Iraq War Poll Finds Low Support, Few Connections To Conflict

Under US law and international law, we do NOT take a nation to war based on what its leader is "seeking" or "developing".  If that were so, we'd have already attacked N. Korea or Iran.  

And that's the distinction between what BushCheney did in 2003 and what ClintonGore did up until they left office on January 20, 2001.

BushCheney cherry-picked intelligence that was faulty, had been discounted or proven false or forged, and kept forcing it down the media's throats (and ours, the public's), or reintroducing it through news venues (Judith Miller's columns in the NYT, is an example of that) and then pointing to it saying, "Even the NYT says it's true" (after BushCheney had given the false information to Judith Miller).  

As far as whether Democratic politicians are weak-minded or brainwashed, they're really not any different than you, me, or most other people when kept in the dark and fed BS - We become mushrooms.  
As Goebbels noted in N@zi Germany:

“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”  

“The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.”  

“If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

BushCheney proved Goebbels correct and Democrats were powerless, for whatever reason (weak-minded, stvpid, corrupt, cowardly, whatever), to stop it.  When you've got Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman emulating Joe McCarthy, calling for the blacklisting of professors who would dare to question the administration's 'war on terrorism', the fix was in that opponents to BushCheney would be steamrolled.  And we all were, some of us temporarily (Chris Matthews is a good example of someone who was against the war, but got out of the way of the administration's stampede, in order to fight another day) and others permanently (Max Clelland, Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, Phil Donohue, to name just a few).
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Iraq War Poll Finds Low Support, Few Connections To Conflict

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress were lied to.

In addition to what Paul Kanjorski and other members of Congress testify to (CIA's faking photographs of UAVs capable of flying nuclear bombs to the US) are the Niger uranium forgeries (that's what was so significant about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame), documents initially revealed by SISMI (Italian military intelligence). These documents seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis.  On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the US and the UK asserted that Iraq violated UN sanctions.  

And again, that nasty word ('conspiracy') comes into play with the Downing Street memo.

There were a few efforts, not many but some, by people like Pelosi and others, to challenge the drumbeat to war, but one thing that we all saw was the *SHOCK&AWE* campaign by the BushCheney administration to override any and all opposition to their plans.
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Iraq War Poll Finds Low Support, Few Connections To Conflict

The single-mos­t important decision that any member of Congress can make is whether to give a president the authority to use military force against another nation.  HillaryClinton claims that she did not discuss her vote to give Bush the AUMF with her husband.  She claims she based her vote on Bush's claim that Iraq had WMD.  We know from the NIE that it wasn't true, and that there were no legal grounds to attack Iraq.  Not only was it illegal, taking Saddam out was bad policy, a bad strategy that would destabiliz­e the entire region, open up a Pandora's box and have us in a quagmire for years and decades.

Bush, no fool he (Bush and Cheney wanted Congress's heads on the line, too, should it all go bad), made that NIE available to all members of Congress.  It was in a locked on the Hill (a table, chair and lamp in the room), an armed guard standing outside.  You had to show your ID as a member of Congress and sign in to enter the room.  Bush wanted a record of it.  

Senator Bob Graham, who didn't vote to give Bush the AUMF (Authoriza­tion To Use Military Force against Iraq) was one of a handful who availed himself of the opportunit­y, and went to the room (we can't find out precisely who did read it because the sign-in sheet is classified­).  

After Graham read it, he  told Hillary that she'd better get herself to the room and read it.  When the existence of the NIE originally became known (during Plamegate) and the little room on the Hill, certain members of Congress were asked if they'd read it before their vote to AUMF.  Hillary said she hadn't.  She said she knew enough about Iraq and didn't have to read the NIE.  She also said that she never discussed her vote or the situation with her husband.  

It's important to realize that as a former president, Bill Clinton got the same PDB that George W. Bush got.   He knew Bush was lying us into a war in Iraq, he backed Bush up; still does to this day.   Is anybody seriously going to say that Hillary and her husband didn't know the truth, that Bush and Cheney were about to spend us into servitude, push us into third world nation status, all the while the Clintons were making HUNDREDS of millions from hedge funds?
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Iraq War Poll Finds Low Support, Few Connections To Conflict

The difference between the political parties is that Democrats were operating at that time under the rule of law, both US and international law.  US foreign policy towards Iraq was about containing WMD capabilities, and UN weapons inspections was the method.  US policy toward Iraq was working.   

BushCheney planned to attack Iraq long before 9/11, long before Bush was even in the WhiteHouse.  Bush biographer MickeyHerskowitz dates Bush's plans to two years before he got into the OvalOffice.  We know from PaulO'Neill, Bush's TreasurySecretary, about BushCheney's 'jones' to attack Iraq from the first cabinet meeting, two weeks after getting into the Oval Office.  And then there's Cheney's energy task force, dividing up Iraq's oil fields in the spring of 2001 - You couldn't possibly have any objection to getting the secret minutes of those meetings, could you?

BushCheney tried to conflate 9/11 with SaddamHussein in order to get Congress to go along with their plans to attack Iraq (remember 'Curveball'? The forged Niger documents about yellowcake?).  When that didn't work, BushCheney inventedthe aluminum tubes' story - ColinPowell knew it was BS.  According to Powell’s CoS LawrenceWilkerson, Powell was skeptical of the entire case for war, but hid that from the public, even as he was used by the administration to sell the war to the UNSecurityCouncil and the American public. “Powell walked into my office,” on the day Congress passed the AUMF, “and without so much as a fare-thee-well, he walked over to the window and said, ‘I wonder what’ll happen when we put 500,000 troops into Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and find nothing?’ And he turned around and walked back in his office. I wrote that down on my calendar — as close to verbatim as I could, because I thought that was a profound statement coming from the SoS, former chairman of the JCOS.”

CondoleezaRice went on all of the Sunday morning shows repeating, "mushroom cloud", and their *SHOCK&AWE* campaign to pressure Congress into giving them the authority to go to war worked.  BushCheney actually did it a step at a time, telling Congress that it was necessary in order for Bush to appear strong and backed by the entire government when he went to the UN to get more sanctions and pressure on Iraq.
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Iraq War Poll Finds Low Support, Few Connections To Conflict

U.S. Companies Get Slice of Iraq's Oil Pie

And, 

Western Oil Firms Remain In Iraq


And,

How the US Public was Defrauded by the Hidden $ Cost of the Iraq War and Occupation

The Bushes, the Cheneys, and the rest of the political establishment (including Democratic politicians and their spouses) made out like bandits, either through oil or military armaments and support, or other corporate deals.  It was one great big raid on the US Treasury for decades to come.  

We the People are being stuck with the tab.  If we allow it.
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