No wonder Europeans distrust the US so thoroughly.

I can't believe we just slipped into fascism. The bad guys appealed to the worst traits of Americans and surprise, they now rule us like monarchs on cocaine.

Blood and bodies and families exploding in their wake.

The Ignorance. The Horror. The Cruelty.

OMG

No one is making this political re Hillary...

your strawman meme?

k

barely a notice.

Bush I didn't go all the way and overthrow Iraq and go to Baghdad. He said what bad things would happen and then they did when he had us go in under Bush II.

Kicked to the curb of irrelevancy, even if they are a minority.

... know the differnce between Sunni and Shia Muslims and now the world is paying
the price.

willfully ignorant to be in such a position of power. But that didn't matter to the "good ol' boys" who thought they had an invitation to sit at the bar having a beer with the next president, cowboy gov. w.

..... how we would control the Iraqi people after the invasion and w came up with the great
idea of getting Indian troops to help to police the country and somebody had to tell President
"w the idiot" that Hindus w/guns telling Muslims what to do isn't the best of ideas. (ever see
the movie Gandi?)

Bush for being an idiot. Cheney and the rest of the Bush crime family for masterminding Iraq and Afghanistan. The American people for being gullible. The corrupt Republican officials in Florida who rigged the election. The Supreme Court for stopping the vote count and handing the Presidency to the Neo-cons. The politicians who voted to give them the authority to launch an ill-advised war based on lies. The media for cheerleading that war.

To quote a Presidential candidate, "It takes a village."

President. Bush was just the front man, the affable boob stupid Americans wanted to have a beer with. Hell, Cheney and the PNACers had been planning this clusterfuck for years. They just needed all the pieces to fall into place. Once they had their "new Pearl Harbor," it was only a matter of time.

said no Republican ever.

Just saying....

I heard she held Dubya and Chaney at gun point and made them start the Iraq War.

Most of congress except for a few that knew better.

I think Bernie was one of those few.

They didn't find WMD's, so it didn't authorize him to go to war.

When our cowardly Congress en masse abdicated its authority to rein in the President re: acts of war.

Brave Representative Sanders stepped right up and gave a big thumbs-up to kickstarting the war on terror, even though it was obvious at the time that it would turn into a shit-show.

What's that? He didn't vote to invade Iraq? Big deal. By that time he'd already helped to render Congress irrelevant and give the administration all of the tools that it needed to terrify the public into believing that the US was in imminent danger of attack.

Frankly I'm disgusted that anyone in Congress voted to approve the invasion of Iraq, but I'm only slightly less disgusted by the cowardice on display 9/14/2001.

with Al Qaeda, even though everyone else pushing it had already decided that wouldn't wash - they tried very, very hard to find a connection and couldn't.

It's a matter of Congressional record, in fact.

And in any case I'm not sure that it's relevant. Votes of record speak louder than non-binding statements.

investigated it and found it false. Why would she repeat it publicly in her support for the invasion of Iraq? You don't need to answer, she repeated the false claim that the Libyan gov't was using rape as a weapon of war after a U.S. investigation and HRW declared it false. Like the whole lying fiasco.

If it was before, then why on Earth did they vote for it?
If it was after, then why on Earth didn't they investigate before?

Either way, it's a grotesque failure of responsibility. Clinton is to be faulted, as is everyone else who voted for it in 2002 or laid the foundation for it in 2001.

to get that connection. It was before the vote.

as well as everyone who laid the groundwork for it in 2001.

You're choosing to be mad at Clinton now that it's convenient, but whatever her statements on the subject, these are less important than her vote.

Also, as noted elsewhere in the thread, she voted to authorize if WMD were discovered. She did not vote to authorize a wholesale elective invasion. That's on Bush/Cheney and on the Congress' failure to rein them in.

get the public to believe that already.

how inflammatory it was after 9/11 - and that it had already been abandoned as one of the excuses, showed complete lack of concern for millions of people she and everyone else knew were going to suffer horribly for this decision. And yes, it's a very strong complaint. Much of the whole world has paid in one way or another. There's a big difference between a 'mistake' and purposefully trying to convince people using a lie.

