[LatteLazy]

I don't understand why he went in the first place. It was clear to everyone it was BS. It should have been triply clear to someone in the DoE whose job includes knowing these things!?

Based on this, the guy is either an idiot (unlikely) or just wilfully ignorant.

Once he was in Iraq, and after he returned, he knew. That's be his own admission. So he spent his time running around and interrogating old men until they cried, blocking streets, disrupting commerce etc.

Then when he came back, instead of telling the truth, he covered for the whole enterprise.

This guy is telling a sob story and acting like he is the victim. But he's not. He's part of the problem. Without people like him, wars like Iraq 2 wouldn't happen.

[toyg]

You have a career, a family, a nice house, and you want to keep all that. You want that promotion, that niche holiday, and you know how fragile all this lifestyle is - if you sound “confrontational”, “rocking the boat”, you’ll get freezed out. Your boss tells you his boss wants you to go and find something, anything, maybe with a bit of spiel about duty to the country and all that. Your whole community is so proud: contributing to the war effort! Proving Americans are just!

Would you really say no, even when you have a hunch that it’s all just song & dance...?

[LatteLazy]

I don't know if I'd say yes or no. But if I said yes, I'd know the whole thing was BS (just like he did) and go knowing that. Unlike him, I wouldn't interrogate any old men until they cried (especially if I could avoid doing so by just not bribing people!?). And I would not come back and decades later, long after anyone stopped giving a shit, write a long article where I pretended going made me the good guy and I was duped. I'd slink off and be ashamed while I bought my new jetski or whatever.

[ta999999171]

Yes, because I would never take a job that could ever put me in that position.

Being "successful" to me is far less important than being happy/not being a piece of shit to the rest of the world.

Altruistic? Or just not a selfish scumbag? You decide.

[acqq]

It seems you aren't aware of what was happening at the time:

2003 Colin Powell's speech in the UN Security Council:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...

A presentation with all the "proofs" which, only after the war started, were proven to be fakes.

Only in 2005, he admits:

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/politics/powell-calls-his...

"Powell Calls His U.N. Speech a Lasting Blot on His Record"

In between, there were a lot who wanted to believe. Including most of the politicians. And not only in the U.S.

Britain was more than willing to help and contributed with its own fake proofs, e.g. the February 2003 dossier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier

"much of the work in the Iraq Dossier had been plagiarised from various unattributed sources including a 13-year-old thesis produced by a student at California State University"

The thing is, J.D. Maddox is right when he writes:

"I’m struck by the power of our national momentum toward going to war — especially unnecessary ones — and alarmed that this momentum seems nearly impossible to halt."

It was true then, it's true now.

Edit, to answer LatteLazy's: ""UN Chief Inspector Hans Blix" rebutting the Powell speech. That's before the invasion and after the speech of course..."

Yes, that rebuttal surely existed (and some others too!), but has it influenced the politics of U.S. and allies in any way? Or the media? It effectively hasn't. Therefore: "the power of our national momentum toward going to war — especially unnecessary ones... seems nearly impossible to halt."

There were also the protests, in vain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

[thisrod]

> There were also the protests, in vain

Not entirely. Before the war started, there mass protests, and ubiquitous claims that its ruling class promoters were pathological liars. People could even discuss those claims around serving soldiers without getting punched.

As Noam Chomsky pointed out at the time, none of that had happened before. The peace movement couldn't stop a war in 2003, but it made a lot of progress towards a future where it can.

[LatteLazy]

Fyi, Your own link has "UN Chief Inspector Hans Blix" rebutting the Powell speech. That's before the invasion and after the speech of course...

[boublepop]

> It was clear to everyone it was BS.

That’s what a lot of republicans have been saying about climate change for decades. Sensible people don’t act based on “everyone knows” especially not when tasked with actually digging out facts.

[stevenwoo]

This is unwarranted whataboutism. Conservatives around the world say this about climate change but that the vast majority of scientists can show the receipts - there is very little evidence against accelerating man made climate change. Contrast with the Iraq war justifications, even after they were shown to be false, the guys in favor of war kept on saying it was OK to go to war because "good intentions" matter more than facts. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,463779,00.... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36712735

[boublepop]

It’s not whataboutism, it was literally the point.

If you where a republican investigator in charge of figuring out if climate change was a problem and decided to not actually do any fact checking because “everyone knows it’s bullshit” you would be an idiot.

In the same sence, someone tasked with looking for WMD in Iraq would be an idiot to simply go “well everyone knows there aren’t any” and not checking the facts.

Point is that no matter your political leanings, there is no such thing as “everyone knows” when doing investigations you look for facts and evidence.

And sometimes that’s hard because there isn’t any (Iraq) and other times that’s easy because there are tons (climate change). But no matter the case and your political affiliation if you skip the facts and rely on public sentiment you’re being foolish.

[LatteLazy]

It's sort of hilarious that you choose that example...