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Speaking of Tony Blair..our New Dems proudly called pro-war folks in our party "Blair Democrats."
Tony Blair is having a rough time right about now.He's being called to account for his role in a war based on lies that they knew would destabilize the middle east.
Time for some of our country's leaders to likewise be held accountable.
This article by Will Marshall shows just about how screwed up things were in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq using lies.
Will Marshall wrote this for the Washington Post in May 2003 as a spokeman for the DLC.
He called it The Blair Democrats: Ready for Battle
He brags on our country's Democrats who voted for the war, and he named them Blair Democrats as a compliment. I have posted this before, but it needs to not be forgotten. It shows how the think tanks making our party policy were able to take a situation based on lies and misinformation.....and turn it against those of us in the party who opposed them.
The U.S.-led coalition's stunning success in liberating Iraq is undoubtedly a triumph for President Bush. But Karl Rove shouldn't get too giddy, because it may be a boon for some Democrats, too.
The U.S.-led coalition's stunning success in liberating Iraq is undoubtedly a triumph for President Bush. But Karl Rove shouldn't get too giddy, because it may be a boon for some Democrats, too.
After all, four of the leading Democratic presidential contenders -- Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sens. Joseph Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards -- not only voted to support the war but also joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair in demanding that Bush challenge the United Nations to live up to its responsibilities to disarm Iraq. This position put these "Blair Democrats" in sync with the vast majority of Americans who said they would much rather attack Saddam Hussein's regime with United Nations backing than without it. And it puts them at odds with what Kerry called the "blustery unilateralism" of the president, which combined with French obstructionism to rupture not only the United Nations but the Atlantic alliance as well.
...Like Bush, these Democrats did not shrink from the use of force to end Hussein's reign of terror. Like Blair, they saw the Iraq crisis as a test of Western resolve and the United Nations' credibility as an effective instrument of collective security. Their "yes-but" position on Iraq irked the antiwar left and some political commentators, who prefer the parties to take starkly opposing stands on every issue, no matter how complicated. But the Blair Democrats faithfully reflected Americans' instinctive internationalism. While neoconservatives may yearn for a new Augustan age based on unfettered U.S. power, most Americans still see strategic advantages in international cooperation.
Here's the other part, where these "policy makers" used the Iraq invasion to denigrate those in our party who fought so hard against this fiasco. This was disturbing.
Just as the swift liberation of Iraq has strengthened the Blair Democrats, it has weakened the party's antiwar contingent, whose worst fears failed to materialize. The outcome deals a near-fatal blow to the presidential prospects of Howard Dean, whose staunch opposition to the war thrilled Iowa's left-leaning activists but is out of step with rank-and-file Democrats, about two-thirds of whom approve of the war. Moreover, because 75 percent of all voters back the war, the odds that Democrats will make Bush's day by serving up an antiwar nominee as his opponent in 2004 seem long indeed.
The writer is president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council.
We, the anti-war protestors, were right back then.
I have encountered no sense of vindication, no "I told you so", among veterans of the anti-war protest of 15 February 2003 in response to the events in Iraq. Despair, yes, but above all else, bitterness – that we were unable to stop one of the greatest calamities of modern times, that warnings which were dismissed as hyperbole now look like understatements, that countless lives (literally – no one counts them) have been lost, and will continue to be so for many years to come.
More from the link, from 2007:
In a statement attached to yesterday's 229-page report, the Senate intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), and three other Democratic panel members said: "The most chilling and prescient warning from the intelligence community prior to the war was that the American invasion would bring about instability in Iraq that would be exploited by Iran and al Qaeda terrorists."
In addition to portraying a terrorist nexus between Iraq and al-Qaeda that did not exist, the Democrats said, the Bush administration "also kept from the American people . . . the sobering intelligence assessments it received at the time" -- that an Iraq war could allow al-Qaeda "to establish the presence in Iraq and opportunity to strike at Americans it did not have prior to the invasion."
Now we are supposed to go along with the rhetoric that our social safety nets are harming our economy, and we are supposed to pretend that the votes for the Iraq war were just a mistake. Guess we are supposed to overlook the massive cost of war as they blames seniors and the needy and poor for the deficit.
I want to hear truth now. I don't want anymore pretending that Iraq did not happen.
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