The Guardian | David Smith: As a new Republican president seeks re-election, senior figures in Washington warn history may be repeating itself

A Republican president facing a tough re-election campaign and widely viewed as hopelessly out of his depth. Bureaucrats itching to turn US military firepower on a Middle Eastern regime they claim without evidence is plotting an imminent attack. Compliant sections of the media that put flag-waving jingoism ahead of skeptical scrutiny.

So it was in late 2002, when President George W Bush�s administration built unstoppable momentum towards invading Iraq, promising to destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that never existed. Nearly two decades later the potential target is not Iraq but Iran, with many of the same concerns over false pretexts and official lies.

�The same people cheering on Trump�s reckless, illogical escalation to war with Iran were the ones telling us that democracy would boom across the Middle East as soon as our cake walk invasion of Iraq was done,� tweeted Chris Murphy, a Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee. �They were wrong then. They are wrong now.�

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