September 11, 2001. The day the planes hit the Towers we set up a tv at work to watch the news. The first thing I heard was a CIA spokeman saying that this was surely the work of the Iraqis. :rolleyes:
That’s when I knew we’d be going to Iraq and that nothing was going to stop GWB from having his war.
I was protesting against it in October 2002, five months before it started, so…
I won’t pretend I foresaw the fiasco over there right now. But I did think it seemed unnecessary because Saddam wasn’t a threat and the Al Qaeda connection idea was so stupid - and so transparently stupid it made you wonder what the hurry to start the war was. I was bewildered watching it.
I don’t have a date in mind but it was when I realized that they had either lied about/screwed up the “Saddam has WMD” analysis or let all the WMD vanish into other hands during the invasion.
I was not opposed to it at the time of the invasion, I figured that Saddam was preventing the inspectors from inspecting, except of course when an army is on his border. I also figured that I couldn’t say Iraq was no threat any more than I was able to say Afghanistan was no threat prior to 9/11. I was also trusting that Bush was actually relying on good information, instead of the pile of shit he was apparently making decisions with.
Somehow or another I doubt the boards will come crashing to a halt as a result of hundreds of folks simultaneously rushing to find my words of prescient wisdom. 
Besides, in order to get the links, I’d have to be searcher #401!
When a pro-war poster here, in the days before the invasion said, “Because they have access to information we don’t.” That was the same bullshit line McNamara used during Vietnam against those who opposed the war. Then, when the news accounts from the opening days of the war didn’t include accounts of special forces teams being sent deep into Iraq to secure WMD facilities, I knew that not only were we being fed bullshit, but that they knew they were feeding us bullshit.
I never imagined, however, that they would put the “FUBAR” in FUBAR as spectacularly as they have done.
There were posters here on the SDMB who claimed that they had all the facts. A prime example was Bluesman who, in this thread, said:
Similar arguments were made by Airman Doors, although he had the intergirty to stay around and admit that the intelligence was bogus, and that we’d been lied to. Bluesman dipped out like a punk-ass bitch.
The one between his ears, or his staff?
I think that might have been this 08-24-2002 post by Sam Stone:
I am still absolutely nonplussed that a self-proclaimed libertarian so readily advocated just blindly trusting the central bureaucracy on a matter as vitally important as this. Because our leaders know what’s best for us. Uh-huh.
At the risk of being wooshed, even a modest amount of searching can affect the boards.
I didn’t think it was am mistake until two things happened: 1) We didn’t find any WMDs; and 2) somewhat oddly, when they looted the antiquities museum and the powers that be didn’t give a crap. Although in of itself that isn’t a big thing, to me it was highly symbolic of the idea that we were already screwing up the peace. And that was the most important thing of all, while the war in of itself may have been a mistake or a bad thing, I truly believe that it is the way we have handled it since “Mission Accomplished” that has lost this thing. It could have been, a bad idea that ended up fairly well. Instead it was a bad idea that is ending up horribly bad.
I think it’s much more likely that Cheney was defending the administration line back then, as opposed to making policy now.
Yes, he did.
I know he still has his defenders here, but I don’t care.
It’s okay to be wrong. But to be arrogantly, dismissively, condescendingly wrong and then running away without a word of apology is classless.
He could still redeem himself.
Seppuku?
You know that’s not the only type of ideologuism he adheres to absolutely.
When did I know? Right after the attacks, I was perfectly willing to believe that Al Qaeda was being used by Saddam. It took only a few weeks of calming down, and hearing story after story that made no sense to those of us with enough historical education to recognize another outburst of jingoism, to realize it. Going into Afghanistan to get bin Laden, and if possible oust the Taliban and restore the warlords to power, was and still is right. But we knew, *knew * long before Bush actually went into Iraq that he was full of shit and would screw it up even if he weren’t. It became clear he was going to do it anyway, and in days, when the UN inspectors reported that they were only a couple of weeks away from wrapping up their WMD work. I dismissed it as forceful sabre-rattling until then, but I’m among the many, many, yet not a majority who knew it was a mistake as soon as he did it.
An apology would suffice. Ritual disembowelment is sooooo 17th century.
Maybe we could update it for the 21st with a RotoZip?
Well … I knew it was a bad idea the first time G.W. Bush was elected. I just had a feeling that he would find a way to finish daddy’s war. I wasn’t surprised that invading Iraq became a priority after 9-11.
Too high tech. Mentos and Diet Coke should do it.
The way I saw it, and still believe it should have been done, was that Bush should have arranged to have some special forces or CIA operatives take out Saddam and his sons. They were horribly evil people commiting god-awful crimes against Iraqi citizens, and so I feel we had a moral obligation to step in and (stealthily) take them out and hope that when things resettled that there’d be a better regime that takes over.
But now we’re back in Vietnam all over again and our fellow Americans continue to be horribly injured and killed. And as each day passes, we become more desensitized with news reports coming in like: “Today in Iraq, three more American soldiers were killed … . And now checking in with sports, the A’s have taken another step towards clenching blah blah blah.”
It all makes me wish that some political figure would come along and make central to his or her campaign platform that we’ll no longer have it business as usual with regard to foreign policy, that we’ll FINALLY stop getting involved with other countries except when it comes to dealing with trading partners that treat their citizens with respect as well as the environment. AND there’ll be no more of this thing of throwing the tax-payer’s hard-earned money into other nations coffers! (Rice, the other month, was shown in the paper wearing a big smile as she stood next to some African leader for which she’d just forgiven the dude’s $980.000.000.00 his country owed us. And I couldn’t help but think, “Where does she get off telling people that they don’t have to pay back what they owe us?!”)
We need higher quality people in government, that’s all there is to it.
By enema.