Why did we go into Iraq?
 

I posted this on another forum, but since you folks are generally smarter than they are, or at least more vocal about your opinions, I thought I'd give you a chance to respond:
I read this post by Digby and it got me thinking:
The leaders of our government lied to us. As a result, our soldiers are in a foreign country dying and not getting anything real accomplished except pissing away shit tons of money and thoroughly irritating off a bunch of people who have shown a willingness to bring the noise back to US soil and US civilians.
So, why isn't anyone beyond 'crazy liberals' standing up and saying, "What the fuck happened here?"

"For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary."

That's from this precious Downing St memo: the Brits, even the skeptical author of the memo, believe that Saddam has WMD and is willing to use them proactively against innocent bystanders.

The memo does not say what you think it does, especially in light of the timetable of 2002-2003. The word "fixed" does not mean what you think it does and the whole thing is the opinion of one person.

Your Digby says "It's true that there have been many hints --- the biggest of which is that, uh, there weren't any fucking WMD --- but this is clear proof that they lied prior to that." Why does he fail to acknowledge the WMD reference in the Downing St memo? Because he can't see it - it's invisible to him, because to acknowledge it would weaken his point of view.

Don't listen to people like that.

Your red quote says that Rumsfeld told them Saddam had WMDs, and the Brits asked questions using that premise.

"fixed" in this case means cherry picked and massaged.

It is not an opinion memo, it is the minutes of a meeting.

The memo does not suggest any such thing. The quote is speculation by Brit military.

It does not. The paragraph tells us that they wanted to use military force and now sought intelligence to justify that approach.

That's a subtle difference, but it's important.

If the US administration wanted to cherry-pick and massage the intelligence, this would not be the subject of a British government meeting with memos.

If any of the Brits in this meeting felt the Americans were lying, chrry-picking or massaging, the meeting would be quite different.

And that section of the memo is the minutes reporting the opinion of one person.

Nice try HM, but your own bias is showing in your interpretation.

Sorry. I indeed read it wrong there.

What is the difference? Making a decision and then asking for intelligence to justify it is the very definition of cherry picking and massaging.
Well, I guess you can always dismiss any report as the opinion of the author. But that was "C's" report on his meeting.

None of which answers my question.
There are serious consequences for what the United States government, as a whole (including the Democrats that voted for war) has done. We have, literally, done exactly what al-Qaeda has told the Islamic world do. That is, invade a sovereign Middle Eastern nation under a pretext (and the Downing Street Memo is just more of a growing body of circumstantial evidence that the reasons given for invading Iraq were all bullshit) to secure a supply of oil.
Long story, short: we blew it. Badly. Yet we still persist in maintaining the illusion, at least at home, that things are going well. They are not. Sure most of the country isn't against us like in Vietnam. But most of the country isn't happy with the way we're acting while we're there.
So, why is no one calling foul on the way the war was originally justified? Or, for a lesser standard: someone give me one reason that the Administration still uses today that it started with in 2002: WMD's? Not a snowball's chance in Iraq. Free Iraq? Not one of the originals, sorry. Links to terrorists: sorry, not true and never was (pre-war). Topple Saddam because he's a bad guy: *ahem* BS.

could you please go back in American history and pick which wars we entered for solely the justifications given to the american public. while you're at it, try to match up the justification that was commonly used at the end of the war with the ones circulated before the war.

i am not saying that you shouldn't be indignant, but it is important to remember that the government has to sell any action it wants to take to the public. quite often the real motives won't excite the masses into support for the plan, so more palatable arguments are used. something about the lowest common denominator.

welcome to gov't by the people, for the people... don't it just suck?

There is a certain segment of the population who believes that anything that happens in the middle east is an oil-grab. We would have gotten much more oil (since there would've been less sabotage) at a much lower price by making nice with Saddam.

It's not about WMD anymore, obviously. It is about liberating a country from an oppressive regime, but with a payoff for the West. By having a secular, democratic buffer smack in the middle of the region (a great strategic location for military as well), we actually fix lots of potential problems. If Syria decides to use the Palestine/Israel conflict to make a major move against the filthy Zionists, we can kick them in the butt and simultaneously block aid from Iran. For that matter, we've thrown a big monkey wrench in the Shiite plan to utterly consume the middle east. Saddam was too secular for them as it was....now that Satan himself has taken up residence, they're worse off than ever. Damn, what if this democracy thing catches on? Lots of white-bearded religious leaders are going to lose alot of political clout.

No, it's not about WMDs. We get it. Bush perpetuated bad info. But it's not as much about oil as it is about a bunch of forward-looking geopolitical maneuvering. I think.

