Clinton Lie Kills Her Credibility on Trade Policy
What is the proper word for the claim by Hillary Clinton and the more factually disinclined supporters of her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination -- made in speeches, briefings and interviews (including one by this reporter with the candidate) -- that she has always been a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement?
Now that we know from the 11,000 pages of Clinton White House documents released this week that former First Lady was an ardent advocate for NAFTA; now that we know she held at least five meetings to strategize about how to win congressional approval of the deal; now that we know she was in the thick of the manuevering to block the efforts of labor, farm, environmental and human rights groups to get a better agreement. Now that we know all of this, how should we assess the claim that Hillary's heart has always beaten to a fair-trade rhythm?
Now that we know from official records of her time as First Lady that Clinton was the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA; now that we know from ABC News reporting on the session that "her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA" and that "there was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time;" now that we have these details confirmed, what should we make of Clinton's campaign claim that she was never comfortable with the militant free-trade agenda that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of union jobs, that has idled entire industries, that has saddled this country with record trade deficits, undermined the security of working families in the US and abroad, and has forced Mexican farmers off their land into an economic refugee status that ultimately forces them to cross the Rio Grande River in search of work?
As she campaigns now, Clinton says, "I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning."
But the White House records confirm that this is not true.
Her statement is, to be precise, a lie.
When it comes to the essential test of the trade debate, Clinton has been identified as a liar -- a put-in-boldface-type "L-I-A-R" liar.
Those of us who covered the 1993 NAFTA debate have frequently expressed doubts about the former First Lady's recent statements. We never heard anything at the time about her dissenting from the Clinton Administration line on trade policy. And we knew that she had defended NAFTA in the years following its enactment. But fairness required that we at least entertain that notion--promoted by the lamentable David Gergen, himself a champion of free-trade policies while working in the Clinton White House--that Hillary Clinton had been a behind-the-scenes critic. We had to at least consider the possibility that, at the very least, Clinton had been worried that advancing NAFTA would trip up her advocacy for health care reform, that she had made her concerns known and that she had absented herself from pro-NAFTA lobbying.
This was certainly the impression that Clinton and her supporters sought to create as she campaigned in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana--states where worried workers want to know exactly where the candidates have stood and currently stand with regard to trade issues.
But that impression was a deliberate deception.
And we must all now recognize that when Hillary Clinton speaks about trade policy, she begins with a lie so blatant--that she's been "a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning"--that everything else she says must be viewed as suspect.
Original aricle posted here.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Just another example of the unbounded and shameless criminality of the Bush Cabal
White House: Hard drives tossed
WASHINGTON — Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.
The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.
"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.
It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration.
Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: President | Executive Office | White House Office of Administration | Facciola
In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.
Facciola proposed the drastic approach of going to individual workstations of White House computer users after the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003. Recycling — taping over existing data — raises the possibility that any missing e-mails may not be recoverable.
At a House committee hearing last month, a computer expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system "primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived.
Under pressure to provide details about its computer system, the White House told the congressional committee that it never completed work that began in 2003 on a planned records management and e-mail archiving system. The White House canceled the project in late 2006 and says it is still working on a new version.
In the absence of a permanent archiving system, the White House has been archiving e-mails on White House servers since early in the administration.
The White House says it does not know if any e-mails are missing, but is looking into the matter.
It would be costly and time-consuming for the White House to institute an e-mail retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation, the court papers filed Friday state.
Original article posted here.
WASHINGTON — Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.
The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.
"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.
It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration.
Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: President | Executive Office | White House Office of Administration | Facciola
In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.
Facciola proposed the drastic approach of going to individual workstations of White House computer users after the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003. Recycling — taping over existing data — raises the possibility that any missing e-mails may not be recoverable.
At a House committee hearing last month, a computer expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system "primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived.
Under pressure to provide details about its computer system, the White House told the congressional committee that it never completed work that began in 2003 on a planned records management and e-mail archiving system. The White House canceled the project in late 2006 and says it is still working on a new version.
In the absence of a permanent archiving system, the White House has been archiving e-mails on White House servers since early in the administration.
The White House says it does not know if any e-mails are missing, but is looking into the matter.
It would be costly and time-consuming for the White House to institute an e-mail retrieval program that entails pulling data off each individual workstation, the court papers filed Friday state.
Original article posted here.
Shame at Faux News? Who ever could have imagined?
Mayhem At Fox News: Anchor Walks Off Set, Wallace Rails Network For "Obama-Bashing"
Original article posted here.
Fox News' very own anchors are speaking out — and walking off — over what they perceive to be "Obama-bashing" on their network.
This morning on "Fox and Friends," Brian Kilmeade walked off the set after a dispute with his co-hosts Gretchen Carlson (she who celebrates deadly floods) and Steve Doocy over Obama's comment that his grandmother is a "typical white person." Kilmeade argued that the remark needed to be taken in context and eventually got so fed up with his co-hosts that he walked off set.
Later, "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace came on the show and railed against "Fox and Friends" for what he called "Obama-bashing."
Watch both clips below (refresh your page if they don't load properly):
Brian Kilmeade walks off set over Obama dispute:
Chris Wallace rails against "Fox and Friends" for Obama-bashing
Original article posted here.
Bad day for warmongering Dick
Saudi king rejects Cheney's belligerency
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in a meeting with visiting US Vice President Dick Cheney has rejected any US military strike against Iran.
King Abdullah in a meeting with the US vice president is against any US military strike against Iran, Saudi official sources say.
Cheney who arrived in Saudi Arabia on Friday discussed Iran's nuclear program and its increasing influence in the Middle East with senior Saudi officials, DPA reported.
Saudi Arabia, along with other Persian Gulf Arab countries, sees negotiations as the best way to resolve the standoff between the US and Iran.
The king also told Cheney that the Middle East should be free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
The Saudis say any nuclear non-proliferation efforts should include Israel, which is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East with around 200 nuclear warheads.
The US vice president's efforts to drum up support for Washington's war mongering policies against Iran comes as a recent NIE report declared that Tehran is not pursuing any nuclear weapons program.
The Islamic Republic says, as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the country is entitled to use the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Original article posted here.
 US Vice President Dick Cheney in Saudi Arabia |
King Abdullah in a meeting with the US vice president is against any US military strike against Iran, Saudi official sources say.
Cheney who arrived in Saudi Arabia on Friday discussed Iran's nuclear program and its increasing influence in the Middle East with senior Saudi officials, DPA reported.
Saudi Arabia, along with other Persian Gulf Arab countries, sees negotiations as the best way to resolve the standoff between the US and Iran.
The king also told Cheney that the Middle East should be free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
The Saudis say any nuclear non-proliferation efforts should include Israel, which is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East with around 200 nuclear warheads.
The US vice president's efforts to drum up support for Washington's war mongering policies against Iran comes as a recent NIE report declared that Tehran is not pursuing any nuclear weapons program.
The Islamic Republic says, as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the country is entitled to use the nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Original article posted here.
Friday, March 21, 2008
(Self) Righteous Indignation (Hat tip to Soc)
Photograph of Bill Clinton and Rev. Wright Surfaces 
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and President Bill Clinton at a prayer breakfast at the White House in September 1998. 
The invitation to the breakfast. 
The invitation’s envelope. 
A thank-you note from Mr. Clinton to Mr. Wright. (Click to enlarge)
Original article posted here.
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and President Bill Clinton at a prayer breakfast at the White House in September 1998.During one of the most difficult periods in the presidency of Bill Clinton, he addressed a group of clerics at an annual prayer breakfast in September 1998 just as the Starr report outlining his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was about to be published.
Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is seen shaking hands with Mr. Clinton in a photograph provided today by the Obama campaign. Mr. Wright’s relationship with Senator Barack Obama, as his longtime pastor, has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent days because of incendiary excerpts of sermons Mr. Wright gave at their church, Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago.
In providing the photograph to The New York Times, the Obama campaign appeared to be trying to divert some attention to the Clintons after a week in which Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Wright has left him facing one of the biggest challenges of his campaign. There is nothing in the picture or the note that addresses whether Mr. Clinton had met Mr. Wright prior to the White House meeting or whether he or Mrs. Clinton knew anything about Mr. Wright’s views.
The invitation to the breakfast.The invitation’s envelope.Asked for a response tonight through email, Howard Wolfson, a top aide to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, wrote, “Urgent indeed — a picture — oooooooo!”
Senator Clinton’s spokesman, Phil Singer, sent along this reply to a request for comment:
In the course of his two terms in office, Bill Clinton met with, corresponded with and took pictures with literally tens of thousands of people.
