In 2005, Greenwald defended Tancredo against those calling him out for his racist views.

[Hissyspit]

154. More exclusion and misrepresentation.

But you know that.

And that wasn't even the question, was it?

Can't win an argument honestly, hunh?

The whole point of the Preface was that, before 2004, I had been politically apathetic and indifferent - except for the work I was doing on constitutional law. That's because, while I had no interest in the fights between Democrats and Republicans, I had a basic trust in the American political system and its institutions, such that I devoted my attention and energies to preventing constitutional violations rather than political debates. From the first two paragraphs:

I never voted for George W. Bush — or for any of his political opponents. I believed that voting was not particularly important. Our country, it seemed to me, was essentially on the right track. Whether Democrats or Republicans held the White House or the majorities in Congress made only the most marginal difference. . . .

I firmly believed that our democratic system of government was sufficiently insulated from any real abuse, by our Constitution and by the checks and balances afforded by having three separate but equal branches of government. My primary political belief was that both parties were plagued by extremists who were equally dangerous and destructive, but that as long as neither extreme acquired real political power, our system would function smoothly and more or less tolerably. For that reason, although I always paid attention to political debates, I was never sufficiently moved to become engaged in the electoral process. I had great faith in the stability and resilience of the constitutional republic that the founders created.
When the Iraq War was debated and then commenced, I was not a writer. I was not a journalist. I was not politically engaged or active. I never played any role in political debates or controversies. Unlike the countless beloved Democrats who actually did support the war - including Obama's Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - I had no platform or role in politics of any kind.

I never once wrote in favor of the Iraq War or argued for it in any way, shape or form. Ask anyone who claims that I "supported" the Iraq War to point to a single instance where I ever supported or defended it in any way. There is no such instance. It's a pure fabrication.

At the time, I was basically a standard passive consumer of political news: I read The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic: the journals that I thought high-end consumers of news would read and which I assumed were generally reliable for getting the basic truth. What I explained in the Preface was that I had major objections to the Iraq war when it was being debated:
During the lead-up to the invasion, I was concerned that the hell-bent focus on invading Iraq was being driven by agendas and strategic objectives that had nothing to do with terrorism or the 9/11 attacks. The overt rationale for the invasion was exceedingly weak, particularly given that it would lead to an open-ended, incalculably costly, and intensely risky preemptive war. Around the same time, it was revealed that an invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein had been high on the agenda of various senior administration officials long before September 11.

Nonetheless, because of the general faith I had in political and media institutions, I assumed - since both political parties and media outlets and journalists from across the ideological spectrum were united in support of the war - that there must be some valid basis to the claim that Saddam posed a threat. My basic trust in these institutions neutralized the objections I had and led me to passively acquiesce to what was being done ("I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.&quot .

Like many people, I became radicalized by those early years of the Bush administration. The Preface recounts that it was the 2002 due-process-free imprisonment of US citizen Jose Padilla and the 2003 Iraq War that caused me to realize the full extent of the government's radicalism and the media's malfeasance: "I developed, for the first time in my life, a sense of urgency about the need to take a stand for our country and its defining principles."

As I recount in the Preface, I stopped practicing law and pursued political writing precisely because those people who had an obligation to act as adversarial checks on the Bush administration during the start of the war on civil liberties and the run-up to the Iraq War - namely, Congress, courts, and the media - were profoundly failing to fulfill that obligation.

I wasn't a journalist or government official during these radical power abuses and the run-up to the Iraq War, and wasn't working in a profession supposedly devoted to serving as watchdog over government claims and abuses. I relied on those people to learn what was going on and to prevent extremism. But I quickly concluded that those who held those positions in politics and journalism were failing in their duties. Read the last six paragraphs of the Preface: I started writing about politics to bring light to these issues and to try to contribute to a real adversarial force against the Bush administration and its blind followers.

It is true that, like 90% of Americans, I did support the war in Afghanistan and, living in New York, believed the rhetoric about the threat of Islamic extremism: those were obvious mistakes. It's also true that one can legitimately criticize me for not having actively opposed the Iraq War at a time when many people were doing so. Martin Luther King, in his 1967 speech explaining why his activism against the Vietnam War was indispensable to his civil rights work, acknowledged that he had been too slow to pay attention to or oppose the war and that he thus felt obligated to work with particular vigor against it once he realized the need ("Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam&quot .

- snip -

But anyone using this Preface to claim I was a "supporter" of the Iraq War is simply fabricating. At worst, I was guilty of apathy and passivity. I did nothing for or against it because I assumed that those in positions to exercise adversarial scrutiny - in journalism and politics - were doing that. It's precisely my realization of how profoundly deceitful and failed are American political and media institutions that motivated me to begin working on politics, and it's those realizations which continue to motivate me now.