There were world-wide protests against that war [0]. You might consider that many of the people commenting here will have been involved in those protests, or are otherwise well aware that the justifications were a huge flight of fantasy. That doesn't mean that current news from the Russian media isn't also a huge flight of fantasy.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...

Iraq was a terrorist state full of abuses

Russia is a terrorist state full of abuses invading a peaceful democratic country.

This is incomparable.

"Democratic" is used as a thought-terminating cliche. Just a few years ago Ukraine had an insurrection because of their election results and overturned the election to install a new leader. It's a corrupt kleptocratic state very similar to Russia, it's just more of the money comes from American interests than in Russia, and that upsets the Russian kleptocrats who don't want American influence in Ukraine.

Similarly, although Ukraine is clearly much more peaceful relative to Russia, there has been low-level conflict for years (including violence in the insurrection and fighting in the contested territories) and there are verifiable claims of them having committed atrocities.

All this can be true and Russia can still be engaged in morally (strategically may be a different story) unjustified aggression.

That's objectively and demonstrably false. The revolution (not an insurrection) didn't happen because of election results (the election was in 2010, the revolution started at the end of 2013 and continued into 2014). It started because the president decided to halt the integration of Ukraine with the EU and was peaceful until the government had decided to escalate.

And if you're talking about the Orange Revolution from 2004, that was peaceful all the way through, and lead to a second round of the election, not installing a new leader.

You’re going to have to explain the difference between an insurrection and a revolution to me.

How does that justify Russian actions right now?

I agree that remembering these events is a crucial enterprise in a moment like this.

And, since both wars are based on bombastic lies, it seems consistent, given this act of remembering, to call the aggressor in each to account.

With these memories still fresh in terms of the cognition of the collective internet, perhaps now we can begin to get serious about a future in which the streams of fantasy which are reliably produced by hegemonic states (or mutually-assured-destructive states) are muted indefinitely, and the capacity for capricious warfare stemming from them dismantled.

This whataboutism has to stop. One bad thing doesn't excuse another. Would you suggest that it's OK to use nuclear weapons because the US used two of them in WW2? I hope not.

The invasion of Iraq was based on lies and this is terrible. The invasion of Ukraine is based on lies and it is also terrible.

Didn't read it as whataboutism. Was more a call to consider the "ridiculous stream of fantasy being spewed out of <country> leader and media" is rhetoric which is almost always applicable somewhere. The spewing's given some credit elsewhere, just not here because they've been pretty cleanly labelled as the enemy. Also maybe because it's batshit, but the people who are unsure of that will have a harder time having a discussion about it because so many people are jumping to emotional or canned responses.

Russian ship, go fuck yourself.

Russian bot, convert yourself into a sunflower.