terribly exceptional to some, it's old hat for most of us. Those of us fighting the fight to bring people closer to our own views. If it takes a long time for some to catch up, so be it. They're worth the time. but for those of us who know better, well that's a different thread.

on edit, i was thinking more on a local level, my mistake

They weighed the options and on balance decided that pandering to the country's baser desires was preferable to making a stand for a moral imperative. Anyone who says else wise is lying.

You are so right it hurts.

...only 6 signed in to read the entire Intelligence Report... most of us would be fired for the same

... but please remember, Bush/Cheney, with the full cooperation of the main stream media, NPR included, lied about WMDs, lied about yellowcake uranium, lied about "imminent threat" and conflated Iraq with 9/11.

The average idiot American bought it and it took more than the usual amount of fortitude to vote against it.

I wish fewer had voted for it but I will cut some slack for those who apologize even while I agree the "misled" story is bullshit.

that their politicians, including their President, were honorable and competent leaders. The average American didn't think for themselves about it. They trusted instead.

..... the average American by a 20 to one margin was against the TARP bailout. When they feel like paying attention they can. They didn't feel like paying attention in this case because a toddler could tell Bush was lying.

In particular the conflation of 911 and Iraq sold the war IMHO. The "average citizen" was basically told in so many words that "we" (govt) "knew" that Saddam was involved but for "classified" reasons we cannot talk about it.

I had a falling out with a neighbor over this very thing. She "knew in her heart" that Saddam was involved in 911. We got into a rather heated exchange and never spoke to each other again.

I think America was angry about 911 and ready to lash out. They don't trust their leaders about anything else, so I'm reluctant to attribute trust as the reason for this lapse.

that much higher percentage of Americans than usual expressed that they trusted the government - after the most spectacular failure of the government most of us had ever seen (allowing 9/11 to happen).

I think in general, people wanted to believe what they were being told, so they did.

.. Americans wanted revenge. They weren't sure Iraq was the right target, and didn't really care.

so long as they have no political ambitions.

Thank you for speaking the truth! Anyone with a whiff of intellect could see we were being lied to. Any politician who bought into this deception is either too stupid to serve, or is complicit.

Anyone who says else wise is lying.
Anyone who says else wise is lying.
Anyone who says else wise is lying.
Anyone who says else wise is lying.

Anyone. EVERYone. LYING!!!!

A truly obscene political calculus.

Very few took the time to read the classified NIE, which painted a far different picture. Those that did, voted NO. Those who didn't read the NIE, it can only be concluded they weren't intetested in making an informed decision on the most important vote of their career, they merely thought voting yes would improve their poll numbers.

Well, we lose.

Especially about the "...knuckleheads on DU..." part of it.

Although not on DU at that time, the same applies. If I could figure out it was bullshit from the beginning, people in power with their resources, should have been able to figure it out too.

I don't think they were misled. I think they were either bought off by the profits or spineless.

Last edited Thu Jun 19, 2014, 11:37 AM - Edit history (1)

they did it for political expediency, not caring what rights were taken away and how many thousands lost their lives. Anyone who would do that not only has no soul but ABSOLUTELY does NOT deserve to be anywhere near the White House.

misled.

but because it didn't look right so I changed it. Now corrected.

I used to think, hey, if a old crabby nurse with a computer could research enough to determine there were no WMD's, why couldn't people who are paid to know, KNOW? I never bought that "we were misled" BS.

Last edited Wed Jun 18, 2014, 10:20 PM - Edit history (1)

see; Office of Special Plans and The White House Iraq Group whose job it was
was to make the intel fit into reasons to go to war in Iraq.

Rachel Maddow's Hubris and Why We Did It puts it all out there for the world to see

My jaw literally dropped as I heard George Bush mention Iraq for the first time in Aug. 2002.

Then when I listened to Colin Powell's UN nonsense, I literally laughed out loud: "That's it? That's all you've got?"

I thought everyone would be mocking him the next day for such weak circumstantial nonsense.

I was shocked the next day to hear what supposedly intelligent people were saying.

One of the most disgusting corrupt periods of American history.

I listened to Powell's presentation and thought it was pure bullshit.

I also believed that he would be ridiculed in the media.

Then the pundits came on and declared the Powell's speech was "devastating."

I remember staring at the TV in amazement.

