Could Twitter Have Stopped the Media's Rush To War In Iraq Ten Years Ago?

Hugh Pickens writes "On the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Eric Boehlert writes that if Twitter had been around during the winter of 2002-2003, it could have provided a forum for critics to badger Beltway media insiders who abdicated their role as journalists and fell in line behind the Bush White House's march to war. 'Twitter could have helped puncture the Beltway media bubble by providing news consumers with direct access to confront journalists during the run-up to the war,' writes Boehlert. 'And the pass-around nature of Twitter could have rescued forgotten or buried news stories and commentaries that ran against the let's-go-to-war narrative that engulfed so much of the mainstream press.' For example, imagine how Twitter could have been used in real time on February 5, 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell made his infamous attack-Iraq presentation to the United Nations. At the time, Beltway pundits positively swooned over Powell's air-tight case for war. 'But Twitter could have swarmed journalists with instant analysis about the obvious shortcoming. That kind of accurate, instant analysis of Powell's presentation was posted on blogs but ignored by a mainstream media enthralled by the White House's march to war.' Ten years ago, Twitter could have also performed the task of making sure news stories that raised doubts about the war didn't fall through the cracks, as invariably happened back then. With swarms of users touting the reports, it would have been much more difficult for reporters and pundits to dismiss important events and findings. 'Ignoring Twitter, and specifically ignoring what people are saying about your work on Twitter, isn't really an option the way turning a blind eye to anti-war bloggers may have been ten years ago,' concludes Boehlert. 'In other words, Twitter could have been the megaphone — the media equalizer — that war critics lacked ten years ago."

Comments

No

[AliasMarlowe]

NO, NO, NO.

Re:No

[jhoegl]

Agreed,
The ones that got us into war, Bush, Cheney, the army, and the media, saw nothing but profits.
If only we could charge them now for the deaths, the economic collapse, and the injured war vets.
Economic rebound son!

Re:No

[Spy Handler]

Correct, the answer is No.

Tomorrow's story headline: Could Slashdot have stopped the Iraq War?

Re:No

[megamerican]

There were plenty of people pointing out the laughable lies in Powell's speech at the time, who were just dis missed as "conspiracy theorists." There were millions of people around the world protesting. Anyone in the corporate media who was against this war were fired or silenced.

Twitter would just be flooded with lies and disinformation that discerning truth would be nigh impossible.

Re:No

[jandrese]

That's the correct answer to any headline that ends in a question mark.

My impression at the time was that Bush and company was hellbent on railroading the country into war, and they knew how to get what they wanted, mostly by running roughshod over the concept of checks and balances. They didn't even really try very hard to convince people, it was just "he might have chemical weapons!" and "ooh, look at this render of a mobile chemical lab that he could have maybe built". It's a shame Breaking Bad had not aired yet at the time, people would have had a lot of fun with the RV comparisons. There was also the fact that we were still neck deep in Afghanistan at the time. The war with Afghanistan at least made sense, the country had been taken over by guys who were very happily sheltering the guys who had just perpetrated the biggest acts of terrorism in modern US history. They were also being huge jerks to their own people (destroying the countries heritage, oppressing women and minorities (ok, that is part of the heretic they kept), and running the place like their own private piggybank) and nobody else in the world liked them. We even had UN buy in and some (mostly token, with a couple of exceptions) NATO support. Saddam had been keeping a reasonably low profile for a long time too, it seemed really unprovoked for Bush to suddenly single him out and call for his head.

Re:No

[alexander_686]

To be honest, some of the blame has to rest on Saddam Hussein – he was playing a double game. He wanted his people and neighbors that he did have weapons of mass destruction while doing the minimum to comply with the UN resolutions. I still remember the UN inspector Hans Blix talking about the cat and mouse game he was playing with Saddam – and that it would only take another 7 years to confirm that Iraq did not have any WMD.

As to the Twitter question – I find new media does a good job on the high level headlines stuff but less well with in-depth stuff. Considering that Hussein had deliberately engaged in disinformation for years, how is Twitter going to get around that? Maybe if a high level government official defected – but heck – even that could be part of a misinformation campaign.

Re:No

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

A million or so people in the UK went on the streets to demonstrate against the war. Tony Blair was for it for reasons which still do not make sense. He forced his party to go along with it. The main opposition party was then led by someone who wanted Britain out of the EU and into Nafta (North American Free Trade). The facts were just a distraction, the UK went to war.
The story in Spain was somewhat similar, the Spanish PM got the chance to visit Bush at his ranch in Texas. Lots of lovely pictures so he could show his grandchildren that he was someone important. Who cared about the facts? Spain went to war.