Maybe you weren't aware that the original foreign policy of regime change, by use of military force if necessary, was initiated by President Clinton.

Perhaps you didn't know that it was Clinton's CIA head who called the WMD a "slam dunk" before the Downing Street memo.

Perhaps you didn't concern yourself, pre-war, with the fact that sanctions were a failure as a policy and that the UN became more interested in preserving the status quo than in solving the problems involved, possibly due to corruption.

Maybe you weren't paying attention when the Saudis changed their own stripes to actively pursue al Qaeda.

Maybe you didn't care that a lot of the anti-war rationales worldwide were due to oil contracts given to the various Hussein supporters.

Could it be the administration's non-WMD rationales were very much a part of the stated pre-war justification and that all those rationales are forgotten or ignored by your sources?

Did you not pay attention to Saddam's support for other terrorists or the link to the 1993 WTC bombing, or are those thing not really relevant to you?

Sorry for the stupid attitude I take here, I can't help myself, I would not be an asshole in real life.

to be fair, that is what the UN is meant to do. after all the lofty talk and BS is over, the UN exists to keep borders from changing and bullets from flying. over the years that has come to mean anything is acceptable as long as there isn't a war.

Actually, instead of "secular, democratic buffer", I'd substitute "huge US military base". If it got too democratic, they might vote us out.
Who's worse off? A US presence in the Middle East is exactly what the terrorist leaders need to ramp up recruiting, and military action isn't effective against terrorism.This is exactly what the Project for the New American Century was advocating. Take out Iraq, and build up a military presence in the heart of the Middle East. At the time, connections drawn between the PNAC and its members in the administration were considered to be nutty conspiracy theories. Now the PNAC line is being used as justification after the fact... Weird.

And yet, he didn't invade.

At the time, he was Bush's CIA head. He was wrong, and was given a medal.

The US kicked out the inspectors, who were in the country, inspecting, before the invasion. The sanctions were indeed poorly implemented, and Bush was successful in getting inspections restarted. Unfortunately, that was just for looks, and the new round of inspections wasn't allowed to continue.

I'll bet they did. Wasn't Al Qaeda's central purpose to overthrow the Saudi monarchy?

A lot of the pro-war rationales were from suspect sources as well.

Maybe. Which ones? They played with quite a few before settling on WMD.

Is that from the woman who also thinks 9-11 and Oklahoma City were also planned from Iraq? Or was there some other connection ,too?

Likewise, I'm sure.

The shah and his cronies are. Our presence does make for juicier propogandizing and recruitment tactics, no question. But for the larger goal of establishing one big Islamic superpower with the head in Tehran, it's a backbreaker. Now, instead of using terrorism in conjunction with backroom deal-making to achieve their goals, the Shiites will have to distance themselves from the terror cells they created to get any policymaking to go their way.

And while military action can't answer every terrorist act tete-a-tete, it is effective. Once the tanks come in, it's a war of attrition -- regardless of what kind of war the terrorists would like to wage, we can kill them faster than they can kill us, and eventually they won't have the numbers to be effective. That's not counting the effect that running water, electricity, new schools, hospitals and women voting have on the message of the terrorists.

Every day the NY Times/al Jazeera runs an article talking about the US' failure in Iraq. Every day the death toll rises as more employment lines are bombed by terrorists. Yet every day, the lines fill up again, with more and more Iraqis banding together to take control of their country's future. If one is killed, two more dry their tears and come to stand in his/her place. As more Americans see what's actually occurring in country (thanks to the blogosphere and other non-big-media sources), fewer of them give credence to the obvious political partisanship of the "traditional" media.

All of this can be filed away under "Good Thing".

Why? They've always been "wink wink nudge nudge" distanced from the terror cells officially. Why wouldn't they continue this arrangement now that the cells are getting an influx of new recruits?

And looking at the recruitment numbers, I don't think we're the ones who benefit in a war of attrition. Israel certainly hasn't, despite their military advantage.

There has always been an "everyone does it" mentality in the middle east in regards to terrorism, and it's a shaky foundation. If even ONE country takes an official (and unofficial) stand against terrorism as a matter of policy, the rest have to follow suit. Why? For the same reason that the school bully loses his playground mojo after one person stands up to him.
Israel hasn't gotten serious yet. They came close when they barricaded Arafat in his compound, but they just couldn't pull the trigger on it. May God have mercy on whoever twists Israel's tail hard enough to make it really bite. People seem to see the US as Israel's attack dog, but it's the US that has kept Israel from reducing the whole middle east to a slagheap. At least that's the impression I have.