A thank-you note from Mr. Clinton to Mr. Wright. (Click to enlarge)Mr. Wright was invited to the 1998 prayer breakfast, and in addition, he received a thank-you note from former President Clinton for his expressions of support about six weeks later.
According to an account by James Bennet, former White House correspondent who has since left The Times:
With tears in his eyes, President Clinton told a roomful of clerics this morning that he had sinned, speaking just hours before the world was presented a painstaking account by prosecutors of when, where and how.
Addressing an annual prayer breakfast at the White House, Mr. Clinton drew on the New Testament, the Yom Kippur liturgy and Ernest Hemingway as he made his most abject confession yet of personal failure, while declaring that he would defend and redeem his Presidency.
‘’I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned,'’ he admitted softly, saying that after resisting expressions of contrition he had reached ‘’the rock-bottom truth of where I am.'’
For the first time, Mr. Clinton also asked for forgiveness from Monica S. Lewinsky, on the day that the details of their intimate relationship — details that he had denied and struggled to suppress — poured out through the Internet, whose wonders as a tool of communication he has so often extolled.
Mr. Wright is not mentioned in the article. Also visible in the photograph is Vice President Al Gore.
And according to the newly released schedules of Mrs. Clinton by the National Archives of her years as first lady, she was in attendance, too.
Her schedule reads:
“Religion Leaders Breakfast (w/POTUS)” in the East Room from 9-10:30 a.m.
Format:
- The President and First Lady are announced into the East Room and proceed to their tables.
- The Vice President makes remarks and introduces The President.
- The President makes remarks and introduces Dr. Reverend Gerald Mann.
- Dr. Reverend Gerald Mann gives blessing.
- Breakfast is served.
- Following breakfast, The President opens discussion.
- Upon conclusion of the discussion, The President introduces Dr. Reverend James Forbes.
- Dr. Reverend James Forbes gives benediction.
- The President, First Lady, and Vice President depart.
PARTICIPANTS: Approx. 130 guests to attend.
The wording of Mr. Clinton’s thank-you note to Mr. Wright, dated Oct. 28, 1998:
Dear Pastor Wright:
Thank you so much for your kind message.
I am touched by your prayers and by the many expressions of encouragement and support I have received from friends across our country.You have my best wishes.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Original article posted here.
Maybe why "things have turned around in Iraq"
AP president: US arrests journalist in Iraq to 'control' information
Original article posted here.
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
"To say the least, we see things very differently," Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested two years ago and remains in military custody.
Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's impossible not to conclude that the words and pictures these journalists produced were considered unhelpful to the war effort and that their arrests would have served a broader strategy of information control."
Curley also called on journalists to demand that all the presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a directive issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after September 11 that radically restricted the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.
Ashcroft's memo stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."
Curley told the National Press Club, "When a matter of public policy poses a straight-up choice between the public's rights of access to government and a government effort to infringe or even narrow those rights, journalists cannot pretend to be disinterested observers."
"This is the moment to make it clear to all the presidential candidates how important reversal of the Ashcroft directive is to us and to the people," Curley continued. "We need to ask the candidates at every opportunity ... whether they are willing to appoint an attorney general willing to follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law that protects the people's right to know what their government is doing."
This video is from The Associated Press<, broadcast March 18, 2008.
Freedom of speech in the UK about as miserable and ethereal as freedom of speech in the US
Muslim man who sold DVDs glorifying the 9/11 atrocities jailed under new terror laws
A Muslim who possessed DVDs glorifying the 9/11 atrocities has become one of the first people to be jailed under a section of the Terrorism Act.
Bilal Mohammed was sentenced under the terrorism act for possessing videos in support of 9/11
Bilal Mohammed, 27, was sentenced under Section 2 of the 2006 Act but his case is the first time the section has been used independently.
A court heard how he possessed nine videos and CDs in support of 9/11 and the Palestinian struggle against Israel.
He routinely took trips around the country to set up stalls where he sold some of his material including in London, Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield and Halifax.
He admitted one count of possessing terrorist publications with a view to selling or distributing them. The items were found to glorify the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism and were likely to encourage people to engage in terrorist acts.
He was sentenced to three years but after serving 14 months in custody following a raid on his home last January, he could be out in as little as three months.
Leeds Crown Court heard on Wednesday how Mohammed, of Halifax, was born in his hometown and is a British citizen.
Judge James Stewart QC said: "All of the material was designed, in my judgement, to induce young British Muslims to be recruited to the terrorist cause, the purpose being to destroy the very fabric of the society in which they have thrived."
The court heard how a covert surveillance on Mohammed and accomplice Rizwan Ditta, 29, found that he had travelled nationwide to sell the "recruiting agents"
Prosecutor Jonathan Sharp said the one that was sold was called "21st Century Crusaders", which effectively exhorted Muslims to take up jihad.
Mr Sharp, who said conversations between Mohammed and Ditta had been bugged, said: "They talk about the Middle East and agree a desire to see the end of Israel.
"They also talked about robbing drug dealers to obtain cash for 'the cause'."
The court was shown excerpts from some of the DVDs he disseminated, including "The Manhattan Raid", "19 Martyrs" and "Hamas training and ideology".
The Manhattan Raid was produced by the media production house of al-Qaeda and was released in September 2006 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the atrocities.
One shocking detail of the video showed Muslims at a training camp using cardboard cut-outs as human victims with the Christian crucifix as the target.
The 19 Martyrs goes into detail about the lives of the hijackers and in some of the material distributed, Osama bin Laden and training camps are depicted.
Mr Sharp said: "All the material is broadly in two parts with the first showing what some might say a partisan history and the problems besetting Muslims. "The second part invariably features bin Laden and training camps, implicitly saying that this is a good thing for the committed young male Muslim to be doing and explicitly calls for young men to join up."
James Ward, defending Mohammed, said that he was not a jihadist and meant to educate people in both sides of the debate of whether Britain and the US should have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
He added that Mohammed was against the occupation of those countries but was reckless as to whether the material he distributed could have encouraged people to commit terrorist acts.
Judge Stewart told Mohammed: "Many in the UK and elsewhere were and are opposed to the British and American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"But when extremist views are disseminated against our own government's policy, society says enough is enough.
"But many young minds have been affected by this, we will never know."
His accomplice Ditta was jailed for four years in December after admitting to owning a publication which showed how to make a suicide vest, contrary to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Iraq's War Anniversary
Patrick Cockburn: This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie
A US Marine drapes a flag over the face of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad on 9 April 2003
A US Marine drapes a flag over the face of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad on 9 April 2003
It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.
The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.
This was a veiled reference to an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein by dropping four 2,000lb bombs and firing 40 cruise missiles at a place called al-Dura farm in south Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker. There was no bunker. The only casualties were one civilian killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.
On 7 April, the US Ai r Force dropped four more massive bombs on a house where Saddam was said to have been sighted in Baghdad. "I think we did get Saddam Hussein," said the US Vice President, Dick Cheney. "He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn't able to breathe."
Saddam was unharmed, probably because he had never been there, but 18 Iraqi civilians were dead. One US military leader defended the attacks, claiming they showed "US resolve and capabilities".
Mr Cheney was back in Baghdad this week, five years later almost to the day, to announce that there has been "phenomenal" improvements in Iraqi security. Within hours, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the Shia holy city of Kerbala, killing at least 40 and wounding 50 people. Often it is difficult to know where the self-deception ends and the deliberate mendacity begins.
The most notorious lie of all was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But critics of the war may have focused too much on WMD and not enough on later distortions.
The event which has done most to shape the present Iraqi political landscape was the savage civil war between Sunni and Shia in Baghdad and central Iraq in 2006-07 when 3,000 civilians a month were being butchered and which was won by the Shia.
The White House and Downing Street blithely denied a civil war was happening – and forced Iraq politicians who said so to recant – to pretend the crisis was less serious than it was.
More often, the lies have been small, designed to make a propaganda point for a day even if they are exposed as untrue a few weeks later. One example of this to shows in detail how propaganda distorts day-to-day reporting in Iraq, but, if the propagandist knows his job, is very difficult to disprove.
On 1 February this year, two suicide bombers, said to be female, blew themselves up in two pet markets in predominantly Shia areas of Baghdad, al Ghazil and al-Jadida, and killed 99 people. Iraqi government officials immediately said the bombers had the chromosonal disorder Down's syndrome, which they could tell this from looking at the severed heads of the bombers. Sadly, horrific bombings in Iraq are so common that they no longer generate much media interest abroad. It was the Down's syndrome angle which made the story front-page news. It showed al-Qa'ida in Iraq was even more inhumanly evil than one had supposed (if that were possible) and it meant, so Iraqi officials said, that al-Qa'ida was running out of volunteers.
