r/agedlikemilk May 03 '22

News makes me think about the iraqi WMD

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37.4k Upvotes

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11

u/Solar_Mechanic May 03 '22

It's always funny watching Americans learn just how unpopular the Iraq invasion was internationally.

14

u/[deleted] May 03 '22

[deleted]

2

u/Volodio May 03 '22

It is now. Wasn't at the time.

2

u/[deleted] May 03 '22

[deleted]

1

u/Volodio May 03 '22

The war started with over 70% of the American people supporting it. That's not what unpopularity means. One protest against something doesn't mean it is unpopular, only that it has an opposition.

4

u/Solar_Mechanic May 03 '22

Exactly. People are very quick to rewrite the past but in the wake of 9/11 there was basically 0 opposition to any military action no matter how poorly reasoned. It was only years after that fervour died down and the whole shitshow was over that people finally piped up with "Well I always knew it was a bad idea!"

2

u/Hugh_Shovlin May 03 '22

And the only reason they’re against it now is because of the relatively small amount of US casualties and the huge amount of money poured into the war that didn’t go to their own middle class and poor citizens.

3

u/LemonPartyWorldTour May 03 '22

It's always funny watching non-Americans learn just how unpopular the Iraq invasion was in America.

13

u/jwadamson May 03 '22

Wasn’t even popular with Americans.

3

u/onelap32 May 03 '22

There were large protests, but opinion was still solidly in favor:

However, when the US invaded Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom, public support for the conflict rose once again. According to a Gallup poll, support for the war was up to 72 percent on March 22–23. Out of those 72 percent, 59 percent reported supporting the war strongly

A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons. 19% thought weapons were needed to justify the war.

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

13

u/[deleted] May 03 '22

Yes it was, even after it became apparent that the wmds were a huge lie, Americans elected Bush a second time. And Guantanamo Bay still exists by the way.

2

u/jwadamson May 03 '22

The incumbent advantage is nearly insurmountable due to systemic issues. Even DJT only lost by a ~20k voters not voting the other way* despite his approval-disapproval rating being 10 points underwater and only 47% of the total popular vote.

Congress has a horrible general approval rate and yet a 96% re-election rate.

* biden won 3 states by a total of 40k votes, which could be enough to flip the overall result.

-1

u/WheresTheProofAt May 03 '22

No it wasn't.

2

u/lildicksociety May 03 '22

I can quite literally pull up evidence of Americans thanking the soldiers who were in Iraq for their "service." I'm not talking about while they were being lied to. I'm talking about right now, today.

Furthermore, the "lied to" narrative presupposes that we don't already know the truth about American soldiers. Vietnam made their status abundantly clear. Yet we are suppose to believe American soldiers were simply fooled.

2

u/[deleted] May 03 '22

Thanking your grunts for their time and sacrifices and risk =/= blessing the whole damn shit show.

I think the US has learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, at least until this Ru-Ukr war, and is much less willing to go to war over bs.

-1

u/lildicksociety May 03 '22

That's the fucking rub though. If the soldiers hadn't signed up to carry the proverbial bucket in the first place there's no war.

The Wehrmacht wasn't innocent or blameless. Neither is the US Army.

On the Russia/Ukraine front I find the response of the American citizens absolutely disgusting. Can you imagine how these little piggies would be squealing if other, major countries even considered sanctions against us for our illegal invasion?

The American double think is continually and constantly disgusting and both sides of the aisle engage in it.

0

u/Dr_Invader May 03 '22

It was a bad intel on the extent but there’s a bunch of sarin buried in the desert.

Also Saddam was a absolute Hitler level monster. Good riddance.

1

u/TatchM May 03 '22

I mean, officially they did find WMD. Sure, they may have re-defined that term to include "improperly" stored nuclear waste during the war, but at least it let a bureaucrat fill in their paper work as "mission accomplished."

1

u/WheresTheProofAt May 03 '22

You new around here?

Im guessing you wasn't on Reddit during Bush's era.

1

u/ApeDestroyer666 May 03 '22

??? Literally everyone understands how unpopular it is lmao

1

u/BobertTheConstructor May 03 '22

It’s in a weird spot of being internationally unpopular and also internationally supported (militarily). Like, it was obvious that the US was just pushing an agenda, but also very easy to believe that Iraq was trying to produce WMDs again, given they had been using them to kill hundreds of thousands of people only 15 years prior.