# The Great Pro-War Massacree Thread (and General Meltdown) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 25, 2004, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019 "2004-01-25T18:07:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Svinlesha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@Mr.Svinlesha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Svinlesha)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/1 "2004-01-25T18:07:31Z")
Alright, enough. No more **Mr. Nice S**. In this [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=236400&page=1&pp=50), **Beagle** dreams of a search engine so that he can go back in time and locate all the stupid things the anti-war crowd said prior to the discovery of “WMD” in Syria (which, it must be admitted, hasn’t happened yet, but will no doubt in the future). The **SDMB** search engine isn’t working at the moment, but I happen to have a couple of threads bookmarked. So let us grant **Beagle** his request, and review some of the falsehoods, stupidities, leaps of faulty logic, assertions of smug superiority, ungrounded assumptions, and general **SHITE** that we have been forced to put up with over the past year and a half. These quotes are taken from “[Post Powell’s Address: Smoking Gun Redux](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=160949&page=2&pp=50&highlight=Iraq)” (pre-war), and “[The Big Impact Plan for Iraqi WMDs](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=201634&page=2&pp=50)” (post-war). Having no respect for the dead I’ll go ahead and start with the late, great, lamented **december** : > [@](#): > > _The Democrats have been playing politics, fussing about no WMDs being found. Nearer to the election, the WMDs will be found, and the Dems will look irresponsible….At least we know which party is dumber._ I know, this is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. He isn’t even here to defend himself. Shame. I don’t really care. > [@](#): > > - We Bush supporters hope that the Democrats will NOT remain silent. We hope they will continue to make a fuss about no WMDs and the war being unjustified. When a large body of evidence about WMDs is released, the Dems will be in trouble. And, it won’t matter whether it’s evidence of WMDs or evidence of WMD programs. Only Democratic partisans are concerned about that distinction.\* Well, I’m so pleased to be of service. I plan to continue making a fuss, but may I ask: where is that “large body of evidence,” again? Moving forward we come to one of my favorite posters, **Sam Stone**. I almost hate to do this, **Sam** , but the fact is, you still have yet to recant. So allow me to share some of your pre-war wisdom: > [@](#): > > _The anti-war position is now starting to remind me of assassination conspiracy theorists. You nitpick at single points of evidence (does ‘evacuate’ mean ‘evacuate’?) while ignoring the BIG PICTURE, which is that there isn’t just one piece of evidence here - there is a body of corroborating evidence._ Yup. Prior to the war I warned you that the Bush administration had failed to present solid evidence to support the claim that Iraq possessed “WMDs.” I’m such a conspiracy buff. > [@](#): > > \*If there were just satellite photos, or just a few phone intercepts, or just the word of a few defectors, then maybe it makes sense to be skeptical of the individual sources. > > But when a defector says, “There’s a chemical plant in a bunker at xxx”, and you aim a satellite at that location and see a hidden facility, AND you intercept phone calls where commanders tell their subordinates to move things, AND you have purchase records for material consistent with the weapons that are there, AND you have other countries like Israel and Australia providing corroborating intelligence, **THEN** …\* Oh, I love this part. Faced with all that overwhelming evidence (that **Sam** made up), > [@](#): > > _…a **rational, reasonable person** will look at the totality of the evidence and conclude that it is a very, very difficult to explain it all away as anything but what it appears to be – **a very large, covert program to systematically hide and manufacture weapons of mass destruction** …._ Me being so irrational and unreasonable and all. > [@](#): > > \*And don’t forget that this isn’t ALL of the evidence. Probably not even the best evidence - the best stuff probably comes from human intelligence on the ground, and releasing it would be a death sentence. That’s why the direct evidence offered today was satellite and voice intercept. > > **Before, you guys were saying that the administration had no hard evidence. They said they did. Today, they proved it**. AND, they said that they still have much more that is too sensitive to release…. > > You anti-war guys are becoming increasingly marginalized, and your arguments are becoming increasingly hollow and confusing.\* Astounding, really, that my “hollow, confused” arguments turned out to be correct, while your “rational, reasonable” arguments turned out to be, well… …hollow and confused? Here’s another great one: > [@](#): > > - I don’t believe that any honest, intelligent person can look at the totality of this evidence and conclude anything other than: > > 1. The original declaration Iraq made was a total joke. Is there anyone who still believes that this thing was legitimate? That’s a material breach. > > 2. Iraq CLEARLY has many different weapons of mass destruction, and delivery systems including unmanned aircraft and rockets. That’s a material breach.