Just follow your common sense. I never believed this Iraq WMD story even before the war started. I just felt there was something wrong with the White House argumentation and started looking around on the internet. Plenty of info that supported my suspicion and the hurry to get the weapon inspectors out of the way was just confirming things.

If your gut says it ain't right, then it ain't right. Always suspect those who want war.
The way the press was embedded was unprecendent, look at what happen with Pulitzer Price Winner Judith Miller.

All goes back to the Climate of Fear Cheney and Bush created. In these times nobody wants to be pictured as non-patriotic.

When Bush was elected the first time though, there wasn't any real indication of this as his future path. For people who voted him in the first time, as I believe bruce is saying, there was no reason to assume that he would lead the country into this disastrous war. No amount of websearching could have told him that. Once Bush was elected and started down the path he is on, that's different....which again, I htink is part of Bruce's point. When the politician or leader that you have cast your vote for, starts to act in such a manner, the fact that you voted for them does not mean you should then defend everything they do, right or wrong, because all you did when you voted for them was cast your vote based on what they appeared to stand for. None of us have a crystal ball.

In 2000, posted was even how George Jr worked better with TX Democrats. However facts after he came to office were disturbing. George Jr was a changed man. His all but insults a first world leader to meet him in the White House - Helmut Schmidt of Germany. Accurate comments only three months after taking office from the Norwegian Foreign Minister declare that George Jr would destroy the Oslo Accords. His snub of Mexico’s president after promising the warmest of relations. Anarchistic attempts to get into a shooting war with China over a silly spy plane. Destruction of the ABM treaty so as to build a 'not functional' missile defense system for threats that would not exist. Follow on discussions to terminate the nuclear test ban treaty.

Clinton's first two years also were not so good. Again, that would also be apparent in the tone of my posts back then. Especially in reference to congressional legislation and a Congresswoman more commonly known as MMM.

Colin Powell defined George Jr's presidency by citing Christie Whitman as the wind dummy. Do you remember these days? Use my posts as a benchmark as to when a mental midget presidency emerged. Also note when appropriate adjectives began to appear.

We had some indications in 2000 that George Jr was really not presidential material. But then neither was John Kennedy in 1959. A major difference exists - lessons to be learned for when this happens again after 2035. John Kennedy had learned extensively about the world. He consulted regularly from all parties with knowledge and experience (ie Cold War, man to the moon program, Cuba Missile, Vietnam, etc). George Jr only asked two people whether he should attack Iraq (not including his conversation with god). Condi Rice says she was one of the only two.

We knew from his first year and from a book by his own Sec of the Treasury Paul O'Neill that George Jr does not read his own memos. Again facts stated with supporting details define when we could / should see what George Jr was really made of. Paul O'Neill had to walk this president through every page of a four page memo because George Jr does not read; did not even read his own PDB warnings of 11 September.

These were damning facts: the devil is in those details. Details that we would not understand until after the 2000 election. Details - not a tarot card - are where facts are found. Few of these facts were evident in the 2000 election.

However by 2003, one had to be a fool to not see how incompetent George Jr was. To appreciate when we should have known, just follow the facts and temper of my posts from 2001. How could anyone with any intelligence vote for him in 2003 and call themselves patriotic? George Jr is one of if not the worst president in this past American century. That is also fact - assuming nothing drastic happens in the next two years.

One final lesson from history. The press was rarely Nixon's critic. That did not happen until first the people got angry. It took that long to see how evil Nixon was. The press (with a rare exception called Woodward and Bernstein) were very supportive of Nixon. Why do we have so much contempt for the troops as to again send them into defeat - without a strategic objective, smoking gun, or exit strategy? The people just are not openly condemning the mental midget. Don't fool yourself. Even our Senate does not have the balls to stand up and do the right thing. This current president has too few vocal critics - and that includes those Cellar dwellers not in America. Same was true of Nixon. More lessons from history.

Bush was not elected the first time.

I had doubts also and left a message, but Bush didn't call me back so I couldn't stop the war. :right:

My point was once I voted him in, there is nothing I can do to prevent him from doing evil..... nothing. I can piss and moan to him and my congressmen, I can bitch to the newspapers, or set myself on fire like a Buddhist Monk, but it wouldn't have one iota of effect on him. Only Cheney, Laura and God can do that.

Don't you think the nature of the press has changed since Nixon's time? :confused:

Every reporter wants to be Woodward and Bernstein, now. And although many of major players they work for, appear to be bias spinners, it's almost impossible to hide the real stories. If they try to ignore a source that wants to blow the whistle, he can go to any two-bit paper and the Bloggers will catch wind of it. He can even go straight to the internet.

It used to be that the newspapers, except for a few biggies, got everything from the wire services. Now there is more avenues to work with, a reporter in podunk can do a credible job just using the net. He won't break any major stories but he can keep Podunkians reasonably well informed.

Sorry, I forgot.

My point is, when all those who voted for Bush second time thought like you (and me, but that don't count) then he wouldn't be reelected.

The first time he was elected over Al Bore through that FLA fraud, I remember I wondered how someone with such a limited world view, intellect, broad knowledge, could run the Greatest Nation in the World succesfully. Guess my gut feeling was right, again?

S-ok, we accept "appointed" in a pinch, but are not happy about it.:cool:

My point is, when all those who voted for Bush second time thought like you (and me, but that don't count) then he wouldn't be reelected.

Well now wait a minute, I didn't vote for the man, but elections are funny things, and past elections doubly so. We really have no way of knowing whether the alternatives would truly be better or worse, except guesswork. In the case of 2004 you had Mr Kerry backing off his vote in favor of Iraq, so hard that he managed to contradict himself in one sentence, the infamous "I actually voted for it before I voted against it". As a result, to many voters, the 2004 choice was dumb-and-principled versus smart-and-political. The former was the devil we knew, and I don't blame them too hard.

We think of things as Bush versus not-Bush right now because that's how the Ds have strategically moved the discourse; that was the approach in 2006 and it worked. While the most political hay can be made by merely criticizing, all pols are doing it. Nobody seems to notice that this, too, is in lieu of actual leadership.

Maybe for dumb voters, but by the same logic of "I actually voted for it before I voted against it", Bush opposed it before he supported it. There were two versions of the bill. Kerry supported the first one, and Bush supported the second one.

Less than 1% of voters ever understood that the gaffe was over appropriations bills. A much larger percentage of both smart and dumb voters* noticed that Mr Kerry voted to authorize the use of force, and that by using statements like that one, he was dodging and weaving like a professional boxer.

*cursing the electorate is a loser's road, and I advise against it.

They could have if they wanted to. But it's so much more fun to wave around a giant flip-flop.

Mr Kerry was damned lucky that the flop in question was over appropriations and not over the larger question of the vote to authorize. He was actually misdirecting from the vote to authorize at the time...

He is prone to making such gaffes without the political instinct and communications touch to explain them simply and easily. So they resonate instead of dying down. Witness the "stuck in Iraq" mis-joke. Having been sound-bitten in a mistake, the next-day's correction had to be a stronger sound bite, and not a gasbag 60-second answer that had to be parsed.

Like I said. A quick sound bite is so much more fun than an explanation.