New GOP talking point: it was the Democrats who lied us into war with Iraq

[Rocknrule]

I've been hearing this a lot lately. That Clinton and Kerry were the ones who were all hot and horny for war and forced Bush to invade Iraq. That it was the Democrats who told everyone that Saddam was behind 9/11 and had WMDs.
My response: Don't try to weasel out of this, you impossible hypocrites! 10 years ago, you guys were salivating at the prospect of killing a few thousand brown people because "they're all gonna grow up to be terrorists anyway", calling anyone who opposed the war an un-American traitor, and demanding that they leave the country. I remember it like it was yesterday! Iraq was YOUR war, Republicans! YOU were the ones who were claiming that Saddam was behind 9/11 and was planning to nuke us! YOU were the ones who came up with immature concepts like "freedom fries" and burned Dixie Chicks CDs because they dared to speak ill of your idol Bush! YOU were the ones who bullied Hillary and other Democrats to vote for the war out of fear of being "Dixie Chicked"! It was YOUR war Republicans, not ours! Stand up and own it!
My god, these people have no shame. Next they'll be saying that the Democrats forced Cheney to shoot his friend in the face.

[Cal Carpenter]

1. It was a rather bipartisan effort, iirc

No point in pretending that many elected Dems didn't happily go along for the ride, including repeating the lies and rhetoric that were used to sell the war to the public.

I wouldn't put the lion's share of blame on the Dems, but it wasn't just a Republican war.

edited for clarification

[WhiteTara]

5. A mouse turd size of effort compared to elephant

piles of shit. Not one single Democrat went on television and said that the smoking gun would be in the shape of a mushroom cloud. Not one single Democrat said that there were WMDs that would be used against the US in Iraq. I could go on and on, so please reconsider that ill considered opinion.

[dhill926]

7. thank you….

[Cal Carpenter]

8. Okay, and actions speak louder than words

29 Democrats in the Senate vote FOR the Iraq War resolution, without whom it wouldn't have passed.

More Senate Democrats voted FOR the Iraq War resolution than voted against it.

Rewriting history gets us nowhere.

[jeff47]

11. And those votes were not at all influenced

by the efforts of Cheney and friends to "tweak" the intelligence they showed those 29 Democrats.

Yes, Democrats didn't stop the war. But they were reacting to the mountain of lies from people who were legally obligated to tell the truth.

The failing isn't the Democrat's war vote. The failing is the lack of prosecution. However, that's not politically possible at this time. If a Democrat other than Hillary wins in 2016, it's a lot more possible. If Hillary wins, it's going to have to wait until the Democrat after her.

[WhiteTara]

14. The drum beat was relentless and the attacks on

patriotism were fierce and there was no opposition voice because they were removed from television. No one was surprised. Barbara Lee was the sole no vote in the House.

No this is all on the republicans and *co, don't even bother to try and push this off onto Democrats.

[freshwest]

24. Agreed. Thanks, WhiteTara. n/t

[Proud Liberal Dem]

43. The war happened for three main reasons IMHO:

1. Bush, Cheney, et. al desperately wanted the war no matter what- though nobody knows why exactly for sure other than them (though there were certainly plenty of benefits thereof, at least initially). With Congress in Republican hands and no major dissension among their ranks, there was nothing or nobody able or willing to stop him, which they might not have been able to do anyway. I had briefly hoped that Colin Powell- having cautioned against regime change in Iraq following GW1 (along with Bush's father and, ironically enough, Dick Cheney)- might talk Bush Jr. out of this bad idea but he ultimately folded and did what his boss wanted him to do- much to his disgrace. Once Powell signed on to the endeavor, I knew that the war was inevitable.

2. There was not much, if anything, anybody could do to stop Bush from doing what he wanted to do. Some Democrats may have voted for the IWR (what they were actually voting for is still debatable) but Bush could have still have easily ignored the defeat of the resolution in Congress and would've done what he wanted to do anyway even if it had failed. He wasn't willing to gamble on another UN vote to get formal international approval for the war and, hell, even the UN Weapons Inspectors were clear that they had not been able to find WMDs after searching the country for months and were still working when they were pulled out in the midst of the start of the invasion and neither of these things fazed him and his (mis-)administration one bit.

3. A lot of people were scared about something else really bad happening to them and were more easily able to be sufficiently spooked into going to war in the wake of 9/11. Few people, let alone politicians, could say with absolute crystal-clear certainty that Saddam Hussein did NOT have any WMDs and I'm sure that nobody in office wanted to be the person who opposed the war only to find out later they were tragically wrong- even if the odds of being wrong were slim to none. Dems like Hillary probably should have known better but even her husband was concerned that Saddam Hussein might still be holding on to a few WMDs since nobody had been in Iraq snooping around for at least 5 years.

It would have been better if Dems had spoken out more and withheld their *support* for the endeavor (if for no other reason than principle) but none of the Dems in Congress were chomping at the bit for the war AFAIK and would never have instigated it. That period of time from 2001-2006 were some of the darkest times for our democracy IMHO.

