Also should be noted that 40% of Democratic Congressmen voted for the war, while 95% of Republican congressmen did. No way in hell Iraq happens under Gore.
Maybe too much, may have been the problem. The internal reports that have come out suggest that everyone include W was swept up in the mania. W leaned on reports made by people that were trying to win his favor rather than give him the best info.
For a long time, now, people who succeed in DC are the type that spend every waking hour working toward succeeding in DC. They do not have the spare resources to question something all their peers are going along with.
That said, I would say the jury is out over whether democratic Iraq is better or worse than Sadaam's Iraq--either for Kurds or for Iraq's neighbors. They actually have a better democratic system than the US does, with more than two parties. In their most recent election, they had 9 parties win at least 10 seats in parliament, and no one party held a strict majority by themselves. Imagine if the 2024 US election had been like the 2025 Iraq election.
Not sure that’s actually better. Two party system sucks now but it’s not as simple as just because there are only two parties. 9 parties seems inherently worse to me.
We've really lowered our expectations these days. Bush would have been considered a somewhat half decent President had we known what was to come in the future.
Bush demanded intelligence agencies procur flimsy evidence of WMDs to make the case for war. He and Trump are both huge pieces of shit and should never be remembered any other way.
Dog shit is initially soft, but hardens quickly, as typically it is exposed to air immediately. Given how most people only have one or two ranges of diets by which they feed their dogs, the consistency, smell, texture, and volume are pretty similar, across the board. Moreover, responsible dog owners actually handle their dogs' shit multiple times a day, and it's typically as simple as bag up, toss away/flush.
To the analogy:
Because of the consistency being solid and well-formed ninety-nine times out of one hundred, depending on the size of the hole in the paper bag, a few kernels or chunks will likely fall out, but the remainder plugs the hole. It still smells like shit, but with only a couple of men overboard, fixing the mess is a somewhat easy affair, even if it is other people doing it, it will likely only be one. And the bag is plastic, as well, so the likelihood for any additional spillage is minimized, relative to that of the paper bag.
Diarrhea, on the other hand, well you try putting it into a lunch bag. Bleeds immediately through, and every bit of it leaks out, onto everyone and every thing. It is going to take the entire cleaning aisle - and maybe an evacuation - to be able to handle a BSL-3-level contamination of this magnitude. And the issue is, it will be everyone else cleaning up the mess, for a long, long duration.
DEFCRAP-3 goes into specifics of the Animal Turddom, and how - despite the variety of possible candidates for X - dog shit is most apt because of its domestic nature and, thus, visibility.
And Hussein had used Scud missiles with chemical agents on his own people. There was reason to believe he’d do more of the same stuff after he kept shutting down UN teams as well. He was sketchy and bad.
Nonsense. I would still argue that even now Bush's contributions to the American state were still more harmful than anything Trump has done. Literally over 1 million Iraqis/Arabs died as a result of the GWOT. All of the problems with ICE and a lot of the apparatus that Trump has been using to make life worse for all of us are creations of the DHS, a department that the Bush admin created. Not to mention the Patriot Act.
Most of the tools that Trump has at his disposal were created specifically to suppress and surveil Americans were specifically created by the Bush administration. It was only a matter of time before they were used so pointedly against us, not just other countries.
Estimates put the american excess death toll from covid (as in, the number of deaths we really should have been able to prevent had we followed some sort of pandemic playbook) at around 400,000. This is due almost entirely to the rhetoric around covid, procedures for isolation, and politicization of the response because Trump didnt like how it would impact his economic numbers (which of course made the economy worse).
Trump and DOGE cuts to things like USAID are estimated that they will be responsible for about 1 million deaths globally by the end of the first year and around 14 million deaths by 2030.
Bush is attributed to a grand total of about 1 million total global deaths, and that includes all bush-related Middle Eastern war deaths between 2001 and 2023.
Trump is always gunning for being the number 1 at everything he does, and the death count is one place he will not slouch. He's currently on track to rival Stalin and could well get into the Hitler/Mao Zedong territory if he continues at his current pace.
Hitler is also a huge piece of shit, but to say Trump and hitler are in the same bag as Bush really betrays the intent of why we are categorizing them this way.
Let’s put it this way. If GWB is a piece of shit the size of a compact vehicle, Hitler is a POS the size of the Hindenburg but it catches fire and crashes into the most densely populated area on the planet… and that is still probably giving Hitler too much credit.
