| 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 |
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.