On Iraq, the Hawks Were Wrong About Everything
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/iraq-hawks-were-wrong-about-everything_b_2686308.html?utm_hp_ref=ukIn Glasgow, a sombre yet defiant prime minister delivered a speech to Labour Party activists. Responding to the march in London, Tony Blair declaimed: "The moral case against war has a moral answer: it is the moral case for removing Saddam." He continued, "It is not the reason we act. That must be according to the United Nations mandate on weapons of mass destruction. But it is the reason, frankly, why if we do have to act, we should do so with a clear conscience." Whether or not Blair's conscience remains "clear" is, as he once pointed out, between him and God. But a decade on from the debate about dodgy dossiers, WMDs, 45-minute warnings and various clauses and subclauses of UN Resolution 1441, those of us who marched against the war stand vindicated. We were right; the hawks were wrong.
It isn't the size of our demonstration that those of us against the war should be proud of, it is our judgement. Our arguments and predictions turned out to be correct and those of our belligerent opponents were discredited. Remember the rhetoric? There was "no doubt" that the invaders would "find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction" (Blair) as well as evidence of how Iraq had "provided training in these weapons [of mass destruction] to al-Qaeda" (Colin Powell); the foreign troops would be "greeted as liberators" (Dick Cheney); "the establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East" would be "a watershed event in the global democratic revolution" (George W Bush).
It was a farrago of lies and half-truths, of delusion and doublethink. Aside from the viewers of Fox News, most people are now aware that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no ties between secular Saddam and Islamist Osama. The fall of the Ba'athist dictatorship failed to usher in a democratic or human-rights revolution. Every argument advanced by the hawks proved to be utterly false.
John2
(2,730 posts)of those reasons for invading Iraq, but there was also one other reason the Bush Administration pushed on Public Opinion. They claimed that invading Iraq would pay for itself when the issue of the budget came up. The new government of Iraq has not repayed the American Public at all but the top percent profited. They left us stuck with the Bill. We had to rebuild this country, which included building up their military. We are doing the same in every country we invade for the sake of our National Security. That is the slippery slope they have used. If every country that we have supposedly liberated repayed us, our Debt would be paid. It has only bought profits to a few at the top though. We should be getting cheap oil from Iraq. The same for Saudia Arabia and Kuwait. Their citizens have gotten very wealthy.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)they just needed to say whatever they thought would help sell the invasion to the public...