My thanks also to JustAsking, I am very interested in how Americans saw and see all this.
Rugby,
America is a huge country made up of a large number of cultural groups and ideologies. Although there is a strong thread of nationalism here that can be easily invoked, there are also plenty of people who very quickly realized that the war was a sham.
I would say almost all of us average citizens were swayed by the arguments that Saddam had WMD and many of us believed what the administration was telling us about Iraqui links to terrorism.
But as the war unfolded, I think I can say that the country began to be divided into two camps. Those who watched each of the purported threats disappear day by day began to realize that the war was a sham. Another camp was so idealogically attuned to this administration and a kind of blind nationalistic zeal that they clung to all of the false claims for our needing to go to war like they clung to their religious faith.
Your example of the American worker saying that Iraqui terrorists bombed the WTC is a good example of the astonishing denial that most of those people were in for a very long time. I heard all kinds of illogical things from the very conservative people who lived here in the midwest where I live. For example, I would say, "I think this war was a mistake and it is actually increasing the threat of terrorism.". And I would get this response from a glazed eye zealot, "But then that would mean that our troops are dying in vain.". Now mind you, this was being offered as a kind of rebuttal to my concern. If you can catch the subtlety of this, it implies that the troops and the war, being sacred, are not open to any challenges from reality because that would take the war's name in vain.
For a long time if you made any kind of complaint someone would say, "You don't support our troops!". That worked for a while, until everyone began to see through that ruse. I used to counter that one with, "You just want to see our troops die needlessly."
Anyway, the blatant living in denial for most Americans lasted even up to the 2004 elections where it hadn't faded enough and John Kerry was not up to the task of winning the election.
These days, you will find plenty of people speaking openly about the fact that they were totally lied to about the war, that the war was a collosal mistake, and that we may have created much more terrorism than we prevented. Even many Republicans have lost faith with the Bush administration. You will notice that not one Republican candidate invokes GWB as an ally.
The times will change over the next year and after the next election we will start looking back and seeing how much of a nightmare this whole 8 years has been. Record national debt, stunningly incompetent gov't agencies, over half million dead in Iraq, a mideast that is more unstable than ever, and the world's most successful terrorist recruiting campaign ever (war in Iraq), totally funded by the USA at the expense of the lives of over 3000 of its children. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 terrorist came from are called our allies along with Pakistan where Al Qaeda has settled with immunity along its Afghan border.
Oh yeah, not to mention Afghanistan, under the US military's supervision, is now the worlds most prolific exporter of opium.
Two more of my favorite quotes:
"Mission Accomplished."
"Heck of a job, Brownie?"
Edit: Oh yes, and the media completely and totally dropped the ball on all of this. They were such cowards until they were woken up and galvanized by the aftermath of Katrina. Here is a
video of a popular journalist in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, speaking the outrage that all Americans suddenly began to feel about how well the government was working. I think these few days marked the beginning of the end for Republican government in the USA.
