• Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    Apparently they’re teaching gradeschoolers that George W. Bush went into Iraq because of 9/11.

    (The Iraq war had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.)

    Also the CIA torture program had nothing to do with gathering intelligence. But that came out when Trump was pro-extra-torture, and his fans loved him for it.

    • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      They were trying to say that at the time.

      If you talk to most boomers and even a lot of Gen X they’ll say they remember that’s what happened. Saying anything else at the time would get you called a conspiracy theorist despite the obvious demonstrable proof that the Iraq war had nothing to do with 9/11.

      Even mentioning Abu Grahib would get eye rolls and be meet with coruses of “you just hate America” or “you are one of those ‘blame America first’ people!”

      • DragonAce@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I’m a young Gen Xer and IIRC it was clear to half the country that the whole WMD story was bullshit, but for a lot of people that bit of clarity came in hindsight after the initial invasion.

        I used to joke that Dubya used 9/11 as an excuse to “finish Daddy’s work”, given that even after the Gulf War Hussein continued to reign for 10 more years. But when Halliberton suddenly started getting all these contract jobs securing oil wells, it was pretty obvious what was going on at that point.

        Its strange because I remember there was initial talks about going to Afghanistan to search for Bin Laden, but then suddenly the discussion shifted to the whole bullshit WMD story. IIRC the assigned UN commission that was supposed to do their annual inspections for nuclear and chemical weapons, found nothing during their visit to Iraq just a few months prior, but those chucklefucks in the WH kept pushing the narrative anyway. The Whitehouse did such a half assed job of getting their stories straight, I was sure someone was going to fuck up at some point, but the media kept pushing the assigned narrative and the public bought it.

    • ZMonster@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think it’s safe to say that he used the reactionary climate of the post 9/11 mentality as a vehicle to help jumpstart OIF. But if not a catalyst, it had nothing to do with OIF, you’re 100% right. We were taking big steps toward conflict and nothing that was used at that time to justify invasion would have been prevented in the absence of 9/11.

    • Starb3an@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      7th grade math class the TV in the classroom actually got turned on and we watched the towers burn.

      I was too young to really understand the politics behind the war but as it progressed it became clear how much BS it was.