Most people here agree that the rhetoric got overblown on both sides of the Atlantic before the Iraq war, and it was a disagreement among friends over the timing, not the substance, of the Iraq war.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.
The Iraq war fueled distrust of the press from both sides.
There are many examples in our history of overheated rhetoric leading to fear and prejudice and government overreach. My own grandfather, a sociologist, was dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said he wasn't a Communist and explained that American Negroes were patriots like everyone else.
A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues.
President Bush has consistently used rhetoric, and that is not convincing given his past record.
As the U.S., much of Europe, and the U.K. shift toward the political right, the rhetoric grows more insular, defensive, and protective.
It all went back to problems we had talked about before, you know, such as the British not believing in formation bombing and not believing in daytime bombing.
Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict, contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 - confusion even. And I think that's hard to capture in journalism.
Then as now, whatever disagreements over policies existed among Americans - and there were many such bitter policy disputes - the purposes and goals for which Americans fought were clearly understood.
It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic.