Two Thousand Six Hundred & Ninety-Three to Zero

So, he lied the nation into war because his father didn't get Saddam or Saddam tried to kill his father?

I'm not trying to be an ass, seriously. I'm just trying to understand the arguments.

And it's already expensive. We'll be there for a while, so get out your compounding calculator.

 

3 bags full, I don't think it's a reach to think that GWB thought (after hearing nothing but sweet whispers from the neocons) he'd blow into Iraq as John Fuckin' Wayne, conquer the masses, and start spreading his version of Christian Democracy all across the mideast. You guys don't remember all the religious talk and spreading of democracy? I sure do. He needed a reason to go there and the combination of 9/11 and WMD was enough (Cheney and the crew talked about this terrorist and that terrorist meeting in Iraq).

I don't think big oil/cronies are the reasons he went there. He thought he was sent from a higher power to do god's work.

 

I don't think it's that simple, honestly.

I think there was a part of him that wanted to avenge Saddam for his father. I think there was a part of him that knew that everyone that helped him get to this position -- a.k.a. his oil cronies -- would benefit if we "controlled" the oil flow in Iraq.

I think there was a huge, huge part of him that truly believes that we are in a fundamentalist Our-God-vs.-Their-God, Good-vs.-Evil, Freedom-vs.-Fascism, Apocolypse Battle that we have no choice but to fight to the death.

Frankly, I don't think he thinks of these things in very complex ways. I think the world is very black-and-white to him. ... The problem is, these things *are* very complex. These things *aren't* very black-and-white.

Doesn't make him a bad guy. As a person, I don't have much problem with him. ... But there's no way he should be leading our country. He's simply not qualified for the position.

 

I'm pretty much in agreement. He may have done it as much to show Poppy that he was more like Mike or Sonny rather than Fredo, than to avenge his father's political calculus after the Schwartzkopf surrender.
Defintely did it because of the neocon rarionales and also did it to show the US wasn't as impotent as 9-11 made us seem.

Oil was certainly a consideration as it was the first area to be secured following the invasion and was the only part of the Iraqi infrastructure to have pre war plans for post war operations.

 

It's more complicated than that, Three_Bags.

But, suffice it to say, Bush surrounded himself with folks of a groupthink mindset who wanted to go to war with Iraq during nearly the whole of Clinton's presidency. Those folks talked him into using the opportunity presented by 9/11 -- and yes, they thought of it as an opportunity -- to "begin" the war on terror with Iraq. Then they went about fluffing up intelligence in order to present the case to the American people that Iraq was the logical next step after Afghanistan. Which, of course, it wasn't, but Saddam was surely a bad guy, and the nation was scared and a lot desperate to be on the offensive. And Rummy had devoted much of his recent lifetime to scheming on how to takeout Saddam, and it provided him with an opportunity to show that he was the smartest motherfucker in the room.

So we invaded with a small, mobile force and everything went swimmingly until the occupation. Then shit started to go bad, and the entire administration dug their heels in and defended their original poor choice, because to not do so was political suicide.

Did they lie? Sure, in the way all politicians lie. They exaggerated their case in order to do what they wanted to do. The real trouble has come with 1. groupthink; and 2. refusal to admit they were wrong about anything. Did Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney play on Bush's psychological issues with regards to Iraq? I don't know, though nothign I know about their manipulations of other people suggest that they wouldn't. Did Bush take the decision lightly? I doubt it. I don't know how his mind works, but I do know that he is VERY reliant on those who provide him information, and VERY insulated about who gives him information, so that it isn't hard to imagine groupthink scenarios where it just becomes accepted that Iraq must be attacked, without the idea being vetted anew. Remember, most all of his cabinet had done thier thinking on the matter. They wanted to invade Iraq. They needed a pretense, and they got one. They still think it was a good idea. I have no doubt many will believe it was a good idea in the face of any and all information to the contrary.

But there is still the big lie. And that is this: They wanted to go into Iraq before they even helped pick Bush to run for office. And they manipulated one of the greatest tragedies of American history to do so. That's the big lie. That's the lie that history won't forget.

 

He started a war in Iraq because he didn't know any better, and he was just arrogant enough not to listen to the people who did know something, and he did so confident in the knowledge that somebody smarter would bail him out of his cock-up, as has been the case his entire adult life.
Also for a permanent presence in the oilfields.
And because Jesus told him to redeem the world.
All answers not worth a single American life.

 

TBF --

I'd hate to think the president lied about things, but here's what gets me:

We sold the case for war on the premise that Hussein had WMDs, they were ready to use, etc. Then we go in, we've been there for more than three years now, and we haven't found a drop. All those labs, all those barrels, all those chemical and biological munitions?

They're all gone.

We were sold on the thought that there were tons and tons of this shit, and more on the assembly line.

Then we go in, and there's none of it. If there was, Donald Rumsfeld would be running up and down Pennsylvania Avenue with a banner that says "We finally found the shit!"

But with tens of thousands of American (and other nationalities) troops and all sorts of eyes and ears on the ground, not a bit of it's been found. Even the insurgents, the guys hellbent on killing our soldiers, haven't had access to anything. If they did, they wouldn't hold back.

So what's the story? Did the American foreign intelligence system -- if not the world's best, it's top three -- fail so completely that it mistook thousands and thousands of tons of chemical/biological weapons for nothing?

In my mind, that's the military equivalent of aiming a missile at Chicago and then landing the fucker nose-first in South Africa.

There's no way our intelligence was that freakin' wrong.

 

But at the heart of everything you guys have written -- and those are some pretty good arguments, I'll admit -- is a good old-fashioned lie. And, again, it's really hard for me to believe someone could do such a thing.