That "evidence" would have been thrown out of court by an uncorrupt judge.

I wasn't on DU at first either. Truth be told, I was a bit hawkish (and centrist, not left) and had been in argument with left wing friends online about Afghanistan. A few of them made the prediction that GWB would use 9/11 as an excuse to go into Iraq. I thought they were overreacting. My view about 9/11 and Afghanistan at the time was, "what else are you going to do? You can't do nothing." Being Canadian, I knew about the camps there, and figured they were going after OBL. I knew no hijackers had been from Iraq, so wasn't too concerned about it. Surely they wouldn't be that dumb/bold to use 9/11 as an excuse for THAT, and surely Americans weren't dumb enough to buy it.

Anyhow...the very SECOND I heard the word Iraq leave GWB's mouth, it was like the entire curtain had been pulled down over my entire worldview. My first thought was "THAT FUCKER!" and I KNEW. I knew my left wing friends had been right about everything (from that moment on, I was pretty hard left). So, I began to research like crazy. As aforementioned, being Canadian, I knew a lot more than most Americans because, well, we had real news. So I started with a leg up and then found Bartcop which led me to DU.

I had the same reaction to Powell. By then I was lurking at Bartcop and DU and wiser people tore his address apart. I was shocked, as you were, that people were buying the BS. That's when I realized my father...who grew up 15 min from the US border during Vietnam and had many American friends...was right about the US war machine.

that most of us already knew about, so, not so much. The fact is, our representatives chose to disregard millions of emails, phone calls and snail mails, not to mention protest after protest from their constituents in favor of trusting in the neocons who had been trying to drum war up all throughout President Clinton's (thankfully, he called bullshit) term since Gulf War I. I don't think I'll ever understand why they did that. But instead of putting the blame on the Democrats, I'm going to blame the Republicans for pushing this war in the first place. They are accountable, too. We liberals like to blame the Democrats believing they should have known better, but why in the hell do we seem to let the conservatives off the hook? They are no less human, and were given no less of a conscience. Just because we know they are prone to toss that conscience aside for money at every given opportunity should in no way leave them less culpable then Democrats.

Because the MIC told them to do it. Big oil was in jeopardy of losing control of the oil flow. Barbara Boxer voted no on Iraq. She said from the beginning there was NO intel that Iraq had WMD. On the other hand
Diane Feinstein voted yes, she is married to someone who financially benefited greatly from the war.
Same old thing, follow the money. EVERYTHING is about money to these people.

Now I can relax.

knew we were being lied to from the beginning. This feinting of innocence is disingenuous.

They've all turned into cooing doves..about Iraq in 2003...if not about Iraq 2014 and the ongoing killing in our other wars to "protect our vital national interests".

"Mistakes were made", etc., etc., etc.,--- BARF!

And now that I recognize it, I won't be able to NOT notice it. ugh.

See what I did there?

fooled by Bush makes you an even bigger dumbass.

Last edited Thu Jun 19, 2014, 06:01 PM - Edit history (1)

So, either they were gullible and naive enough to be conned by a clueless imbecile fronting for PNAC fascist scum, AGAIN and are admitting that they totally got beat by a transparently malicious fool, or they voted for this war for what are unquestionably despicable, anti-democratic reasons.

I don't know of one single leftist Democrat, not one, who didn't know that Bush was lyin' like a snake in our beds the moment Bush opened his mouth about Iraq. And the archives of Democratic Underground are full of our posts as proof of this.

This is what all we leftist Democrats knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt:

Yeah, out leaders lied, and our representatives completely ignored the will of their constituents, because that's what politicians do.

But it really was a turning point for the media; they became a propaganda machine. While anyone with two brain cells and a modem knew invading Iraq was a dumb idea, the very same people who should have been shouting Bullshit! from the rooftops turned into cheerleaders for war.

Yeah "they" lied us into war, but it was the media who let it happen.

Millions of people knew it was BS. Hopefully next time someone will listen?

Implying people were lazy is ridiculous!

The only textbooks were written by Cheney?

Then how exactly did so many people know it was bullshit?

...even those who "knew" it wasn't true were very concerned as our troops approached Baghdad, afraid they would be attacked with WMD.

The Israelis suspected that Iraq had WMD, every citizen has a gas mask.

It's easy 10-12 years after the fact for people to now say they "knew" it wasn't true.