The Times splashed on it under the headline, "Down's syndrome bombers kill 91". The story stated firmly that "explosives strapped to two women with Down's syndrome were detonated by remote control in crowded pet markets". Other papers, including The Independent, felt the story had a highly suspicious smell to it. How much could really be told about the mental condition of a woman from a human head shattered by a powerful bomb? Reliable eyewitnesses in suicide bombings are difficult to find because anybody standing close to the bomber is likely to be dead or in hospital.
The US military later supported the Iraqi claim that the bombers had Down's syndrome. On 10 February, they arrested Dr Sahi Aboub, the acting director of the al Rashad mental hospital in east Baghdad, alleging that he had provided mental patients for use by al-Qa'ida. The Iraqi Interior Ministry started rounding up beggars and mentally disturbed people on the grounds that they might be potential bombers.
But on 21 February, an American military spokes-man said there was no evidence the bombers had Down's. Adel Mohsin, a senior official at the Health Ministry in Baghdad, poured scorn on the idea that Dr Aboub could have done business with the Sunni fanatics of al-Qa'ida because he was a Shia and had only been in the job a few weeks.
A second doctor, who did not want to give his name, pointed out that al Rashad hospital is run by the fundamentalist Shia Mehdi Army and asked: "How would it be possible for al-Qa'ida to get in there?"
Few people in Baghdad now care about the exact circumstances of the bird market bombings apart from Dr Aboub, who is still in jail, and the mentally disturbed beggars who were incarcerated. Unfortunately, it is all too clear that al-Qa'ida is not running out of suicide bombers. But it is pieces of propaganda such as this small example, often swallowed whole by the media and a thousand times repeated, which cumulatively mask the terrible reality of Iraq.
Barack Obama's speech that you DIDN'T hear
In an address delivered to an invitation-only audience at a community college, Mr. Obama praised the military's service, specifically singling out those based at nearby Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base. Yet he said the war had not been worth the toll taken on military families and the nation's security. He amplified his call to remove one to two brigades a month with a goal of having combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.
The World Beyond Iraq
A portion of the speech:
Senator Barack Obama
March 19, 2008
As prepared for delivery
Just before America's entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress: "It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war," he said. "...But the right is more precious than peace." Wilson's words captured two awesome responsibilities that test any Commander-in-Chief – to never hesitate to defend America, but to never go to war unless you must. War is sometimes necessary, but it has grave consequences, and the judgment to go to war can never be undone.
Five years ago today, President George W. Bush addressed the nation. Bombs had started to rain down on Baghdad. War was necessary, the President said, because the United States could not, "live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." Recalling the pain of 9/11, he said the price of inaction in Iraq was to meet the threat with "armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities."
At the time the President uttered those words, there was no hard evidence that Iraq had those stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. There was not any evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks of September 11, or that Iraq had operational ties to the al Qaeda terrorists who carried them out. By launching a war based on faulty premises and bad intelligence, President Bush failed Wilson's test. So did Congress when it voted to give him the authority to wage war.
Five years have gone by since that fateful decision. This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq.
History will catalog the reasons why we waged a war that didn't need to be fought, but two stand out. In 2002, when the fateful decisions about Iraq were made, there was a President for whom ideology overrode pragmatism, and there were too many politicians in Washington who spent too little time reading the intelligence reports, and too much time reading public opinion. The lesson of Iraq is that when we are making decisions about matters as grave as war, we need a policy rooted in reason and facts, not ideology and politics.
Now we are debating who should be our next Commander in Chief. And I am running for President because it's time to turn the page on a failed ideology and a fundamentally flawed political strategy, so that we can make pragmatic judgments to keep our country safe. That's what I did when I stood up and opposed this war from the start, and said that we needed to finish the fight against al Qaeda. And that's what I'll do as President of the United States.
Senator Clinton says that she and Senator McCain have passed a "Commander in Chief test" – not because of the judgments they've made, but because of the years they've spent in Washington. She made a similar argument when she said her vote for war was based on her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country – a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington's judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military.
It is time to have a debate with John McCain about the future of our national security. And the way to win that debate is not to compete with John McCain over who has more experience in Washington, because that's a contest that he'll win. The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose. The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that's what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party – because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past.
Nowhere is that break more badly needed than in Iraq.
In the year since President Bush announced the surge – the bloodiest year of the war for America – the level of violence in Iraq has been reduced. Our troops – including so many from Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base – have done a brilliant job under difficult circumstances. Yet while we have a General who has used improved tactics to reduce violence, we still have the wrong strategy. As General Petraeus has himself acknowledged, the Iraqis are not achieving the political progress needed to end their civil war. Beyond Iraq, our military is badly overstretched, and we have neither the strategy nor resources to deal with nearly every other national security challenge we face.
This is why the judgment that matters most on Iraq – and on any decision to deploy military force – is the judgment made first. If you believe we are fighting the right war, then the problems we face are purely tactical in nature. That is what Senator McCain wants to discuss – tactics. What he and the Administration have failed to present is an overarching strategy: how the war in Iraq enhances our long-term security, or will in the future. That's why this Administration cannot answer the simple question posed by Senator John Warner in hearings last year: Are we safer because of this war? And that is why Senator McCain can argue – as he did last year – that we couldn't leave Iraq because violence was up, and then argue this year that we can't leave Iraq because violence is down.
When you have no overarching strategy, there is no clear definition of success. Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely. Here is the truth: fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. And fighting in a war without end will not make the American people safer.
So when I am Commander-in-Chief, I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war. Not because politics compels it. Not because our troops cannot bear the burden– as heavy as it is. But because it is the right thing to do for our national security, and it will ultimately make us safer.
In order to end this war responsibly, I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. We can responsibly remove 1 to 2 combat brigades each month. If we start with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today, we can remove all of them 16 months. After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy. What I propose is not – and never has been – a precipitous drawdown. It is instead a detailed and prudent plan that will end a war nearly seven years after it started.
My plan to end this war will finally put pressure on Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their future. Because we've learned that when we tell Iraq's leaders that we'll stay as long as it takes, they take as long as they want. We need to send a different message. We will help Iraq reach a meaningful accord on national reconciliation. We will engage with every country in the region – and the UN – to support the stability and territorial integrity of Iraq. And we will launch a major humanitarian initiative to support Iraq's refugees and people. But Iraqis must take responsibility for their country. It is precisely this kind of approach – an approach that puts the onus on the Iraqis, and that relies on more than just military power – that is needed to stabilize Iraq.
Let me be clear: ending this war is not going to be easy. There will be dangers involved. We will have to make tactical adjustments, listening to our commanders on the ground, to ensure that our interests in a stable Iraq are met, and to make sure that our troops are secure. Senator Clinton has tried to use my position to score political points, suggesting that I am somehow less committed to ending the war. She makes this argument despite the fact that she has taken the same position in the past. So ask yourself: who do you trust to end a war – someone who opposed the war from the beginning, or someone who started opposing it when they started preparing a run for President?
Now we know what we'll hear from those like John McCain who support open-ended war. They will argue that leaving Iraq is surrender. That we are emboldening the enemy. These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer. Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.
The war in Iraq has emboldened Iran, which poses the greatest challenge to American interests in the Middle East in a generation, continuing its nuclear program and threatening our ally, Israel. Instead of the new Middle East we were promised, Hamas runs Gaza, Hizbollah flags fly from the rooftops in Sadr City, and Iran is handing out money left and right in southern Lebanon.
The war in Iraq has emboldened North Korea, which built new nuclear weapons and even tested one before the Administration finally went against its own rhetoric, and pursued diplomacy.
The war in Iraq has emboldened the Taliban, which has rebuilt its strength since we took our eye off of Afghanistan.
Above all, the war in Iraq has emboldened al Qaeda, whose recruitment has jumped and whose leadership enjoys a safe-haven in Pakistan – a thousand miles from Iraq.
The central front in the war against terror is not Iraq, and it never was. What more could America's enemies ask for than an endless war where they recruit new followers and try out new tactics on a battlefield so far from their base of operations? That is why my presidency will shift our focus. Rather than fight a war that does not need to be fought, we need to start fighting the battles that need to be won on the central front of the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is the area where the 9/11 attacks were planned. This is where Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants still hide. This is where extremism poses its greatest threat. Yet in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have pursued flawed strategies that are too distant from the needs of the people, and too timid in pursuit of our common enemies.
It may not dominate the evening news, but in Afghanistan, last year was the most deadly since 2001. Suicide attacks are up. Casualties are up. Corruption and drug trafficking are rampant. Neither the government nor the legal economy can meet the needs of the Afghan people.
