I would like to hear about your opposition to the Iraq war.

[mdmc]

Did you always oppose this military action, or did you support it at any time? I am asking for your opinion on your beliefs.

I wonder how many Dems supported this war at one point, and now are having second thoughts. Check in folks! Peace and low stress...

[mike_c]

1. the invasion of Iraq has always been ILLEGAL and IMMORAL....

I have opposed it from the very beginning. I marched, I wrote and called my congress folks, and I've railed against it in LTTEs, in the classroom, and in the street.

[mdmc]

41. kick

[Solly Mack]

2. Always opposed the invasion of Iraq

It's been one big lie from the beginning,propped up by more lies.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. It was based on bullshit then and now.

I never for one minute thought this thing was just, a good idea, or could possibly succeed.

[ntesla]

4. "Benefit of a doubt"

I was once stupid enough to be fooled by Bush's lies. Not anymore.

[ScreamingMeemie]

Welcome to DU, ntesla

:toast:

[mdmc]

12. welcome to DU bro

peace and low stress to you and yours...

[Arkansas Granny]

24. I'm glad you have come to recognize the lies.

Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[POAS]

5. Never bought the lie!

[Hissyspit]

15. Lie plural.

Never bought them either.

[POAS]

19. The whole history

of this administration hac been one big lie. Never bought any part of it!

[Hissyspit]

27. Ah, good point. Lies and LIE.

The lieS are so hard to keep track of. But they are all part of the one Big Lie.

[WilliamPitt]

6. My opinion was published in the fall of 2002

[mdmc]

9. Didn't know you worked with Ritter

Saw him at www.wamc.org in Albany and had him speak down in Orange County, NY. He knows his shiite.

[wellst0nev0ter]

45. I Didn't Even Think About The War Before

reading some excerpts from your book, because I didn't think Bush was stupid enough to invade that country.

But then you revealed a few basic facts about that country (ethnic/sectarian rivalries, the fact that Saddam's army is a third of what it was during the Gulf War) and how the Bushies were dead set for the war really had my alarms ringing and turned me into an activist. So I would just like to say thank you for your efforts.

[SaveElmer]

52. Will... can I ask you about this post from 2004...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=605385#605633

You appear to be defending John Kerry's vote on the IWR...and endorsing it yourself...

Is this true?

Particularly in these passages

The 'Yes' vote on the IWR essential to the establishment of effective weapons inspections. Only the threat of force made the previous inspections effective. I asked Scott Ritter personally if his seven years in Iraq as an inspector would have been effective without the threat of force. He said the inspections would have been useless without the threat.

The threat of force got rid of the weapons from 1991-1998. The threat of force was needed to get rid of whatever he might have developed since. As Ritter said in my book, no one was absolutely sure they hadn't retained any of their weapons capabilities.

If you were in favor of weapons inspectors, YOU WERE IN FAVOR OF THE THREAT OF FORCE TO BACK THE INSPECTORS. There is no separating the two. Period.

Then the following responses...

#4 in that thread

Any President - even Mr. Gore - would likely have looked hard at Iraq post-9/11 because of that nation's history of WMD development. Gore would have gotten inspectors into the game, and would have asked for a threat of force to back the inspectors up.

The difference is the handling of that power, not the delivery of it.

#10 in that thread

Just because he let them in

doesn't mean he wasn't going to fuck with them. He was no angel, and the whole history of inspectons was him fucking with them until we blew his shit up.

[cali]

7. Strongly and vociferously opposed

this fucking disaster of a war. Rode on a miserable bus ride for hours and hours to DC to march against it. I knew that it was bound to be disaster, and I knew that the vile little man just had a hard on for war. Was there ever such an unfortuitous combination of event and leader as 9/11 and georgie bush?

[montanto]

8. not for a second. nt

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

10. I never quite "got" the reason ...

... one dictatorship conquers and annexes another non-Democratic sheikhdom. So what did that ever have to do with us? Kuwait was not worth going to war for.

[sandnsea]

11. Always opposed

The Bushies were pushing too hard and it didn't make sense in connection with 9/11. I did not 'know' there were no WMD in Iraq, nobody could 'know' that beyond all reasonable doubt. I did know we had other options that hadn't been exhausted.