Good work

As the saying goes, GFYS!

.... that we would be in a war before we knew it. Colin Powell was going around the world rattling the sabers as soon as GWB took office. Then came 9/11 and all the rest. I've lived a long time on this earth, but those eight years were the worst eight years of my life. I knew it was all a lie, especially when Collin shook that little vial of baking soda in front of the camera during his speech at the UN. All I could think was "shame on you Colin, shame on you."

the inspectors didn't know and trusted the administration to have the country's best interests at heart.

They call it a "con job" because "con" is short for "confidence". The Bush admin conned a good number of lawmakers who fucked up by trusting them. They built these marks up to have a certain level of confidence in the bullshit they spewed.

I will never, ever forget Senator Graham going on to "Meet the Press" literally begging the Senate Intelligence Committee to read the National Intelligence Estimate. Senators on that committee included, I believe, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, among others. John McCain, too. Robert Byrd, Jr., too, who we should never forget was moved to tears on the Senate floor because the Senate voted to go to war without even having debate on the issue to invade Iraq.

Graham was so demoralized. So exasperated. So defeated. So furious that he decided not to run for reelection that following year. Instead, he decided he had had enough. His Senate colleagues voted to invade an unarmed nation that had not attacked us, was not responsible for the atrocities that had occurred the morning of September 11, 2001, and as the NIE evidence had demonstrated, did not possess weapons of mass destruction. And yet because of politics and some warped neoconservative hyper-ideological extreme corporatist movement, this country was going to war and sending tens of thousands of men and women into harms way to be killed or maimed with no exit strategy. How do these people look themselves into the mirror every morning and night? How do they fix their mouths to pray? How can Hillary Clinton ever claim that her faith guides her life when it was really politics and some neocon ideology that led her to that decision, even when her dear friend, Bob Graham, pleaded with her to read the NIE? How could she?

A few years later, I was on my way to Florida on a work-related trip via Reagan-National airport and who should I run into but former Senator Graham who was on my flight. He looked great. Very refreshed. I was with my then-fiance and we were being a little affectionate with our good-bye hugs and kisses. He was watching us and commented that he "loves to see people in love". Not recognizing him at first, I replied, "thank you," a bit chagrined. Then I realized who he was: "Oh, Senator Graham! Thank you for everything you did! And your work on the NIE!" Him, something like: "You know 'bout that?" Me, something like: "Oh, yes! More Americans know more than you think. Our voices were drowned out, but we know and we appreciate everything you and those who stood by you did. Just wanted you to know." Him, something like: "Oh, my! Thank you so much. That took so much out of me. I left office over that issue. Never should we send our troops into harms way. Never should we do that."

I will never forget that encounter as long as I live. I will never forget what the war cabal did to this country. And I will forever be ashamed of the fact that we never held the war criminals accountable for what they did to this country, to the whole world, to the good people of Iraq who did nothing wrong and all those innocent soldiers and civilians who lost their lives for no noble cause...to any innocent human being who was harmed--soldier and civilian, man, woman and child who was harmed or lost their lives over this travesty.

So many lie when they said they were misled or that the intelligence was flawed. BULLSHIT!!

Bob Graham, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, so many others BEGGED you to read the fucking National Intelligence Estimate. BEGGED YOU to debate the issue! You refused! You demonized Scott Ritter. Demonized Joe Wilson and his wife. Demonized Hans Blix. Anyone who disproved what you wanted to believed...that Hussein had nothing to do with 911, was not associated with bin Laden, and had no weapons of mass destruction, was destroyed.

Shameful liars. All of them!

Though he failed, he is a hero in my eyes. The man took a principled stand, and did everything in his power to prevent the country from making a grievous mistake. And he was right. There's very few of his kind in Washington.

edit to add: Sen Graham has also stated that there is devastating information in the redacted portions of the 9/11 report.

Thanks for relating it.

"How could she?" indeed.

Good lord YES!

that decided morality was more important than getting re-elected

THANX for posting & reminding us, especially those who would prefer to ignore the truth.

There is one part to the Constitution that many here on DU are witness to and understand the political/ business/ military crime that has been perpetrated by the Bush Cheney GOP profiteering crime syndicate.

That simple phrase to the definition of self-evident; “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That said being the most liberal idea.