Bush wanted to finish the job his father started and essentially asked the secret services to find a justification for war, just as Blair did. The US went to war.

Germany was fighting an election where the government stated unequivocally that they would not go to war. The opposition refused to commit themselves. The government surprised everyone by just shading the election, probably on this issue. Germany did not go to war. The then foreign minister even told Powell at the UN: "with all due respect, I think you are wrong on this".

Iran had every reason to hate the vile Saddam Hussein, but they knew exactly what Iraq had for weapons and they were horrified when their neighbours were invaded on such a faked pretext. A lot of the posturing Iran has gone in for since is an attempt to make it clear "you invade us and we will really hurt you". Iran has been screwed by the British and the US before.

Re:No

[RabidReindeer]

That's the correct answer to any headline that ends in a question mark.

My impression at the time was that Bush and company was hellbent on railroading the country into war, and they knew how to get what they wanted, mostly by running roughshod over the concept of checks and balances. They didn't even really try very hard to convince people, it was just "he might have chemical weapons!" and "ooh, look at this render of a mobile chemical lab that he could have maybe built". It's a shame Breaking Bad had not aired yet at the time, people would have had a lot of fun with the RV comparisons. There was also the fact that we were still neck deep in Afghanistan at the time. The war with Afghanistan at least made sense, the country had been taken over by guys who were very happily sheltering the guys who had just perpetrated the biggest acts of terrorism in modern US history. They were also being huge jerks to their own people (destroying the countries heritage, oppressing women and minorities (ok, that is part of the heretic they kept), and running the place like their own private piggybank) and nobody else in the world liked them. We even had UN buy in and some (mostly token, with a couple of exceptions) NATO support. Saddam had been keeping a reasonably low profile for a long time too, it seemed really unprovoked for Bush to suddenly single him out and call for his head.

The truly sad thing here is that for some time before 9/11, even before Bush took office, Saddam Hussein had been steadily pushing at his limitations, repeatedly violating the "no-fly" zones and doing other provocative things. I consider it very likely that given enough time, Saddam would have done something sufficiently egregious that the entire world would have said "enough", formed a "Coalition of the willing" that wasn't a mere joke and ended up more or less where we are today except that the USA would have had a decent excuse for invasion and not have lost one more reason to be considered one of the Good Guys.

9/11 wasn't even the remotest excuse. Saddam hated al-quaeda as much or more as we did, but almost from the day Bush moved into the White House, they'd been muttering about going back into Iraq. 9/11 was merely the trigger that set off the stampede. It was a long, long time before you could buck the White House without being accused of hating America and being on the side of the Terrorists.

Re:No

[interkin3tic]

Indeed. Bush et al won the war to go to war with soundbites, because no one was paying attention for more than a few words. To suggest that a soundbite machine would have beaten them at the game is absurd.

Re:No

[iceaxe]

Saddam is gone. I don't miss him.

Do you miss the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of other people who are also gone? Not to mention the arms, legs, eyes, health, etc. of thousands of other folks?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2727471.stm

Re:No

[Enderandrew]

How did Bush, Cheney and the like profit?

For better or worse, Bush and Cheney thought it was the right thing to do. It wasn't like they got rich doing so.

People like to conveniently forget, but right after 9/11 (two days later if I recall) the UN Security Council unanimously passed another measure threatening Iraq for lack of compliance, but Bush publicly spoke about not rushing to blame Iraq, and letting facts come out over time. If Bush wanted to capitalize on popularity, he could have gone into Iraq immediately after 9/11, though he would have been wrong to do so.

The argument for going into Iraq 3 years later came down to 3 points (which Bush laid out in his national address 2 weeks before going into Iraq).

1. 30 million people living in Iraq were in danger. Saddam had begun cutting off shipments of food to cities, shutting off water, etc. He had bombed Kurds and chased them out of their homes, forcing them to hide in caves.

2. The cease fire from 1991 was based on Iraq's compliance. The UN Security council then passed 75 resolutions over the next 10 years citing that Iraq was refusing to comply and waving their fist. Bush contended that Iraq had refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, so the initial authorization for military conflict in 1991 stood. Some say this is cheap logic, but at the same time, if you never once follow through on an ultimatum, then the UN Security Council becomes a paper tiger (if they aren't already).

3. He said the CIA had presented evidence that Iraq had been pursuing WMD. This is the biggest point of contention. I know Powell despises war, but argued for war because he believed the intel as well. In retrospect, I guess some of the intel was flawed. And the term WMD is so vague, that the American public perceived this as ICBMs where Iraq could nuke the US, which is absurd. Bush also screwed up big time by asking the UN permission to invade in advance (tipping off Iraq) and then announcing on national TV he was going to invade two weeks later. Then famously, we saw a huge caravan leave Iraq and head into Syria. Powell then noted we'd likely never find the smoking gun on WMD evidence as we gave them warning to move it out of country.

