How many DUers supported the Iraq war initially? The results are IN!

[Iceburg]

Post Survey Edit/Commentary:
The question was posed "How many DUers supported the Iraq war initially?"
In the 1/2 window there were 200 viewers, and 20 responders -- all but 2 claimed to be non-supporters.

A small sample, admittedly but it does suggest that:
a) many viewers of the thread were too embarrassed to respond
b) DU is completely out of sync with the general population which was very supportive of the invasion by an alarming majority (>70%)
see http://pewresearch.org/pubs/431/trends-in-public-opinion-about-the-war-in-iraq-2003-2007
c) Other?

Question: Given that a huge proportion of that 70% are now against the war, what will the 70% of the population that were once favor of the war be looking/listening for from the presidential candidates to assuage their guilt?

[SoFlaJet]

1. ~~~~~~crickets~~~~~~~~

I was right here fighting the good fight in 2002

[Danger Mouse]

2. Absolutely fucking not.

[jemsan]

3. No Way!!

[Iceburg]

4. follow-up:Would it be fair to say most DU'rs didn't support the Iraq war?/nt

[Buzz Clik]

5. Not me.

I opposed invading Afghanistan louldy. In retrospect, I'm not as certain about Afghanistan (initially) though I am still skeptical about ALL the motivations (e.g., Central Asian Pipeline).

Never a hesitation about Iraq, no regrets about my opposition.

[CoffeeCat]

6. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I was against the Iraq war, before I was fervently against it.

[PCIntern]

7. Of course not BUT

I knew that it would be the beginning of the downfall of Bush II and he would do to himself what the Dems were apparrently incapable of doing...same as Hitler and Napoleon. Over-reaching militarily and occupation-ally. I don't know if that's a word but you know what I mean...

I 'smiled grimly to myself' (An Ian Fleming-ism) when they went ahead with the invasion b/c I knew they were screwed. Of course it's a tragedy for those who had to die and be maimed.

[chieftain]

8. Not me. I knew it was immoral and likely to be counter-productive

over the long term. Even had Iraq possessed WMD, Sadaam posed no imminent threat to the US. What still stuns me is how miserably Bush and his gang have botched the aftermath of removing Hussein. It is a bad thing done badly.

[Iceburg]

Kick ...need a sample size of 30./nt

[Iceburg]

9. Kick ...need a sample size of 30./nt

[whistle]

10. I never supported war on Iraq and the more reasons given by Bush

...and Cheney and the Pentagon the more skeptical I got. I knew it was all a scam when Powell made his dog and pony presentation appeal for the Iraq War based on WMDs to the UN and he pulled out his cartoon presentations of the mobile labs.

:wtf:

[whistle]

11. Kick for greater response

[JVS]

12. Nobody

[tulsakatz]

13. not me!

It just didn't make any sense to me!

We were beginning to catch a few terrorists but all of a sudden Saddam was to blame for everything.......like I said, it didn't make sense!

[Cirque du So-What]

14. No support here

I was busily denouncing the looming invasion of Iraq throughout *'s dog-and-pony show from the corner of a city park adjacent to a busy intersection. The pro-invasion crowd was confined to a strip of city property across the street, so a good deal of our shouts were directed toward the neocons' cheerleaders. I wish I could contact all those counterdemonstrators now - just to see how many remain supportive of *'s folly.

[Nite Owl]

15. No, in fact I

knew if he won in '00 we were going to war in Iraq.

[dsc]

16. As a close call, I did.

I felt that our sanctions were very hard on the wrong people but admittedly this war went far worse than I could have ever imagined. In an ideal world I wouldn't have supported the war, but in comparision to the sanctions I thought a short war would be preferable.

[Iceburg]

18. Thank you for your honest response. /nt

[Qutzupalotl]

17. Marched, wrote, called, shouted out against the stupid fucking idea

but it still wasn't enough to stop a tyrant from getting his way.

[BanzaiBonnie]

19. Absolutely not

I knew they were lying. I had no doubt.