It is not too late to prevail in Afghanistan. But we cannot prevail until we reduce our commitment in Iraq, which will allow us to do what I called for last August – providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our efforts in Afghanistan. This increased commitment in turn can be used to leverage greater assistance – with fewer restrictions – from our NATO allies. It will also allow us to invest more in training Afghan security forces, including more joint NATO operations with the Afghan Army, and a national police training plan that is effectively coordinated and resourced.
A stepped up military commitment must be backed by a long-term investment in the Afghan people. We will start with an additional $1 billion in non military assistance each year – aid that is focused on reaching ordinary Afghans. We need to improve daily life by supporting education, basic infrastructure and human services. We have to counter the opium trade by supporting alternative livelihoods for Afghan farmers. And we must call on more support from friends and allies, and better coordination under a strong international coordinator.
To succeed in Afghanistan, we also need to fundamentally rethink our Pakistan policy. For years, we have supported stability over democracy in Pakistan, and gotten neither. The core leadership of al Qaeda has a safe-haven in Pakistan. The Taliban are able to strike inside Afghanistan and then return to the mountains of the Pakistani border. Throughout Pakistan, domestic unrest has been rising. The full democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people have been too long denied. A child growing up in Pakistan, more often than not, is taught to see America as a source of hate – not hope.
This is why I stood up last summer and said we cannot base our entire Pakistan policy on President Musharraf. Pakistan is our ally, but we do our own security and our ally no favors by supporting its President while we are seen to be ignoring the interests of the people. Our counter-terrorism assistance must be conditioned on Pakistani action to root out the al Qaeda sanctuary. And any U.S. aid not directly needed for the fight against al Qaeda or to invest in the Pakistani people should be conditioned on the full restoration of Pakistan's democracy and rule of law.
The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people – for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That's the promise that America must stand for.
And for his sake and ours, we cannot tolerate a sanctuary for terrorists who threaten America's homeland and Pakistan's stability. If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan's border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot. Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have all distorted and derided this position, suggesting that I would invade or bomb Pakistan. This is politics, pure and simple. My position, in fact, is the same pragmatic policy that all three of them have belatedly – if tacitly – acknowledged is one we should pursue. Indeed, it was months after I called for this policy that a top al Qaeda leader was taken out in Pakistan by an American aircraft. And remember that the same three individuals who now criticize me for supporting a targeted strike on the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, are the same three individuals that supported an invasion of Iraq – a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
It is precisely this kind of political point-scoring that has opened up the security gap in this country. We have a security gap when candidates say they will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but refuse to follow him where he actually goes. What we need in our next Commander in Chief is not a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality or empty rhetoric about 3AM phone calls. What we need is a pragmatic strategy that focuses on fighting our real enemies, rebuilding alliances, and renewing our engagement with the world's people.
In addition to freeing up resources to take the fight to al Qaeda, ending the war in Iraq will allow us to more effectively confront other threats in the world - threats that cannot be conquered with an occupying army or dispatched with a single decision in the middle of the night. What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What's in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What's whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator's bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.
Without American leadership, these threats will fester. With strong American leadership, we can shape them into opportunities to protect our common security and advance our common humanity – for it has always been the genius of American leadership to find opportunity embedded in adversity; to focus on a source of fear, and confront it with hope.
Here are just five ways in which a shift in strategy away from Iraq will help us address the critical challenges of the 21st century.
First, in addressing global terror and violent extremism, we need the kind of comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy I called for last August. We need to strengthen security partnerships to take out terrorist networks, while investing in education and opportunity. We need to give our national security agencies the tools they need, while restoring the adherence to rule of law that helps us win the battle for hearts and minds. This means closing Guantanamo, restoring habeas corpus, and respecting civil liberties. And we need to support the forces of moderation in the Islamic world, so that alliances of convenience mature into friendships of conviction.
Second, the threat of nuclear proliferation must serve as a call to action. I have worked across the aisle with Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel in the Senate to secure dangerous weapons and loose nuclear materials. And as President, I will secure all loose nuclear materials around the world in my first term, seek deep cuts in global nuclear arsenals, strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and once more seek a world without nuclear weapons.
Third, the danger of weak and failed states risks spreading poverty and refugees; genocide and disease. Now is the time to meet the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half, in part by doubling our foreign assistance while demanding more from those who receive it. And now is the time to build the capacity of regional partners in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and the reconstruction of ravaged societies.
Fourth, the catastrophic consequences of the global climate crisis are matched by the promise of collective action. Now is the time for America to lead, because if we take action, others will act as well. Through our own cap and trade system and investments in new sources of energy, we can end our dependence on foreign oil and gas, and free ourselves from the tyranny of oil-rich states from Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela. We can create millions of new jobs here in America. And we can secure our planet for our children and grandchildren.
And fifth, America's sluggish economy risks ceding our economic prominence to a rising China. Competition has always been a catalyst for American innovation, and now should be no different. We must invest in the education of our children, renew our leadership in science, and advance trade that is not just free, but fair for our workers. We must ensure that America is the economic engine in the 21st century just as we were in the 20th.
I have no illusions that any of this will be easy. But I do know that we can only begin to make these changes when we end the mindset that focuses on Iraq and ignores the rest of the world.
I also know that meeting these new threats will require a President who deploys the power of tough, principled diplomacy. It is time to present a country like Iran with a clear choice. If it abandons its nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, then Iran can rejoin the community of nations – with all the benefits that entails. If not, Iran will face deeper isolation and steeper sanctions. When we engage directly, we will be in a stronger position to rally real international support for increased pressure. We will also engender more goodwill from the Iranian people. And make no mistake – if and when we ever have to use military force against any country, we must exert the power of American diplomacy first.
Once again, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have made the same arguments against my position on diplomacy, as if reading from the same political playbook. They say I'll be penciling the world's dictators on to my social calendar. But just as they are misrepresenting my position, they are mistaken in standing up for a policy of not talking that is not working. What I've said is that we cannot seize opportunities to resolve our problems unless we create them. That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev. And that is what I will do as President of the United States.
What I have talked about today is a new strategy, a new set of priorities for pursuing our interests in the 21st century. And as President, I will provide the tools required to implement this strategy. When President Truman put the policy of containment in place, he also invested in and organized our government to carry it out –creating the National Security Council and the CIA, and founding NATO. Now, we must upgrade our tools of power to fit a new strategy.
That starts with enhancing the finest military in the history of the world. As Commander in Chief, I will begin by giving a military overstretched by Iraq the support it needs. It is time to reduce the strain on our troops by completing the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines, while ensuring the quality of our troops. In an age marked by technology, it is the people of our military – our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen – who bear the responsibility for complex missions. That is why we need to ensure adequate training and time home between deployments. That is why we need to expand our Special Forces. And that is why we must increase investments in capabilities like civil affairs and training foreign militaries.
But we cannot place the burden of a new national security strategy on our military alone. We must integrate our diplomatic, information, economic and military power. That is why, as soon as I take office, I will call for a National Strategy and Security Review, to help determine a 21st Century inter-agency structure to integrate the elements of our national power.
In addition, I will invest in our civilian capacity to operate alongside our troops in post-conflict zones and on humanitarian and stabilization missions. Instead of shuttering consulates in tough corners of the world, it's time to grow our Foreign Service and to expand USAID. Instead of giving up on the determination of young people to serve, it's time to double the size of our Peace Corps. Instead of letting people learn about America from enemy propaganda, it's time to recruit, train, and send out into the world an America's Voice Corps.
And while we strengthen our own capacity, we must strengthen the capability of the international community. We honor NATO's sacrifice in Afghanistan, but we must strive to make it a larger and more nimble alliance. We must work with powers like Russia and China, but we must also speak up for human rights and democracy – and we can start now by speaking out for the human rights and religious freedom of the people of Tibet. And while we are frustrated by the UN, we must invest in its capability to keep the peace, resolve disputes, monitor disarmament, and support good governance around the world – and that depends on a more engaged United States.
We are at a defining moment in our history.
We can choose the path of unending war and unilateral action, and sap our strength and standing. We can choose the path of disengagement, and cede our leadership. Or, we can meet fear and danger head-on with hope and strength; with common purpose as a united America; and with common cause with old allies and new partners.
What we've seen these last few years is what happens when the rigid ideology and dysfunctional politics of Washington is projected abroad. An ideology that does not fit the shape of the times cannot shape events in foreign countries. A politics that is based on fear and division does not allow us to call on the world to hope, and keeps us from coming together as one people, as one nation, to write the next great chapter in the American story.
