One can't help but think that if this information had been made public immediately after 9/11, that the Bush Administration would have found itself under public pressure to bomb Riyadh instead of Baghdad.
That's just it...
We did know. We knew the majority of the highjackers were Saudis. As was Bin Laden. We already knew about Saudi financial support of exporting extremism. We certainly knew enough to determine that Iraq had zero contribution to 9/11/01.
We were also told about the ramifications of invading Iraq on multiple levels. The debate that gave us this informatin played out every day across cable news and in print and online. Nothing was kept from us that could sway us one way or the other truthfully. To learn that going to Iraq would most likely end up empowering Iran in the region, destabilize the region and unleash even more radicalized Muslims on the world because attacking Iraq would just confirm their beliefs about America and the West in general... We knew all this. This was public knowledge and it was a vigorous argument.
If that argument missed was missed by folk they chose not to see it. And for those that were engaged they then also made a choice to believe that what all the experts said would occur if we went to Iraq was somehow false.
Did the Bushies lie and push BS? Yeah.
But the counternarrative was as widely dispersed. Lefties can bray about Judith Miller all they want and say the MSM was in on convincing the public but that does not line up with my memories at all. As usual the majority of the media was accused by the Right Wing of being insufficiently Pro-America because they kept publishing articles and doing reports about how the **** the Bush Admin. put out didn't pass the smell test and you didn't have to search for this info. You didn't have to have some inside source or go to the undbelly of "the dark web" or some ****.
The Bushies lied and people died?
No.
The Bushies lied and a **** metric ton of people, the American public, CHOSE to believe those lies despite having access to sober analysis that said in fact Iraq was a fool's errand.
And then we doubled down when the 2004 election came and the writing was already on the wall as to how this attempt at Democritizing was going (hint... Not well. Iraq was never close to stable in this period or the ensuing years if not rest of the decade.) but public gave Bush a victory anyway.
We don't have a lack of information with these things for the past two decades. We are told what we need to know to make an informed decision. Too many simply make the choice poorly and then we turn around and play victim to circumstance when the choice blows up in all of our faces.
