FOLLY OF IRAQ INVASION NEEDS MORE PUBLIC SCRUTINY--A must-read

[raccoon]

By Cynthia Tucker | Cynthia Tucker – 5 hrs ago

Ten years ago, on March 20, 2003, the administration of George W. Bush launched its disastrous invasion of Iraq. It's a war most Americans -- including many Republicans who enthusiastically supported it -- are working assiduously to forget.

(Yep, now a great many people--especially died-in-the-wool Republicans--just want to pretend it didn't happen. Just let it go down the memory hole, Winston.)

Not so fast. An examination of the lies, the hypocrisy and the power-mongering that led us into that act of grand folly may help us to avoid similar impulses in the coming decades. Besides, there are lasting consequences that cannot be shoved into history's dustbin. Yes, Saddam Hussein is dead. So are an estimated 100,000 Iraqis and more than 4,400 Americans. Countless other Americans are forever maimed, some of them suffering mental traumas from which they will never fully recover.

That's the human toll. It doesn't include the billions of dollars that were wasted. While the official calculations of the cost to the treasury are in the $800 billion range, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has put the cost to the U.S. economy at $3 trillion. That's why it's quite laughable now to listen to the Fox News crew blast President Obama over the budget deficit. They all cheered for Bush's dumb war, which he prosecuted while cutting taxes.

Among those attacking my anti-invasion stance were comfortable, affluent professionals whose sons and daughters would never have considered volunteering for military service. I was dumbfounded by the nonchalance -- and hypocrisy -- with which they endorsed a war that would be fought by young men and women largely from the working classes.

(Yep, most of those idiots who were cheering it on--I guess they think that makes them seem more patriotic--knew that their kids and grandkids would never have to go fight in a war with real blood and gore.)

http://news.yahoo.com/folly-iraq-invasion-needs-more-public-scrutiny-050208047.html

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary,

Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cy

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. She is from my little town

and many of her columns, about local folks, were in our weekly paper.

[rainy]

2. And let's not forget all the chicken shit

Democrats that voted for it. They are just as responsible. The press sucked too. I remember crying when finally Robert Byrd took the floor and spoke against the war. Where were the press when he filibustered the Iraq war?

[Victor_c3]

4. That is my biggest fault with some of the most prominent name(s) in our party

They did the politically expedient move of voting for the war rather than voting for what would have been right.

I read a very good analysis a while back basically summarizing that we, as Americans, were looking to exact revenge on any Arab country. It didn't matter who or what the reason was, we just wanted Arab blood. Well, we got it.

If she runs in 2016, I'd vote for Hillary Clinton, but in the back of my mind I will always have a problem with her initial support for the war in Iraq.

Likewise, although I like Bill Clinton, the one thing that keeps me from loving him is the fact that he dodged the draft. However, having experienced war myself, I can't really blame him for dodging.

[Martin Eden]

6. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry -- ALL voted FOR the IWR in October 2002

I have never forgiven them for it, and never will. I think Kerry would have won the presidential election in 2004 if he had been a strong and passionate voice against the war before it started, like Senator Byrd. John Kerry rose to national prominence as the leader of Vietnam veterans against that war; what a SHAME he didn't carry that forward. The phrase "terribly disappointed" doesn't begin to scratch the surface of how I felt when he voted to give GW Bush authority to invade Iraq. Nevertheless, I travelled to Cuyahoga County Ohio to help get out the vote for him in 2004 because Bush belonged in prison, not the White House.

I have no problem whatsoever with Bill Clinton dodging the Vietnam draft. I would have done the same, but the draft ended when I was in high school.

[nineteen50]

9. All of them

belong to the same country club and it ain't ours.

[Bandit]

14. How did he dodge the draft that was any different than hundreds of thousands of other kids with

a college deferment? It isn't as if he burnt his draft card and moved to Canada.....

[malaise]

3. K & R

for truth

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[papa3times]

7. The folly of Iraq indeed

I'm sorry but the idiocy of this war has already been swept into history's dust bin! Remember a little old place called Vietnam? Over 50,000 U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of billions of dollars flushed down the toilet. We are still paying for the wounded vets from that war(as we should). Remember Vietnam Syndrome? The horrible hangover politicians referred to if anyone questioned going into another interventionist war. The Reagan administration started working on getting rid of that as soon as that buffoon took office with his invasion of Grenada. No, my friends, Americans are too stupid to let something like the Iraq fiasco stop the war profiteers like Dick Cheney from leading us down this path in the future. It may slow us down for a while but that is about the best we can hope for.

