Friday, April 18, 2025

JD Vance has Bizarre and Incorrect take on How the Iraq War Started

Hayes Brown writes about this comment by JD Vance: "Something I know a little bit more personally: I think a lot of European nations were right about our invasion of Iraq. And frankly, if the Europeans had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up, then maybe we could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq."

Posted by truthhurts at 09:33 PM | 31 COMMENTS | permalink

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There are a few things to unpack there. Most obviously, it's not as though Europe (aside from the British) meekly went along with President George W. Bush's march towards war ...

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More from the cited OpEd...

JD Vance has a bizarre and factually incorrect take on how the Iraq War started

... Vice President JD Vance recently gave a phone interview to UnHerd, a British news and opinion website, focused on how he and the Trump administration view America's European allies.

The major takeaway is that while Vance still thinks the U.S. and the continent should be considered friends, despite the U.S. levying (and then suspending) large tariffs on European countries, he argued that there are a few caveats to that relationship.

In making those points, Vance offered some truly bizarre takes on history. ...



#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-04-16 02:11 PM

Vance Blames Europe for 2003 Iraq War

- Idi Amin JD Vance: But you did not persuade me, Nicholas Europe. You did not persuade me!"

#2 | Posted by censored at 2025-04-16 02:14 PM

"if the Europeans had been a little more independent"

He's blaming Europe, for fabricated intelligence that the Republican Party engineered.

Never. Take. Responsibility.
It's how Republicans think.

#3 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-04-16 02:34 PM

#3 | Posted by snoofy

It's also how demented sociopaths think.

(Pardon the redundancy)

#4 | Posted by Angrydad at 2025-04-16 03:24 PM

It's been elevated to policy.
And adopted by people who know better.
People like Chuck Grassley.

Occasionally, rejected by people who know better.
By people who have more skin in the game.
People like Lesbian Liz Cheney.

Republicans can't want to send Liz to Gulag.

#5 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-04-16 03:31 PM

Vance has made it clear he is a liar who will lie even after shown he was lying.
On the face of things, he lacks a well-ordered, functioning moral compass.
No, he is not as well informed or stunningly brilliant as he thinks he is.
What we have is a pompous arsewho wants kudos for having once read a book.
Yet there's that problem again: he's an amoral liar.

#6 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2025-04-16 04:00 PM

V D Prance is a ---- sucking FAGAT

#7 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-04-17 12:26 AM

In the build-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, I was working in J2 and could not believe the faulty construction of evidence to invade Baghdad. Republicans dominated the internal discourse, D/CIA George Tenet said the evidence was a "slam dunk," and Colin Powell made his infamous UN WMD speech (which he later regretted). The Europeans knew (as did we in the USG) that secular Saddam Hussein and religious Usama bin-Laden were enemies. Saddam tried going after the Kurdish Ansar-al-Islam (AI) cells in northern Iraq, but our No-Fly Zone prevented his air force from striking them. European intelligence agencies were also dubious of our WMD claims. But lapdog UK Tony Blair jumped on the war bandwagon. Waitaminnit! I was told the Europeans were 'freeloaders?'

VD Jance knows all this, like Usha, his wife who was a registered Democrat until 2014.

Some unclassified sources:

archive.globalpolicy.org

www.scribd.com

www.europarl.europa.eu

https://www.businessinsider.com/usha-vance-politics-yale-jd-wife-vice-president-2024-7

#8 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2025-04-17 01:03 AM

"In the build-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, I was working in J2 and could not believe the faulty construction of evidence to invade Baghdad."

CENTCOM J2 I'm guessing? I ran targeting for a year for the Conventional (non-SOF) Task Forces in Afghanistan and Syria, around the time ISIS was making its last stand in Baghuz Fawqani.

"The Europeans knew (as did we in the USG) that secular Saddam Hussein and religious Usama bin-Laden were enemies."

Tariq Aziz (Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs) was offering to assistance to the US in fighting Al Quaeda.

"Some unclassified sources:"

Please ensure all classified information is kept on Signal.

#9 | Posted by madbomber at 2025-04-17 12:33 PM

- Please ensure all classified information is kept on Signal.

Ha!
MB has a sense of humor... who knew?

#10 | Posted by Corky at 2025-04-17 12:49 PM

"MB has a sense of humor... who knew?"

Dude, I work in Sensitive Operations...so pretty much everything we do is very highly classified.

You should see the memes in my office. OpSec Clear!

#11 | Posted by madbomber at 2025-04-18 02:08 AM

Maybe JD Sofa means the uk. Which poodled alongside America into Iraq.
If I remember correctly, the rest of Europe basically told dubya to go fornicate himself.
Does JD not remember freedom fries?

#12 | Posted by northguy3 at 2025-04-18 08:01 PM

What an unmitigated liar. Dubya was going to invade come hell or high water. This guy is a fraudster.

#13 | Posted by LauraMohr at 2025-04-18 08:08 PM

The US gave Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait, then used it as an excuse to invade. I distinctly remember seeing Amb Glaspie, essentially, say as much on the PBS NewsHour. She repeated it on Sunday shows, then has never been heard from, publicly, since her sudden retirement. Funny how none of that footage has seen the light of day since.

whatreallyhappened.com

#14 | Posted by morris at 2025-04-18 10:02 PM

"this is everybody's fault but mine..."
-Homer Simpson

#15 | Posted by TFDNihilist at 2025-04-19 12:45 AM

You liberal -------- are really reaching now to find things to be outraged about. No where does Vance blame Europe for the war. He says Europe may have been able to stop it - you disagree with this point?