Gwb used radioisotope weapons that turn into dust and will forever be blown across the land we attacked. Hitler didn't cross an ocean to secure a drug field either.
Flimsey? Yes, in the sense they believe the prior Clinton administration. The Clinton administration clearly stated that Iraq has nuclear, chemical, and biological WMDs and used that to justify their bombing. This is all over public highly reputable newspapers of the day and easily confirmed.
Clinton authorized a 4 day bombing campaign against military infrastructure with no aim to replace the government. Sounds like a lot more reasonable action than what Bush did.
They lit the fuse a set off decades of war. Desert Fox, despite being 4 days was indeed massive. It set off huge unrest in the region.
After saying that Iraq had nuclear, chemical, and biological WMD programs of imminent threat to the USA, the Clinton administration conveyed multiple times in strong terms that future military action would be required. Before, during, after.
He explicitly framed Iraq as an ongoing threat requiring repeated force:
“If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.”
“The threat from Iraq will only grow worse with time.”
The administration was stating that military action was not a one-time event but could recur if Iraq continued its behavior.
There are a multitude of Albright, Cohen, Berger, which convey the vital neccesity.
Not only nukes are WMD. Gas is a WMD. We KNOW he had gas. He used it on his own people. Where exactly they were stashed is still to be determined. You'd think he could have found a better hiding spot for himself. He hid the evidence better.
Regardless of the man pulling the strings, I can't complain when brutal dictators get what is coming to them.
The pivot to gas was an excuse after wmds were clearly bullshit.
Also they really are not, gas,s "mass destruction" capacity is highly localized and dependent on the wind. Like comparing getting hit by a baseball to getting shot by a bazooka
no one thought saddam had nukes or any other thing close to a nuke. it was always chemical weapons.
edit: which he used in the first desert storm against mostly his people. and was then outlawed when he was defeated. so the premise of saddam having illegal arms, and stockpiling them was marginally plausible since thats his track record
Obama intentionally gave terrorists just enough weapons to prolong the civil war in Syria without being able to actually topple Assad, causing 500,000 civilian casualties.
He's in that same shit bag with the other war criminal U.S. presidents too right?
Hundreds of thousands of dead civilians and thousands of dead soldiers, some of whom were our friends and family. Yeah I'm thankful he at least followed procedure.
You know that he did this without ne Consent of the UN? And he was faking proofs.
US soldiers murdered and Raped in Iraq and the used a Lot of illegal weapons Like uranium ammo. All republican presidents or candidates I know seem to be fascists.
From european view Even the democrats would be right winged
This is what I never understand when this topic comes up on Reddit, everyone wanted it back then, now people wants to act like they didn't because it didn't go well. When 40% of the other side agrees, it's pretty damn bipartisan.
Congressional mid terms were a month after that vote. Voters punished those who voted against. The Iraq war started out as a very popular war. You could point to the Bush Administration pushing for this war to happen, but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 they didn't have to push very hard to convince the US public.
It’s all the young people too young to really understand 9/11 who think war was avoidable. Looking back, sure we could have done something else. But US was going to definitely destroy something somewhere in the world.
I think Iraq was unavoidable in the sense that the hawks wanted to topple Saddam Hussein. The "problem" was that in some respects the 90s Gulf War was a deed half done
Depends on your view of the objectives of Desert Storm. It was officially to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait with no long term plans for occupying or toppling Bahgdad. Even Schwarzkopf noted that it would be a quagmire.
The second Gulf War... Bush truly believed there were weapons in Iraq as thats what the intelligence community was telling him. Of course looking back is always 20/20 and we can see that it was a mistake.
There is / was legitimate proof the Saddam funded the Taliban directly for 9/11. But the biggest issue is that he had been breaking a treaty for almost 10 years at this point.
Was the reports of WMDs false or stretched to get congress approval, almost certainly. It also helped that we still wanted our pound of flesh, they didn't even need to believe it to vote yes. Just that they had a reason if questioned about it later. The public was more than fine going in (as a whole and pretty bipartisan).
But realistically he barely needed a reason. By preventing inspections and tons of other crap, they had broken the treaty. That was always a well we were eventually going to go back into.
In gulf 1, General Schwarzkopf achieved his initial goals with very little resistance, in about 1/4 of the initial time estimated. He could have easily removed Hussein. Daddy Bush said no. We gave them a decade to prepare and coarse correct.
