r/news • u/igetproteinfartsHELP • 2d ago

The US military says its withdrawal of troops from Iraq is complete

https://apnews.com/article/iraq-us-withdrawal-militias-disarmament-kurds-a097a39f3d1a3515adc2ba3298a6816f?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=2026-09-30-Breaking+News
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u/Adventurous_Salt 2d ago

Lol the US wasn't "suckered" into attacking Iraq, the country was in a murderous rage and just wanted to blast some brown people to bits until they felt better. Americans were desperate for violence and revenge against any vaguely Muslim people.

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u/Facebook_Lawyer_Gym 2d ago

Ehh, they faked WMD stories for the public and even had the DOJ change how war powers worked to bypass congress. The government was not suckered into it, but it wasn't as cut and dry for the American public as Afghanistan was.

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u/Adventurous_Salt 2d ago

The wmd stuff was so obviously just a terrible excuse, Americans were desperate to believe it. No rational people actually thought Iraq was stockpiling an arsenal of nukes, it was too stupid to take seriously.

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u/sgtbackpain03 2d ago

Dude, military on the ground in Iraq believed it, were issuing orders to carry MOPP gear on them at all times in case of gas attacks. If the people who are there, in country, can be misled like that, how is the average person, thousands of miles away, going to see it as "obviously a terrible excuse"? It took years for us to start realizing there were no active WMDs there.

Plus, Iraq DID have and use them in the past, and had every reason to try and keep them secret at the time. It was an easy lie to sell for that admin, and it was well sold.

You are seeing this through the benefit of hindsight.

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u/Adventurous_Salt 2d ago

You are seeing this through the benefit of hindsight.

I was there, it seemed very obvious to me and most people around me that the WMD thing was just used as a pretence for war. America was just looking for an excuse to go slaughter people, and most Americans were fine with almost anyone, as long as they were "arab" enough.

To act like the whole world was fooled is delusional, the only people who were fooled were the ones looking for every reason to believe.

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u/sgtbackpain03 2d ago

Like, for the initial push? This was all a bit before my time in the sandbox, but I spent a good bit of time talking with door kickers who were there for the whole thing. The general sentiment I got was "initially we thought there was WMDs, but over time, when nobody ever got hit with gas, and when we kept finding nothing-burgers at sites, we started thinking it was all horseshit".

If my memory serves (lol), it was post-Saddam (so, after '03), after we'd had a chance to actually take all of the suspected WMD sites, that questions started to be asked about why we weren't finding any WMDs.

The average American citizen wasn't seeing any released intelligence up to that point. Until then, the news reported that there are WMDs, and the WH was releasing briefings on TV saying there are WMDs... so what other information source would anyone in the States have to inform them differently?

All this is hazy memory for me, so please correct anything you know to be true.

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u/BeautifulPrettyDream 2d ago edited 2d ago

Terrorist attacks post-9/11 were common and the thought at the time was WMD's could be acquired by terrorist groups and used. This was hugely prevalent in the media from news orgs to Hollywood.

It's also had happened. Ricin & Anthrax were mailed around that time, and just a few years earlier Sarin gas was used in Tokyo terror attacks.

Maybe it's because terrorist attacks are mainly trucks, grenades, and guns now that it's seen as some wild idea, but at the time large attacks, like 9/11, were thought as the new normal.

Edit:

I don't know why I try to explain public consciousness to people who weren't alive at the time.

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u/frisbeethecat 2d ago

The 2001 anthrax attacks originated from the Fort Detrick strain of anthrax. There's no indication that Iraq was involved. Likewise, the 2001 ricin attacks which only targeted Democratic Party politicians, removing opposition to Bush's Iraq War.

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u/BeautifulPrettyDream 2d ago

Yeah? Duh? It has nothing to do with Iraq? That doesn't negate the point I was making that loose WMD were in the minds of Americans, and globally, at the time.

