Emphasis added. Where did you learn that? The latest poll shows more than 40% of Americans think the war was a good idea. Are those Democrats?
Gallop poll: Feb 2003 ; 94% of Americans believed it was likely or certain Iraq had WMD before the invasion., when by far the most credible case was put by Blix and Scott Ritter.
2003 was when I realised democracy for the USA is, for the most part, a mirage.
I suspect you would need to dive into that more deeply if you wanted to figure out what they meant.
How many of those would tend to approve of nearly anything our military does?
How many are actually comparing an accurate analysis of the situation back then to the situation today?
How many believe a justification for the war that is even close to what we faced at that time?
How many are simply voting their party?
In the end, it’s pretty crazy to consider that what we got from this war (broader terrorism, less regional stability, an Iraq aligned with Iran, etc.) was worth the lives of thousands of our best kids and more than a trillion dollars OR that what we got was somehow unpredictable - an unfortunate accident.
So, this 40% number is thinking up a basis for approval that has nothing to do with the real world.
When the war happened (the first one), I was in college. I thought, based on what I knew of history and politics, that it was a collossally bad idea bound to end in disaster. But I thought “the people in Washington must have knowledge and experience that dwarfs mine, so they must know what they are doing.” But I was right and they were wrong, or rather short-sighted / misguided / had different goals.
So I learned not to presume that the people running things know what they’re doing.
Camouflage. I learned all about how camo varied according to the environment.
Exactly.
I’m really surprised that anyone who was born before 1985 or so would have “learned any lessons” from our post- 9/11 Iraq misadventures. (Apologies, in my late 50s, I have a hard time envisioning the impact of the social and educational environment in which much younger folk came of age.) And you don’t even have to go back to Viet Nam. One of my favorites was Operation Just Cause - short for Just 'Cause We Can! 
This folly emphasized many behaviors and practices, but none were unprecedented or unanticipated.
And for all this talk of lessons learned, how are you applying those lessons? How much of America learned those lessons? Does it matter if an average citizen learns a lesson, if those in power learned different lessons, including that military action can be very profitable?
This is almost exactly my lesson learned. It was completely obvious that the WMDs were a lie but on the plus side, you’d get rid of Saddam and due to Washington’s superior knowledge of strategery and politics (!) they’d probably be in and out of Iraq in a few months, even though I, as a layperson, could plainly see that there weren’t nearly enough troops for an occupation should that not happen so smoothly.
Interesting. So, you don’t believe that 94% would constitute a majority in whatever passes for ‘democracy’ in your mind? Just because they were wrong, it’s hard to see how this isn’t democracy in action, but I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with your tedious antipathy towards the US…
It can be denialism. It’s easier just to continue telling yourself you didn’t get fooled, and you can point to all the other people who got fooled as support. So, Saddam had WMD’s.
At a certain point you have to just fess up and say you were wrong. It’s either that or go the increasingly out of touch with reality CT route, where it’s a vast conspiracy. Literally we’ve been in the country for well over a decade now, to just about all of it, and there hasn’t been any substantial stockpiles of WMD. At most, there were a few old and obviously abandoned remnants from when he did have the things before the first Gulf War.
FTR, I was one of those who were wrong. I was convinced that Saddam did in fact have them, that he was tricking the UN who were obviously duped and naive (which seemed to me to be their default) if not corrupt, and that taking him out of power in the region would be a net positive for not only the region but the world. I was very wrong about all of that, most of all I was wrong that the US (certainly under Bush) could be a force for GOOD change in the region, that we could topple what was pretty obviously a evil regime (which I still believe they were) and replace it with something that would be an example to the region of how things could be. Epic fail.
American military involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973. For 30 years after that a guiding principle of American foreign military involvement was “No More Vietnams”. Then in 2003 the Iraq war started. The U.S. withdrawal happened in 2011. So I expect that until about 2041 a guiding principle of American foreign military involvement will be “No More Iraqs”.
I learned that Americans refuse to accept, despite years of evidence to the contrary, that no “eyes” were ever found in Iraq or Iran.
I learned that a lot of people will buy the tale when a politician votes for a war, then later says they were opposed to the war, and knew it was a bad idea, but had some reason for voting for it. Senators who went on to run presidential campaigns like Kerry and Clinton both did this, and an awful lot of people objected strongly to anyone pointing out that they supported the war in the way that matters most (using their authority as an elected official to give a yes or no on it happening).
“It’s taking longer than we thought” indeed. Instead of made-up fantasies, is it OK to listen to Clinton’s own words before she cast her vote?
Perhaps it’s too late—America chose a different “anti-war” leader—but I ask all Dopers who’ve unwittingly promulgated mistruths about Hillary Clinton to apologize! 
Thanks in advance.
That speech has always looked more like political triangulation to me. An attempt to give something to everyone. She gets to vote to authorize the use of force, but say she has “serious concerns”, too. Had she really meant it, I would have expected some sort of protest from her between the time of that vote and the actual invasion in March 2003. I have not been able to find one peep from her expressing even mild concern about the way things actually played out in late 2002 and early 2003. Or, she would have voted for the Levin amendment instead of voting against it. That amendment throttled back on the authority given to the President to act unilaterally in the AUMF, as it was written.
Instead, we find this, in April 2004. More than a year after the invasion:
Perhaps she should have listened more closely to her colleague, Russ Feingold, when he gave his speech on the Senate Floor explaining why he was voting against the Iraq AUMF. Quoting, in part:
More likely Clinton, like the other presidential hopefuls, thought a vote for the AUMF was the better political choice. If there is one lesson we should all have learned, long before this or any other war, it’s to pay less attention to what politicians say and more attention to what they do. In the end, Clinton voted for the AUMF. She didn’t have to, and many Democratic Senators did not.
It’s not a “made-up fantasy” to say that she voted for the war, and that’s what matters in this case. I’m well aware that she gave lots of speeches hedging her bets, but when you vote FOR the war, the relevant fact is that you voted saying ‘I use my power to authorize this war to happen’, not that you added a meaningless ‘oh but it would be a bad idea to do what I just authorized’ later on. The ignorance is people like you perpetuating the twisted idea that senators voting for the country to do X doesn’t count as them supporting X.
There were Democrats that actually weren’t in favor of the Iraq war and voted against it, but she (and Kerry) simply weren’t among those.
Were there any Congresspeople who voted against the invasion who said they opposed it because Saddam didn’t really have any WMD? Not “we need more time for inspections” - because inspections wouldn’t be necessary if Saddam didn’t have anything to inspect. I mean people who said what Democrats have been saying ever since - it was clear that Saddam didn’t have any WMD.
Regards,
Shodan
Which Democrats have been saying that and how many?
This, there was nothing new under the sun.
That was what I was asking about - are there any Democrats who said, before the invasion, that Saddam didn’t have any WMD?
There are lots of examples of Democrats saying that he did - cite.
I was talking about these kinds of claims -
Were there any Democrats who said that before the fact?
I will assume you don’t need a cite for the “Bush lied” allegations ever since.
Regards,
Shodan