[Jesus Malverde]

18. The warmongering was bipartisan

[WhiteTara]

36. Joe Lieberman was only technically a democrat

and showed his evil ways and lost his seat because of it. Joe...what a putz. But there were many eloquent speeches against and it was hard to stop the overwhelming everyday scare stories.

[spanone]

40. democrats were the ones lied into supporting the bullshit.

[SummerSnow]

2. i remember this...

lying mofo's

[lpbk2713]

3. I'm convinced ...

Convinced gawd created rethuglicans just to show s/he has a sense of humor.

[baldguy]

4. It's a talking point shared by many of the anti-Democrat DUers, too.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

9. Yes I see that up above

[butterfly77]

6. They are rewriting history...

all over the place and the Democratic party just goes along and lets them do it. Watch when these fake hearings start on Benghazi the panel with be set with mostly republiCON liars and some weak Dems,that is if we get more than one on the panel.

CONservatives will be throwing lies out left and right and shutting off the mic and the media will go along with the BULL...

[Wolf Frankula]

10. So Monkey Bush Was a Democrat

That will surprise his daddy. And the Supreme Court seditionists who installed him the Preznitcy. We were lied into it by Rethuglicans, with the support of a few Democrats who wanted to be 'bipartisan" ie weak.

Wolf

[tclambert]

12. When is Obama going to apologize for allowing those airliners to crash into the World Trade Center?

And Obama refused to do anything about the mortgage bubble that many economists warned about. Then when it blew up and triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression, did Obama man up and take responsibility for that? Why, no. Oh, and Hurricane Katrina! Did Obama even try to save New Orleans? At least George W. Bush kept us safe from terrorist attacks, economic crises, and even catastrophic weather. If only Obama were more like George W. Bush, what a world it would be!

[fleabiscuit]

13. Got any pointers to where you are hearing that? Count me skeptical. n/t

[Luminous Animal]

15. Hearing this a lot lately where? (I do not expect an answer.)

[xmas74]

19. I actually heard something like this not too long ago at work.

Extremely conservative coworker was mouthing off about it. He's a big Alex Jones fan so I thought it must be some new thing going around.

According to him the Republicans only wanted to go to Afghanistan but the Democrats demanded that we also go into Iraq in order to install a puppet government and take over their oil supply.

I ignored him, as usual. No sense in talking to someone who has been working on an underground bunker "somewhere no one will ever find", regularly stocks up on 20 year supplies, owns enough weapons to arm his own militia (and likes to show pics the way most would show pictures of their children) and brags about how Planned Parenthood supposedly has a restraining order against him for supposedly "asking for a coat hanger" to unlock his car.

The talking point must be out there since he's heard it. Of course, it's coming from the truly insane so do with it as you wish.

[Art_from_Ark]

41. Holy bat guano, Batman!

There were Republican oilmen in the top two positions in government in 2003, who had bombed Iraq also as soon as they assumed power, and the father of one of them had even attacked Iraq 12 years earlier, but it was those mean old Democrats who demanded that we also go into Iraq in order to install a puppet government and take over their oil supply???

[xmas74]

42. The best thing to do is to never, ever engage him in discussion besides

simple questions about his children. Anything else causes him to go crazy.

I learned this the hard way.

[fleabiscuit]

20. One especially cynical neuron is firing that this may be a future useful op to bookmark. n/t

[Bigmack]

16. I promised myself...

... at the time... that I would say "I told you so" at every opportunity.

The Dems were fooled by Repub lies...?

I wasn't. Why were the Dems who voted for it?

I would never have voted for that war.

I expect the Repubs to lie to us. Where was the Dem skepticism? Why would Dems believe them?

Or was it cowardice? Dems afraid of not appearing "patriotic".

It won't keep me from voting Dem, but I will never forget their votes on those wars.

[Jesus Malverde]

17. The war mongering was bipartisan.

When you fail to investigate, repudiate and condemn, you become an accessory.

[woo me with science]

22. [phone] Particularly when you ALSO then entrench, justify, and expand

the entire new layer of secret laws, secret courts, and unconscionable Constitutional/civil liberties abuses that were pushed through along with the warmongering, with the same justifications and rationalizations.

The parties were and are complicit in warmongering and terrormongering for profit.

[MisterP]

23. and now even bringing up IWR will be "playing into the GOP's hands"

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

21. Hillary and Kerry voted for it because they thought it politically expedient.

Or, they are monumentally gullible.

[Jim Lane]

25. Either way, they were at fault -- but less so than Shrub and the gang

Doing what's expedient in the face of vicious McCarthyism is less culpable than creating the McCarthyism in the first place.

Gullibly believing a lie is less culpable than telling the lie in the first place.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

27. Not as bad? They voted for, and in Hillary's case, supported Bush's wars.

Kerry backtracked when it went sour, but Hillary has still to admit her collaboration with Bush &Co.