We did find training manuals, storage facilities, missiles with sarin gas, etc. but not a huge smoking gun of lots of really dangerous WMD. Maybe they had more, and maybe they didn't. I guess we'll never know.

But even in the Twitter age, the first two points would stand, even if journalists questioned the intel on point 3 sooner.

The common talking point that Bush lied to create war for his profit is a really absurd lie that needs to go away. Bush was an idiot and he also acted on bad intel. But it wasn't like he lined his pockets with oil money and fabricated the situation.

Re:No

[dcollins]

Your memory must be seriously execrable.

"According to the French academic Dominique Reynié, between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

When inspectors would show up unannounced, Iraq wouldn't let them inspect. They were allowed to inspect certain areas on certain days if Iraq approved it ahead of time. The inspection process was a joke, but Hans Blix defended it because he didn't want to see war again.

The irony is that if Hans was harsher and enforced real surprise inspections, perhaps we would have had real answers on WMD sooner and prevented war. By not really running proper inspections, Blix may have enabled the war to happen.

Except that according to the presentations to the UN, he DID run no-notice inspections.

This is not to say that the operation of inspections is free from frictions, but at this juncture we are able to perform professional, no-notice inspections all over Iraq and to increase aerial surveillance.

The real problem is that the UN team were repeatedly fed 'dead-cert' tips from the CIA and MI6, and when they followed up on them they found chicken farms or sheds that had clearly been empty for years. They didn't want to admit that their intelligence was of practically no use (also consider the dossier released by MI6 that claimed Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger where they hadn't even checked whether the minister signing the documents was in office on the signing date). So instead, there was an intensive briefing campaign that suggested Blix was incompetent, or that he was deliberately ruining the inspections because he was a hippy pacifist. It was another aspect of the 'the French/'Old Europe' are surrender-monkeys' propaganda bullcrap.

Re:No

[Shagg]

How did Bush, Cheney and the like profit?

Yeah, it's not like either of them is an ex-CEO of a private company that made billions off of government contracts as a direct result of the war.

Re:No

[TapeCutter]

I don't think Blix had the power to prevent the war but he did give it a good try. He didn't have that power because it wasn't about WMD's, it was about getting rid of Saddam. The WMD's were a convenient excuse and most world leaders knew that at the time. The media failed in it's role as a government watchdog, it failed most significantly in the US, the ABC/SBS here in Oz shot massive holes through Powell's slide show, it was quite clear that the presentation was at best an exaggeration ("sexed up" as the BBC would say). At the end of the day Powell failed to convince the UN that WMD's were reason enough to go to war, Bush responded by spitting the dummy and going ahead anyway.

I'm old enough to remember watching despots such as Mao and Pol Pot on the evening news. I don't believe the end justified the means but the Bush apologists do have a salient point, the world really is a better place without Saddam in it.

Re:No

[jbolden]

$3t is a lot of money to bring stability. We probably could have stabilized about 100 countries for that. Moreover Iraq ain't really all that stable now.

Saddam was annoying and somewhat dangerous. He was difficult for the USA to deal with. Replacing him might have been a good idea. A long term occupation of Iraq made replacing him militarily not worth it.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument for going into Iraq 3 years later came down to 3 points (which Bush laid out in his national address 2 weeks before going into Iraq).

Of course, his national addresses are online.

1. 30 million people living in Iraq were in danger. Saddam had begun cutting off shipments of food to cities, shutting off water, etc. He had bombed Kurds and chased them out of their homes, forcing them to hide in caves.

Nope, this claim doesn't appear in the transcript.Or in any of the other statements or speeches that I can find from this time period. He does make the references to 'freeing the Iraqi people' using various phrasings, but not nearly as much as he talks about WMD.

2. The cease fire from 1991 was based on Iraq's compliance. The UN Security council then passed 75 resolutions over the next 10 years citing that Iraq was refusing to comply and waving their fist. Bush contended that Iraq had refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, so the initial authorization for military conflict in 1991 stood. Some say this is cheap logic, but at the same time, if you never once follow through on an ultimatum, then the UN Security Council becomes a paper tiger (if they aren't already).

Nobody on the Security Council except the US and UK believed that individual members were allowed to take any action they wanted in response to any breaches of UN Security Council resolutions. And the many Middle Eastern countries that are in breach of resolutions but happen to be 'friends' of the US never face any consequences whatsoever. The Security Council has never been allowed to pass any resolutions on Israel.

