Where are they now, the cheerleaders for war on Iraq?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1188073,00.html

Bush and Blair have lit a fire which could consume them

The Iraqi uprising will drive home the forgotten lessons of empire

Seumas Milne
Thursday April 8, 2004
The Guardian

Where are they now, the cheerleaders for war on Iraq? Where are the US Republican hawks who predicted the Anglo-American invasion would be a "cakewalk", greeted by cheering Iraqis? Or the liberal apologists, who hailed a "new dawn" for freedom and democracy in the Arab world as US marines swathed Baghdad in the stars and stripes a year ago? Some, like the Sun newspaper - which yesterday claimed Iraqis recognise that occupation is in their "own long-term good" and are not in "bloody revolt" at all - appear to be in an advanced state of denial.

Others, to judge by the performance of the neocon writer William Shawcross and Blairite MP Ann Clwyd, have been reduced to a state of stuttering incoherence by the scale of bloodshed and suffering they have helped unleash. Clwyd, who regularly visits Iraq as the prime minister's "human rights envoy", struggled to acknowledge in an interview on Monday that bombing raids by US F16s and Apache helicopter gunships on Iraqi cities risked causing civilian deaths, not merely injuries. The following day, 16 children were reportedly killed in Falluja when US warplanes rocketed their homes. And yesterday, in what may well be the most inflammatory act of slaughter yet, a US helicopter killed dozens of Iraqis in a missile assault on a Falluja mosque.

The attack on a mosque during afternoon prayers will, without doubt, swell the ranks of what has become a nationwide uprising against the US-led occupation. By launching a crackdown against the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - and, in an eloquent display of what it means by freedom in occupied Iraq, closing his newspaper - the US has finally triggered the long-predicted revolt across the Shia south and ended the isolation of the resistance in the so-called Sunni triangle. Bush, Blair and Bremer have lit a fire in Iraq which may yet consume them all. The evidence of the past few days is that the uprising has spread far beyond the ranks of Sadr's militia. And far from unleashing the civil war US and British pundits and politicians have warned about, Sunni and Shia guerrillas have been fighting side by side in Baghdad against the occupation forces. snip

Unlike in, say, Spain or Australia, we are hamstrung in Britain by the fact that all three main political parties are committed to maintaining the occupation, including the Liberal Democrats - whose former leader and Bosnian governor Lord Ashdown yesterday argued for at least another decade in Iraq. But opposition to such latter-day imperial bravura is strong among the British public and across all parties, and must now find its voice. There is a multiplicity of different possible mechanisms to bring about a negotiated, orderly withdrawal and free elections. Tony Blair calls that "running away" and admitting "we have got it all wrong". But he and Bush did get it wrong: there were no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq wasn't a threat, there was no UN authorisation, and the invasion was manifestly illegal. Foreign troops in Iraq are not peacekeepers, but aggressors. The lessons of empire are having to be learned all over again.

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[Skittles]

1. HANGING THEIR HEADS IN ABSOLUTE SHAME

I HOPE.

[libbygurl]

2. Painful lessons never learned. Anyone know what ex-liberal now Bush

apologist Chris Hitchens has to say about it now?

[Viking12]

3. There was one on O'Reilly last night claiming to be a DEM

There was one on O'Reilly last night claiming to be a Democratic Strategist. His name was something like Chris Lepita. He actually said that the Democratic party needs to shut out anti-war voices; deny them time at the convention, eliminate links from DNC website, marginalize them in other ways, etc...

[truthspeaker]

4. Calling their lawyers and counting their money

Dead people and ruined countries don't mean a thing to these neo-imperialists. Worst case scenario: they'll have to dump their Halliburton stock and fly to the Caymans while their attorneys stall indictments.

[billybob537]

5. All thats left undone

is to piss off the Kurds. Then Iraq can mount a unified assault on the Undermanned security forces, military and civilian. Bush note to self;Keep draining swamp.Forget about aligators.