re: #357 Mattand

Just finished listening to the audio/podcast version of Rachel Maddow’s run-up to the Iraq War doc. Since no one asked me for my opinions, here they are:

1. I didn’t really learn anything new, but the sheer audacity of the Bush administration is breathtaking. Given the damage he did to both the American and Iraqi peoples, hearing Bush insist it was the right choice is infuriating.

I said it yesterday - I watched the report and it made me just as pissed off as I was the day we went into Iraq.

3. I’m still angry at the “godless libruls” like Kerry and Hillary for supporting this. It was like giving Charles Manson keys to a gun shop and saying, “All right, Chuck, don’t you do anything crazy now, you scamp!”

4. I know this is going to sound condescending, but I still don’t understand how people bought the whole WMD story. My big problem at the time was the Administration initially pushing the Al Queda angle.

Consider the tenor of the time. The country was still reeling from 9/11, the media was fully on board with Moar War, and anyone who even questioned the wisdom of going to war with Iraq was called a terrist sympathizer.

And the Bush administration had free run of every media outlet in the country at that time. They used it to relentlessly push their propaganda, and the media pretty much got out of the way and let them bloviate to their hearts’ content. Anti-war voices were few and far between in those days because the news nets didn’t want to piss off the White House and risk being called anti-American.

It was a dark time, and we were being led by a bunch of cynical mofos who would stop at nothing to get their war. And they got it.