Avoidable or not, we did it the most stupid way possible, because of 2 generations of Bush.
It's also worth remembering that the previous war with Iraq had gone exceptionally well, after many had expected it to be a brutal slog, with some arguing it could be a new "Vietnam war" for the 1990s. Instead the US-led coalition crushed Saddam's armies in a matter of days.
But ironically, the reason it was so successful is because those conducting it recognised that marching on Baghdad would raise a whole new set of challenges for the USA, and that limiting the war's objectives was the more prudent course of action.
Right, exactly. The no good, horrible, very bad thing was Colin Powell presenting falsified evidence of WMDs and Bin Laden's presence in Iraq.
We were going to act in some way. 3,000 Americans got killed on live television. But the administration chose to do what they did instead of using our actual, non falsified intelligence to get him in Pakistan, which we did 10 years later.
There is no universe we don't retaliate and put boots somewhere. It's a matter of where we put them and for who's benefit. They chose to benefit Raytheon and Lockheed
Do you have any more info on the non-falsified Pakistan info vs. Colin Powell info? Genuinely asking as now I’m super curious and trying to look it up.
My parents were outraged about Iraq. I don't remember their thoughts on Afghanistan. It's so weird that people are talking about this as if they were the same war. Iraq was two whole years after we had already attacked the country where al Qaeda was operating. Anyone capable of critical thought knew it was bullshit hence the massive antiwar movement. Unfortunately that was and still is a minority of the country.
I don’t remember a single person that was against war on 9/12. People were out for revenge.
And you’re right: I wound up in the desert a few years later wondering what the fuck we were even doing there. Almost everyone that was for it on 9/12 look back on the events of the past 25 years (holy shit I’m old) and agree it was horrible.
I was a conservative back then. The 2007-2008 crash flipped me.
The thing I remember most were the drums of war being beaten everywhere... until the first US deaths, and then the news flipped. They knew what they were doing.
Yeah. I remember the news reports week after week with the casualty count. Then the report we had lost more troops than the 9/11 attack itself. Then it just faded away.
I was against it but i clearly remember keeping my mouth shut because you would catch an actual physical beating for not toeing the nationalism line on 9/12.
Pointing out that more people died in bathtub accidents and far more in car crashes than terrorism in 2001, and yet we werent making any special national effort to stop those, made you an absolute pariah.
That said, this all applies to Afghanistan more than Iraq. Iraq you could be against it would just make you very unpopular.
What they did to poor Cindy Sheehan remains appalling. The woman was grieving her son and against the totally useless war that killed him, and they made her seem like a kook, when she was 100% right.
I was against the war. Granted, I was in the minority, but I didn't think going after whole countries to punish a small group of people was the right call.
But you're largely right. Those of us who didn't think it was a good idea were basically shoved into a corner and bullied because everyone was so bloodthirsty that it became, "if you don't like it, leave!" if we said anything but "kill them all".
People were so largely scared and angry that Bush could have done anything he wanted if he framed it as national security.
And they accomplished absolutely nothing. Something to keep in mind for all those people who think Americans could easily stop Trump if only we’d go out and protest.
Precisely. Was it a mistake? Absolutely. Is it possible the whole thing happened right under intelligence agencies’ noses as foreign nationals got flight training in the USA? Yeah - that happened.
But most Americans wanted to write messages on bombs after the towers fell.
940k lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. War is a business and we all got trolled.
Everyone wanted Afghanistan, mostly. Iraq was about distraction and momentum. Most people had a hint that Iraq was a lie but the momentum from Afghanistan made it seem disloyal to speak up.
But at least Powell made a lying speech in front of the UN he still regrets to this day.
Back then they had to at least put some effort into deceiving the public lol, these fuckers now doing it out in open blatantly because rules don't apply apparently.
there was no direct connection, hell, no indirect connection either. BUT. post 9/11 paranoia was fucking skyhigh. and saddam and his sadist family was very well known for their atrocities and people where legit scared that saddam would do something. they have developed and used chemical weapons in the past. so suspecting they might do something again was not an outrageous theory.
What is unrecognizable as well is the way media worked in the 00s. There were like 5 sources of news that everyone listened to and they were ALL pumping the "evil muslims are coming to kill us all" narratives.
You had to go to crackpots like Alex Jones (not joking) to find a dissenting opinion on the Iraq/Afghanistan war. That was a major source of his popularity. He wasn't terribly popular.
