We should be spamming their inboxes with these quotes on a daily basis.

"Whatever opinion you held on the war three weeks ago... you have to concede that this war did actually liberate the people of Iraq... even if you're a pacifist, even if you don't support a war to roll back secular and religious fascism in the Middle East, can you at least admit to being somewhat pleased by the results of this war? The war in Iraq was short, and it did more good than harm." - Dan Savage, April, 2003

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=13963

Dan writes a great, helpful, awareness raising, kink-normalizing sex column, has written some interesting and enjoyable books and is generally on target without being a raving idealogue.

No fucking comparison.

Judy Miller of the New York Times, talking on CNN, March 19, 2003: According to “a slew of information from defectors” and her other “intelligence sources,” American troops would soon find the WMD sites; indeed, “one person in Washington told me that the list could total more than 1400 of those sites.” (Italics added.)

Anyway this reminds me of when my Republican friends were tryiing to convince me about the Iraq war. I had to concede that Iraq was pretty much one of the worst countries out there at the time, and that yeah I'd say it would be a good thing to get rid of Hussein, just there was something off-colour about the whole war deal when there were clearly a) worse countries out there and b) North Korea was a waaay bigger threat, and c) on humanitarian grounds, there's waaay more efficient ways to alleviate the world's suffering. But I said, like Dan, yeah I guess it'd do more good than harm, yeah i guess at this point I'm for it (this was imminently before the invasion).

Then when Baghdad fell nice and quick, they were all jumping up and down with I-told-ya-so's for the non-believers. Disgusted that they would be so quick to congratulate themselves (as if the fall of Baghdad was the part that had been questioned... who really doubted that would happen? I was thinking about WMDs and nation-building and stuff), I told them to go suck a nut. It was a visceral moment cus my (extremely bright) friend Rob (I was in HS back then btw) threw up his hands and said I was totally incomprehensible.

All I can say is I hope he comprehends now. Basically the lesson I know nobody's going to learn (probably not me either) is don't be an asshole about your own opinion. Chances are 9/10 that half of everything you believe is questionable, and the other half is straight-up wrong. Like... who, before this happened, envisioned it exactly as it unfolded? Nobody, that's who.

It's that they still lie.

Continually.

No one predicted what would happen? Bullshit. Everything that happened and is happening in Iraq was predictable, and many people predicted the general clusterfuck that's happened even if the details of it actually happening are more horrifying than our pre-war imaginations were. I actually predicted this (sectarian civil war, increased terrorism, regional instability, a quagmire with thousands of American dead) way back before Gulf War I, when I assumed that GHWB would topple Saddam and occupy Iraq. All of this probably would have played out similarly, only 12 years earlier, but cooler heads prevailed at the time.

Unfortunately, one of those cooler heads at the time, Dick Cheney, changed his tune in the intervening years. The other cooler head, Colin Powell, played the part of the dutiful soldier and let Cheney get away with it. And of course W's only concern beyond being a loyal puppet was to one-up his Daddy and make money for his business buddies.

Sorry, but people who believed the propaganda and lies of Preznit Bush and his army of keyboard warriors in our broken and corrupt media are simply gullible fools.

That said, what upsets me about those quoted and most of those Moyers quoted last week isn't as much as they were wrong, but that they won't admit it, or don't want to discuss it (NY Times). Dan Rather said he messed up. But the others are still working as "expert" pundits saying we should "stay the course" or bashing Harry Reid because he says the Bush strategy is bunk.

Even better, he is now president of the World Bank.

The closest I could find: from Paul Wolfowitz, in Senate testimony, March 27, 2003: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

Since he said it in Senate testimony, he was probably joking. Can't hold that against him.

ITMFA

ITMFA, dammit.

Seriously.