[Systematic Chaos]

13. I was sickened by the first Iraq War.

Not even so much that we had to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait (which, from some things I've read, was either another ridiculous lie or at least an exaggeration... can anyone confirm or deny that, by the way?) Rather, because of the use of depleted uranium weapons and the horrible Gulf War Syndrome so many of our troops past and present are going to have their lives ruined by.

[cali]

16. I was dead against the first gulf war as well.

If you read about the exchanges between April Glaspie, the Ambassador to Iraq and Saddam, you know we sent Saddam some very mixed messages prior to his invasion of Kuwait.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Opposed the sanctions, the first gulf war, and this current carnage.

But, I'm opposed to the use of violence by nations or individuals in general.

[Crunchy Frog]

17. Always opposed it.

I always said that I was open to supporting it should they make a genuinely compelling case for its necessity, but they never did. Just a bunch of totally transparent and obvious manipulation, like in an advertising campaign.

I found DU on the eve of the invasion, because everywhere else on the net, it seemed that there was nothing but mindless cheerleading, and I was looking for someplace where people saw things the same way I did.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Always opposed

My reasons were:

1) While I'm not a total pacifist, my own principles allow war ONLY for defensive purposes and ONLY when the U.S. has been directly attacked. Saddam posed no threat to the U.S., had not been involved in 9/11, and even if he did pose a threat to other nations in the Middle East, the three biggest recipients of U.S. military aid (Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) should have been able to take care of him.

2) I knew the U.S. government would make a mess of it. When you consider that far more intelligent people than the current gang of idiots and asslickers in the White House couldn't salvage the Vietnam fiasco, I just knew that the Busheviks would botch this one.

3) It was one of the Bush administration's ideas. That alone should have been a warning.

[donco6]

20. Always opposed.

It was clear very early on that Bush wanted the war and he wasn't going to let facts get in his way.

[LWolf]

21. Always. n/t

[NoPasaran]

22. Always opposed it

Although I can't make the claim that I KNEW the justifications for war were lies, because I don't actually have access to much classified intelligence about the Middle East and nuclear proliferation myself. Let's just say that I strongly suspected much of Bush & Co's case was bullshit and hoped that events would prove me wrong.

Beyond that, I felt that even if Iraq did have WMDs of some sort the war would likely turn into a disaster for us as Iraq fell apart and the entire region became further unstable.

[Arkansas Granny]

23. I have always opposed it.

I couldn't believe that so many people bought into the changing reasons that Bushco gave for the necessity of the attack.

[Nite Owl]

25. Absolutely always

opposed going into Iraq. We had no right to invade a sovereign country that did nothing to us. It was in no way self defense as the facts have now proved. It this war did was endanger us and destabilize the entire region. Everything that is happening now was foreseen so this administration is either totally incompetent or they invaded in order to create chaos.

[mdmc]

32. NICE

:kick:

[Jcrowley]

26. Been actively opposing

the US occupation/war/theft/sanctions in Iraq for 15 plus years.

Spent more time on the streets during Bush-Clinton-Bush years than I care to recount.

Anyone who has been even paying a small amount of attention and is curious would see a marvelous criminal consistency in US foreign policy in Iraq. It's been a bi-partisan affair with only a few of the reliable Dems speaking out.

All in all it's genocide by any measure.

The body count is in the millions.

[Quantess]

28. Always firmly opposed to military invasion of Iraq.

I had never heard of DU, and I never looked at political web sites. I just paid a modicum of attention to what people were saying on TV, and it was clear that voices of opposition were being shunned. Their questions were not answered. It was just "rah rah rah" let's go git Saddam. It looked very suspicious to me. Most of my friends were lukewarm about it, and didn't seem to care too much either way. I would have gone to an anti-war rally, if I had known anyone else who was willing to go with me.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

29. Demonstrated against the war before it started

donated money to ads about stopping the war, wrote letters, called folks--I could see what would happen if we went there, and, sadly, it has all occurred.

[Posteritatis]

30. Supported the first war, opposed the sanctions, opposed this debacle. (nt)

[Stevepol]

31. I opposed it from the beginning but once I began to waver.

When Bush with Tony Blair standing by his side in September of 2002 (Sept 8 I think) said something like this: The IAEA, when it was last pushed out of Iraq (which was 96), said in its report that they could have the bomb in 6 months.

