Someone needs to make a seeded bracket of all the Iraq fuckery, so we can determine what was #1. Is is Powell's testimony, is it Ahmed Chalabi, etc. And we need a play-in round between Cindy Sheehan and [insert some dated fuckery I forgot].
I'd nominate:
* The media coverage of Jessica Lynch's capture.
* Iraqis pulling down the Saddam statue, which seemed to be a handful of Chalabi's men aided by US forces.
* Fallujah basically being ceded to Sunni insurgents for a year because retaking it would mean casualties and negative press, and it was an election year.
* The Iraqi army being dissolved with no plan on what to do with tens of thousands of disaffected, unemployed trained soldiers. A decision that nobody takes responsibility for to this day, I believe.
* The US being blindsided by ethnic/religious divisions.
* The US being blindsided by Moqtada Al-Sadr.
* Iran offering the US a diplomatic opening through a Swiss diplomat, and getting completely shut down.
* That fucking deck of cards with all the high-ranking Iraqi officials on them.
* "Warbloggers"
* Warbloggers promoting Healing Iraq (a blog by an Iraqi) in support of the war, until the blog's author had his cousin killed by soldiers throwing him off a bridge for being out after curfew.
* Curveball
* Toby Keith and jingo-country as a genre
* The US moving all those resources to Iraq cause Afghanistan looks like it will be just fine (though good chance it wouldn't have made a huge difference)
* Mission Accomplished
* "I better call my lawyer."
* When death estimates of the Iraq war are published in the Lancet, hawks spontaneously developing very deeply held beliefs about epidemiology and statistical analysis.
* The US telling Hans Blix to get out, and how quickly that was retconned into "well Saddam kicked out the inspectors, so how could we know?"
* That time everyone was freaking out about the Dixie Chicks
* The change from "Bush won't be held back by the stuffy Arabists at the CIA and State!" to "The CIA duped Bush and forced him into invading!" See
here.
* Freedom fries and goofy francophobia in general
* Pre-war predictions from "they'll be building a statue of Bush" to "the oil will pay for the reconstruction."
* Expenses from the war never being included in future budget projections. The Bush administration taking credit for hypothetically cutting the future deficit, using the assumptions of no Iraq costs and an expiration of their own tax cuts.
* Judith Miller
* Reporters saying stuff like "by late 2003, it was clear there were huge problems with..." but saying it in 2007 and not 2003.
* So many dead Americans. Dead allies too.
* So, so many dead and displaced Iraqis.
* Bush, that sonofabitch, managing to duck that shoe.
