In which I draw your attention to a Daily Kos diary by Michael Moore, and make additional comments...

Michael Moore makes the case that it was the political cowardice and/or gullibility of liberals in the media and in government that allowed George W. Bush to lie us into the war in Iraq. He is right, of course.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/15/902221/-Never-Forget:-Bad-Wars-Arent-Possible-Unless-Good-People-Back-Them

Now, of course, we know that, when we go to war, we are all supposed to band together behind the president and help him fight the war. Therefore, in cases when the war is uncalled for, people, politicians especially, need great courage to go against the tide. If we look back to Viet Nam, even though the anti-war position ended up being the conventional wisdom at that time, historical revisionism has bitten politicians who did not serve in that war in the ass.

I have mentioned before that Bush betrayed America by using our grief and anger from 9/11 to trick us into supporting his war in Iraq. We had been wounded by Al Qaeda, and we obviously needed to take some action. President Bush used this opportunity to engage in a war that he wanted an excuse to get into before 9/11 even happened.

I don't claim to be a political genius, but the Bush administration's lies always seemed to me to be so clumsy and transparent that anyone could see through them. After 9/11, we went into Afghanistan, which is where Osama bin Laden was hiding. So far, so good. Then, George W. Bush announced that, far from limiting our actions to punishing Al Qaeda, we would fight terror world-wide, wherever it was to be found. I immediately thought to myself, "Oh, so this is how he gets into Iraq."

So, if your average Joe (me) could see through that ruse, you know that there were professional politicians and pundits who recognized it immediately. Yet, very few had the courage to speak up, with the result that we lost more soldiers in Iraq (in a war justified by events that had nothing to do with Iraq) than there were deaths in the 9/11 attack.

As a tangent to all of this, I have a theory about the media's vehement response to George W. Bush's bungled response to hurricane Katrina. Bungled it was, but the hurricane was huge, affecting the city as much as a war would have. We know that FEMA, under Bill Clinton, would have done a better job, but the task would have been a daunting one in any case. I believe that the media, and others who might have stood up against our going into Iraq, experienced a growing rage as the case for the war unraveled, and they realized how they had been bamboozled. The rage that could not be expressed over Iraq exploded over Katrina.