Media as key players performed so much of the unhappiness the evil, criminal, and offensive news lies over and over.

Many good Americans can see what evil is happening in our political upper circle of political persons. The French and Italians during the Renaissance realized an upper circle of rich and powerful socialist then called aristocrats, monarchies, today are called the one percent.

America does not have a Republican party, or maybe not even a Democratic party.

But, America has a GOP profiteering crime syndicate guilty of committing, a hoax, thought to be too big to fail. American political persons with a plot, under the cover of national security secrets sack the treasury all the while fighting a very cleaver religious based war.

The harsh reality is even grade school and high school children question the reason to invade a country that has a Constitution based on the Quran.

American young children know laws by religion do appear totally against the values of America’s Constitutional basic values of separation of church and state.

Then the media adds confusion to blame the young make us all wonder why the young take up weapons and illustrate the anger they perceive to murder on mass instead of praying in mass.

That is not being misguided, the contrast is a failed moral authority in America’s leadership and media to not recognize that basic belief in Democracy blinded by profiteering deceit, guile, hypocrisy, duplicity, fraud, trickery in media games deliberate to practices designed to fool the public.

This is a country under an aircap, in a super sensitive region carefully balanced over like seventy years on a bipartisan and multinational effort that has ever been precarious, at best.

Basic history and common sense should result in serious brake tapping.

Misled is a lie or an admission of profound stupidity or complete disregard for their duty.

I expect they did not want to appear bad.

let us down, let down thousands of our troops, let down half million dead innocent Iraqi's, should rot in hell.

others think it is our responsibility to cheer them on.

Those that say they were mislead are flat-out lying.

it could be proved that they were functional morons or actually brain damaged. Otherwise the proper response would be to admit complicity, true motives, incompetence- and resign from public life as a starter. Maybe an honorable encounter with a pistol in a private chamber.

This shameful charade parade was also predicted because obvious. Obvious because ALL the leadership was failed to begin with, zero competence even to achieve malicious deliberate goals.

Only they think they have to bother to "move on" with their careers to produce similar results. Now that they(the selected to be reelected) "have learned the hard way" instead of doing the right thing in the first place. The only people who have learned the hard way are the people, the soldiers and the innumerable victims of a grotesque foreign policy- and we are allowed no voice at all, not really even the pitiful squeak "now don't you do that again!".

We even have a larger and more criminally insane bunch in the rotten barrel who are even blinder and more willing to create more deliberate crimes against humanity.

This is AFTER claiming for years that those AUMFs were overly broad and obtained under false pretenses. Lied to or not she has now fully embraced them.

That pisses me off more than the neocon chickenhawks who got us into this clusterfuck in the first place & are still defending themselves. At least they were honest enough to admit what they intended to do. It was still evil and they all deserve to be rotting in Leavenworth right now, but at least they aren't trying to worm their way out of their support with their lame ass "I was misled" bullshit. Hell, I am an Ojibwe woman in my 50's with no special access to anything, yet I saw what this would turn out to be from day 1.

Actually, I KNEW that George W. Bush would screw everything up from the moment I saw him standing atop the World Trade Center debris pile with that stupid bullhorn.

They did exactly what they wanted to do, for reasons of their own - mostly relating to money.

If I thought I saw a bear in someone's house - and rather than taking the appropriate action, burned it down to stop the bear from breaking anything, or eating all their food... and then discovered that the bear was actually a stuffed bunny rabbit... and then said, "Sorry! I was mislead!"

You know, I think I'd probably still go to prison for a good while. What we need is accountability here. Every politician who voted in favor of the Iraq war - without doing their homework, should not only be ashamed, but should face charges for criminal negligence. How many people died because a bunch of politicians were "mislead"?

or __________ you fill in that blank

It's possible to imagine a necessary war that we would oppose - for example if DU had been around during WW2 I'm not entirely sure we would have supported it.

Bryant

But they were also up against the might of the entire TV, radio and print media. The Right® controls the media in this country. Most politicians weighed their choices and voted accordingly.

Iraq PM: Immunity issue scuttled US troop deal

BAGHDAD — Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that U.S. troops are leaving Iraq after nearly nine years of war because Baghdad rejected American demands that any U.S. military forces to stay would have to be shielded from prosecution or lawsuits.