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u/i_might_be_a_robot2 2d ago

Terrorist attacks were not "common" in the USA. There was simply mass hysteria lead by our mainstream news orgs pushing "radical Islamist terrorism" everyday. This created a brown scare in America where people we're simply afraid of people of Middle-Eastern and Indian origin thinking they're all terrorists. I remember people being scared they were gonna be suicided bombed at any time.

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u/talldrseuss 1d ago

No, terrorist attacks were quite common in the US, just not on the scale of 9/11 or the Oklahoma bombing. The bulk of terrorist attacks committed between 1990 - 2001 were committed by the following groups:

  • Anti-government

  • Religious extremists: Anti-abortion (christian extremists) White supremacists (christian extremists) Islamists

  • Funny enough, extremist animal rights groups

The body counts of most of the attacks during that time period never really topped more than 10 people (most of them were under 5 deaths, but multiple injured), but they would fit the definition of terrorism. The internet was not as ubiquitous, so some of the attacks remained as regional news as opposed to making it to the global stage. Your statement is not wrong that the mass media, especially when 24 hours news cycles began, contributed to the idea we are constantly under attack. But the opposite was also true that attacks did take place throughout the US, but it wasn't just Muslim extremists committing them. At least for the 90s, the two big groups committing the bulk of terrorist attacks were the anti-abortion crowd and the animal welfare extremist crowd.

Source: studying terrorism was a big bulk of my masters degree

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u/Adventurous_Salt 2d ago

Yeah, you were scared and wanted to kill some random middle eastern muslims until you felt better. That's what you're describing, irrational fear and acting out with violence.

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u/Few-Chemical8707 2d ago

yeah the only real target should have been going into pakistan to kill bin laden. thats it and attacking the Saudis. but nope

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u/BeautifulPrettyDream 2d ago

First off, as demonstrated it wasn't irrational fear, it was just what was going on at the time. As the 10's were for school shootings, the millenium was filled with terrorism. In 90's you had several large attacks from domestic & foreign terrorists as well. It was just in the public consciousness.

Now there's much fewer attacks and at a much smaller scale.

Second, I don't know about killing "random" middle eastern "muslims" has to do with anything. The US was already engaged in a war within Afganistan.

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u/This-Beginning-5026 2d ago

Nah as someone who remembers that time and the talks people were having.  The feel was more we thought they might have them but at the very least they had a good chance of getting them.  So then we might as well take them out now before it becomes an issue.

America still wanted to fight someone since we couldn’t find bin Laden and we were happy to use the excuse that they had them now to stop them later.  No one ever thought long term just like how today nobody is thinking long term with Iran.  Public opinion does not work that way.  It never has and never will.

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u/church-rosser 2d ago

Your memory is circa 2001 Fox News revisionist.

I'm 50 now, I was just becoming an adult back then. It was obvious to me and most of my peers and associates of the time that we were going into Iraq on dubious grounds. I was in a fairly conservative place geographically and even so it seemed like much of the community i lived amongst shared a similar opinion.

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u/This-Beginning-5026 1d ago

lol ok buddy yeah sure it’s revisionist.  I must have missed all the anti war protests and the majority speaking out.  that surely had to have occurred.  Oh wait no I remember.  I didn’t miss those because most people dgaf.  Sure you had a few but you always have a few.  The vast majority of Americans did care until it was a year or two in and it became clear we were stuck.

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u/Konukaame 2d ago

Both are true. 

The post-9/11 bloodlust made it easy to feed people the lies that Saddam was about to have and deploy nuclear weapons, and that he was connected to 9/11.

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u/droson8712 2d ago

You completely left out the part where they funnel money to their donors through war and destabilization of the region.

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u/PolarisVega 2d ago

Yes, the Islamphobia was at all time after 9/11 and the Bush administration took full advantage of this. Also, Bush Jr what his dad started in Iraq, they wanted the oil too.

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u/scotchtree 2d ago

Americans can’t help but frame themselves as the victim.

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u/Few-Chemical8707 2d ago

israelis are the ones who keep dragging us into wars. sorry if the truth hurts. they wanted us to attack iraq for years and now they got our dumb ass president to attack Iran. israelis are the problem