We also know that there is another face of America that we have seen these last five years. From down the road at Fort Bragg, our soldiers have gone abroad with a greater sense of common purpose than their leaders in Washington. They have learned the lessons of the 21st century's wars. And they have shown a sense of service and selflessness that represents the very best of the American character.
This must be the election when we stand up and say that we will serve them as well as they have served us. This must be the election when America comes together behind a common purpose on behalf of our security and our values. That is what we do as Americans. It's how we founded a republic based on freedom, and faced down fascism. It's how we defended democracy through a Cold War, and shined a light of hope bright enough to be seen in the darkest corners of the world.
When America leads with principle and pragmatism, hope can triumph over fear. It is time, once again, for America to lead.
The World Beyond Iraq
A portion of the speech:
Senator Barack Obama
March 19, 2008
As prepared for delivery
Just before America's entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress: "It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war," he said. "...But the right is more precious than peace." Wilson's words captured two awesome responsibilities that test any Commander-in-Chief – to never hesitate to defend America, but to never go to war unless you must. War is sometimes necessary, but it has grave consequences, and the judgment to go to war can never be undone.
Five years ago today, President George W. Bush addressed the nation. Bombs had started to rain down on Baghdad. War was necessary, the President said, because the United States could not, "live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." Recalling the pain of 9/11, he said the price of inaction in Iraq was to meet the threat with "armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities."
At the time the President uttered those words, there was no hard evidence that Iraq had those stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. There was not any evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks of September 11, or that Iraq had operational ties to the al Qaeda terrorists who carried them out. By launching a war based on faulty premises and bad intelligence, President Bush failed Wilson's test. So did Congress when it voted to give him the authority to wage war.
Five years have gone by since that fateful decision. This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq.
History will catalog the reasons why we waged a war that didn't need to be fought, but two stand out. In 2002, when the fateful decisions about Iraq were made, there was a President for whom ideology overrode pragmatism, and there were too many politicians in Washington who spent too little time reading the intelligence reports, and too much time reading public opinion. The lesson of Iraq is that when we are making decisions about matters as grave as war, we need a policy rooted in reason and facts, not ideology and politics.
Now we are debating who should be our next Commander in Chief. And I am running for President because it's time to turn the page on a failed ideology and a fundamentally flawed political strategy, so that we can make pragmatic judgments to keep our country safe. That's what I did when I stood up and opposed this war from the start, and said that we needed to finish the fight against al Qaeda. And that's what I'll do as President of the United States.
Senator Clinton says that she and Senator McCain have passed a "Commander in Chief test" – not because of the judgments they've made, but because of the years they've spent in Washington. She made a similar argument when she said her vote for war was based on her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. But here is the stark reality: there is a security gap in this country – a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington's judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military.
It is time to have a debate with John McCain about the future of our national security. And the way to win that debate is not to compete with John McCain over who has more experience in Washington, because that's a contest that he'll win. The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose. The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that's what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party – because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past.
Nowhere is that break more badly needed than in Iraq.
In the year since President Bush announced the surge – the bloodiest year of the war for America – the level of violence in Iraq has been reduced. Our troops – including so many from Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base – have done a brilliant job under difficult circumstances. Yet while we have a General who has used improved tactics to reduce violence, we still have the wrong strategy. As General Petraeus has himself acknowledged, the Iraqis are not achieving the political progress needed to end their civil war. Beyond Iraq, our military is badly overstretched, and we have neither the strategy nor resources to deal with nearly every other national security challenge we face.
This is why the judgment that matters most on Iraq – and on any decision to deploy military force – is the judgment made first. If you believe we are fighting the right war, then the problems we face are purely tactical in nature. That is what Senator McCain wants to discuss – tactics. What he and the Administration have failed to present is an overarching strategy: how the war in Iraq enhances our long-term security, or will in the future. That's why this Administration cannot answer the simple question posed by Senator John Warner in hearings last year: Are we safer because of this war? And that is why Senator McCain can argue – as he did last year – that we couldn't leave Iraq because violence was up, and then argue this year that we can't leave Iraq because violence is down.
When you have no overarching strategy, there is no clear definition of success. Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely. Here is the truth: fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. And fighting in a war without end will not make the American people safer.
So when I am Commander-in-Chief, I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war. Not because politics compels it. Not because our troops cannot bear the burden– as heavy as it is. But because it is the right thing to do for our national security, and it will ultimately make us safer.
In order to end this war responsibly, I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. We can responsibly remove 1 to 2 combat brigades each month. If we start with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today, we can remove all of them 16 months. After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy. What I propose is not – and never has been – a precipitous drawdown. It is instead a detailed and prudent plan that will end a war nearly seven years after it started.
My plan to end this war will finally put pressure on Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their future. Because we've learned that when we tell Iraq's leaders that we'll stay as long as it takes, they take as long as they want. We need to send a different message. We will help Iraq reach a meaningful accord on national reconciliation. We will engage with every country in the region – and the UN – to support the stability and territorial integrity of Iraq. And we will launch a major humanitarian initiative to support Iraq's refugees and people. But Iraqis must take responsibility for their country. It is precisely this kind of approach – an approach that puts the onus on the Iraqis, and that relies on more than just military power – that is needed to stabilize Iraq.
Let me be clear: ending this war is not going to be easy. There will be dangers involved. We will have to make tactical adjustments, listening to our commanders on the ground, to ensure that our interests in a stable Iraq are met, and to make sure that our troops are secure. Senator Clinton has tried to use my position to score political points, suggesting that I am somehow less committed to ending the war. She makes this argument despite the fact that she has taken the same position in the past. So ask yourself: who do you trust to end a war – someone who opposed the war from the beginning, or someone who started opposing it when they started preparing a run for President?
Now we know what we'll hear from those like John McCain who support open-ended war. They will argue that leaving Iraq is surrender. That we are emboldening the enemy. These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer. Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and al Qaeda. Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.
The war in Iraq has emboldened Iran, which poses the greatest challenge to American interests in the Middle East in a generation, continuing its nuclear program and threatening our ally, Israel. Instead of the new Middle East we were promised, Hamas runs Gaza, Hizbollah flags fly from the rooftops in Sadr City, and Iran is handing out money left and right in southern Lebanon.
The war in Iraq has emboldened North Korea, which built new nuclear weapons and even tested one before the Administration finally went against its own rhetoric, and pursued diplomacy.
The war in Iraq has emboldened the Taliban, which has rebuilt its strength since we took our eye off of Afghanistan.
Above all, the war in Iraq has emboldened al Qaeda, whose recruitment has jumped and whose leadership enjoys a safe-haven in Pakistan – a thousand miles from Iraq.
The central front in the war against terror is not Iraq, and it never was. What more could America's enemies ask for than an endless war where they recruit new followers and try out new tactics on a battlefield so far from their base of operations? That is why my presidency will shift our focus. Rather than fight a war that does not need to be fought, we need to start fighting the battles that need to be won on the central front of the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is the area where the 9/11 attacks were planned. This is where Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants still hide. This is where extremism poses its greatest threat. Yet in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have pursued flawed strategies that are too distant from the needs of the people, and too timid in pursuit of our common enemies.
It may not dominate the evening news, but in Afghanistan, last year was the most deadly since 2001. Suicide attacks are up. Casualties are up. Corruption and drug trafficking are rampant. Neither the government nor the legal economy can meet the needs of the Afghan people.
It is not too late to prevail in Afghanistan. But we cannot prevail until we reduce our commitment in Iraq, which will allow us to do what I called for last August – providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our efforts in Afghanistan. This increased commitment in turn can be used to leverage greater assistance – with fewer restrictions – from our NATO allies. It will also allow us to invest more in training Afghan security forces, including more joint NATO operations with the Afghan Army, and a national police training plan that is effectively coordinated and resourced.
A stepped up military commitment must be backed by a long-term investment in the Afghan people. We will start with an additional $1 billion in non military assistance each year – aid that is focused on reaching ordinary Afghans. We need to improve daily life by supporting education, basic infrastructure and human services. We have to counter the opium trade by supporting alternative livelihoods for Afghan farmers. And we must call on more support from friends and allies, and better coordination under a strong international coordinator.
To succeed in Afghanistan, we also need to fundamentally rethink our Pakistan policy. For years, we have supported stability over democracy in Pakistan, and gotten neither. The core leadership of al Qaeda has a safe-haven in Pakistan. The Taliban are able to strike inside Afghanistan and then return to the mountains of the Pakistani border. Throughout Pakistan, domestic unrest has been rising. The full democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people have been too long denied. A child growing up in Pakistan, more often than not, is taught to see America as a source of hate – not hope.
