The Right and Wrong Questions About the Iraq War

[applegrove]

The Right and Wrong Questions About the Iraq War

by James Fallow at the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/the-right-and-wrong-questions-about-the-iraq-war/393497/

"SNIP..............


Now, the little history lesson. I am reinforcing a point already made in different ways by Peter Beinart for The Atlantic, Steve Benen for the Maddow Show blog, Greg Sargent in the WaPo, and Paul Krugman in the NY Times. But it is so very important, and in so much danger of being swamped by the current “Knowing what we know...” bomfog, that I feel I have to weigh in.

•The “knowing what we know” question presumes that the Bush Administration and the U.S. public were in the role of impartial jurors, or good-faith strategic decision-makers, who while carefully weighing the evidence were (unfortunately) pushed toward a decision to invade, because the best-available information at the time indicated that there was an imminent WMD threat.
•That view is entirely false.
•The war was going to happen. The WMD claims were the result of the need to find a case for the war, rather than the other way around. Paul Krugman is exactly right when he says:


The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that.



.............SNIP"

[elleng]

1. Quite right!

Remember PNAC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century, notice JEB's a signatory, AND General Wesley Clark Tells 'Democracy Now' The Truth About Middle East And War On Iraq!

the whole thing was PLANNED!

[Gregorian]

2. I hadn't seen that before. These war threads, lately, are really exciting in a way

It shows that there ARE good people, and we aren't forgetting what happened. And that we are vindicated for our extreme concerns.

All of us on DU, and other places, were distraught for very good reasons. We had seen the PNAC. It was no accident.

[elleng]

3. Wes Clark wrote about it,

and unfortunately he's not achieved the prominence in Dem circles that he should have.

We may be 'vindicated,' but they're trying to head us back into the morass.

[applegrove]

4. I think we should take the time to go in deeply to the topic of exactly how the Iraq War started. It

is good to remind people.

[elleng]

5. Many don't know the history, and

many will ignore it, as they do now.

[OnyxCollie]

6. More importantly, we should take the time to go in deeply to the topic of how *wars* start.