We're not allowed to be pissed that we were lied to?

This is a response to the following post by a respected author/blogger at Clusterfuck Nation.
In short he makes a few points:

• It's a meme that people believe we were lied to about the run up to the Iraq war, and anger over it is unjustified.
  
• That attacking Iraq was a legitimate response to 9/11, and simply going after Al-Queda in Afganistan wasn't enough, because Afgans aren't Arabs.
  
• Something had to be done as a response to the litany of terrorist attacks on American targets over the years
• The UN weapons inspectors' findings were inconclusive, and Saddam might have had WMDs someplace, and the only way to know was to invade and look around ourselves.
  
• The true objectives of the action were... to punish an Arab nation for 9/11, to establish a military presence between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and to "secure" a large reserve of oil (not to steal it, but to assure access to buying it).
• By blaming lying leaders instead of looking at our own culpability, we tell ourselves a pretty story so we don't have to face the energy or other crises.
  

. I agree that the responsibility for the clusterfuck that is America can be laid at only one doorstep – the lazy, stupid, gullible American people.

However, your post that somehow the rage people feel over the lies that dragged this country into the war is somehow invalid disregards the facts of the matter. The Iraq war is the only war in history to be protested before it started. Millions of people demanded that we not attack a sovereign nation that has never attacked us, and were ignored. From day one, the war was treated as a story to sell, and not because GW thought it was the right thing to do.

The argument that somehow the bush administration was surprised by the outcome of the war is fallacious. Cheyney knew exactly what would happen in 94:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

We purposefully bombed the shit out of the infrastructure so Bush’s friends could rip off America by pretending to rebuild it. They still don’t have power more than a few hours/day, and Saddam restored it in 45 days after the first gulf war. This is just another treasonous war crime that demands impeachment.

You certainly can’t use any argument that involves the success (or lack thereof) of the war in Afghanistan, since Rumsfeld and the rest were targeting Iraq from day 1.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/24/freedomofinformation.september11

For all Bush knew, they would capture and kill UBL in a matter of months, but still from the first day they were completely focused on selling a war in Iraq. They didn’t know they would be such complete failures at bringing Al-Queda to justice (although the Bushes had all the Bin Laden family flown out of the US in the days after 9/11, so they clearly were unwilling to go after UBL through his rich-ass high level Saudi family). In short, they didn’t know they would need Iraq to provide for the emotional demand for revenge that Iraq so conveniently provided for.

Any argument involving WMDs as a case for war is fallacious. As is any argument involving the bad things SH did to his own people (like the gassings which occurred in the 80s). There are countless examples around the world of bad dictators doing bad things to their own people who are CONFIRMED to have nukes or nuke material, and we don’t go after them. Obviously that was nothing more than a cover. SH has never once attacked America and it’s idiotic to suggest that there was any legitimate fear that he would do so. That was nothing more than fear-mongering, and pathetically transparent.

Invariably on the world stage, when something bad is done, you can find out who and why by following the money. The endless stream of money flowing out of the US and in to the hands of Haliburtion and many others who have completely failed to provide even the most basic services in Iraq tells the entire story. Iraq was nothing more than a convenient way to rob America, just like the housing bubble, the tech bubble, and the state of our health care system.

The inevitable laws of human nature dictate that power corrupts. As our business and health care systems grew less and less regulated, clever people found new ways to rip off America. Our campaign system ensures that the richest people and corporations decide who we get to vote for, that is until the massive groundswell of actual people demanded that Obama be president. Connecting the power > money > corruption dots is pretty easy.

Yes all wars involve plenty of lies. But let’s not forget we haven’t declared war on Iraq, and we won’t. The authorization was yet another back-room pressure-filled bullshit lie that was sold to the congress as a ‘leverage tool’ to bargain with SH, and that we’d never actually attack them. And of course the spun, twisted or outright fabricated ‘intelligence’ that went along with it. I’ve read a bunch of Tom Clancy novels about the CIA, and the one thing they never do is draw conclusions without enough evidence. Bush said ‘make the case for Iraq’ and Tenet complied.

Sure 9/11 was bad. It was a devastating attack, and people demanded revenge. We should be able to expect more from our leaders, we should be able to expect them to vote their conscience and not blow with the wind – in short to do the right thing. Everything you blame Americans for is correct. We as a country failed to expect anything more from our leaders than cynical fear-mongering and manipulation.

Also, the idea that attacking Iraq was a good idea in that it would somehow teach the terrorists a lesson, is silly. The truth is the Iraq war has been nothing more than the best recruiting poster ever for terrorists. We disbanded their army, destroyed their infrastructure, and gave plenty of young angry men no other option. Al-Queda never existed in Iraq before, and now they are firmly entrenched.

If our government were interested in reducing, rather than aggravating, terrorism, they would address the cause of it. Our 30B/year support for Israel is one of the cornerstones of hatred for America, and let’s not forget our cia-led coup of Iran last century, and the countless other dirty acts that went unreported as we abused our power to rob and fuck over 3^rd world countries.

The fact is that totalitarian leader types like Bush need a big scary enemy, and tragically there aren’t any good ones left. China owns our ass so we can’t go pissing them off, and we prefer targets that can’t defend themselves (that’s why we never hear about invading North Korea). It’s so 1984 that it’s funny. In the 20^th it was the red scare, a completely trumped up bullshit reason to spend our country into bankruptcy, again following the money to the defense industry. It is in Bush’s interests to increase terrorism and not decrease it, which is exactly what they’ve done.

The only response that would have scared the terrorists would have been to go after Bin Laden’s entire family and kill/round em up, and use them against him. To hunt and catch him instead of fucking around and hardly trying. There are countless sociological studies that say the only true deterrent to a crime is the likelihood of getting caught – this is why there are no kidnap/ransom demands anymore. No one gets away with it, so no one tries. Any attempt to curb bad behavior that doesn’t either attack the cause of the behavior (like the US fucking over other counties) or increases the likelihood of getting caught is bullshit.

And let’s not forget that it’s a free country, and unless we change that there is nothing we can do to guarantee no more attacks. It’s only a matter of time until the next one. We should be more like the British. When their subway was bombed (granted a much smaller scale attack than 9/11), they went right about their business. Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.

The truth about 9/11 was it was nothing more than cover for the Bush administration to do what it already wanted to do. To force the passage of the patriot act and gain more power for himself. To start an endless, undeclared war to rob this country and create a 1984-esque ready-made excuse for him to do whatever he wanted – spy on Americans, record every bit of traffic on the Internet, and twist the government and its offices (like say prosecutors) to do his partisan bidding.

I’ve never heard a convincing argument that in any way justifies what Bush did in Iraq. It was nothing more than yet another way to rob this country while pushing his other agendas, and that’s why people like me feel such rage over it.