Tim Grieve (Salon's War Room) NAILS IT! re: antiwar converts

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Welcome to the war

Arianna Huffington thinks we're all being too harsh on Newt Gingrich for his apparent about-face on Iraq. When a Sioux Falls newspaper reported earlier this week that Gingrich was advocating a "pullback" in Iraq, the blogsophere -- including this corner of it -- jumped all over the former Republican speaker and would-be presidential candidate. Some of us dredged up old quotes in which Gingrich threw his support behind the president and attacked those who dared to raise questions. Matt Stoller at MyDD called Gingrich "another cowardly rat jumping off the Iraq ship." At Firedoglake, Jane Hamsher dubbed him a "war pimp."

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It would be one thing if the Newt Gingriches of the world had acknowledged from the beginning that opposition to -- or even questions about -- the war could be both reasonable and legitimate. They didn't. As recently as this January, Gingrich was suggesting to his friends at Fox News that Americans who raised doubts about the war at home were giving "comfort" to Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.

It would be one thing if the George W. Bushes and Dick Cheneys of the world would acknowledge the way in which the Bush administration twisted intelligence to pave the way for war and then justify it afterward. They haven't. Colin Powell said over the weekend that he "never believed" that Saddam Hussein had a "Niger connection" and that the claims about a nuclear threat from Iraq were trumped-up creations pushed hard by Cheney himself. But three years after the president warned of a Niger connection in his State of the Union address -- three years after all that talk about the smoking gun and the mushroom cloud -- we're still learning new facts about the way in which the White House mishandled intelligence and tried to spin it away afterward.

And it would be one thing if the president and his supporters would acknowledge that there were sides to take and decisions to make back in 2002 and 2003, and that they chose the wrong path. They haven't done that, either. Instead, Bush has pushed the "everyone else was wrong, too" theme: We all thought Saddam Hussein was a threat, we all thought he had weapons of mass destruction, we all thought war was the right way to go about fixing things. But that's not what we all thought. Twenty-three senators voted against the resolution authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq. Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer and Lincoln Chafee weren't wrong about Iraq then. Neither was Howard Dean. The decision to go to war wasn't some kind of goof we all made; it was a decision certain people made and advocated, and some of them -- Andrew Sullivan, Francis Fukuyama, even some of the generals now calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation -- may regret it now.

My sentiments eggs-fucking-zactly, Tim! I'm going to need one hell of a mea culpa from the chickenhawk bastards who cheered this war on before I consider forgiving them for calling me, a veteran, unamerican (and worse) for opposing this madness three years ago.

More (requires watching a short ad): http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

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1. Those damn cut-and-run, Arab-loving, cheese-eating surrender monkey...

Republicans.

Bwahahahahahaha.