Libya, Honduras, Haiti, Syria - so many 'mistakes'.

While we're at it, if you're going to accuse her of lying, then it's on you to demonstrate that she was lying, rather than simply being incorrect. It would be helpful if you could provide links and/or documentation of her "ugly and dangerous" campaign of lies, in fact.

And I still don't believe that no one else defended their vote after the fact. Did they all run out of the chamber and start preaching The Good News that they were mistaken?

Did they all miraculously have a change of heart? Then they should all have retired for being disastrously unqualified for office, given their terrible decision-making abilities. Why the hell didn't they do anything about it after their votes were cast?

She and the rest of them lied - they pushed it, and millions are paying for it.

Think what you like.

If they're not, and if you're referring to links that are somehow plain to see but too much work for you to provide, then you forfeit all credibility. If you can't be bothered to support your claim, it's silly of you to expect others to do it.

Liars who push for war knowing their 'excuses' were all just rank bullshit from the start - and some who CHOOSE to do it all over again to another sovereign nation using - again - LIES imo do not care for anyone but the MIC, weapons manufacturers and the profits gained by getting into countries they had long been denied access to. Children fishing water out of rivers with corpses floating by, babies being born grossly deformed d/t ungodly chemical weapons - defend it and the lies all you like. I find it absolutely sickening.

That's intellectually dishonest, at least. It's not my job to support your claims for you.

Your passionate grandstanding make it clear that you want everyone to know how deeply you feel about this, and that's lovely. You and your cause would be better served if you aimed some of that anger at the correct target, rather than arbitrarily declaring that Clinton is chiefly and solely to blame among Democrats.

Just something else I learned about this whole stinking fiasco. And I never once said 'Clinton is chiefly and solely to blame' - I said she was the only one to make that claim - how 'intellectually dishonest' of you.

And you have further claimed that her lies led to the suffering of millions. Were your statements true or untrue? If there's intellectual dishonesty here, it's not coming from me.

Also, I don't care if it was posted here many times. You are making the current claim, and you are requiring your readers to do your research for you. That's intellectually dishonest.

You don't give a shit about all those millions suffering - too bad. LIES to devastate and destroy whole nations are 'intellectually dishonest'. Keep defending it. While small children wash up on beaches. How sad.

That's disappointing, coming from you.

There is nothing more to be gained from this interaction.

...and that's a problem.

was about enforcing the UN resolutions with regard to WMD's.

Bush disregarded the language of the resolution and went to war without finding WMD's. He could safely do that because he then had a Rethug Congress that would give him a blank check for war.

Everybody knew he was going to use that resolution to go to war regardless of what was found. Everybody.

Maybe we shouldn't nominate any of those dumb shortsighted ones this year?

against WMD's. But WMD's were never found, so Bush was not legally authorized by that resolution to go to war. OTOH, the Rethug Congress at that point had no interest in stopping him.

Where was the outcry afterwards? I mean, once Bush actually launched that invasion? Was Hillary Clinton speaking out against it and demanding something be done? How many democrats, who voted in favor of the IWR actually came out afterwards and said... "There were no WMD! This was a crime! We were lied to! We need to impeach this asshole!" Worse than impeached, he should have been accused of any number of crimes. On the contrary though, Clinton's support did not vanish, nor did democratic votes for funding.

Why did she continue to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq after the invasion? After it was clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction? Legal authorization notwithstanding, there's no way they didn't at least suspect we would get exactly what we did. Maybe they thought weapons of mass destruction would be found afterwards - but a lot of people, weapons inspectors among them... were already telling us that there was no smoking gun.

Was Clinton so naive that she didn't see it coming? Were any of the others? We watched the rhetoric and the lies and the buildup towards the invasion long before it happened. A whole lot of us knew what was coming if we didn't find a way to stop it. It's a shame that so many of our elected officials did not side with the American people, the people they were elected to represent.