\* Before the war, my opposition was either _dishonest_ or _unintelligent_. After the war, of course, **Mr. Stone** changed his tune, arguing that all intelligence work is inherently uncertain, and that the US government didn’t have a “crystal ball.” Which is, strangely, one of the points I had been trying to make all along. Even after the war, **Sam** had trouble admitting things didn’t quite pan out the way he envisioned them: > [@](#): > > - But if I were a betting man (and I am), I’d be laying odds right now that some pretty good evidence is going to come out. There’s a whiff of it in the air. If you wanted to bet me that compelling evidence of WMD will not be found, I’d probably offer you 2-1 odds on that. Of course, the sticking point will be what we would consider to be ‘compelling evidence’.\* Well, yeah…there was a whiff of something in the air, but it sure wasn’t _evidence_. I should have taken that bet. Here’s one of my favorites. Remember this one, y’all? > [@](#): > > _The administration is acting awfully cocky about this right now, and David Kay has a big smile on his face. Y’all might want to be just a bit careful about your claims._ That famous David Kay smile – whatever happened to that smile, I wonder? 🙂 And you claimed with absolute certainty, prior to the war, that Iraq possessed “WMDs.” But now, afterwards, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we should be “careful about our claims.” Really, you should consider taking your own advice on occasion: > [@](#): > > _And I love how you turn the argument into a certainty, and then try to change the question into, “Who’s responsible for this failure?” The whole point is, we don’t know if it’s a failure yet. We don’t know where the WMD are. We don’t know what programs Saddam had, and what he was planning to do with them. That evidence is still being gathered. In the end, it may turn out that you were right. But you’re jumping the gun if you try to claim that it’s a closed issue. **It’s not, and the Administration is making increasingly confident statements that they will be proven right in every major detail**. Time will tell._ And indeed, time has told. > [@](#): > > - David Kay now says he has strong, compelling evidence of a very sophisticated series of WMD programs, and **evidence of the existence of the weapons themselves**.\* (Side note: in the interest of accuracy, Kay never made such a claim. S). \*If that’s the case, than all the carping you guys have been doing about how obviously duped we all were is going to come back and bite you in the ass. > > **If not, then I will admit that I was duped.** \* I anxiously await the **SDMB’s** most prominent libertarian to return and make good on this public contractual agreement. Alright, continuing on to some of our more unsavory files, look! It’s **Shodan** , the hard-headed, pragmatic conservative! > [@](#): > > - All these arguments that Iraq doesn’t pose a direct threat to the US boil down to arguments that we should wait until it is too late to do anything. > > I suspect several earlier posters were correct - we could publish an authenticated picture of Saddam Hussein pointing to an ICBM full of plutonium, and some people would say “There’s no indication that he is going to aim it at the US - let’s let the inspectors do their work.” > > Another indication, I suppose, that the far left in the US is becoming increasingly marginalized. Thank God.\* Indeed – how could I have been so unreasonable? > [@](#): > > - I am accusing the hard left in the US and across the world of being strategically short-sighted, isolationist, reflexively anti-American and pro-appeasement, and almost breath-takingly stupid.\* Yup. That’s me in a nutshell, alright. Breath-takingly stupid… and, unfortunately, also correct in my assessment of the evidence. What does that make you, I wonder? Stupider than “breath-takingly stupid,” maybe? > [@](#): > > \*I am accusing them of attempting to force implementation of tactics similar to those used to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, and Hitler to abandon his program of conquering Europe…. **december** characterizes this as conservatives learning from their mistakes. Perhaps so. But liberals in this thread have claimed, in the teeth of the evidence, that Saddam does not have WMD, or that he has been contained and poses no particular threat. > > We learn from the times we were wrong. Do you?\* Judging from our latest exchanges in **GD** , **Shodan** , you’ve learned absolutely nothing from your mistakes. Oh, and I just love this one: > [@](#): > > - It has, unfortunately, gone way beyond the point of sober reflection. **Some liberals now are attempting to deny reality. To claim that the evidence is ambiguous that Saddam “may or may not” have WMD is to take that step**.