This is why I stood up last summer and said we cannot base our entire Pakistan policy on President Musharraf. Pakistan is our ally, but we do our own security and our ally no favors by supporting its President while we are seen to be ignoring the interests of the people. Our counter-terrorism assistance must be conditioned on Pakistani action to root out the al Qaeda sanctuary. And any U.S. aid not directly needed for the fight against al Qaeda or to invest in the Pakistani people should be conditioned on the full restoration of Pakistan's democracy and rule of law.
The choice is not between Musharraf and Islamic extremists. As the recent legislative elections showed, there is a moderate majority of Pakistanis, and they are the people we need on our side to win the war against al Qaeda. That is why we should dramatically increase our support for the Pakistani people – for education, economic development, and democratic institutions. That child in Pakistan must know that we want a better life for him, that America is on his side, and that his interest in opportunity is our interest as well. That's the promise that America must stand for.
And for his sake and ours, we cannot tolerate a sanctuary for terrorists who threaten America's homeland and Pakistan's stability. If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan's border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot. Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have all distorted and derided this position, suggesting that I would invade or bomb Pakistan. This is politics, pure and simple. My position, in fact, is the same pragmatic policy that all three of them have belatedly – if tacitly – acknowledged is one we should pursue. Indeed, it was months after I called for this policy that a top al Qaeda leader was taken out in Pakistan by an American aircraft. And remember that the same three individuals who now criticize me for supporting a targeted strike on the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, are the same three individuals that supported an invasion of Iraq – a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
It is precisely this kind of political point-scoring that has opened up the security gap in this country. We have a security gap when candidates say they will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but refuse to follow him where he actually goes. What we need in our next Commander in Chief is not a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality or empty rhetoric about 3AM phone calls. What we need is a pragmatic strategy that focuses on fighting our real enemies, rebuilding alliances, and renewing our engagement with the world's people.
In addition to freeing up resources to take the fight to al Qaeda, ending the war in Iraq will allow us to more effectively confront other threats in the world - threats that cannot be conquered with an occupying army or dispatched with a single decision in the middle of the night. What lies in the heart of a child in Pakistan matters as much as the airplanes we sell her government. What's in the head of a scientist from Russia can be as lethal as a plutonium reactor in Yongbyon. What's whispered in refugee camps in Chad can be as dangerous as a dictator's bluster. These are the neglected landscapes of the 21st century, where technology and extremism empower individuals just as they give governments the ability to repress them; where the ancient divides of region and religion wash into the swift currents of globalization.
Without American leadership, these threats will fester. With strong American leadership, we can shape them into opportunities to protect our common security and advance our common humanity – for it has always been the genius of American leadership to find opportunity embedded in adversity; to focus on a source of fear, and confront it with hope.
Here are just five ways in which a shift in strategy away from Iraq will help us address the critical challenges of the 21st century.
First, in addressing global terror and violent extremism, we need the kind of comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy I called for last August. We need to strengthen security partnerships to take out terrorist networks, while investing in education and opportunity. We need to give our national security agencies the tools they need, while restoring the adherence to rule of law that helps us win the battle for hearts and minds. This means closing Guantanamo, restoring habeas corpus, and respecting civil liberties. And we need to support the forces of moderation in the Islamic world, so that alliances of convenience mature into friendships of conviction.
Second, the threat of nuclear proliferation must serve as a call to action. I have worked across the aisle with Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel in the Senate to secure dangerous weapons and loose nuclear materials. And as President, I will secure all loose nuclear materials around the world in my first term, seek deep cuts in global nuclear arsenals, strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and once more seek a world without nuclear weapons.
Third, the danger of weak and failed states risks spreading poverty and refugees; genocide and disease. Now is the time to meet the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half, in part by doubling our foreign assistance while demanding more from those who receive it. And now is the time to build the capacity of regional partners in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and the reconstruction of ravaged societies.
Fourth, the catastrophic consequences of the global climate crisis are matched by the promise of collective action. Now is the time for America to lead, because if we take action, others will act as well. Through our own cap and trade system and investments in new sources of energy, we can end our dependence on foreign oil and gas, and free ourselves from the tyranny of oil-rich states from Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela. We can create millions of new jobs here in America. And we can secure our planet for our children and grandchildren.
And fifth, America's sluggish economy risks ceding our economic prominence to a rising China. Competition has always been a catalyst for American innovation, and now should be no different. We must invest in the education of our children, renew our leadership in science, and advance trade that is not just free, but fair for our workers. We must ensure that America is the economic engine in the 21st century just as we were in the 20th.
I have no illusions that any of this will be easy. But I do know that we can only begin to make these changes when we end the mindset that focuses on Iraq and ignores the rest of the world.
I also know that meeting these new threats will require a President who deploys the power of tough, principled diplomacy. It is time to present a country like Iran with a clear choice. If it abandons its nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, then Iran can rejoin the community of nations – with all the benefits that entails. If not, Iran will face deeper isolation and steeper sanctions. When we engage directly, we will be in a stronger position to rally real international support for increased pressure. We will also engender more goodwill from the Iranian people. And make no mistake – if and when we ever have to use military force against any country, we must exert the power of American diplomacy first.
Once again, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have made the same arguments against my position on diplomacy, as if reading from the same political playbook. They say I'll be penciling the world's dictators on to my social calendar. But just as they are misrepresenting my position, they are mistaken in standing up for a policy of not talking that is not working. What I've said is that we cannot seize opportunities to resolve our problems unless we create them. That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev. And that is what I will do as President of the United States.
What I have talked about today is a new strategy, a new set of priorities for pursuing our interests in the 21st century. And as President, I will provide the tools required to implement this strategy. When President Truman put the policy of containment in place, he also invested in and organized our government to carry it out –creating the National Security Council and the CIA, and founding NATO. Now, we must upgrade our tools of power to fit a new strategy.
That starts with enhancing the finest military in the history of the world. As Commander in Chief, I will begin by giving a military overstretched by Iraq the support it needs. It is time to reduce the strain on our troops by completing the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines, while ensuring the quality of our troops. In an age marked by technology, it is the people of our military – our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen – who bear the responsibility for complex missions. That is why we need to ensure adequate training and time home between deployments. That is why we need to expand our Special Forces. And that is why we must increase investments in capabilities like civil affairs and training foreign militaries.
But we cannot place the burden of a new national security strategy on our military alone. We must integrate our diplomatic, information, economic and military power. That is why, as soon as I take office, I will call for a National Strategy and Security Review, to help determine a 21st Century inter-agency structure to integrate the elements of our national power.
In addition, I will invest in our civilian capacity to operate alongside our troops in post-conflict zones and on humanitarian and stabilization missions. Instead of shuttering consulates in tough corners of the world, it's time to grow our Foreign Service and to expand USAID. Instead of giving up on the determination of young people to serve, it's time to double the size of our Peace Corps. Instead of letting people learn about America from enemy propaganda, it's time to recruit, train, and send out into the world an America's Voice Corps.
And while we strengthen our own capacity, we must strengthen the capability of the international community. We honor NATO's sacrifice in Afghanistan, but we must strive to make it a larger and more nimble alliance. We must work with powers like Russia and China, but we must also speak up for human rights and democracy – and we can start now by speaking out for the human rights and religious freedom of the people of Tibet. And while we are frustrated by the UN, we must invest in its capability to keep the peace, resolve disputes, monitor disarmament, and support good governance around the world – and that depends on a more engaged United States.
We are at a defining moment in our history.
We can choose the path of unending war and unilateral action, and sap our strength and standing. We can choose the path of disengagement, and cede our leadership. Or, we can meet fear and danger head-on with hope and strength; with common purpose as a united America; and with common cause with old allies and new partners.
What we've seen these last few years is what happens when the rigid ideology and dysfunctional politics of Washington is projected abroad. An ideology that does not fit the shape of the times cannot shape events in foreign countries. A politics that is based on fear and division does not allow us to call on the world to hope, and keeps us from coming together as one people, as one nation, to write the next great chapter in the American story.
We also know that there is another face of America that we have seen these last five years. From down the road at Fort Bragg, our soldiers have gone abroad with a greater sense of common purpose than their leaders in Washington. They have learned the lessons of the 21st century's wars. And they have shown a sense of service and selflessness that represents the very best of the American character.
This must be the election when we stand up and say that we will serve them as well as they have served us. This must be the election when America comes together behind a common purpose on behalf of our security and our values. That is what we do as Americans. It's how we founded a republic based on freedom, and faced down fascism. It's how we defended democracy through a Cold War, and shined a light of hope bright enough to be seen in the darkest corners of the world.
When America leads with principle and pragmatism, hope can triumph over fear. It is time, once again, for America to lead.
