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1. Scott M. | March 21, 2013 at 1:19 pm

   During the recent anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, I think it important to remember the political class of both parties wanted it to happen and in the words of our friend 89Hoo, “A pox on both their houses.”

   http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2013/03/21/judis-on-political-consensus-and-the-iraq-war/

   Ten years after we invaded Iraq, it’s worth examining how the decision to invade became a matter of bipartisan consensus at the time. We like to think that it was just Bush and the neo-cons who wanted it, but nearly all the leading lights of the Democratic party supported it too, including both Clintons. John Judis has a review of his experience as a prominent dissenter from that consensus. He found some unlikely allies:

   I found fellow dissenters to the war in two curious places: the CIA and the military intelligentsia. That fall, I got an invitation to participate in a seminar at the Central Intelligence Agency on what the world would be like in fifteen or twenty years. I went out of curiosity—I don’t like this kind of speculation—but as it turned out, much of the discussion was about the pending invasion of Iraq. Except for me and the chairman, who was a thinktank person, the participants were professors of international relations. And almost all of them were opposed to invading Iraq.

   More…..
2. Name Withheld | March 21, 2013 at 8:33 pm

   Did the democrats support the war, or did they support the president’s ability to go to war when he felt it necessary? Those are different things. Did they vote to give the president the authority, hoping that the show of readiness would compel Saddam Hussein to open his weapons sites to inspectors?
3. Sandi Saunders | March 22, 2013 at 7:46 am

   I suppose everyone has forgotten “freedom fries”, and “you are either with us or against us”. ANYONE who spoke against the war was immediately told ‘you are now and probably always have been, a Communist’ kind of crappy rhetoric. We were branded as “unpatriotic” for even questioning the intel, much less the war. Oh now memory revises history.
4. Sandi Saunders | March 22, 2013 at 11:40 am

   Oh look, a retrospective of the “good old days”…

   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/behold-the-hatred-resentment-and-mockery-aimed-at-anti-iraq-war-protesters/274230/

   “Few hawks who treated them shabbily have reflected on their behavior in reminisces about the conflict.“
5. Al | March 22, 2013 at 11:54 pm

   #2…”Did the democrats support the war, or did they support the president’s ability to go to war when he felt it necessary?”
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   That is trying to split hairs. The dems voted per the polls and not on their beliefs. Were they trying to say we give you authority but not the power to use it?
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   Oh the good old days when the president would a least ask congress before going to war.
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   Sandi…I remember some of those things, but I also remember the publicity that one woman got who protested her son’s death. And now after over 4,000 kia, the same media looks the other way.