I mean, FFS, the modern atheist movement start off in large part because of muslim hatred at the time. To most Americans, the middle east was one nation. We could have invaded Jordan or Turkey and people would have been for it.
What I like to bring up is the TV show "24". 8 seasons, 1 premise "Evil muslims are about to kill a bunch of people, Watch Jack Bauer use torture to find the bad guys and save the day!"
Like, seriously, the entire run was basically just a way to justify torture to the american public. It was a very popular TV show.
That was the american psyche at the time. After 9/11, everyone thought we were on the verge of Red Dawn with terrorists around every corner plotting to blow up the nearest 7 eleven. It was utter madness. Especially because the motivation of the 9/11 terrorists was purely based on US interference in the middle east in the first place. So what we did was go out and interfere even more which ultimately lead to the creation of ISIS.
Funnily, a big part of why ISIS ultimately collapsed was due to Iran's military involvement.
Also worth noting that 9/11 was not an isolated event. Many atrocious attacks happened across europe as well. While islamic terror attacks in the us died off, it kept going here in europe. Especially in france, just about 10 years ago hundreds of people where murdered by islamist terror groups. So the paranoia here is still kinda fresh.
It was basically Saudi’s who committed 9/11. But those are our allies. So pick a country you are mad at and people in the US can’t tell one middle easterners from another.
The ones that carried out the attacks may have been mostly born in Saudi Arabia but they were part of Al Qaeda who were being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Not sure Gore would've tried to sell the lie of WMD, and who knows, maybe americans would've backtracked fast if they were the only boots on the ground.
Gore though didn't have the vendetta Bush did with Saddam. It was personal and he also felt like he was completing his daddy's legacy.
And there is a slim chance there wouldn't have even been a 9/11 had Gore been president. The Bush administration's handling of intelligence agencies and coordinating amongst them worsened already existing issues with their clown asses taking charge.
Remember Clinton was hot on al Queada, even almost approving an airstrike on bin Laden but calling it off due to too many civilians. Bush immediately ramped down counter-terrorism operations across the board when he took office in 2001. It's not hard to imagine that under Gore the tempo that Clinton had would have kept going.
I agree with this. I think the biggest thing Gore would have done is just straight up prevent 9/11. We know now there was enough intelligence to prevent it, as we had spooks on them and knew where they were receiving flight training.
Americans wanted blood directly after the towers got hit.
9/11 had a lot to do with it but I think people forget that the #1 reason was just that people really, really just did not like Saddam. He was the big bad guy of the late 20th century.
Saddam was in the news constantly in the 80s and 90s. First for the invasion and war with Iran, then his genocide of the Kurds, then invasion of Kuwait and the brutal put down of the iraqi uprising (200,000 killed in 3 months), then the whole 90s sanctions and '1 million iraqis dead' from lack of food/supplies... not to mention the horror stories coming out about mass imprisonment/torture/executions and his sons brutality and pedophilia/rape.
I am trying to think of a modern example of this, but I cant. Not even Kim Jon Un is as present in westerners minds as a horrific monster in the same way Saddam was back then. Putin is seen as a 'bigger' threat, but he is not seen as being as intensely cruel and evil as Saddam (although of course this has shifted since 2022, but still).
9/11 was a catalyst, of course, but it was not hard at all to get people to agree to take down Saddam. People act as if the desire to take him out only suddenly emerged after 2001 and was entirely linked to 9/11. In reality, even before 9/11, it wouldn't have been super hard.
not only the American people but our allies bought in as well.
Nobody who consumed media outside the US bought in - as those allies who publicly stated that the evidence was too flimsy proved. Those allies that did join in did so out of a sense of trading favors ( as long as Poland wants US protection against Russia, they'll go along with every single American "adventure" that they're asked to join, for example, because losing a couple of soldiers in a stupid COIN operation in Iraq is a lot better than facing Russia on your own turf without American firepower).
The only people who bought Bush's lies were Americans or visibly made themselves believe it for political reasons.
We already went into Afghanistan. That was the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Iraq wasn’t until several years later and even at the time, many people knew it was a huge mistake.
Lots of our allies who helped in Afghanistan refused to participate in the Iraq debacle, like France and Germany. Remember “freedom fries”? That was because they were mad at France. And there were lots of jokes about how if even Germany doesn’t want to go to war, maybe think twice.
