Uninformed & uneducated people bought into the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Pentagon lies for the illegal invasion of Iraq - through the usual republican fear mongering channels -The media. The media pushed hard for the war purposely & blindly for profit and went along repeating every word from the White House as fact.
When Phil Donahue tried to have debate about the upcoming illegal invasion of Iraq on his show, BushCo put pressure on MSNBC and the only mainstream voice (Donahue) questioning Bush's upcoming war & lies was canceled or fired however you choose to look at it.
And the American people ate up Bush's lies for war - BushCo had over 80% of naive serviceman believing they were in Iraq because Hussein was behind 9-11 - which of course was completely Bush/Cheney fabrication.
Bush wanted the war, (he wanted to be a "war time president") didn't matter how many were killed for his ego and political goals, corporations are still making billions off the war for corporate profit, along with Pentagon weapons selling profiteers and all the oil companies are back in Iraq again after being tossed out by Hussein for their greed & exploitation.
As one infamous ignorant war supporter sign read, telling us who were against the war in Iraq to, "Get A BRAIN! Morans".
That was the mentality then - This is the same mentality we see today in the ignorant unwittingly corporate & republican shills, the tea-baggers!
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Ex-top soldier: Iraq war ‘fiasco’ due to Rumsfeld’s ‘lies’"Rumsfeld had 'worst style of leadership I witnessed in 38 years of service'
The US had no reason to invade Iraq in 2003, and only did so because of "a series of lies" told to the American people by the Bush administration, says Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served for four years as the US's top military officer.
Shelton, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, makes the comment in Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, a soon-to-be-published memoir reviewed at Foreign Policy".
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/iraq-fiasco-due-bushs-lies/