[mrguyorama]

>With hindsight I wonder why Afghanistan just didn’t get talked about in the same seriousness as the invasion of Iraq.

If you weren't for war you were violently shouted down as unamerican and undemocratic and unpatriotic. It's a simple as that. This applied to US senators just as much as it applied to average americans. "Our country is under attack and we are at war" was the hammer used to suppress any argument, especially the one talking about how Bush clearly wanted a war even before the attack.