Nine years after we were lied into war with Iraq, those who objected deserve some praise
FRI MAR 16, 2012 AT 11:52 PM PDT
Nine years after we were lied into war with Iraq, those who objected deserve some praise
byMeteor BladesFollow
.............................
The endless flow of blood.
There is now a long list of the dead who would not be dead were it not for this war initiated out of bravado, rancid ideology and doctored "evidence." Thousands of dead Americans and allied troops. And, at the very least, 120,000 dead Iraqis, perhaps several hundred thousand. Deaths in any war are terrible enough. Deaths in a war of choice, a concocted war, an illegal preventive war, count as nothing short of murder. The list of the maimed, the widowed, the orphaned is far longer, the list of the psychologically impaired longer still.
Before George W. Bush was voted 5-4 by the Supreme Court into the presidency, those who lied us into this war were already plotting their justification for sinking deeper military and economic roots into the Middle East—petropolitics and neo-imperialist sophistry interlaced with arrogant disdain for Iraqis and Americans alike. When they stepped into office in the footsteps of the mediocrity they had chosen to manipulate, terrorism gave them no worries, as Richard Clarke later explained to us. They focused, as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill later informed us, on finding the right excuse to persuade the American people to go to war with Saddam Hussein. This they perceived and planned as a prelude for going to war with some of his neighbors. Less than nine months later, the excuse dropped into their laps in the form of Osama bin Laden's kamikaze crews.
From that terrible day forward, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow rogues engineered the invasion with eager nods from Bush. They saw the chance to carry out their invasion plan and moved every obstacle—most especially the truth—out of their way to make it happen.
It didn't have to. They could have been blocked. Due diligence and some spinal fortitude in Congress might have stopped the war in its tracks. But in October 2002, the Senate and the House voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. Five months and one week later, the bombs began falling on Baghdad.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/17/1075198/-Nine-years-after-we-were-lied-into-war-with-Iraq-those-who-objected-deserve-some-praise
= new reply since forum marked as read
And I've been dead wrong the whole time - Citizens United was not the worst SCOTUS decision ever - that belongs to Bush v. Gore. 
Too bad I had no power.
"Democracy begins at home" was my sign.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/curmudgeoness/6991225323/|"
" width="500" height="375" alt="DC_March"></a>
And I wasn't alone.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/curmudgeoness/6991225559/|"
" width="500" height="333" alt="Rally"></a>