100 years in Iraq, Mr, McCain? I don't think so,
US military growing weary in Iraq
Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the US military is flagging under long and repeated deployments that have taken a toll on troops and hurt its readiness to deal with other crises.
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Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the US military is flagging under long and repeated deployments that have taken a toll on troops and hurt its readiness to deal with other crises.
"People are tired," is the way Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, summed it up at a congressional hearing last month.
The third longest war in US history -- after the Revolutionary War and Vietnam -- has forged a battle-hardened ground force with bitterly won experience in counter-insurgency warfare.
But military leaders and experts say it also has left the US Army in particular, but also the marines, with major equipment shortfalls, inadequate training in conventional warfare, and not enough troops.
Shot through it all is the human fallout from combat and the stress of repeated deployments: record suicide rates, rising divorces and mental health problems, according to army health reports.
Some troops are in their third and fourth combat deployments.
"What it means is that the army coming out of Iraq will be a shadow of its former self," said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official and senior analyst at the Center for American Progress.
Korb said it will take at least a decade for the army to recover, assuming that the United States continues to draw down its "surge" force in Iraq, which currently number 162,000.
Estimates of the cost of resetting the army's forces and replacing or repairing war damaged equipment runs to 240 billion dollars, according to congressional leaders.
And Korb said the army could face personnel problems in coming years from having lowered quality standards to meet its recruiting goals.
"On the other hand we've got the most experienced military we've had in many a decade," said Bernard Rostker, a former undersecretary of defense for readiness in the Clinton administration.
"Soldiers who are back in Iraq three or four times, believe me they have learned. That stands us very well. So that on the readiness scale would have to be very high," he said.
Rostker said the all-volunteer force has been surprisingly resilient.
Many had thought it would break after the second or third rotation in Iraq, he said. "But that wasn't the case."
"All in all, Yes, the army is tired; yes, the army has comported itself extremely well," he said.
"Nobody expected a volunteer force to do what it has done. It has learned over time and I think you see that in the surge, and hopefully we'll be able to bring some troops home," he said.
Troop levels in Iraq are supposed to fall to 140,000 by July, offering hope of relief.
But the security situation in Iraq, while dramatically improved over last year, remains fragile and commanders are calling for a pause in the drawdown after July.
The question facing military leaders is how long the army can withstand the current pace of deployments.
"Our soldiers are deploying too frequently. We can't sustain that," General George Casey, the army's chief of staff told Congress recently. "It's impacting on their families, it's impacting on their mental health. We just can't keep going at the rate that we're going."
Casey's immediate goal is to reduce tour lengths from 15 months to 12 to ease the strain on the force, which he expects to be able to do in July when the "surge" troops are out of Iraq.
Eventually, as the army expands in size or if more troops come out of Iraq, the army hopes to increase the time soldiers have at home between deployments from 12 months to 15.
But, as Army Secretary Pete Geren warned recently, "We are consuming readiness as fast as we build it."
The almost exclusive focus on counter-insurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with the short turnaround between deployments, has meant that most military units have no time to train for conventional warfare.
Mullen told Congress last month there is "significant risk" in the US military's readiness to respond to a crisis elsewhere in the world.
Concerns about the situation appear to be widespread within the military as well, even though morale remains high.
A recent survey of 3,437 current and retired officers of the rank of major or above found that 60 percent believe the US military is weaker today than it was five years ago.
Eighty-eight percent thought the war has stretched it "dangerously thin", according to the survey by the Center for a New American Security and Foreign Policy magazine.
The drive for fascism will come to Europe. Americans are aware of black flag ops, while Europeans still sleep. Al CIA threatens Europe.
New Bin Laden attack on EU over cartoons
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
An internet audio message from Osama bin Laden was released last night in which the al-Qaida leader threatened the EU over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad two years ago, but did not address contemporary issues.
The five-minute message, played over a still image of Bin Laden holding an AK-47, was his first this year. Although apparently timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the message on a militant website appeared more closely linked to yesterday's anniversary of Muhammad's birth.
The cartoons were part of a crusade in which he said the Pope was involved. "Your publications of these drawings - part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican had a significant role - is a confirmation from you that the war continues," he said. "You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," said a voice believed to be Bin Laden's.
Bin Laden also touched on the row over alleged kickbacks paid to Saudi officials as part of the multibillion dollar al-Yamamah deal with Britain. He said King Abdullah "ordered your legal institutions to stop their investigations into the embezzlement of the billions from the al-Yamamah deal and Blair carried this out and he is today your representative in the Quartet".
The cartoons were first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 but a furore erupted only after other papers reprinted them in 2006. At least 50 people were killed in the protests against the publication of the cartoons, which Muslims say are an affront to Islam.
Original article posted here.
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
An internet audio message from Osama bin Laden was released last night in which the al-Qaida leader threatened the EU over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad two years ago, but did not address contemporary issues.
The five-minute message, played over a still image of Bin Laden holding an AK-47, was his first this year. Although apparently timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the message on a militant website appeared more closely linked to yesterday's anniversary of Muhammad's birth.
The cartoons were part of a crusade in which he said the Pope was involved. "Your publications of these drawings - part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican had a significant role - is a confirmation from you that the war continues," he said. "You went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," said a voice believed to be Bin Laden's.
Bin Laden also touched on the row over alleged kickbacks paid to Saudi officials as part of the multibillion dollar al-Yamamah deal with Britain. He said King Abdullah "ordered your legal institutions to stop their investigations into the embezzlement of the billions from the al-Yamamah deal and Blair carried this out and he is today your representative in the Quartet".
The cartoons were first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 but a furore erupted only after other papers reprinted them in 2006. At least 50 people were killed in the protests against the publication of the cartoons, which Muslims say are an affront to Islam.
Original article posted here.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Don't forget the biggest lie of them all
25 Intolerable Contradictions: The Final Undoing of the Official 9/11 Story
Review of David Ray Griffin's book
by Elizabeth Woodworth | |
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Global Research, March 17, 2008 | |
A review of "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," by Dr. David Ray Griffin. Interlink Publishing, March 2008. 368 p. List
At last there is a book about 9/11 that politicians and journalists can openly discuss without fear of being labeled "conspiracy theorists".
9/11 Contradictions advances no theories. It simply exposes 25 astonishing internal contradictions that will haunt the public story of this unparalleled event for all time.
Until now, the persistent and disturbing questions about the day that changed the world have confused and alienated journalists and politicians, because:
- The technical issues regarding the collapse of the towers, the failure of the military to intercept the flights, and the relatively minor damage to the Pentagon have been considered too complex for analysis in the media.
However, Griffin’s new book requires no technical expertise from the reader, because each readable chapter revolves around one simple internal contradiction inherent in the public story. "If Jones says ‘P’ and Smith says ‘Not P’, we can all recognize that something must be wrong, because both statements cannot be true."
- Many who have doubted the official story have offered alternative theories which have been dismissed as "conspiracy theories" by a press which must understandably place a high value on its credibility.
However, this book offers no alternative theories to explain the contradictions within the public story. It simply presents the glaring contradictions that have never been probed by Congress or the media, and beseeches members of these institutions come to grips with the reality and lead the charge for a truly independent investigation.
- The 9/11 issue is six years old, journalists are busy people, and the world has moved on.
Though six years have passed, this matter is by no means closed, nor is the trail cold. "The accepted story about 9/11 has been used to increase military spending, justify wars, restrict civil liberties, and exalt the executive branch of the government." Indeed, this reviewer notes, the public story has recently been challenged in foreign forums (Japan Parliament, January 10, 2008, and at the European Parliament building in Brussels, February 26, 2008). The 9/11 Commissioners themselves have cast doubt on the credibility of the Commission Report in their January 2, 2008 New York Times article, "Stonewalled by the CIA." (Ref. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html)
Let us now turn to the contradictions. But first, to quote Professor Griffin:
"Within the philosophy of science, there are two basic criteria for discriminating between good and bad theories. First, a theory should not be inconsistent with any of the relevant facts....Second, it must be self-consistent, devoid of any internal contradictions. If a theory contains an internal contradiction, it is an unacceptable theory."
Unacceptable, for example, is the following internal contradiction, quoted from the chapter summaries that have been helpfully provided at the end of the book interested investigative journalists and members of Congress:
With regard to the identity of the plane spotted over the White House around the time of the Pentagon strike: The military’s denial that it was a military plane is contradicted by CNN footage of the plane’s flight, which showed, as former military officers have agreed, that it was an Air Force E-4B.
[Reviewer’s note: "The E-4B serves as the National Airborne Operations Center for the president, secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff or JCS." Cited from a current US Air Force factsheet at http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=99.]
