Iraq War 10th Anniversary
When President George W. Bush announced the invasion into Iraq in March 2003, the goal was to remove a dangerous dictator and
his supposed stocks of weapons of mass destruction. It was also to create a functioning democracy and thereby inspire what Bush
called a "global democracy revolution."
The effort was supposed to be cheap -- to require few troops and even less time. Instead, it cost the United States $800 billion at
least, thousands of lives and nearly nine grueling years ...
Today in Fallujah, the site of two of the war's largest and most devastating military campaigns, the very best that can be said is that
it's two years late to the party -- not 10 years early -- the Arab Spring has arrived. But the government the people are rising up
against is the very one the U.S. installed.
The Bush White House relentlessly and cynically sold the phony details of Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction."
Yes, it is true that when a government decides to lie and does it systematically, it isn't easy to pull back the curtain. And yet too many
people in and out of government believed what they wanted to believe or felt it convenient to believe.
Many of the naysayers moved within the orbit of the CIA, which was denounced by the Bush-Cheney neoconservatives as an agency
full of incompetent weaklings. Members of the press with vast experience and deep CIA contacts became some of the loudest critics of
the idea of attacking Iraq, yet many were ignored precisely because of their sources.
Too many members of Congress, including Democrats, stifled their doubts out of political fear -- fear that Bush might be right about the
evidence, but more important, fear that the war would go well and they would be on the "wrong" side of it politically, headed into the
2004 presidential election year.
"I should have known more, studied more, asked more questions and been more skeptical. I hope I am wiser now. I hope we all are."
Howard Fineman (writes for CNN and The Washington Post) [email protected]
Can this happen to us?
When President George W. Bush announced the invasion into Iraq in March 2003, the goal was to remove a dangerous dictator and
his supposed stocks of weapons of mass destruction. It was also to create a functioning democracy and thereby inspire what Bush
called a "global democracy revolution."
The effort was supposed to be cheap -- to require few troops and even less time. Instead, it cost the United States $800 billion at
least, thousands of lives and nearly nine grueling years ...
Today in Fallujah, the site of two of the war's largest and most devastating military campaigns, the very best that can be said is that
it's two years late to the party -- not 10 years early -- the Arab Spring has arrived. But the government the people are rising up
against is the very one the U.S. installed.
The Bush White House relentlessly and cynically sold the phony details of Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction."
Yes, it is true that when a government decides to lie and does it systematically, it isn't easy to pull back the curtain. And yet too many
people in and out of government believed what they wanted to believe or felt it convenient to believe.
Many of the naysayers moved within the orbit of the CIA, which was denounced by the Bush-Cheney neoconservatives as an agency
full of incompetent weaklings. Members of the press with vast experience and deep CIA contacts became some of the loudest critics of
the idea of attacking Iraq, yet many were ignored precisely because of their sources.
Too many members of Congress, including Democrats, stifled their doubts out of political fear -- fear that Bush might be right about the
evidence, but more important, fear that the war would go well and they would be on the "wrong" side of it politically, headed into the
2004 presidential election year.
"I should have known more, studied more, asked more questions and been more skeptical. I hope I am wiser now. I hope we all are."
Howard Fineman (writes for CNN and The Washington Post) [email protected]
Can this happen to us?
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