[Jim Lane]

29. Bush was still the principal instigator.

I'm no Hillary fan. I very strongly hope that our 2016 nominee will be someone to her left. Nevertheless, my guess is that, if she had been President then, she would not have ordered the invasion of Iraq.

She went along with Bush on it because he'd created the conditions to get Democrats to go along. I agree with your summary of the possible explanations:
1) She and other Dems recognized that it was politically expedient. Bush was (ab)using the power of the Presidency to move public opinion in the direction of war hysteria. He and his allies stood ready to paint any dissenters as uninformed, naive, or lacking in their concern for Americans' safety and for our lofty ideals of democracy. I'm sure some of the Dems privately thought it was a bad idea but they didn't have the guts to stand up to the war hysteria.
2) She and other Dems were gullible. Bush cherry-picked the intelligence, and outright lied when all else failed. The President really does have access to more information. (It was the same thing LBJ did during Vietnam. His administration was pointing out, correctly, that it had access to information not available to the public. Then the Pentagon Papers revealed that the nonpublic information was more damning of the government's policies than what its critics had been saying.) Some of the Dems probably just couldn't bring themselves to believe that the President would be so thoroughly dishonest, so they deferred to his judgment.

Regardless of which group Hillary was in, I say that, yes, she was not as bad as Bush. She should have shown more courage and/or more skepticism in dealing with the Bush administration's war push -- and that was the main reason I supported Obama over her in 2008 -- but the fact remains that her fault was in how she dealt with what Bush did. It was Bush who created the problem in the first place. That makes him more at fault in my book.

[oldandhappy]

26. I remember Colin Powell's speech at the U.N.

and I suspect many of us do. I was sucked in. But I did not stay sucked in!

[merrily]

28. War is peace. Truth is lies. It's 30 years after 1984, written in 1948 to show

how awful Russia was.

On the one hand, Huxley was incredibly prescient. On the other hand he was either incredibly naive or incredibly propagandistic. (Is that a word?)

[Jim Lane]

30. You're mixing up your dystopias.

1984 was written by George Orwell. In mentioning Huxley you're probably thinking of Brave New World. Both novels have elements of prescience, unfortunately.

[cali]

31. I haven't heard that. Do you have some links?

[Zambero]

32. Pushing toothpaste back into the tube

would be an easier task than trying to convince a sane person that Iraq was somehow a "Democrat" war.

[Kalidurga]

33. This isn't a new talking point per se

In 2009 All the Republicans became doves.

[woo me with science]

34. Just practice for doublethink, demanded daily of us by propagandists.

Both corporate parties are complicit in the war agenda, but Democrats and Republicans out in the country are separately propagandized to support everything their party does while in office, while opposing the very same policies when pushed by the other party. In this way the One Percent keep us divided and unable to unite against the bipartisan predatory corporate agenda that continues no matter which party is in office, and which is impoverishing *all* of us and stripping us of our Constitutional rights.

A great deal of money and effort has been put into the propaganda machine that attempts to disconnect party loyalty from principles and policies and attach it instead to a team color. Hence we have the spectacle of Republicans expressing outrage at the very policies they fiercely defended under Bush. And the very best Democrat, according to the Third Way, finds no cognitive dissonance in having loathed virtually every aspect of the Bush administration, but now bellowing fervently in support of the very same policies under Obama.

Our hope for the country rests in the fact that our propagandists don't have functioning memory holes or even very good writers. I think the nation is getting very sick of the constant lying to our faces and demands to deny reality.

[Kalidurga]

38. Yeah, your probably right both sides do a bit of that flipping

I try not to think too much about Democrats sliding right, but I have seen it happen.

[Demo_Chris]

45. Wonderful post. nt

[Gothmog]

35. This theory is delusional

What is the color of the sky in the world of the people advancing this theory?

[Martin Eden]

37. Cheney/Bush was the perpetrator, but many Dems were complicit.

The invasion of Iraq and the systematic campaign of misinformation to deceive the American public were very much the product of the Bush administration and the neocon agenda for US military hegemony spelled out in the PNAC document Rebuilding America's Defenses.

To evert this war crime and colossal strategic blunder required strong leadership from the Democratic Party -- especially from prominent leaders like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Instead, not only did they vote to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, they echoed some of the war rhetoric to burnish their "tough on terror" credentials.

They were complicit, and I find it extremely difficult to believe they were gullible. We here at DU knew Bush was lying through his teeth, and any member of Congress who was fooled is simply unqualified to hold their office.

I will never, ever, vote in a Democratic primary for anyone who voted for the IWR in October 2002.

[pnwmom]

39. What's even worse is they pretend 9/11 didn't happen on their watch. n/t

[Why Syzygy]

44. The Iraq war started in 1990.

And the embargo caused as much death as war. Clinton defended the embargo. No one's hands are clean.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/170/41910.html
(be sure to read the rebuttal below the quotes by Clinton)