Not calling you liars or America-haters, but I'm still not sold the intelligence wasn't WAY, WAY wrong.

 

It's not irrelevant in the sense that your bunch gets a pass for things you blast the GOP about. In the strictest defintions of the argument at hand, it might be irrelevant.

But it also illustrates your stunning hypocrisy. You people have the gall to rail about Iraq when you've got the blood of Iraq times 20 on your hands from Vietnam.

You have the gall to scream about the marital indiscretions of Newt Gingrich when you've got Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

You have the gall to bitch about the privileged Bush family and rip the Bush twins, for example, when the Kennedy spawn have been involved in much, much worse.

You yell and scream that Bush doesn't care about global warming and the environment, when Hollywood elites, Al Gore and the rest of them won't give up their limos, SUVs and private jets on pain of death.

You harp about the rich, elitist republican when you've got the Kennedys, Kerrys, Pelosis, etc who are filthy rich.

Don't do as I do, do as I say. After all, you guys know exactly what's best for the rest of us poor peons.

Screw the lot of you. Hypocrites.

 

What do you think of murderers? I mean, they spin their web of lies. Do you think they couldn't lie? I'm not saying anything bad, but I'm asking if you could see them lying.

 

Love the meme that, since a Democratic adminstration botched a war in Southeast Asia 40 years ago, the left has no place speaking against what's going on in Iraq. Just fabulous.

It should also be noted that once it became clear that LBJ's involvement in the war was based on lies, many of his solid Dem allies deserted him. Let me know when the GOP's motley crew does the same to Bush.

Also, I might be a little more cynical toward Bill Clinton's and Ted Kennedy's vices if their party was the one that was lecturing America about values and morals. And if anyone wants to compare the Kennedy and Bush families in terms of positive impact on the country and presence on the police blotter, line 'em up. I'll bet that the final tallies would be a little different than some of us expect.

 

Josef Goebbels, despicable Nazi fuck that he was, knew this dynamic better than anyone when he said ...

"The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it."

And that's true for Iraq too. And while Bush is despicable himself for provocating war based on a lie, the Democratic opposition and, yes, the people of this country aren't by any means off the hook.

With few exceptions (like my boy Russ Feingold), the Democrats were NOT stridently trying to seek the truth in our intelligence, despite warnings from UN inspectors at the time that said there was nothing to the claims of WMDs. Many Democrats took the politically expedient way out and went along with it, because to call bullshit on the intelligence at that particular time with our country still freaked out by 9/11 would have been politically poisonous (Oh look at him! He's supporting the pansy-ass UN over our own intelligence! That's un-American!).

Once again, short-term political capital took precedence over long-term ramifications, and the Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for that. John Kerry found out to his horror when his initial support for the war was turned against him a year and a half later.

The people of this country bought into to it too. Yes, we were lied to. Yes, the knee-jerk reaction of the majority of people in our country is to trust in the decisions our country makes, especially when it comes to war. None of that is a good enough excuse.

But apart from that, how many of us in 2003 gave in to the notion that we needed this war, regardless of the intelligence or long-term ramifications?

How many of us were fired up by the simplistic notion to kick Saddam's ass?

How many of us LIKE to see America at war, so we can live out these silly machoistic, John Wayne war fantasies that we delude ourselves with?

Too many of us were thinking with guns and glory instead of using our brains and though there was an anti-war movement at the time, the public was solidly in the corner of going to war.

Sure Saddam was a brute, but I think the unspoken aspect to this that few ever want to talk about, is that it made our collective dicks hard to be the ones that took him out, consequences be damned.

Well, 2,693 dead Americans and one fucked up, dangerous-ass region of the world later, we are painfully aware of the short-sightedness of this kind of thinking.

It's not a new story. It's textbook war fever, with flames fanned by the lies of the Bush provocations. War fever deludes and distorts everyone into thinking war is the easy solution. It's like going into a gas station thinking you're going to hit Lotto and all your problems will be over.

War fever gripped us in the Civil War, with both sides believing victory was certain in a short period. War fever gripped Europe in World War I, with nations planning brazenly idiotic (in hindsight) military strategies based on occupying Berlin/Paris (depending on which side it was) by Christmas.

War fever based on a lie characterized both the beginning of World War II (when Poland "invaded" Germany) and our massive increased involvement in Vietnam (Gulf of Tonkin).

File this under History Repeats Itself. We thought we'd be in and out of Iraq within a year or two. Anyone with any inkling of the history of conflict knows it's almost NEVER that simple.

But Bush sold the simple big lie, and as a nation, we bought into it. There's too many people in this country who would rather be cowed than have the truth told to them. It's easier to believe than disbelieve. It's easier to think it's patriotic to wave a flag and mindlessly support, when in fact, it's unpatriotic NOT to question what our country is doing, especially when its predicated on a lie.

We were/are not unlike those 30s German citizens Goebbels helped cow into becoming complicit with the devil incarnate.

Like them, we never want to see any evil, we always want to trust unconditionally and look the other way. Most Germans didn't want to see any evil either, they didn't want to know about the Holocaust, Lebensraum, etc. The Nazis never explicitly advertised those things, though the evidence was there for those who wanted to see it.

But evil has its way of repaying those who refuse to acknowledge it or pretend it doesn't exist with interest, because the thing about the big lie is it usually has a big downfall -- a lesson regular German folk learned all too well, too late.

Though Iraq isn't on the same planet in terms of human cost (God willing, it won't ever approach it) as pre-war Germany, but we should still heed the lessons from that period.

Many people's eyes are finally being opened to that lesson here in regards to the big Iraq lie. I hope it sinks in. And I'm glad people are finally getting angry instread of getting apathetic about being lied to.