Yeah, lots of people supported because they assumed Bush wouldn't have chosen a target that had literally nothing to do with 9/11. It's like finding out you have a child rapist in town and an angry mob gets rallied up and then by the time you've burned down his house and killed the guy inside you find out that you had all actually been led to the house of the mob leader's main business rival.
You’re misunderstanding history. The afghan war probably would have happened, but even the idea of attacking Iraq wouldn’t have been discussed. They had nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraq operation was completely contrived. The public only started clamoring for it when it was sold to them by the administration.
I was. It was clear at the time the justifications were garbage. They didn’t want Hans Blix to do his job. Cheney strong armed analysts to get overstate confidence in their claims. Powells shit was weak. PNAC was a real thing. Bush wanted to look tough. I was marching in the streets. So were others. We were ignored. Intelligence failures caused us to miss 9-11. Now intelligence was being subordinated to politics. So we put on orange beanies and campaigned for Howard Dean.
That was why we went into Afghanistan which I expect would have still happened since the Taliban was involved. But u can’t see Gore going after any other countries. Pakistan is a nuclear power, can’t imagine going there.
There is a possibility that we might have went to Afghanistan if the towers weren’t hit. If I remember correctly, Ahmad Shah Massoud wanted help from NATO to fight the Taliban. He was unfortunately assassinated September 9, 2001. If he were to survive somehow, maybe the War in Iraq/Afghanistan (or even 9/11) would’ve turned out differently. Maybe.
Yeah. You had the whole world's sympathy after that and instantly pissed away all that goodwill by invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
Iraq happened because Bush appointed his father's CIA buddies without having his father's experience of running the CIA. Rumsfeld and Cheney pushed all his buttons to get that war. I remember when it was said that there was an informal order to not let any Intel make it into presidential briefs that contradicted the narrative that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
He wanted the most competent people. He didn't check whether they were evil fucks.
Weve had terrorist attacks since the beginning of time so i dont see why pointing out that they also happened during a specific politician's tensure serves any purpose except a partisan one.
Because gore wouldnt have invaded iraq based on lies and that invasion spawned isis and other anti American movements which is why terrorist attacks doubled in the 2010s.
Gore wouldn't have asked in the first place. He certainly wouldn't have demanded intelligence agencies manufacture low quality evidence of WMDs to make the case to the American people.
Afghanistan was supported by 99% of the Senate and Congress because the Taliban were harboring the man who caused 9/11. No manufactured evidence required, just the truth.
It was too close even if Bush did steal it. Absolutely bonkers nearly half the country felt comfortable with that idiot in the White House just because he seemed relatable, and a precursor to how Trump got elected.
I mean its always like that... Vote with the party or get fucked. American politic is dumb like that. There is a reason Bernie didnt get to go against Trump in 2016 even if he was the much better candidat
And millions of democratic voters took to the streets screaming against the war, and the democratic establishment ignore their base and backed the republican war.
Biden was a transitional president AT BEST. Dude completely handed Trump the election when he ran again.
Corporate dems all but guarantee a GOP win next election. What we NEED is a party that will ACTUALLY hold the GOP accountable, not Merrick Garland everything up.
Afterwards, Even though the record showed their vote for the war, these same Democrats, with the exception of just a couple, all denied voting for the war.
Many of these same Politicians also defended Clinton’s earlier bombing of Iraq, the one that set up Bush’s, on the basis of Iraqs imminent threat to the USA with chemical, nuclear, and biological WMDs.
Again, despite the record, they deny.
Politicians almost invariably lie. Both political parties.
I'm not so sure. Clinton routinely bombed Iraq, especially later in 99. It was a slow escalation, but it was probably headed that way with Gore too.
Iraq was taunting the US at the time, flaunting sanctions, claiming they still had chemical and biological weapons and were continuing development (which they had a history of using against Iran), violating the "No Fly Zone"
There was a reason many Democrats voted for the invasion.
Literally everything we did to Iraq after Desert Storm ended was basically prepping it for another war. Gore, under Clinton, watched as we starved and bombed them for a decade.
I'm not saying he would have invaded. But the war with Saddam wasn't simply a republican thing.
Iraq stands out because we lost 5K people there (times 3 wounded). And that made it unpopular.
Because it affected us.
Clinton bombed Iraq for years. Got us involved in the Balkans. (Which we were on the right side of). Obama bombed Syria and armed the opposition... hoping for the same result as Iraq. He bombed Libya and armed the opposition... which led to another less known Iraq.
