Bush was very careful in riding the coattails of 9/11. Did he or did he not say Iraq (Saddam) was tied to 9/11? Doesn't matter. It worked. Like you say, those predisposed to believing it did.
And the news outlets went along for the ride. The offender that's most notable isn't notable because they were the most prolific in disseminating misinformation (that honor will always go to Fox News), but because the public trusted them specifically not to do that. I am of course speaking of the New York Times. This is arguably the worst lapse in journalistic principles of that paper in the 20th century. Of course it could be argued that a near equal lapse was in treating the investigation into Hillary's email's as a serious matter, which ultimately caused her election loss in 2016.
Yeah, I forgot the OP. Lol.
Well, that's ultimately what it came down to! The international community rushed to carry out investigations in an effort to stave off what was strongly turning into an inevitable war, and Bush was like, "Nope! Out of time, mother****ers, we're going in!" As I said, the Bush administration permeated it with a sense of inevitability. You know that one friend who's made up his mind to make a bad decision, and nothing anybody can say will alter his course? That was the leadup to the second Iraq War.
No real contra-arguments from me. There was surely lots of similarities, imo Ukraine is quite clearly even worse case though. In my country the Russian propaganda imo usually works like "ok for Russia to do X since US some time does similar thing(even if the thing done by Russia is a bigger crime)" then show the whole statement to be just bs and empty rhetorics by never saying that "of course by same logic US doing X is morally ok too since Russia does similar or even worse thing. Oth imo not recognizing W's faults like some still do can play into Putin's hand too, because if Iraq war is afterwards justified, inspections being underway unhampered with nothing found, with the excuse that "why didn't he convince us he did not have WMD's?" (when there was no way he could have convinced the neocons of it), then what's the difference with Putin arguing like "look what you make me do, Zelensky! Why did you not convince me you are not nazis building secret biological weapons to you use against Russia?".
Yea, and what purpose would this buffer serve?Not as if Ukraine was going to be invading Russia- ever.
It should be clear, when the inspections for WMD's where still underway, and underway unhampered, with nothing found, that the right thing to do would have been TO LET THE INSPECTIONS BE COMPLETED. By now this ought to be clear to everyone. But if the neocons would have done that, they would have lost the rationale for war.
So far, every pretext for invasion logically leads to every country on earth being at war with every country on its border (as well as nearly every other country on earth). But I gotta say, this "right to a buffer state" argument really takes the cake.
My main worry is that the balance conservatives have reached that allows them to simultaneously condemn the 2nd Iraq war and justify the leadup to it is that they've allowed themselves to be susceptible to the next hoax war. In other words, they didn't really learn anything from history, which means of course that they're going to repeat it.
you