It goes well beyond that though. Did you know that the sanctions prior to the invasion denied the Iraqis even many basic medical supplies? There were injuries and illnesses that could not be effectively treated because it was believe that various supplies could, possibly, be used to make weapons. There were thousands and thousands of children already being born deformed, there were thousands of people already dead, without access to basic necessities. The ongoing bombings... these people, this Country... they were already on their knees. In regards to economy, military - and everything else - they did not have the power, the funding, or even the will to take on the USA if they wanted to - and they didn't want to.

We invaded a Country and slaughtered a people that didn't want to fight to begin with. All of the attempts at justification after the fact are bizarre. Yes, NOW there are Al Qaeda in Iraq, NOW we have ISIS and various other terrorist groups that have grown in numbers, in funding, in overall strength. We created them with bombs, with sanctions, we created them by slaughtering people and starving them and poisoning the air in their Country. We inspired the births of thousands of malformed children, thousands of dead children, parents, and people who had nothing at all to do with any of it.

I'm sorry, but Clinton was wrong. Kerry was wrong. Bush and Cheney were wrong. Those who supported this war, either through the IWR or afterwards... were wrong. They are not the ones who had to pay for it though. Thousands of our soldiers did, thousands of our families - and thousands in Iraq and elsewhere paid and are still paying the price for the lack of accountability, integrity and forethought so common in American politicians.

There is no way to spin this that makes Clinton innocent.

of government at the time Bush went to war.

There wasn't one, that's my point. Not just democrats, either, but republicans should have been making the same calls and demands. We've come to a pretty sad place in this Country when our leaders cannot even be held accountable for lies that were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, for war crimes, for deliberate manipulation. People here at DU were basically saying, over and over again... what our elected officials should have been saying.

An outcry would have at least shown the American public that there was some level of integrity and accountability within our government. What was demonstrated, instead, was just the opposite. That power and money are both the end and the means, that, when someone is in such a mighty position, they are above the law and above answering to the people who put them there. Some times it's not just about winning - it's about actually making the attempt, making the effort. That didn't happen - and it has set a dangerous precedent for the years and politicians to come.

People will often do (and do again) what they can get away with. The Bush administration and those who supported them got away with something which it should not have been possible to get away with. If they did it, so can (and likely will) future politicians.

Halliburton and others. They were definitely not going to do it for minimum wage.

Several of whom are on their board of directors.

these war criminals are not in prison

Thank you SCOTUS for what you have wrought.

Voting for the candidate who didn't vote for the Iraq War? Who knew it was all a farce? Millions of people around the world knew it was...

Cities Jammed Worldwide in Protest to War in Iraq

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/15/sprj.irq.protests.main/

Protests against the Iraq War

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

Viewpoint: Why Was the Biggest Protest in World History Ignored?

http://world.time.com/2013/02/15/viewpoint-why-was-the-biggest-protest-in-world-history-ignored/

----------------
I remember. I remember a DU that understood that as well. It is and will forever be our country's great shame.

Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/

It's like, "Oh look! I blew shit up! Put me in charge of your government!"

we have engaged in since "w" left office fit into the picture?

They want to inflame Islamophobic sentiment in order to make more radicals.

Our Right Wing wants the exact same thing.

...how about we at least lobby the hell out of her, and extract some meaningful assurances that it won't happen again?

sea of money, so we can't get to them.

and Bush II created ISIS.

Tell me again which is the "Party that keeps us safe"?

Democrats better start to get media savvy in our new Reality TV Political World.

Get on TV or Twitter and call St. Ronnie Ray-Gun a "bastard terrorist creating loser"...call Bush the "ISIS Creating 'Beheader-in-Chief".

Not only will you tie these terrorist bastards back to who they belong to, but if we've learned anything, the more crass you do it, the more media coverage you will get.

it started back during WWI

which would be much worse than Iraq, but it's on the PNAC list, so she'll do anything to make that happen. http://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-clinton-if-im-president-we-will-attack-iran/5460484

It didn't take a brain surgeon to see through the bogus rationale for this stupid war. Obviously Hillary and too many others either got bamboozled or were afraid to vote no.

So many dead. So many maimed physically and/or mentally. Multiple trillions in cost, much of that in the hands of Halliburton, Blackwater, etc. Plus it unleashed ISIS and other terrorist groups.

I get angry just thinking about all this.