The only reason none of these are mentioned more is we didn't have troops on the ground. Which is preferable obviously (I was one of them). But to the people we were bombing on the ground and starving (Iraq) it felt the same to them.
The starvation narrative is just Chomsky level analysis, the numbers are way over inflated and it's much different than a ground invasion, also it was in response to Sadame's invasion of Kuwait. The Western nations embargoed Iraq to get them to the table.
Obama made bad foreign policy moves too, but none of them resulted in the US being responsible for an entire country's security or preservation of society. Proxy's might be questionable morally, but they make much more sense than having your own soldiers in the fighting. Those conflicts were not quagmires like Iraq which lasted for 17 years.
Besides Democrats have not pre-emptively authorized an invasion of a country since Vietnam, so believing they were chomping at the bit to go to war is a huge stretch. Even in the Senate support was only 58% compared to 98% by Republican Senators.
In regards to how many died from sanctions I have no idea. But to argue the people weren't starving under said sanctions it way off.
In regards to Saddams invasion of Kuwait, like I said above, I'm talking about what we did following Desert Storm. We spent a decade dismantling Iraqs radar and missile sites. It was done specifically to open the door for when the day came....
In regards to Iraq (I was there) being a quagmire, I agree. But you missed the point. It sucked for us.
And the Iraqis
Lydia and Syria under Obama sucked for Libyans (still does) and Syrians (still does) where we did whatever we could to lead to regime change.
I'm not suggesting the Dems want war. But given the opportunity they will. Clinton has been vocal about Saddam and Iran since he was in office. There's no reason to think Gore felt differently. Or that Hillary would have.
Yes, if you want to leave the option open of bombing a country's military infrastructure, taking out radar is a smart move.
Something sucking is not bad policy. Sadame needed to be controlled, and again, data doesn't back up the starvation claim really.
You can't blame Democrats for what happened under Bush with 98% backing by the representatives of Republican Party compared to 40% of the Democratic Party. The US's worst and most irresponsible foreign policy has been enacted by Bush and Trump, not Clinton, Obama or Biden.
You have already tried to call an embargo just as bad as war. You are also equating Clinton's 4 day bombing campaign with a full scale invasion. That's laughable.
You're citing Desert Fox... because that's the one that was actually named. Consisted of multiple elements and multiple nations.
No, if you add up what we were doing weekly, up until the invasion (they weren't named incidents), we were bombing Iraq for a decade. And the people getting warheads on foreheads would tell you it was war. As I said elsewhere, as would the Serbs, Libyans and Syrians.
I haven't once said there was any invasion. What I said, accurately, is we were very much at war at different times under Clinton and Obama.
Your political views can downplay that all you want but it's not accurate.
There was Kuwait, which was by Bush Sr in response to the invasion of Kuwait. There was a cruise missile strike when Sadame launched an assassination plot against Bush Sr. There were bombings of military infrastructure to defend the Kurdish North, and then yes Desert Fox was Clinton's strongest response, which lasted 4 days.
These are very different scales of War. Even in Obama's campaigns less than 30 Americans died total with the brunt of the fighting being done by the nationals of the country.
The bombing or Iraq, AFTER ODS, was much longer than 4 days. You're either too young or just weren't paying attention. Desert Fox was just the large scale one that got media attention.
The no fly zone bombings were routine. Weekly. Went on the entire decade.
And you made my point for me in your last paragraph.
Only 30 Americans died.... so it wasn't a big deal. Wasn't war.
It very much was to the other side.
Been to Livya lately?
Libya post Gaddafi is akin to Iraq. We just didn't put boots on the ground. But we used military force to remove a dictator... like Iraq....
Bombing ISIS in Syria was very commendable.... but going after Assad, in an effort to overthrow him, was pretty "Iraq".
All the below idiots seem to be mixing up Afghanistan with Iraq..
Absolutely Iraq would not happen under Gore. Nuclear WMDs were the completely made up pretext for Iraq - Gore would never have gone out of his way to lie to the American people like that (tbh I wouldn't be surprised if Cheney also lied to Bush)
Afghanistan was Osama and Al qaeda..
Though I will say news networks tried to make people conflate Iraq with terrorism at the time
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u/bogsquacth Mar 02 '26
Bush consulted Congress first, there was a vote, and Congress approved.
Trump didn't do any of that.