3. He said the CIA had presented evidence that Iraq had been pursuing WMD. This is the biggest point of contention. I know Powell despises war, but argued for war because he believed the intel as well. In retrospect, I guess some of the intel was flawed. And the term WMD is so vague, that the American public perceived this as ICBMs where Iraq could nuke the US, which is absurd.

Gosh, why would people think that Iraq was going to use WMD against American cities. Could it be because GWB told them this:

Saddam Hussein has a long history of reckless aggression and terrible crimes. He possesses [note - not 'had been pursuing'] weapons of terror. He provides funding and training and safe haven to terrorists who would willingly deliver weapons of mass destruction against America and other peace-loving countries.

The attacks of September the 11, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terror states could do with weapons of mass destruction.

Anyway...

Bush also screwed up big time by asking the UN permission to invade in advance (tipping off Iraq) and then announcing on national TV he was going to invade two weeks later. Then famously, we saw a huge caravan leave Iraq and head into Syria. Powell then noted we'd likely never find the smoking gun on WMD evidence as we gave them warning to move it out of country.

We did find training manuals, storage facilities, missiles with sarin gas, etc. but not a huge smoking gun of lots of really dangerous WMD. Maybe they had more, and maybe they didn't. I guess we'll never know.

If only there had been an investigation.

ISG formed a working group to investigate the possibility of the evacuation of WMD-related material from Iraq prior to the 2003 war.... Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judge

Re:No

[vux984]

1. 30 million people living in Iraq were in danger.

Millions of people are in danger in lots of other places, we only bother to make stern condemnations, if we bother to take note at all. Why is Iraq special? Clearly "millions of people in danger" is not why we do anything. Where are we on that with Rwanda? No, we don't really care about millions of people in other countries, it just how we pretty up an invasion to sell what we want to do for other reasons. It's like invoking "think of the children"...

2. Bush contended that Iraq had refused to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, so the initial authorization for military conflict in 1991 stood.

Likewise, that's not a reason to go to war. That's an excuse one can use if one already wants to go to war. It is not compelling us to war.

3. He said the CIA had presented evidence that Iraq had been pursuing WMD. This is the biggest point of contention.

This is also the most complicated. Without getting into the philosophy of it too much, there really isn't any moral argument that we should prevent them from having WMD. The whole thing actually mirrors the 2nd amendment controversy within the US except at the nation state level and the US is not the world government.

Deciding that other countries may not have, nor may even research weapons technology of their own that we have massive stockpiles of is pretty indefensible.

While the US is entirely within its moral right to ensure its own security I don't thnk that extends to depriving everyone else of those same rights to 'enhance our enjoyment of our own right' stands up as reasonable.

I didn't like Saddam, I don't like Kim Jong-anything, and I KNOW that them having WMDs represents an increase in risk that WMDs will be used.

But that's a risk that seems one has to take. Like the right to bear arms means that people will have guns, some of them will be bad people, and that the risk that sometimes innocent people will be hurt by them is increased. So be it.

The world is not a safe place, and oppressing other people to make it "a little bit safer for me" is not an acceptable solution.

The US is not 'benevolent dictator for life' and elevating it to that position, and bestowing upon it powers that give it a perpetual power imbalance with it's peers will not be stable in the long run. It already exploits that position and I don't see why we want to perpetuate that.

Re:No

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Twitter only makes things worse. It surrounds you with a large bubble of people with similar views. How is that any different than how ANY of the last 6 presidential administrations have been run anyway, other than to give you more people with the same views as yours to pretend that you're in your own little information world bubble?

Re:No

[atriusofbricia]

So you are saying that it's better that the US is now killing the Iraqis, rather than Saddam. Got it.

Firstly, they are killing each other in rather large numbers.

Secondly, what Atilla's post was getting at is that yes, it was progress to get rid of Saddam. I don't understand how you can debate that point.

Bush and Cheney were morons, otherwise they would never have been so gung-ho over the Irak thing. Everyone who knew a bit of history knew that once Saddam was gone, Irak was going to go down in civil war. But arguably, the Americans have actually made a very good job of keeping the thing from melting down. And gave the country a chance that would not be there if Saddam or his crazy son were still in power. All of this has cost the US a lot of lives and money. For very little return.

This right here honestly. War costs lives. Freedom and even the attempt at freedom costs lives. That's simply the way it is. The people who bemoan what happened never seem to want to address the flip side of their argument. I'm not saying the US going there was awesome, but if we're going to say it was the great crime of the 21st century then we damned sure need to answer the question of would Iraq be better off now if the US hadn't gone there?

There's every reason to believe that Saddam would still be in power. There's every reason to believe that he still would have wiped out large numbers of his own people to stay that way and no reason to believe that eventually he wouldn't have taken another look at Kuwait or another neighbor.

