MAY 16, 2015 by Maureen Dowd

IT isn’t about what we know now.

It’s about what we knew then.

It is simply not true, as Republican presidential aspirant Scott Walker said on Friday, that “any president would have likely taken the same action Bush did with the information he had.”

That’s not giving enough credit to W. and his frothing band of Reservoir Dogs.

It took a Herculean effort of imagination, manipulation and deception to concoct “the information” that propelled the invasion, occupation and destruction of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

When the Republican House majority leader at the time, Dick Armey, balked at invading Iraq unprovoked, because Saddam was a clownish tyrant but not a nuclear menace to America, Dick Cheney summoned Armey to his Capitol hideaway and coerced him with brazen fabrications.

As Barton Gellman wrote in “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” Cheney tried to spook his old friend in September 2002 by confiding that the Iraqis were well on their way to developing miniaturized nuclear weapons and that Al Qaeda was working with Saddam and his family — both spurious assertions.

Aside from the Blair poodle and the Coalition of the Willing-to-Overlook-Counterfeit-Claims, our allies tried to warn us. You know you’re in trouble when the Germans tell you that you’re too militaristic.

for more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinio...other.html?_r=0

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Here are the Democratic Senators who voted YEA on October 2002.

Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Breaux (D-LA), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Carnahan (D-MO), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Cleland (D-GA), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Yea
Daschle (D-SD), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Edwards (D-NC), Yea
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hollings (D-SC), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lieberman (D-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Miller (D-GA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Torricelli (D-NJ), Yea

Jeesh! Look at all the Dems who voted FOR this invasion of Iraq! Now they ALL cast a revisionist memory for their own actions that led us into this Middle East disaster. TM