[Angela Shelley]

20. No support.

[Moh96]

21. Absolutely NOT

[peacetalksforall]

22. NO! NO! NO! It was blatantly transparent whether a person was

listening closely or not. If PNAC had someone where they want them - they would believe it - meaning they would trust them. Believing had plenty to do with pre-existing trust. It was easy to start filling in the holes.

One otherwise fine day - Rumsfeld said he didn't want to fight the war in Afghanistan because of the terrain - our equipment was a better fit for Iraq. In 1998 he was with Cheney in asking Pres. Clinton to invade Iraq. There were many knowns and it was blatantly phony.

Edited to add: I was furious with COngress for not stopping it. Then they voted for it. Our leaders.

[conservdem]

23. I did.

[Seabiscuit]

26. Has anything changed your mind?

[conservdem]

31. With hind site I now see it was not a good decision.

I though the Bush admin would have done a much better job with things after defeating Saddam.

I am glad Saddam is not in control any more over there, but I am not optimistic that there is enough support among the people there to have a democracy.

I do not think we can quickly pull out all our troops now, but I hope the general in charge over there now will draw them down as soon as practical.

[Seabiscuit]

37. Does it matter to you that this war was based on lies about WMD and ties to Al Queda?

[conservdem]

41. I did not believe there was a close tie to AQ, but I did

believe he might have some WMD's, Bill Clinton seemed to think he had them too. I think the Bush admin embellished the WMD info, but I probably would have supported with out any of the embellishment. I think if Saddam could have purchased a nuke he would have, and I think he would have given or sold it to AQ to use on us or Israel.

I thought it was important for the UN resolution to be backed up. I also wanted to see Saddam gone and I hoped some other tyrannical dictators would see that they could not defy the UN in the manner that Saddam had.

I wanted to see us act differently than we did after the Lebanon bombing and the Somalia debacle. I think that part of the word thought we would turn and run if our forces suffered casualties. In the long run I thought that was very dangerous for us.


Curious did you support our invasion of Afghanistan and why or why not?

[Seabiscuit]

49. It's very troubling to me that so many people in this country have fallen for the false

propaganda that has always surrounded this invasion.

As for Afghanistan, I would have gone in as soon as Congress authorized it, without giving Bin Laden a 6-week jump-start the way Bush did.

And I would have sent our own troops into the caves in Tora Bora when Bin Laden was there instead of letting him sneak through to Pakistan, as Bush did.

In retrospect, it's clear Bush never wanted to capture/kill Bin Laden. He wanted him out there as a real live bogeyman to scare the American people into falling for whatever outrageous claptrap he was promoting in the name of fighting "terror", including his insane incursion into Iraq as part of the PNAC's mad-hatter scheme to take over the middle east and steal their oil.

And I never would have diverted our effort to get Bin Laden by sending troops from Afghanistan to Iraq, which posed absolutely no threat to us whatsoever, had absolutely no WMDs, and which had absolutely no ties to Al Queda (in fact, Saddam and Bin Laden were bitter enemies - Bin Laden was a muslim fundamentalist, Saddam was a secularist whose hero was Stalin - anathema to Bin Laden and his followers, who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 80's).

[conservdem]

52. I agree with you about Bush poorly handling Afghanistan,

and I even back then I though we should completely address that and get BL before starting another action. I thought he and our military could do both, but i think he and Rumsfeld did not listen to the military leadership.

Do you have a sense of what % of DUers supported our Afghanistan invasion?

[K Gardner]

24. Hell no.. I lost too many friends in Vietnam and never trusted a BUSH or CHENEY or RUMMY !

[Seabiscuit]

25. Not I, said the horse.

[LWolf]

27. Absolutely NOT.

I also did not collapse in grief and fear over 9/11, and decide that we had to unify in giving away the bank because we were fearful and vengeful.