That's more or less an accurate paraphrase of what El Residente said, and it did scare me. I wavered. I thought well maybe he really does know something I don't know, and Saddam isn't a guy you'd want to have his finger on the "nucular" trigger.

Of course a week later, one of those intrepid liberal journalists (from the Wasnington Times as it turned out) had the brilliant idea of giving the IAEA a call to find out about this "report."

What the reporter found out is that there was no such report, and in fact when asked by reporters when they left about the state of Iraq's nuclear capability, the IAEA had said that it would be 5 years before Iraq COULD EVEN BEGIN to develop the bomb.

In other words, a complete and utter lie, one of many. That was the one and only time I wavered.

[mdmc]

33. well, in TSOTU, the yellowcake comment made me pause

I thought, "We need to attack Iraq and Niger. Saddam can't go around buying nukes." Joe Wilson set us straight.:kick:

[mnhtnbb]

34. Always opposed it. Knew Bushco were liars and didn't trust them.

Knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Felt the UN should be supported
in determining whether Iraq was in compliance and UN should be in charge of sanctions.

[WritersBlock]

35. Opposed it...

...ever since 9/11. My husband and I looked at each other and one of us said, "He'll be going after Saddam for this." Can't remember which one vocalized it, but we were both thinking it.

[madokie]

36. Not only was I against it from the get go

I felt pretty sure that the little one would do something like invade Iraq. I couldn't even look or read or listen to him until I found DU

[mdmc]

38. nice

:patriot:

[No Exit]

37. Never for one second did I support this illegal and fraudulent war. And I voted for * in 2000!

(Ow! Aaagh! Ouch! Stop it with the rotten veggies, already!)

Yes, I voted for that horrible, treacherous, mutant piece of less-than-dog-turd! I'm sorry!!!

Anyway, I saw the light the minute I first heard of his (then impending) deadly plan to invade Iraq.

And now I see that his invasion of Afghanistan was PLANNED BEFORE 9/11--so it, too, was a fraud. He fooled me with that one. Fool me once, shame on you.... YOU CAN'T GIT FOOLED AG'IN! As they say in Texas TennesseeTexas Tennessee...

And ditto for his and the filthy neocons' plan to invade Iran.

[Jacobin]

39. spent several weekends fax blasting congress

to vote against the IWR with my fellow DUers.

I wish I had saved the canned email responses from some of our dem 'leaders' who wrote back telling me why we had to invade. Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

[mdmc]

40. I did save some emails

Spitzer, "We must support our troops!" No shit, now what?

[Zhade]

42. Always opposed because I was always aware of the facts.

NT!

[mdmc]

49. the facts

will set you free:kick:

[roamer65]

43. I wanted to give Blix and the other inspectors much more time.

The French were right.

[bdamomma]

44. I was always against just like other countries were against it

but again George did not listen, he only listens to the voices in his head. Stupid man.

[EFerrari]

46. We were in Santa Monica and went to vigils / other actions

before this ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL invasion.

[porphyrian]

47. I never understood pulling the soldiers who were about to get bin Laden out of Afghanistan...

...to be redeployed in Iraq. I understood even less how fucking stupid so many people were to think it was a good idea or that Iraq had anything to do with it. No offense, stupid people.

[wellst0nev0ter]

48. The Foreign Press Was Already Revealing That Colin Powell's

UN testimony was phony during the run-up to the war (they actually, you know, visited the sites Powell said were making weaponsofmassdestruction and found out the true story), and the kneepad media STILL thought he was a fucking god. I really felt there was no hope for this country.

[mmonk]

50. Opposed it right off the bat.

There was no logic to the action. I could tell leading up to the attack and invasion that bush was determined to go to war as well and that it was no such thing as a last resort or that the administration was seeking any legitimate diplomacy.

[PassingFair]

51. Didn't believe the crap for ONE SECOND.

BUT, I was surprised we waited as long as we did.

I expected Little Boots to bomb immediately.

I also thought they would get away with planting at
least SOME weapons.

The total "absence of evidence" was the real shocker to me.

[SaveElmer]

53. I opposed military action once the lies became apparent in mid 2003...

I probably would have supported the IWR given Husseins campaign of decerption between 1991 and 1998, the fact that there were no inspectors in Iraq for 4 years, and his history of using WMDs against both the Iranians and his own population...