\* That one is absolutely priceless – it speaks for itself. Before, I was in denial because I suspected that Iraq might not have all the “WMDs” Bush claimed it had. _Now_ I’m in denial because I suspect that maybe, just _maybe_, Bush wasn’t being entirely honest when he made his previous claims. But somehow, I get the feeling that I’m not the one suffering from denial, here…. Finally, here are a couple from the “where are they now” files: first up, **Doghouse Reilly**. Anyone remember him? He made fun of me because I doubted that Saddam was really capable of wiping out lower Manhattan with a teaspoonful of anthrax. > [@](#): > > - What does this have to do with Saddam actively using his WMDs to deter his own citizens from breathing? You guys are gyrating ever more desperately to distract the audience from the main point. Any moment now, I expect you to don funny hats and baggy clown pants and start dancing the macarena–anything to draw attention away from the fact that you were wrong.\* Well, somebody was dancing around the truth, but it wasn’t me, I’m afraid. And then, **El Jeffe** : > [@](#): > > - He’s been demonstrated to be amassing a large variety of chemical and biological weapons, and there’s strong evidence to suggest that he’s trying to get nukes, with little to stand in his way. How is that “contained”? He has prototype unmanned aircraft with a range of 300 miles, that can be fitted with bio/chem weapon delivery systems. Once he gets that perfected, he could deliver an effective weapons strike pretty much anywhere he wants. This is contained? > > With conventional weapons, he’s a problem only to his own area. With WMDs, he’s a problem for the world.\* Shame, I guess, that he didn’t have any “WMDs.” Well, there you go: just a small sampling. Anyone else want to play? ---
**Author:** ![WernhamHogg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@WernhamHogg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WernhamHogg)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/2 "2004-01-25T18:13:36Z")
Back in 2002 I was flamed (on another board) for suggesting that Bush would wage a war in Iraq. I was called a Bush hater, hysterical liberal, etc. Funny – once the war was on, nobody bothered to apologize for the name-calling the previous November. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/3 "2004-01-25T18:30:35Z")
Damn, **Mr. S.** , this thread is like exhuming the six-week-old corpse of a suspected murder victim: probably necessary, but scary and icky. Thanks for undertaking (hee hee) the task, I’d never have had the guts (or the patience). What scares me the most about this post-mortem is seeing how absolutely, vociferously, vituperatively positive and confident some quite intelligent and reasonable people were (no, not counting **december** 😉 ) about a position that was totally unsupported by adequate evidence. These are almost all conservatives with a strong anti-government streak, but nonetheless they totally bought the government’s line about the dangers of Iraqi WMD. May I never, never, never get that absolutely convinced that I know what I’m talking about, even if I really want to believe it. I’m gonna go rewrite all my potential posts and put in a lot more "maybe"s. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/4 "2004-01-25T19:02:54Z")
This will get ugly. Fast. I predict twenty pages before lockdown. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/5 "2004-01-25T19:14:08Z")
Those were judgements made given the information available at the time. It wasn’t just my opinion - it was the opinion of the intelligence services of almost every major country. EVERYONE was surprised by the apparent lack of WMD in Iraq. Even Bill Clinton has recently said that he was absolutely certain WMD were in Iraq. So this isn’t just “BUSH LIES!”. There’s something more going on here. Perhaps some systemic failure of the way the U.S. and other countries gather intelligence? Some sort of echo-chamber effect where bad intel bounces around between the intelligence services and feeds on itself? We’ll have to see. I understand you guys wanting to gloat over this, so have fun. For myself, I modify my opinion as the data change. I still stand by everything I said then, because it was based on the best information I had. Now, of course, my opinion is different. I don’t understand much of the intelligence available at the time. For instance, what happened to those phone intercepts? Unless you think they were faked, they are still damned hard to explain. What was going on there? Right now, it looks possible that this was an intentional deception on Iraq’s part - maintaining a facade in a mistaken attempt to build stature or a gross misjudging of the U.S. - Saddam may have thought that the threat of WMD would keep the U.S. at bay. It’s hard to say right now. The other possibility is that Saddam honestly thought that he had these WMD, because his subordinates were blowing sunshine up his ass. It’s said that in the waning days of WWII, Hitler spent much of his time giving orders to divisions that no longer existed, because his generals were scared to tell him the truth. In any event, we have a condundrum. We have reams of intelligence from many nations which don’t match facts on the ground. We need a serious investigation of this. If the intelligence community is making mistakes of this scope, it has national security implications. There should be a bipartisan congressional commission formed to determine what happened. And if it turns out that what happened is that bad intelligence was intentionally injected into the intelligence stream by the Bush administration, then heads should roll fast and far. ---