Is Iraq better off now and more importantly likely to be better off in the future because of what happened over the last 10 years? Probably so.

Re:No

[Burz]

Germany was fighting an election where the government stated unequivocally that they would not go to war. The opposition refused to commit themselves. The government surprised everyone by just shading the election, probably on this issue. Germany did not go to war. The then foreign minister even told Powell at the UN: "with all due respect, I think you are wrong on this".

Several months before the war started, European media outlets had already reported that the satellite photos, yellow cake documents, and suspicions about aluminum tubes and bioweapons stockades were indeed fabricated (not to mention Blair's plagerizing of an old, inaccurate document).

The American news media ignored each and every report. Their colleagues around the globe were treated like non-entities (and, closer to the action during the war, like hostiles).

Our post-90s megacorporate media are in the business of taking the great mass of mundane news about murders, fires, weather, etc. and using it as credibility so they can mix in misinformation on the big issues. Today's network news reporters are first and foremost attuned to their stock options and the interests of Wall St. finance.

Re:No

[fyngyrz]

they don't live under a dictatorship anymore. Even WWII had collateral damage.

Yes, they just live under a new dictatorship, a religious one, one that is completely unable to maintain civil order but has no problem whatsoever imposing a rule just as oppressive as the one Saddam did. As for WWII, there was a real threat to be countered there, one of hugely more power and intent than anything Saddam ever even dreamed of. The one time he actually tried something along those lines (Kuwait), he got stepped on like a bug and ran home to mommy, which was fine.

There's no question that when a country steps outside of its own borders and makes war on others without the specific pretext of stopping exactly that act, it must be stopped. Unfortunately, the country that fits that definition in the case of the 2nd Iraq war is not Iraq -- it is the USA. Even more unfortunately, there is no one big enough to stop us, or even slow us down, when we do evil things.

What countries do within their own borders must be the business of that country. If you think otherwise, you just completely justified an invasion of the USA by anyone who cares to do it for failure to abide by its own constitution. Our leadership is corrupt from top to bottom - executive, judiciary, legislature, political parties - and our actions reprehensible by our own standards. But I suspect you'd say that it's entirely our job to work out our own problems. What concerns me is that you would not say the same for the Iraqis.

Re:No

[Gavagai80]

Saddam was not in the process of genocide. The war was about a decade late to save anyone from his last suppression of shia revolt, and there was no indication that he was posing much threat to his own people in 2003 given that the no fly zone was working.

Re:No

[fyngyrz]

Which defines it as an internal Iraqi problem, from an Iraqi source, towards Iraqi targets. This is what distinguishes a problem where we caused the deaths, and therefore bear responsibility for.

Just as problems in the USA today in no way justify the invasion of our country by another, the problems in Iraq did not justify our invading them, and by extension, they did not justify any of the consequences of that invasion.

We have a right, although not an obligation, as does any sovereign country, to take an interest when a country steps outside its boundaries and begins to fuck with others (as in 1990 and Kuwait.)

We even have a right to engage in modification of how we deal with them, from simple diplomatic speak to the harshest refusal to trade, when they have internal issues we frown upon. Because these actions are taken outside the sovereign nation. We can gang up with other nations and do so. Still ok.

However, we do not have a right to step inside a sovereign country and fuck with its internal affairs. The moment we take the position that we do, that right extends to everyone else, and the idea of "sovereign borders" immediately becomes "who has the biggest military and strongest castle" and we decided long, long ago that such an approach was insufficient deal with the varied approach to civilization taken by the many nations of the world. And today, with the heinous fuckery our government is engaged in, everyone from China to Luxembourg has reason to step in and do to our government exactly what we did to Iraqs: squash it because it's not living up to its own standards, much less anyone else's. If you think you want that, you are a fool.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew all this stuff at the time. From public radio and the web. The pro-war people I talked to didn't give a damn. Remember, the nation had 9/11 fever. It was unamerican not to give the president full support no matter how stupid his actions seemed. Twitter would have been full of that too.

Re:No.

[Genda]

For the love-o-jebus, The nations staged the largest protest in American History... Millions across the nation in every major city and many small towns publically assembled to scream and shout, "We see you, We know what you're doing, and this war is the thinnest of shams." I was in San Francisco, there was a veritable sea of pissed off humanity as far as the eye could see. The life support systems for rectums in D.C. weren't interested, and the wholly owed and operate media was too busy fellating Dick (how appropriate) Cheney and Rummy.

Twitter could have tweeted its brains out, I can't imagine it would have made a popcorn fart in a hurricane of difference.

Re:No.

