The Democrats caved on Iraq, too. Remember?

[mudesi]

Why did they cave on Iraq? Because they were afraid of looking unpatriotic and had the WMD been found and the troops greeted as liberators, they'd have been crushed in the polls and Bush would've won a second term and the GOP would've become more popular than ever, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

They caved on Iraq because they were politically spineless. Because of that, over 4000 troops have been killed and over one million civilians have been killed and the world is a far more dangerous place. Apparently, Bush is planning a coup in November by attacking Iran. I wonder if the Democrats will even attempt to impeach him then.


I see a few DUers giving the Democrats a pass regarding the FISA bill now and I wonder where these DUers were back in 2003 and why a mere 5 years and over 4000 lives later, they have forgotten the consequences of complicity to the fascist criminals currently running the show.

This is not acceptable.

[Ian David]

1. Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to believe that it is helpless in a particular situation. It has come to believe that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, the human being or the animal will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it does actually have the power to change its circumstances. Learned helplessness theory is the view that depression results from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation, or situations(Seligman, 1975). Examples can be found in schools, mental institutions, orphanages, or long-term care facilities where the patients have failed or been stripped of agency for long enough to cause their feelings of inadequacy to persist

<snip>

Martin Seligman's foundational experiments and theory of learned helplessness began at the Cornell University in 1967, as an extension of his interest in depression, when, at first quite by accident, Seligman and colleagues discovered a result of conditioning of dogs that was opposite to what was predicted by B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, then a leading psychological theory.<1><2>

A seminal experiment by Martin Seligman and Steve Maier was done in two parts. In part one, there were three groups of dogs in harnesses. The Group One dogs were simply put in the harnesses for a period of time and later released. Groups two and three consisted of "yoked pairs." A dog in Group 2 would be intentionally subjected to pain by being given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group 3 dog was wired in parallel with a Group 2 dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't do anything. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3 dogs the shock was apparently "inescapable." The Group 1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but the Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless, and exhibited symptoms similar to chronic clinical depression.

In part two of the Seligman and Maier experiment, these three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus, in which the dogs could escape shocks by jumping over a low partition. For the most part, the Group 3 dogs, who had previously "learned" that nothing they did mattered, just lay down passively and whined. Even though they could have escaped the shocks, they didn't try.


More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

[thewiseguy]

2. Its easy to say these things after the fact

I am not sure if democrats could have ever made the WMD case an issue. CIA was certainly suggesting that there were WMDs in Iraq. The senators who voted for the IWR did so because they were presented faulty intelligence.

Honestly we are talking about maybe a year after the 9/11 when the buildup started to take place. The country was still in shock. I personally never thought we would be bugged down in Iraq as we were.

To be brief the democrats did not cave in on the Iraq war. There was simply wrong intelligence on WMDs.

[OwnedByFerrets]

4. IF what you are saying is true...

then I and thousands of others were smarter than our "leadership". The facts were there for any to see if they wanted to. The inspectors were there...Blick was saying there were NO wmds. Saying they were simply wrong on intelligence is simply wrong.

[MrSlayer]

6. That's bullshit.

The NIE, which few of them bothered to read, made it clear that the WMD line was total crap. They weren't given faulty intelligence, they just didn't bother reading up on it and voted for it out of fear of looking unpatriotic and soft. Political expedience. I'm sure some of them voted for it because of the profit potential. The neos are in both parties.

[thewiseguy]

10. My point is that they did not cave in

The inspections were stoped prematurely. CIA also stated that they did have WMDs. Have you forgotten Powell's presentation to the UN?

They even tricked him into this.

Those who voted for the war either did not practice correct judgement or fell in love with false intelligence briefings.

[lumpy]

19. So true, much legislation gets passed with little scrutiny, much

less passed with full knowledge of the bill. I am convinced also that very little attention was paid to the NIE reports. So many here and around the world paid attention to the NIE reports and Colin Powell's phony presentation to the UN should have convinced everyone that Bushco was pulling a fast one.

[mudesi]

7. Is that you, Bill O'Reilly?

There was no faulty intelligence. They were lied to, and everybody with half a brain cell knew it.

[thewiseguy]

11. And I said what?

[madfloridian]

18. Oh that is so not true.

They had to have known at least as much as we online knew. They were afraid.

[GarbagemanLB]

3. It's all about winning. Winning > principle and the constitution, it would seem. Pathetic.

[BzaDem]

9. Welcome to the world of political science.

It's not like this is a new phenomenon. It is a simple property of representative democracy.

[Catherina]

5. Some of us are reliving some very bad memories about that right now

[BzaDem]

8. Bush would have gone into Iraq regardless of the outcome of the resolution.

Likewise, FISA will be signed into law regardless of what Obama does.

I agree that Congress should not have brought the law up for a vote. I have no idea why they did that.

But do you not support Obama just because of this one issue? Because if you don't, I have a lot of trouble seeing how McCain is much better on this one issue (let alone everything else).

[crankychatter]

12. 150 Legislators have stock in the War... they're profiteers

the others get campaign contributions from the same crew of snakes the Republicans do

I swear to god I've never witnessed more snivelling in my life than in the last two days on this board

ya'all support every issue in the world except Public Campaign Financing... then whine when elected officials vote on behalf of special interests

Obama can't do jack shit about it right now... it's the water he's swimming in

[BlueJac]

13. The Cave-in party...........WTF

[daa]

14. 162 BILLION no strings, Thx dems. eom

[JoFerret]

15. And your candidate is

...?

[mzmolly]

16. Over 100 did not cave on the war, even in the aftermath of 911.

Over 100 did not cave on FISA, again in the "aftermath" of 911.

[GreenPartyVoter]

17. Yeah, and it drives me nuts

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