I keep reading about how those who voted for the war, including Democrats have a black mark against them. That confuses me a little because I seem to remember that those who voted for it did so mainly because of Colin Powell's presentation of supposed strong evidence that Iraq had WMDs.

Thus to say that those who voted for the war were wrong, must be saying one of four things:

1. Powell was lying and congress people should have realized this and voted differently

2. Powell was mistaken and congress people should have realized it and voted differently

3. They DID realize that Powell was likely lying or mistaken but they voted for war anyway.

4. They assumed Powell was not incorrect but voting for the war was wrong even if they had WMDs.

I think it would be useful if those who make a big issue of that vote specified which of the above is their reason.

The whole damn admin were lying about Iraq & WMD's which led to an immoral invasion, Iraqi civil war and every jihadist from New Jersey to Jakarta seeing it as a call to arms. Then this admin turned its back on the Kurds, your allies. Whole debacle was a very serious black mark on America.

People rightly concluded that the purported ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq were nebulous at best and that the U.S. government was just using post-9/11 hysteria to justify furthering American hegemony in the Middle East.

So,

5. They should have realized it was a weak rationale to go to war.

There was nothing connecting Iraq to 9/11 and we knew about (and even supplied him with) the chemical weapons Saddam used against Iran in the '80s, but didn't care because they were our allies then. We've always been at war against Iraq.

The evidence for WMDs was disputed by foreign intelligence sources from the start. I think Powell himself had doubts but “did his job” and made the best case he could for Iraq having WMDs because that’s what the president wanted.

But I think you’re missing the key point of the Bush/neocon worldview that led to the invasion. The WMDs were a side issue. The main point was Sadam was not being transparent on his weapons capability, so nobody could prove he didn’t have any and that could be used as a justification for regime change. It’s a good idea to take this opportunity to do so because his regime will be easy to topple (it was) and we can quickly set up a free and prosperous Iraq that will help not not only Iraqis but bring stability to the whole region(laughably false). People who voted for the war believed that nonsense whether they worded it like that or not.

I was young, but even without the WMD, at the time I remember the consensus being Saddam was a horrible, sadistic human being that brutalized his own people (which was true) and a giant threat to the region from a geopolitical perspective.

The WMD was the icing on the cake, but at the time there was plenty of reasons to approve of getting rid of him without them.

I don't think anyone was anticipating we would have destabilized the region like we did and create a whole bunch of other problems. If it had worked out better I don't think anyone would have any problems now.

No one is second guessing our intervention in the Balkans, because it worked out ok. And the stuff he was doing to his enemies in Iraq was arguably just as bad as what was going on there.

Funny is you sucked all your coalition countries into the war but one. That country did not believe the evidence.

Even without WMD, why was intervening in the Balkans good and intervening in Iraq evil? What am I missing?

He was torturing and murdering at will with conventional weapons so it was ok?

They could have deposed Saddam overnight if that’s all they wanted to do. The CIA had been in northern Iraq along with some Special Forces teams for a while before the war even kicked off and could have pulled it off, according to Sam Faddis, who was there. The next biggest mistake was firing the entire Iraqi military. That mistake can not be overstated.

I doubt that Saddam could have been easily deposed by CIA operating in northern Iraq. But Bremer was definitely an idiot to the degree that it was criminal. He should be beaten with a pipe for firing the Iraqi military and his de-Baath-fication program.

Most of the answers are straying from my question. Let me be more succinct To those who think that a vote for the war was wrong, was that because you think they should have known that the WMD story was unlikely to be true? Or is it because you think that they should have voted no even if it was true?

I'm gonna take credit for inspiring this thread with my Norman Mailer video.

Unless the member was sitting on the intel committee, the yes vote was fine. Based on what CIA was saying there was no way not to.

A smart person with knowledge of history would know that the military and the CIA have a long history of lying. There were plenty of people who knew that the war was fraudulent and had the good sense to not take Colin Powell at his word, but none of them were in Congress.

They shouldn’t have been only thinking about WMDs. Pretty much everyone agrees now when you factor in odds Iraq has WMDs and the difficulty of regime change it was a mistake. Some people may think those factor in about 50/50 others may think the WMD part matters more but it doesn’t really matter. You get the same answer wither way.

I think you mean blame.

Both. Obv it was a lie.

And even if some moron believes it true, still not worth a war.

In fact it was widely anticipated, and not only in elite forums. Frederick Forsyth's bestselling novel The Fist of God, in 1994, was marketed partly on the basis that it explained the Allies' refusal to march on Baghdad and overthrow Saddam at the end of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The novel includes supposed briefs written for President Bush, explaining that, with Saddam gone, Iraq would fracture into its tripartite structure -- Sunni, Shia and Kurd -- with Iran and the Syrian minority leadership drawn in on behalf of the Shia, Saudi Arabia drawn in on behalf the Sunni in response, and Turkey drawn in against the resurgent Kurds, thus destabilising the entire region. Which is exactly what did in fact happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fist_of_God

Forsyth may be just a hack novelist, but he does his research and on this occasion his information and his judgement appear to have been good.

The whole 'WMD' story came from two Iraqi exiles in Germany. The German intelligence body, the BND (https://www.bnd.bund.de/EN/Home/home_node.html), reported them to be fantasists and liars who, perhaps for admittedly good reasons, just wanted to see Saddam overthrown.

For some motive never disclosed -- certainly not by the Chilcot Report, which was unfit for purpose (https://www.gov.uk/government/public...e-iraq-inquiry) -- British MI6 withheld this information from 10 Downing Street and falsely claimed that the two Iraqis were reliable. In January 2003, a month before Powell's notorious UN presentation, according to Chilcot, MI6 had belatedly obtained proof, not just suspicion, that one of the Iraqis was lying, which strongly implied that the other one was lying as well. MI6 did not tell No.10 this. And clearly Colin Powell did not know, when he made that presentation, that it was all complete flim-flam.

A better-led inquiry than Chilcot's might have discovered why MI6 deceived the government, and to what extent they were perhaps doing a favour to American intelligence interests. But, of course, we're still in the dark about that.

OK. But the second point supersedes the first. And is obviously more important. In other words if you believe that second point, it is almost counterproductive to bring up the first one (especially given how respected Colin Powell is and was) when you are criticizing legislators who voted for the war.

They should have known it was obvious bunk, because it was. Top politicians are kind of obliged, or at any rate conditioned, to believe what their intelligence services tell them (when your guard dog barks at night, you take notice), but the rest of us don't have that institutional handicap.

Some foresaw the certainty of sectarian violence and instability to the region. F*ck any 'evidence' presented by Powell. That was incidental.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/sayi...tien-1.1192878

#3

And they were just following the script. PNAC, Bernard Lewis Plan, etc.

NeoLibs and NeoCons. Two sides, same scarce coin.