[NeutronCowboy]

The anti-war protests may have been some of the largest in history, but they were still dwarfed by all those who approved of it. On average, the US supported the war. Furthermore, the people in power - politicians, journalists and other newsmakers branded everyone who disagreed with the impending war as traitors. Remember the phrase "It's not unpatriotic to disagree"? Yeah, it was coined by protesters who were tired of being essentially threatened with firing squads every time they spoke up.

Wow, you know what

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter, what can't it do? Surely somewhere in Twitter there is a time traveler that can go back and let 2003-era America know that they are about to make a huge mistake!

I mean, twitter is fucking awesome, right? It freed all those people in Africa, what's to stop it from just making a picture fucking perfect world out of this whole god forsaken planet?

Tell us, Hugh Pickens, what is next for our social media superhero?

Revisionist

[0racle]

The Iraq war was not an unpopular idea at the time. It became unpopular in hindsight.

Re:Revisionist

[newcastlejon]

The Iraq war was not an unpopular idea at the time. It became unpopular in hindsight.

There are a few million people who would disagree with you.

Re:Revisionist

[Fallingcow]

Bingo. Twitter would have been full of war cheerleaders shouting down the handful of dissenters, just like every other popular online forum at the time.

Re:Revisionist

[phantomfive]

Yeah but more millions would agree with him. That's what popularity means, most people favor it. And they did, Bush did a good job selling war as something necessary. People believed he must have had a good reason. Eventually they found out he didn't, which is why they felt he lied.

Stop worshipping Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a blog post 140 characters at a time. Why 140 characters? Because Twitter is a relic dating back to a time when phones couldn't send messages any longer than that (thank you SMS, you reinvented the modern haiku). It's as unimportant now as it was when it was founded. The rise of Twitter mirrors the spread of the dread scourge of centralization that has taken hold as Software as a Service started to flourish: perhaps this newspost is what it will take for you to stop and re-examine how concentrated the providers of the Internet services you use every day have become.

No, because the "ignorance" wasn't accidental

[DragonWriter]

At the time, Beltway pundits positively swooned over Powell's air-tight case for war. 'But Twitter could have swarmed journalists with instant analysis about the obvious shortcoming. That kind of accurate, instant analysis of Powell's presentation was posted on blogs but ignored by a mainstream media enthralled by the White House's march to war.'

Actually, many of the claims were debunked by the UN and others prior to Powell's speech (some in the same UN session, some earlier, some both), and had been covered extensively in the news pages of the major media. The "mainstream media" didn't ignore it, though the pro-war commentary in the major media did; the major media just separated the coverage of the "air-tight" case from the coverage of all the holes that had been drilled in it before it was even presented, which was conscious misrepresentation, not accidental ignorance that faster delivery could have addressed.

So, its unlikely Twitter would have changed things in a different way than the blogs did: the people that were paying attention to the sources which debunked Powell would, perhaps, have seen the debunking in a different format, but the people that didn't see it still wouldn't have seen it.

Really?

[Sparticus789]

So tell me, how has Twitter stopped the numerous stupid political decisions since 2006?

No. Journalism is dead

[tekrat]

Journalism died at least 5 years before the Iraq war. "News" media outlets are corporate/political megaphones, they are NOT the "4th estate" that keeps the checks and balances we hoped.

Look how the media was duped to demonize the United Nations during the entire Bush Presidency, even before the Iraq war. Long before we went to war, the UN's policies and internal politics were marginalized and they were made to look like a bunch of bumbling fools so when the Bush Admin got around to saying that Hans Blix didn't know what he was talking about, we idiotically believed it.

And "news" has gotten worse as time goes on. If you watch *any* of the corporate run media outlets, you're horribly mis-informed. Twitter isn't going to change that.

Re:It would have just meant more cheerleaders

[i kan reed]

Your criticizing 2(Egypt, Tunisia) successful peaceful changes of power to fledgling democracies on the grounds that there was another that wasn't peaceful and another that wasn't successful or peaceful?

Or are you angry at the results of democracy in Egypt?

Something more specific that I'm missing?

It's hard to compare that to Iraq where every major claim the Bush administration(and the media) were making turned out to be quite literally the opposite of reality.

You may not remember these claims that were common by war cheerleaders:
Claim: "It will pay for itself." Reality: The war cost 6 trillion dollars
Claim: "It will take less than a week." Reality: 9 years
Claim: "Actively pursuing chemical weapons." Reality: not even a hint of evidence to that effect
Claim: "Collaborating with al qaeda." Reality: Hussein was actively suppressing islamist movements in Iraq.
Claim: "Greeted as liberators." Reality: A few staged photo shoots to that effect.