**Author:** ![Binarydrone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@Binarydrone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Binarydrone)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/6 "2004-01-25T19:29:28Z")
Nice spin Sam ---
**Author:** ![Monster104](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Monster104](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monster104)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/7 "2004-01-25T19:37:45Z")
> [@](#): > > Nice spin Sam Nice ignoring the content of his post. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/8 "2004-01-25T19:39:22Z")
**SS:** \*EVERYONE was surprised by the apparent lack of WMD in Iraq. \* Er, there were millions of people all over the world, from UN inspectors and CIA officials on down, who were skeptical all along about the WMD claims. Maybe most of us believed that the inspectors might turn up **something** , but we never felt that the Administration had made a credible case that Iraq had enough stuff to justify our invading them. Your credulity was by no means universal. \*I still stand by everything I said then, because it was based on the best information I had. \* Including your assertion that anyone who could disagree with your interpretation of the evidence had to be “dishonest” or “unintelligent”? You know, folks, this isn’t about gloating. This isn’t about “I guessed right and you guessed wrong, ha-ha!” This is about totally natural and justifiable resentment of the level of **insult and disparagement** that we in the anti-war camp were subjected to, simply for making reasonable objections to the Administration’s propaganda. I never claimed that no “honest and intelligent” person could possibly believe what Bush was claiming. I never called war supporters “conspiracy theorists” or “reflexively anti-American” or “breathtakingly stupid”. I don’t think war supporters necessarily have to apologize for being wrong about Iraqi WMD. But damn it all, you sure as hell ought to be apologizing for insulting and heaping scorn on people who were right about it. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/9 "2004-01-25T19:46:27Z")
Look at **Sam** my-boy shuck & jive! YOU SO _CRAZY_ , **Sam Stone**! :wally ---
**Author:** ![Binarydrone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@Binarydrone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Binarydrone)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/10 "2004-01-25T19:53:31Z")
> [@Monster104](#): > > Nice ignoring the content of his post. Actually, I read the post rather carefully. The thing is that all of these scenarios are starting to sound a lot more like excuses for fucking up, cleverly wrapped in a disguise of theory. The fact is that someone blew it and thousands of Iraqi citizens are now dead or mutilated because of this (to say nothing of the unexploded cluster bombs that will be killing and crippling people for decades to come (they are still hurting people in Cambodia to this day, did you know))). The fact also is that those of us that were against this war from the beginning were mocked, flamed and had our patriotism questioned and were all but accused of siding with the terrorists. Enough already. I know that at this point the focus seems to be something along the lines of stating that perhaps there was an intelligence failure, but gee aren’t the Iraqis better off now that we caught Saddam. While it may be true that he was a horrible leader, I wonder if anyone can cite for me how many people he had killed a month and then cite for me how many people we have been killing a month in collateral damage. ---
**Author:** ![Monster104](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Monster104](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monster104)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/11 "2004-01-25T19:53:38Z")
> [@](#): > > I never claimed that no “honest and intelligent” person could possibly believe what Bush was claiming. I never called war supporters “conspiracy theorists” or “reflexively anti-American” or “breathtakingly stupid”. > > I don’t think war supporters necessarily have to apologize for being wrong about Iraqi WMD. But damn it all, you sure as hell ought to be apologizing for insulting and heaping scorn on people who were right about it. I’m a ‘war supporter’ (though from day one I felt possible WMD in Iraq was just icing on the cake), and I think this is a gross generalization of the situation. I saw people on BOTH SIDES trading insults as if they possessed in their hand the concrete data everyone was looking for. I saw both sides acting as if the evidence pointed solely to their position as being correct and there was no other way to interpret it. I myself have been insulted for supporting the war, not on this board but on others and in person. So don’t imply that the anti-war position is all whitewashed and innocent, because that’s simply not true. Also don’t try to lump a large, diverse set of people of a certain opinion in one large group, because you’re bound to commit multiple fallacies if you do so. Some pro-war people acted like dunderheads, but so did some anti-war people. What’s the saying, there’s a bad egg in every basket? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/2bfe46/32.png) [@John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Carter_of_Mars)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/12 "2004-01-25T20:00:22Z")
