Reply #35: I believe that many of them believed in saving their political asses.

[bklyncowgirl]

Remember the times folks.

People were still jumping at shadows after September 11. The Afgan war had by and large gone well--all right, there was that little bit about not catching Bin Laden--but aside from that it went very well indeed. Bush was riding high in the polls. Standing up to him meant opposing a popular president after America had been attacked.

Yup, many Democrats to their credit, stood up and voted against the war. Other Democrats and some Republicans who had doubts about the wisdom of the thing voted for the IWR--and let's face it--no matter how they try to wiggle out of it everyone knew that Bush was determined to do this war--I knew it and I'm just a poor little citizen.

They made a few assumptions that turned out to be dead wrong. First of all, They also assumed that there would be at least some rusty old WMD's so they could point to them and say "See, we told you so." They assumed that the Iraqi people would be so glad to get rid of Saddam Hussein that they'd be willing to live with whatever puppet dictator we put in power. Finally, they assumed that victory would be quick and easy. No one thought, in the immortal words of John Kerry, that Bush and Co. "would fuck it up so bad".

Some of the Democrats may actually believe in the PNAC theory. Still others are so pathologically afraid of not appearing weak that ironically, they are supporting a policy that is draining our country of manpower and resources and weakening our defenses. We couldn't meet a real military threat right now if we wanted to.

Whatever the reasons, many leading Democrats seem unwilling to admit that they made a mistake in trusting George Bush and worse yet are quick to jump on any of their colleagues who are willing to say otherwise.

Sounds like the old definition of insanity to me.