I mean, I can't think of a single true thing that was said by a pro-war speaker before the war, with the exception of one thing that stuck with me that bush said the night of the Invasion, slightly paraphrasing from imperfect memory: "This won't be like the wars Americans are used to. American soldiers will die." Fucking dead on for once.

not all Bush's fault

[night_flyer]

though its fun and all to blame Bush for Iraq, all you have to do is look back a year or so before he got into office and see that Clinton, Albright, Kerry, Berger, Pelosi and more were pounding those drums as well...

"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California), Statement on US Led Military Strike Against Iraq, December 16, 1998

"In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now -- a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program." President Clinton, Address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff. February 17, 1998

"The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people." President Clinton, Oval Office Address to the American People, December 16, 1998

  "Imagine the consequences if Saddam fails to comply and we fail to act. Saddam will be emboldened, believing the international community has lost its will. He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And some day, some way, I am certain, he will use that arsenal again, as he has ten times since 1983." Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Town Hall Meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University, February 18, 1998

"No one has done what Saddam Hussein has done, or is thinking of doing. He is producing weapons of mass destruction, and he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from other dictators." Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's Secretary of State, Town Hall Meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University, February 18, 1998

A Million Protesters in London - No Chance

[turgid]

Over a million people took to the streets of London to protest against the Iraq War. It still went ahead. Britain still got involved.

I was one of the idiots that believed that there were WMD and that the politicians knew more than we did (national security and all that). But I was young and naive. I was also stupid enough to believe that we were going there as Liberators, not Occupiers, and then I was shocked to see the way we (the Coalition) treated the Iraqis.

I am also disgusted at the mess we've left the country in. There is rampant sectarian violence, suicide bombings and Islamofascism. It makes the Northern Ireland Troubles look like a village fete.

Re:Hindsight is 20-20...

[GodfatherofSoul]

Horseshit, we KNEW he didn't have WMD because all of these issues were known at the time. It wasn't a revelation that Saddam's foreign policy involved faking having WMDs to scare off Iran. We had inspectors on the ground and everywhere they looked they found jack squat. About the only things we couldn't account for were chemical and biological weapons that had expired YEARS before the invasion.

We also had publicly available empirical evidence that what was being fed to the public was fake information. The notion that there was any *real* doubt is HORSESHIT. Oh, there was plenty of artificially-produced doubt. The only people who didn't know this was a bullshit invasion were those who didn't follow foreign affairs closely.

Joe Wilson, Italian intelligence, yellow cake, the Downing Street Memos, aluminum tubes, Hans Blick [sic], Judith Miller, etc. The history rewrite has always been the attempt to pretend that there was ambiguity.

No shit

[roman_mir]

I spent extraordinary amount of time on various sites..... not just /., /. is not a forum that can pin a discussion and keep at it for months. There were plenty of those at the time, I was absolutely overwhelmed by people who were pro-war, pro-invasion, pro-military action, completely out of their mind yelling that Saddam was the devil himself and he caused 9/11 and probably fucked their grandmother (and her cat) while gradpa wasn't watching.

Actually I think some were so weird, they nearly referred to the Southpark (the movie, uncut etc.), because it had Saddam and the Devil in it at the same time, that was pretty freaking weird.

Basically there was story after story after story and after story completely swamping, overwhelming every freaking site and forum about how absolutely necessary it is to attack Iraq.

I couldn't believe what was happening, it was like a fucking nightmare. The sort that reminds you of the original Elm street movie, where you are walking the stairs and are just getting sucked into the carpet, can't move, the house is collapsing around you. That's what was happening.

You absolutely could add Twitter and every bit of technology you wanted to this mix and it would only AMPLIFY the crazy.

And the crazy were talking about how Saddam attacked USA on 9/11! I mean they could add how Saddam attacked USA on 9/12 and burned the white house in 1812. It was un-fucking-believable. They were absolutely sure that Saddam had every weapon in his disposal, it doesn't matter if I was pointing out before the invasion that if Saddam HAD anything, USA would have NOT attacked him!

Already in the first days of the invasion I was writing that if I were him, I would have used every single bit of every type of WMD against every American (and some of his internal enemies) immediately, in the first minutes or hours of that attack.

No, the crazy became only more and more vocal and actually cheering and jubilant as the war progressed.

I think that the live TV coverage that everybody was involved in actually helped USA pro-invasion propaganda. Also I remember how surreal it was to watch a real war on TV, not in real life. In real life it's different, you are there and you only see a little bit of what surrounds YOU. But when you see it on TV from many crews and many angles, it's so strange, like a surreal movie, that's not really happening. Similar to the weird feeling I remember having when watching the actual attack on 9/11 in real time (I was in a TV channel station, it was on the same floor as my contract at the time and they were getting a live feed) and the twin towers collapsing. It was a weird moment to watch, unbelievable almost, the entire war was like that, only stretched into weeks of that live coverage.

