Apologists for the Iraq War

Here we are on the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. attacking Iraq over alleged weapons of mass destruction.

A majority of Americans now say the war was a mistake, and those in charge at the time are mostly making noises about how they had some private doubts but the country got swept along.

In a great post she called "If Only Someone Had Said Something," about the despicable Paul Wolfowitz, Allison Hantschel makes some sadly true points about these guys in general, of whom PW is but one example:

And yet imagine if you had spoken out, as you are now so bravely doing in an attempt to keep food on your table. Imagine if you had said you know, this guy is kind of an assclown, and we’re rushing into war on the basis of his say-so, and who the fuck knows if it’s going to work. Imagine that.

I mean, we probably would have gone to war anyway. And you’d have been scorned, of course, and treated like a filthy hippie. AS WAS EVERYBODY ELSE WHO WAS FUCKING RIGHT. You might have been kicked out of the best restaurants and all the good parties. You might have missed some meals. Might have been forced to take a temp job in some congressional district office somewhere.

And now you wouldn’t be forced to go around talking about how you knew all along that this was a terrible idea, as if this makes it better that you didn’t speak up.

Everything was just fine, when everything was just fine. Now that it’s universally acknowledged to have been a colossal clusterfuck, it was always going to be that way and nobody listened to you about the right way to do it. Yet I am wracking my brain for the memory of the op-ed piece or blistering speech Paul Wolfowitz gave warning of dire consequences if we didn’t listen to his plan instead of the president’s.

These people all act like there was nothing they could do. Nothing they could do to stop the war. And maybe they couldn’t have stopped it, but they could have done plenty. They chose not to.
 

I maintain that the only fitting punishment for these war criminals--for that's what they were and are--would be to perform community service for the rest of their lives, in VA hospitals, emptying bedpans and performing personal care for the maimed veterans that they created.