The comments by Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, made clear that it was Iraq who refused to let the U.S. military remain under the Americans' terms.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44998833/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/iraq-pm-immunity-issue-scuttled-us-troop-deal/

I am still getting used to this place, there can be 10 threads on the same topic or headline, but I have been seeing this conversation a lot lately.

The only prominent, in the news politician who is saying she was mislead or wrong or whatever is Hillary, so is that the point of all these?

To go after her?

When I saw this today I researched how many voted against that war and it was way more than I remembered, but so what!

You wont find a bigger opponent to that war in me, given the crap our family had to go thru while our son (my step son) was over there, wont go into it now but it was BULLSHIT...

And I have a hard time believing someone like Hillary didnt know pretty well that the WMD stuff was likely bullshit or what WMD could exist was not the threat it was being played out to be.

And I am reading today

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/18/hillary-clinton-pushed-obama-to-keep-troops-in-iraq.html

“Hillary Clinton was a lion for keeping troops there,” James Jeffrey, who was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq in 2011, told The Daily Beast in an interview. “She was a strong advocate for keeping troops there past 2011,” when American forces eventually withdrew.

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If I, as an average DU reader, had access to enough good journalism that I knew the war justification was bullshit, then our fucking representatives in Congress should have known too.

I think they got their political calculations wrong the same way I got it wrong. I thought this would be another adventure like the first Iraq invasion back in the early 90's. In and out real quick with a hell of a lot less loss of American Servicemen. I think we lost 300 soldiers in that one? And we came and went in less than a year? (It's relative. 300 dead sucks, but 4,500 plus 1,000 to 2,000 in Afghanistan is a hell of a lot worse. And what of the thousand or so contractors that also made the ultimate sacrifice? They are lost to history. In much the same way as the people that died stateside in our factories making war materials for WW2.)

I think the cynical and self serving politicians that decided it was politically expedient to do the cowardly thing and support the war because of overwhelming support of the propagandized public still reeling from the attacks of 9-11, did not realize the magnitude of incompetence and corruption that was the branding of this second US-Iraq conflict. I bet they all thought it woulda been in and out real quick like the first one. (apologies for the run on sentence)

I try to make my Congressman John Larson's town halls. The last one I went to, perhaps 6 months ago in the Bristol Connecticut town hall, I told him that the GWB White house was full of traitors that committed war crimes and should be tried for treason. I get amped up when I do that, cuz I'm pretty passionate about that point, and his answer, as near as I can recall, was that they were sincere in their efforts and just got real bad intelligence. Well, shucks, anybody can get it wrong.

I found that answer unacceptable, and I am almost giddy the collapse of the country we couldn't fix after over a decade, is bringing to the forefront the question of why the fuck did we go in the first place.

Lastly, the first anti-war protest I ever attended in my life was on the Washington Mall in January 2003*. Remember? Of course not. Our American MSM had a full blown news blackout on all the anti war protests taking place all over the world, especially throughout Europe. The meme I took from that is that this time period produced the largest gathering of protest in the history of humanity. Who cares if most American don't even know that.

-90% Jimmy

*and I was draft age in 1972 and I didn't participate in any war protests, in spite of my life being on the line. If Nixon had not abolished the draft and I had to serve, I would not have survived, physically and emotionally. I'm a crappy lover and my fighting is even worse.

PS - my FB post of yesterday - It's perversely delightful to watch these vampires in hindsight. Because we now know unequivocally that they were lying through their teeth and they knew they were lying when they were catapulting their propaganda.

Here's two video's from the "architects" of the 2003 Invasion. It's very important to note there is no opinion or analysis or talking heads. It is the GWB cabinet in their own words. And the written commentary is silent, so this is pretty doggone objective. Utterly devoid of sinister lefty spin, except for the unspoken and brief written commentary.

The biggest benefit of the invasion for me is I learned a new word; "mendacity".

Many couldn't see the truth for all the dollar signs dancing before their eyes.

They weren't mislead (that's a cover their ass story) and more research wouldn't have helped. They did a political calculus and decided it was more expedient choice to go to this war. It was cynical to the core.

HRC was playing the percentages as she is currently doing now. You can carp about Obama not being forceful, however, this comes from an actual belief system.
I fear Hillary, like Bill, lacks one.

I remember several articles from CIA sources that explicitly stated that the yellow cake story was fake. And yet those politicians will act like there were no sources other than the lies.