You could turn on the TV and watch live war at any moment in time. No Twitter, no anything could stop that.

The people's common sense was completely turned off. Anybody suggesting that the war was the wrong thing to do was almost attacked (or attacked for real). The answer to the question mark in the story headline is no.

Re:This just in:

[Chris Mattern]

Radar could have prevented the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor!

Pearl Harbor *had* radar on December 7, 1941. Unfortunately, inexperience in its use and poor communication protocols led the operators to mistake the first incoming Japanese attack wave for a flight of B-17s that was due to land at Hickam Field at about that time (the bombers actually showed up in the middle of the attack and had to land while under fire).

Media and Government would have ignored Twitter.

[crgrace]

I marched in Orange County, CA just before the Iraq War started. There were at least 100,000 people on Jamboree Blvd. I was there. I saw them. Now, Orange County is one of the most conservative regions of California. It produced Richard Nixon, and usually has Republican representatives. So the fact so many citizens would leave work to march against a coming war was incredible to me.

That night I watched the news. Nothing. Not a single thing. Probably the biggest civil political protest in Orange County history and it wasn't on the news (at least that I saw). It should have been ALL OVER the news.

That's when I knew this "liberal media" was not true. It's really "corporatist media" and because the media in general decided for whatever reason to support the war they ignored the fact that an unprecedented number of regular citizens were against it. I learned a lot about how the world works that day. I really don't think Twitter would have made a difference.

Yeah, no.

[fyngyrz]

Neither could Iraq. The only difference was that there was a country so big and powerful that it made no difference. We imposed our will on them in the oldest, most vile manner possible: By murderous force, without any right, on a sovereign country.

By every measure, the 2nd Iraq war was unjustified, the consequences horrific, the perpetrators criminal, and by that, I don't mean the pawns, the soldiers, but those who steered this ship of terror, Bush and Cheney and every minion they had that participated in the faking of intelligence and the misdirecting of the public as to any involvement whatsoever with 9/11.

But overlaying all of this is the simple truth that collectively: we cannot trust our government, we cannot control our government, and we do not care enough to do anything about it.

This has been true for some time, from things we allow it to do to us, from the war on drugs to the fear-mongering used to crush our liberties subsequent to 9/11, to the completely unjustified actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 9/11 perpetrators were mostly Saudi with 2...3 from Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE. No one from Afghanistan, no one from Iraq. The justification that they went to school in Iraq kind of skips over the idea that more of them went to school in the UK and Saudi Arabia. The idea that OBL was hiding there so we had to destroy an entire country to get at him was both wrong, and not really justified by the fact that he was pleased, but surprised, to hear that we had been attacked. The fact that we shot him when we had overwhelming force on our side and didn't bring him to any witness stand is, at least, suspicious.

Do I claim to know what happened? No. But I will say this: if you step back from the official story, the first thing you note is that this puzzle fits together really, really badly if you use the lines drawn by the US government. It's likely, IMHO, to be close to the real truth -- the best and most enduring lies usually are -- but it clearly isn't the truth. We know of many problems: There were no aluminum rods being used for centrifuges. There were no WMDs. Neither country -- Iraq or Afghanistan -- had much, if anything, to do with our being attacked. Saddam had, in fact, given us access to every site of any consequence. Almost everything Bush and Cheney said was distorted or outright false. Both undertakings failed to even vaguely resemble the minimalist interventions we were sold.

The lesson is that the government has control of the picture they present, and that we will, no matter if the consequence is our liberties at home or the lives of others across the sea, accept that picture and back them in almost any action.

I prefer the explanation that begins with what the Gaussian lays at my feet: More than half the people are really, really stupid. All of the people are subject to heavy attempts at deception to get them to comply. Even very smart people will fall prey to this until they obtain data that comes from sources that are not mangling it to fit a false picture.

I don't think we can fix this. Under the present model, our congress and judiciary are wholly bought and paid for, entrenched in a way that the public really doesn't understand through political leadership that transcends elections and lobbyists that exert the will of a privileged few who are subject to zero oversight by the public.

As to Twitter, Twitter is a form of the voice of the public, but it's really no different in its reach than the voices of big forums (and search engines) ten years ago, and there were plenty of those, including this one. Twitter is different in that 140 characters isn't enough to make a case for anything; I refer you to this very post: You may completely disagree with me, and if you do, likely you'll couch that disagreement in the form of a claim that I haven't made my case, even though I took the time to cite quite a few facts which you can easily confirm supporting it. Imagine if I had tried to use twitter to make the same case -- would