Do you remember where you were when you first thought that America going to war in Iraq might not be such a bad idea after all? When it struck you, for the very first time, that maybe it was something we should do?
That weirdly exhilerating moment came for me on February 5, 2003, when Colin Powell made his case before the U.N. Security Council about how certain it was that Saddam Hussein had huge numbers of weapons of mass destruction that he was just itching to use.
I was at that time working as the founding editor of a magazine in San Diego. I, my assistant editor, and our two graphics guys all gathered around our office TV to watch Powell give his extremely convincing testimony.
After he was finished, I looked gape-jawed at my staff. They looked at me, at each other, at the TV, out the window.
“He sure made a good case,” I finally said.
“He sure did,” said my assistant editor, a brilliant and ferociously liberal media studies major at the University of California at San Diego.
“I guess we should invade Iraq,” said my art director, an intense, frightfully articulate young man who was clearly going to become the famous artist he since has. “Fuck it. We should. What are we gonna do, wait for Hussein to bomb us?”
“I do trust Colin Powell,” I said.
“So do I,” said Assistant Editor Jessica. “He’s the real deal.”
Anyway, that’s where I was at the moment that I first thought going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do.
Do you remember where you were when you first thought the same thing?
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