[Jerry442]

8. Great article, but the 100,000 Iraqi casualty figure is way too low.

In 2006, the British medial journal Lancet published the results of a peer-reviewed survey that estimated the number of invasion-related deaths at that time at over 600,000. Although you can believe (as I do) that we had a moral obligation to document each and every invasion-related death individually, you can't dismiss the Lancet survey as just half-assed guess based on a handful of interviews, unless you're willing to toss the whole field of probability and statistics out the window.

Good reading at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties

It is shameful that our government couldn't even be bothered to properly count the people we killed.

[IDemo]

10. Without looking, let me guess

that the bulk of commenters on Yayhoo are resoundingly pro-war and disgusted with the author.

[caseymoz]

12. K&R: I was resigned at the time of invasion

Because even then, in March 2003, that the justifications were thin, the evidence behind them was laughable (if the punch line wasn't a war). I remember there was opposition, hundreds of thousands of people in the US and millions in the world marched against it. Yet, reporting on them was tepid and perfunctory. They were presented as misinformed (I guess Fox presented them as worse). Yet, no matter how poor the arguments were, the government was absolutely determined to invade Iraq anyway.

I remember when it seemed the US won easily, and Bush spoke under his "Mission Accomplished" banner. I said, "Well, that's the easy part. Now comes the hard part." And it was immediately obvious that our leadership wasn't prepared for anything hard. I remembered thinking why I could see that when these purportedly much better educated and informed experts couldn't.

Later, when I argued with people about the war, people who were conservative, in management, and wealthier than I was, I got the distinct impression that the upper class had learned a completely different lesson from Vietnam. They thought that the problem with Vietnam was that the opposition to the war stopped us from winning. Not that it was bad strategically, impractical, and let's say it, inhumane and cruel to the point that it was self-defeating, but they really thought press and university students betrayed the US.

Therefore, in the meantime, what the upper class did was buy up the press and remove any fairness constraints and regulation on it. Against students, they turned education from a grant to a loan-based system, and on the boards of universities, they raised tuition. On the latter, students who had high loans to pay off that they couldn't escape were far less likely to make trouble. (Remember debt is the leading cause of slavery in the world.)

So, that muted two sources of possible opposition to a war that was transparent only in that it was mendacious.

I think a few things influenced the decision. First, a faith in a positive attitude, and if anything, Bush and conservatives were all about that. Second, a faith in technology. They really thought the US military couldn't lose and that any of the strategic limits that militaries in history had (such as never fight a land war in Asia, for example) no longer applied to forces like the US.

That's similar to the belief a few years earlier that technology had made the economy recession proof.

[KoKo]

16. +1

[retired rooster]

13. Still dumb founded after all these years.

I was retired from the Air Force and teaching at a large community college in Louisiana when Bush was elected. Amid all the cheering among the students and faculty for Bush's election, I was telling everyone that Bush would have us in a middle eastern war within six months and I didn't miss it by much. While everyone was saying that Iraq had WMD's I was saying "no they don't". I was laughed at and almost lost my job after publicly speaking about the folly of the adventure. No one would listen and, after a television appearance, had to change my telephone number because of all the kooks making threats. My military career and Vietnam service was no shield from being called a traitor.

Now I just shake my head when I hear people say "everybody thought Iraq had WMD's" and "we could have won that war if we hadn't pulled out too fast". Far too many say Bush was a great President

I am simply amazed at the stupidity and gullibility of the American people.

[NoMoreWarNow]

15. A staggeringly terrible evil done in our name.

I will not forget.

[99Forever]

17. I am suffering from wasted outrage...

... fatigue. Getting angry over the shit that the assholes in Washington DC did, do, and will do again, seems like nothing but a waste of time and energy. They really, truly, and completely don't give a single shit what we think, need, or want. I'm am sure of very little in this world, but of that I have NO doubt.