Yeah, stay safe, Cube. I hope things work out OK for you and your family!
Come back safe, DrCube. Although, I would prefer that you not go.
One other thing, DrCube. Give the lawn a good mowing before you ship out, and remember this: wearing shoes while pushing a lawn mower is for sissies.
I also opposed the invasion since the 2002 “Axis of Evil” State of the Union address, which I was lying in bed listening to, live on the radio, in Ireland, in the middle of the night. It jerked me into wakefulness, and I sat up in bed, woke WriterChick, and said “oh my God, they’re going to invade Iraq”. A year later I marched against it, and not for the bullshit reasons given by US conservatives about the protestors. It was a guaranteed clusterfuck, and it delivered.
DrCube, best of luck with what you have to do. Keep safe, try to respect the Iraqis, and come home safe.
I knew it was a mistake when the British Foreign Secretary (who of course had seen the ‘evidence’) resigned before the war started:
I have chosen to address the House first on why I cannot support a war without international agreement or domestic support.
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The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner - not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council.
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Only a year ago, we and the United States were part of a coalition against terrorism that was wider and more diverse than I would ever have imagined possible.
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History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.
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Our difficulty in getting support this time is that neither the international community nor the British public is persuaded that there is an urgent and compelling reason for this military action in Iraq.
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None of us can predict the death toll of civilians from the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq, but the US warning of a bombing campaign that will “shock and awe” makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at least in the thousands.
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It is entirely legitimate to support our troops while seeking an alternative to the conflict that will put those troops at risk.
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For four years as foreign secretary I was partly responsible for the western strategy of containment.
Over the past decade that strategy destroyed more weapons than in the Gulf war, dismantled Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme and halted Saddam’s medium and long-range missiles programmes.
Iraq’s military strength is now less than half its size than at the time of the last Gulf war.
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We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.
Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term - namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target.
It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?
Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?
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Nor is our credibility helped by the appearance that our partners in Washington are less interested in disarmament than they are in regime change in Iraq.
I suspected it was wrong from the start - everyone just seemed too eager to wade in and kick some Iraqi ass, it seemed plain to me that the excuses for doing this were fabricated.
Not that I’m too proud of the whole ‘I told you so’ thing, because I’ve been wrong about stuff like this before, it just happens that I don’t think I was this time.
Add me to the “from the beginning” list. I just thought going to war without the cooperation of the UN and a clear message from the IAEA on the existence of WMDs was a bad idea. But I wasn’t totally convinced. I mean, I was a twenty-three year old loan processor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and my main source of intelligence was NPR. And Bluesman was railing against all of us pansies on the SDMB for not trusting the president…I mean, it turns out I was right all along, but I don’t think it’s because I’m any smarter or more perceptive than the people who believed and are now kicking themselves for falling for the lies.
For me it was also the intelligence, not how effective it was, but how weak it was.
The contrast with Afghanistan was the key for me, after 9/11 all the world’s intelligence pointed to Osama and Afghanistan. The evidence? The true coalition of nations that formed. Even today, French, Spanish and Germans troops are there to help the US.
Then on the way to Iraq that solidarity melted, contradictory and suspicious evidence appeared, most of the suspicions were talked about in left leaning sources and outside the USA, when the last push by the WMD inspectors was not finding the evidence in locations that even the USA told them to look for, then I knew the fix was in.
Just going down the time line of the differences just before the war, one can notice how doubts, contradictory evidence and differences of opinion were criminally dismissed by the war proponents.
I still think that invading Iraq and removing Saddam was the right thing to do. How soon we forget what a monster he was. But staying? Not good. Bush has explained why we’re staying and I respect his reasoning, but I don’t agree with it. I forget exactly when I first articulated this, but it was quite some time ago.
We should have left Iraq for the Iraqis to sort out - and that would likely mean it splitting up - with stern warnings to the other countries. Done at the time, they would have listened to us.
BTW wasn’t regime change in Iraq Clinton’s policy?
Nice try Quartz, regime change might have been a stated goal of Clinton’s administration (after some Republican arm twisting), but there is one teeny tiny difference: Clinton didn’t invade Iraq (other than that your point is flawless).
Because 11 years before, Cheney thought it was a BAD idea.
I had misgivings from the beginning-and I realize that most wars end badly. But i still can’t understand how Bush snookered Tony Blair. What did Blair see in this? Post-war rebuilding contracts for British companies?
The sad fact is, we were lied to at EVERY turn. Every reason given for the war was a lie, and the Bushies NEVER had a plan “B” (in case everything went wrong). Now we are faced with a staggering drain on the treasury, our credibilityis shot, and we have thousands of gravely wounded young men-great call Mr. Bush! Mission Accomplished??
I have long thought that another war with Iraq was pretty much inevitable, and was looming much closer with the sanctions regime crumbling as it was.
I’m not happy any time a war begins, but I supported this one, and still do.
Summer of 2002, when I first heard news stories about Bush bringing up Iraq. I thought it was crazy nonsense that would be quickly shot down by sensible, not-crazy people. How naive I was.
Just after desert storm. I admired Bush senior’s restraint in not going after Saddam after curbing his aggression against our ally, Kuwait. I saw no real change in the situation in Iraq that merited out intervention.
Now, the place I thought we might want to intervene was Afghanistan due to the change in treatment of women.
In the beginning, back in 1920.
It takes a lot of convincing for me to approve of a war, and if there’s any other option, like there seemed to be with weapons inspectors, I’m against it.
It kinda seems to me that some people really don’t understand that thousands of innocent civilians will always die in a war, otherwise they would really consider it only as a last recourse. And I really mean as a last recourse, unlike the lip service Bush gave to the concept when it obviously was, in his mind, the only recourse.
Ah, dear Czarcasm, ever the optimist!
(Not that I’m questioning the judgment of your Holy Moderatorness - this certainly looked like a thread that would quickly descend into a series of cheap shots. I’m amazed at how civil and focused the discussion has been.)
I can’t say when I first thought this war was a bad idea. I do recall that when Cecil made his “damn fool war” comment I thought, “Welcome to the club.”
I’m surprised at the number of people here who have said they were against the war from the beginning. Where were we five years ago? 
As someone else observed, I remember being troubled when I first heard the “Axis of Evil” crap. That probably correlates with when I stopped watching the incumbents speeches, as they only angered me.
I recall thinking “That’s it” when Bush mobilized the troops and imposed deadlines several months before the actual invasion. IMO, that was when the war effectively began. The steps he was taking were too “expensive” for him to back down, whatever happened.
I remember seeing Powell’s UN presentation and thinking “That’s all we’ve got?” Figuring that was way below the threshhold of what might justify our invasion of a sovereign country to overthrow its government. (Ongoing genocide is the only such justification I can think of right now.)
As phouka observed, I naively like to think of my country as “the good guys.” But “good guys” do not begin wars as we did.
As I recall asking with some supporters of the war prior to the administration, please just show me why it is absolutely necessary that we invade Iraq at this moment? Still haven’t received an acceptable answer to what I think should have been a pretty basic question.
War is far too unpredictable and costly to be initiated lightly, or as anything other than an absolutely unavoidable last resort. Such was clearly not the case here.
I was for the war initially because I believed the president when he said Iraq had WMDs and he would give them to terrorists. The thing is, in 2002 I was a politically naive 17 year old who lived in Indiana and relied on the MSM for news. So cut me some slack, eh?
As for when I started to know it was a mistake, somewhere in late 2003/early 2004. That’s when I started to earnestly read and fill my personal book collection and became interested in politics and, in particular, the history of U.S. foreign policy. Apparently high school history classes suck at that last subject.