[Seabiscuit]

28. To assuage their guilt, many of them are anticipating "The Rapture".

[Iceburg]

29. Kick for the results!

[TheDebbieDee]

30. I did. I believed * when he said there were WMDs in Iraq.

I figured, "Why would he lie about something like that?" This was before I deduced that the pResident was totally insane.

About 2 months into the Iraq invasion, in April of 2003, it also occurred to me that had Iraq truly had WMDs, Israel would have taken action to do something about it!

[Iceburg]

36. Thank you for your honest response/nt

[RC]

32. I was against invading Iraq before it happened.

I could tell by the administration's rhetoric* that they were spouting bull shit to convince everyone the Iraqi invasion needed to be done. It was so obvious, why didn't more people in this country get it?

*Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous: In other words what normally comes out of the White House under bu$h.

[HuskerDU]

33. I figured that if the President was wrong, he'd be ridden out of

town on a rail. I also looked to our Democratic leaders for answers and trusted their decision.

I have learned a lot since then, mostly from lurking here.

[southernleftylady]

34. No way did I back the Iraq war! but I dont think I was a member here yet nt

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

35. I'd Wager Easily That At Least 50% Of Respondents Are Lying Through Their Teeth. n/t

[Barack_America]

38. I didn't support the war, but I was happy for the Iraqi's when Saddam...

...was overthrown. I was happy that it happened, but not how it happened. We shouldn't have played a role.

But it was obvious to me by 10:00am on September 11, 2001 that we would be going to war with someone. I didn't speak out as I should've, I was too resigned to the fact. But I was damn proud of my Michigan Dems. They certainly spoke for me.

[SammyWinstonJack]

39. No and didn't support attacking Afghanistan either.

[TriMetFan]

40. I just could not believe that Saddam Hussein

had anything to do with 9/11, but if the one's that did were in Iraq or any other place then at that time I didn't care if we went in and took over. I'm also the type of person that cries when our National Anthem is played. So I can understand why Kerry, Edwards and Hillary voted for The War Resolution. But I think that what people forget is in the long run it was up to Bush and his thugs in going into Iraq and Bush lied to Congress.

[Iceburg]

42. Hillary supporter here -- but against both the Afghan and Iraq invasions ...

That said, I do understand the position of the 70% of the general population who were supportive.
After hearing Hillary's speech/qualifications that accompanied her vote, I am satisfied that her intent was no different than mine who didn't have the immense burden of safe guarding America. I do find Obama's pre vs post senate spin and promo as the anti-war candidate extremely disingenuous and dare I say hypocritical, not to mention naive.
His ill-spoken remarks on the pre-emptive bombing of Pakistan lead me to believe that he cannot be trusted to steer our foreign policy in the right direction.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

43. what is the point of this thread?

[Iceburg]

44. The point is > 70% of Americans were supportive of the Iraq war initially

and that DUers were overwhelmingly against it -- they do NOT represent the general populations way of thinking.

In a matchup against McCain, I would like to have insights into that 70% of the population who were largely for the war but are now against it.

see my comments a couple of posts above.

[conservdem]

45. Do you know if the majority of DUers supported our

invasion of Afghanistan?

I supported that too.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

46. I do NOT nor have evr supported any wars...and I don't think many if any DUers did

[conservdem]

50. Several, to my surprise, told me in posts that they did support it. I think both of us would be

surprised by the percentage.

[TriMetFan]

47. Thank You very Much. And you are very right.

Here in Portland when the anti-war people started to block our freeways and bridges, I was like go head and gas them. I have never been against protesters. I have always believe and still believe that it is one of our rights to protest, but again at that time I was pissed and wanted the ones at fault for 9/11.

[Whisp]

48. not for one minute. Not Afghanistan, Not Iraq.

never will.
carved in stone.

forever.

[Bluerthanblue]

51. not me- I'm sure the archives here can

back me up- I posted my opposition many times.

I don't believe that the majority of people in this country were EVER for the war.

No one gave us the chance to weigh in officially- Calling my rep's was an exercise in futility- but I did it- several times.


The war has and continues to be a major issue with me-

peace~