Pro war massacree? I don’t feel massacreed, **Mr. S**. Saddam’s in the can, his regime is crushed, and those are _good things_. If you’re out to nail GWB for lying, that’s a different thing. Saddam had billions of dollars in cash at his disposal, large resources of manpower, and over a month’s time while he watched invading armies mass on his borders. Put me in that situation, and I can hide some stuff. Did he have WMDs and hide them? He didn’t have any and chose to act like he did? Bush did/didn’t deliberately lie? Who knows? I don’t. The bottom line is my top line: “Saddam’s in the can, his regime is crushed, and those are _good things_.” ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/13 "2004-01-25T20:00:52Z")
> [@](#): > > The fact also is that those of us that were against this war from the beginning were mocked, flamed and had our patriotism questioned and were all but accused of siding with the terrorists. Wah, wah, wah. The most vocal anti-warriors were hardly paragons of politeness and rationality, themselves. Hell, if you were even SLIGHTLY pro-war, you had rabid hate-mongers screaming, “WHERE’RE THE WMD’S?!?!?” even if you never claimed you believed they were there. You were mocked and flamed because your stance boiled down to “I hate Bush, and I got a couple flimsy reasons for it!” rather than “These are the intelligent and rational reasons why we shouldn’t go into Iraq.” ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/14 "2004-01-25T20:10:20Z")
Mmm… this could be considered a hijack… but, considering the title of the thread, it’s an ON-TOPIC hijack, so I’m gonna go ahead and do it. It’s more than just whether or not there were WMDs. At least, that’s how I feel about it. Y’see, I don’t wanna live in a dictatorship. I wanna live in a democracy. Or, at the very least, I’ll settle for a republic, where elected officials I vote for make decisions that affect me. Now, the way they taught ME that this works was that the President had to ask Congress before we went to war. That way, if the President went loony, Congress could stop him before we nuked Vancouver or something. Our current President has gotten us into not one, but TWO wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – without a declaration of war from Congress. His reasoning: information that turned out to be faulty, or flat-out untrue. Of course, he’s the President. He can always swear up and down that HE didn’t know the information wasn’t solid, and he can refuse to show it to us on grounds of “national security” or any number of other reasons. The result: there is, apparently, nothing stopping George W. Bush from ordering troops into Vancouver if he gets a bug up his butt for some reason, any reason, or no reason. _This is an extremely bad idea._ Now, you will notice that I have expressed my opinions here without calling Bush a liar. For all I know, he isn’t a liar, although I have my doubts about that. …but here’s the kicker: My beliefs have not changed. I thought letting the President start wars on his own authority was a rotten idea a year ago, and I think it’s a rotten idea now, for all the same reasons. I would think it’s a rotten idea if he’d found the damn Dr. Strangelove Doomsday Machine buried in the sands south of Baghdad, for potato’s sake, because IT’S AN EXTREMELY BAD IDEA!!! “You’re either with us or against us.” GEE WHIZ, folks, are these or are these not the words of a frickin’ DEMAGOGUE, or WHAT? …but a year ago, I was subjected to considerable rudeness, both in person and over the Internet, for expressing this opinion. **“Shut The F\*ck Up And Get Out Of Our Way, Pansy,”** proclaimed jingoists, posters, and emails. **"WE’LL Defend America!"** Well, no, actually, you won’t. You will simply invade foreign countries on the say-so of one man who took power under questionable circumstances, and insult and ridicule anyone who dares to disagree, or even ask whether or not we shouldn’t stop and think about this for a minute before swarming into the Middle East, armed with cockeyed intelligence and half-assed plans for what we’re going to do when we get tired of shooting foreigners. _This, too, was an extremely bad idea._ The ONE THING that MIGHT, repeat, MIGHT have justified this idiocy was finding out that, by george, he DID have some weapons of mass destruction squirreled away in there! …and we’re still waiting. And even if we DO manage to find Saddam’s Q-96 Space Modulator somewhere between now and the election, it won’t change the fact that half a thousand Americans are dead on the say-so of one man, who did not need a Congressional declaration of war to order them to die for him. So, someone tell me again: what was the justification for the poisonous denunciation of the antiwar faction, again? ---