As for the Iraq War, last time I checked, Trump called Bush a war criminal and had his entire family kicked out of the GOP - Jeb was running for president at the time and it ended his career as a politician. Now, W Bush and the daughter of the true architect of the war Cheney, are favorites of the libs. But, I guess that was back when liberals were against forever war before now voting for it.

#16 | Posted by ScottS at 2025-04-19 01:25 AM

France tried to warn us that we would be there for twenty years. That started the "Freedom Fries" thing if you recall. They where painting their tanks desert colors when we told them they couldn't play and went to war without them, all to drown out their warning.

I'll never forget WMD's in Iraq and how many people bought into it - an assertion with no proof, by the party with the agenda, just like RussiaGate.

#17 | Posted by HeliumRat at 2025-04-19 01:50 AM

The issue here seems to be VP Vance's dislike of the US multi-decade alliance and friendship with Europe.

But why that dislike?

The reasons seem to be, I'll be kind, quite irrational.

But if you have be an obsequious suck-up of the President, rationality does not seem to be an over-riding concern.


#18 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-04-19 02:01 AM

"#18 | Posted by LampLighter"

Or, one could take the parallel of Europe warning US about the Iraq War disaster with Trump warning the Europeans about the upcoming Ukraine War disaster if they continue to financially support this nonsense. Europe failed to do enough - Trump/Vance won't. That is the difference. Europe has to overcome their historic ethnic hatred and love for global wars before it is too late.

#19 | Posted by ScottS at 2025-04-19 02:11 AM

@#19 ... Trump warning the Europeans about the upcoming Ukraine War disaster ...

Pres Putin did an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign Ukraine.

And, now your current alias seems to want to blame that unprovoked invasion by Pres Putin of a sovereign Ukraine upon Europeans?

Wow.

#20 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-04-19 02:31 AM

#20 | Posted by LampLighter

It wasn't unprovoked. The Miadan Coup was "the best $5 billion dollars we ever spent" according to Hillary. No way was Russia letting Ukraine join NATO in it's Civil War.

The result was very predictable. I saw it coming when Russia stocked up on whole blood. It came two weeks later.

#21 | Posted by HeliumRat at 2025-04-19 02:57 AM

Stop lying.

truthout.org
To label participants in the Maidan uprising as puppets of Washington is as unfair as labeling peasant revolutionaries in El Salvador during the 1980s as puppets of Moscow.

#22 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-04-19 08:24 AM

"Pres Putin did an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign Ukraine.
And, now your current alias seems to want to blame that unprovoked invasion by Pres Putin of a sovereign Ukraine upon Europeans?
Wow... Lamplighter."

Firstly, Putin is on par with Stalin, or worse. No good for his own country or the larger world.

Secondly, NATO's (read rent-seeking-hatchet-wiedling adults) attempted expansion to include Ukraine was, and is, a historical assault on the integrity of Russia. A cold-blood pre-meditated act.

And so, dear Lamplighter, I encourage you to witness the deaths of both Ukranian and Russian young men at the front of war. I encourage you to temper your words and dialog with cold-blooded death of youthful males on both sides.

From the perspective of a US enlisted veteran who later read "All Quiet on the Eastern Front" and "War is a Racket" by Smedly Butler, I encourage you to better understand Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial-complex that George Washington also warned about in his farewell letter to the American people.

This is to say, it is one thing to be knowledgeable before an audience of the uneducated, and another before the audience of those who have seen first-hand the horrors or war.

This is to say, those who have witnessed the horrors of war, brought upon the world by enablers of Lamplighter, have more to teach than the enablers can relate.

#23 | Posted by Hegel at 2025-04-19 08:33 AM

"a historical assault on the integrity of Russia."

---- you and ---- your Russian propaganda.

Nobody from Ukraine has ever said they are from Russia.

#24 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-04-19 08:45 AM

"I encourage you to witness the deaths of both Ukranian and Russian young men at the front of war."

Don't forget the North Koreans!

You know you're on the right side of history when North Korea is providing meat for the grinder.

#25 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-04-19 08:46 AM

"those who have witnessed the horrors of war"

Oh so you can only learn about things, first hand.

I guess that's why you stupid ----- never figured out the horrors of Measles, until it was too late.

#26 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-04-19 08:49 AM

Somehow,and I still don't understand it

But Trump has got Lumpers defending the US-led invasion of Iraq

That's a lot of hatred Lumpers.

#27 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-04-19 09:38 AM

IAMRUNT, your child-raping hero supported the invasion of Iraq.

www.nbcnews.com

#28 | Posted by reinheitsgebot at 2025-04-19 09:45 AM

You know what's so interesting about this thread?

We have actual Republican Iraq War Veterans who actually supported the Iraq War.

They read our Republican Vice President call the Iraq War "the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq."

They think about their comrades who died for that failure their leaders once supported. They remember Mission Accomplished.

And then they don't dare criticize their Republican Leadership, who now says the whole thing was a senseless waste of those lives.

I predict a modest uptick in Iraq War Veteran suicides for 2025.

*************************

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#29 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-04-19 10:05 AM

"They read our Republican Vice President call the Iraq War "the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq."
They think about their comrades who died for that failure their leaders once supported. They remember Mission Accomplished.
#29 | Posted by snoofy "

Are you stuck living in a year prior to the 2016 GOP primary? Because Trump has been consistent on this point for years.

#30 | Posted by ScottS at 2025-04-19 12:27 PM

---- off, idiot.

#31 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-04-20 02:08 AM

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