**Author:** ![gum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bbe5ce/32.png) [@gum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gum)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/15 "2004-01-25T20:12:11Z")
Jezus what a boring thread. If you’re done gloating, think of an interesting one, will you? ---
**Author:** ![Monster104](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Monster104](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monster104)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/16 "2004-01-25T20:15:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Our current President has gotten us into not one, but TWO wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – without a declaration of war from Congress. > > His reasoning: information that turned out to be faulty, or flat-out untrue. What information about going into Afghanistan turned out to be faulty or flat-out untrue? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/17 "2004-01-25T20:21:40Z")
**M104:** \*Some pro-war people acted like dunderheads, but so did some anti-war people. \* Then they should apologize for it. I apologize if I came across as saying that **all** war supporters should be apologizing for the insults and flaming of a few such as **Sam** and **Shodan**. People who were reasonable and civil about the issue, on either side, don’t deserve to be trashed simply for being wrong. **JCoM:** \*Did he have WMDs and hide them? He didn’t have any and chose to act like he did? Bush did/didn’t deliberately lie? Who knows? I don’t. The bottom line is my top line: “Saddam’s in the can, his regime is crushed, and those are good things.”\* That sounds like you’re determined to focus only on the positive outcomes (and I think we can all agree that those **are** positive outcomes) while refusing to pay any attention to the negative outcomes or the dangers of starting a war for inadequate reasons. Over 500 American soldiers have been killed and many more wounded; thousands of Iraqis have been killed; our military is stretched thin; millions of Muslims around the world are enraged with us over what they see as a deliberate anti-Muslim assault on a nation that hadn’t attacked us; millions of Muslims and non-Muslims alike are concluding that our leaders are liars, bullies, and thieves. **Those are not “good things”,** and sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting “But Saddam’s in the can! Saddam’s in the can!” will not make them go away. ---
**Author:** ![London\_Calling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/18 "2004-01-25T20:26:11Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > EVERYONE was surprised by the apparent lack of WMD in Iraq. Even Bill Clinton has recently said that he was absolutely certain WMD were in Iraq. So this isn’t just “BUSH LIES!”. There’s something more going on here. . Yeah, it’s called US foreign policy doctrine - you know, that thing called the ‘national interest’. And we pretty much know for sure you just don’t get it **Sam Stone** , not even the opening riff, let alone the substance. Hence you just unquestioningly recite and regurgitate neo con speeches like they have actual meaning. You’re a \*believer \ ***Sam Stone** and, I’m sorry, but in terms of politics you are a genuine fool. ---
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/19 "2004-01-25T20:35:34Z")
How about focussing on **Master Wang-ka** ’s main point: that the President should not have the sole power to decide when and where a war is fought? The Constitution deliberately gave the power of the purse and the power to declare war to the Congress, precisely to prevent a situation like Iraq from ever happening. We should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it happen. We should be further ashamed if this man is re-elected. And we should be debating the steps that need to be taken, including amending the Constitution, to make sure it never happens again. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2004, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019/20 "2004-01-25T20:38:25Z")
> [@Monster104](#): > > What information about going into Afghanistan turned out to be faulty or flat-out untrue? Well, let’s see: the supposition that Osama Bin Laden was directly responsible for the attack on 9/11 (possible, but far from proven); The idea that the destruction of Al-Qaida would win the war on terror (not only untrue, but laughable) The idea that we CAN successfully invade/conquer/pacify all of Afghanistan (depends on your definition. Are we EVER gonna clean ALL those heavily armed crazy people out of their holes? Not likely.) The idea that Al-Qaida is a centralized organization with a head which can be attacked and eliminated by invading Afghanistan (not only untrue, but if Bush had been listening to his own people, they probably could have told him this.) The likely truth is this: Bush felt like kicking some immediate ass after 9/11 for political purposes, and Afghanistan offered up some properly undiplomatic, rude, unpleasant Muslims, as well as almost certainly harboring a major terrorist organization (which likely largely scootled across the border into Pakistan the minute we showed up). But don’t tell ME that invading Afghanistan is gonna win the war on terror. It ain’t. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-pro-war-massacree-thread-and-general-meltdown/226019.md?page=2)