In his 2004 "The New Pearl Harbor", Griffin had already noted that the Standard Operating Procedures regarding flight interceptions had been inexplicably dropped on September 11th. This reviewer deduces that because a complex network of defense systems could not have been fully disabled without coordination from a senior military level, it was logical for Dr. Griffin to open the current volume by asking questions that the 9/11 Commission failed to ask: what were President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and General Richard B. Myers, Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doing that morning? In each case, inexplicable contradictions emerged in the reports of their whereabouts, and the same applied to Vice President Dick Cheney. None of these public officials were questioned under oath, and now it is abundantly clear that the contradictions surrounding them must be laid to rest in by a thorough and rigorous investigation.
In Part II, Griffin carefully tracks the disparities in the reported times at which the military was notified about the erratic behaviors of Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93. In each case, the striking contradictions he unearths are shown to require a serious investigation into how this over-arching failure actually did happen, and---this reviewer suggests---what connection it may have had to the unprecedented military air drills that were progressing throughout the attacks.
In Part III, probing questions regarding the pre-9/11 tastes and habits of the alleged hijackers are closely pursued through early press reports, with the confounding revelation that they had taken up Western sexual and drinking practices, and could certainly not be characterized as devout Muslims ready to meet their maker. The contradictions revealed in the investigation of cell phone and airphone reports of their actions on the planes is nothing short of brilliant, negating the entire phenomenon of the aggregate onboard myth.
Finally, Part IV deals with the towers themselves, including advance knowledge of their collapses, and the extraordinary oral testimonies of dozens of firefighters who reported, for example, massive explosions in the sub-basements of the buildings: a 50-ton hydraulic press reduced to rubble; a 300-lb. steel door wrinkled up like a strip of aluminum foil.
It is interesting to note that Dr. Griffin has become a virtual one-man clearinghouse for the vast accumulation of research that has been done on this world-changing event. It now appears highly likely that his neutral approach to this impressive body of evidence will be the axe that finally splits the issue open. Each one of the 25 carefully researched contradictions represents a crumbling brick in the official facade that shields the world from the unknown underlying truth.
As a writer myself, and a retired professional librarian, it was an honour to critique and give bibliographic support for Dr. Griffin’s chapters, and for the extensive research supplied in the footnotes. Throughout the process, I was able to witness first-hand the precise, methodical, and ethical standards to which he works. One can only hope that the exceptional quality and responsibility evident in his work will inspire people in Congress and the media (and indeed in all walks of life) to rise to his challenge to investigate this pivotal international issue.
The still forgotten disgrace that is Iraq
Five years after the invasion of Iraq: A debacle for US imperialism A war based on lies The Democrats and the war
Five years after Washington inaugurated its “shock and awe” campaign, striking Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.
The war’s costs, in terms of both US imperialism’s global position and sheer dollar amounts, have eclipsed the immense damage wrought by the protracted intervention in Vietnam nearly four decades ago. It has already lasted longer than the American Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Even in Vietnam, after five years of major troop deployments, the withdrawal of American forces had already begun.
A “war of choice” that was launched as a demonstration of the overwhelming and irresistible force of American militarism has turned into an operational debacle that has strained the US armed forces to the breaking point and eroded the strategic position of the United States in every corner of the world.
For the Iraqi people, the war has produced a catastrophe. For the American people, as well, it has yielded nothing but suffering and tragedy. It unquestionably constitutes the single greatest war crime of the twenty-first century. In both its motivation and execution, it embodies the essential characteristics of similar crimes carried out in the last century.
The International Tribunal at Nuremburg that convicted the leaders of the Third Reich summed up its verdict with the following observation: “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
The “accumulated evil” wrought by the decision to launch a war of aggression in Iraq continues to unfold. According to the most credible estimates, it has cost the lives of over 1 million Iraqis, while turning over 4 million more into refugees, driven by violence and destruction either out of their country or into internal exile.
A poll released this week that was conducted for the British Broadcasting Corporation, ABC News in the US and German and Japanese television found that nearly half of the residents of Baghdad said at least one family member had been killed since the occupation began.
The same poll found that over 70 percent of Iraqis want US troops out of their country, a sentiment that has remained steady throughout the occupation, but which is consistently ignored by the US political establishment and the mass media.
The divide-and-rule strategy employed by the US occupiers and Washington’s attempts to fashion a puppet regime based on ethnic politics created the conditions for a savage sectarian war that claimed untold victims and “ethnically cleansed” large sections of Baghdad and other areas where Shia, Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis had previously lived side-by-side.
The destruction of social infrastructure caused by American high explosives five years ago—as well as the previous years of punishing sanctions—has only been exacerbated by the disintegration that has unfolded under US military occupation. Essential infrastructure remains devastated, with the population deprived of electricity, fuel, clean water, sanitary facilities and garbage collection, creating hellish conditions and an immense public health crisis. The killing of over 600 doctors and medical professionals and the flight of thousands of others, together with severe shortages in medicine and equipment, have left Iraq’s health sector in a state of collapse.
The death toll among US troops will soon top 4,000. At least 60,000 more have been wounded, and many thousands more American soldiers and Marines sent into this dirty colonial war have come back with severe psychological problems.
As for the costs to American society, it is now estimated that the occupation is consuming some $12 billion a month and could total as much as $3 trillion. A report by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress found that the war thus far has cost an average American family of four $16,900, an amount projected to rise to $37,000 by 2017. These vast sums have been diverted from pressing social needs in the US itself, while the massive expenditures have contributed significantly to a raging financial crisis that threatens to plunge the economy into a depression.
It is a measure of the perverse mindset of the US president—and his criminal indifference to the loss of human life—that in a video conference last week with US military personnel in Afghanistan, Bush declared himself envious of those fighting in America’s colonial-style wars, calling it “a fantastic experience” and “in some ways romantic.”
Equally delusional were the comments made by Vice President Dick Cheney during an unannounced visit to Baghdad. Cheney called the five-year war a “successful endeavor” that “has been well worth the effort.”
The reality is that five years after a US invasion that was expected by its organizers to swiftly replace the government of Saddam Hussein with a stable US client regime, 160,000 US troops remain deployed in the country and—as the extraordinary security measures surrounding Cheney, even in the fortified Green Zone, make clear—no area can be claimed to be fully secure.
The surge initiated by the Pentagon a year ago has yet to create conditions in which American commanders believe they can reduce occupation forces even to the level that existed at the beginning of the invasion. The surge, which Cheney said was responsible for a “remarkable turnaround,” has not halted the daily bloodbath. Even according to US government figures, on average 26 Iraqi civilians were killed every day in the month of February.
To a large extent, the reduction in what remains a horrific death toll is attributable not to US pacification efforts, but to the fact that the sectarian violence unleashed by the occupation has largely separated Sunni and Shia populations, leaving fewer people to kill. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is financing and arming former Sunni insurgents, who have no loyalty either to Washington or the US-backed government, but who for the moment see the Shia-dominated security forces and militias as the greatest threat.
As for Iraqi perceptions of conditions in their own country, the recent poll indicated that more than half believe the beefing up of the US troop presence in Baghdad and Anbar Province has made matters worse.
As is now universally recognized, the war was prepared in 2002 and early 2003 with a campaign of deliberate lies and fabrications about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda, both of which proved to be non-existent.
The Bush administration, with the complicity of congressional Democrats, sought to exploit the fears and political confusion in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks to implement long-prepared plans to seize control of a country holding the word’s second-largest proven oil reserves and turn it into a platform for the extension of US military power throughout the region.
Notwithstanding the popular disorientation fostered by a relentless propaganda campaign waged by both political parties and backed by a subservient media, there was broad opposition to the drive to war, reflected in massive demonstrations both in the US and around the world.
The five years since the invasion have not only seen the original lies thoroughly exposed, but also a complete discrediting of the US government and US policy in the eyes of the world’s population. The old attempt to drape predatory US policies in the mantle of democracy—used to some effect during the two world wars and the Cold War that followed—is now rejected with contempt by people around the globe, who have been repulsed by the killings and repression in Iraq and atrocities such as the sadistic torture practiced at Abu Ghraib.
Of equal importance is the discrediting of the political system within the US itself. Rejecting the official story relentlessly sold by the mass media and the two major parties, the American people by a large margin have come to oppose the war. Yet it continues unabated, and the president who launched it—who is despised by millions and retains the support of less than a third of the population—retains undiminished power to pursue a policy of unrestrained militarism. Nothing could expose more thoroughly the undemocratic character and political rot that pervade the entire governmental system within the United States.
The global eruption of American militarism and the crisis of US and world capitalism are inextricably linked. In the final analysis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the threat of a new war against Iran, are a product of the attempt by the US ruling class to maintain the hegemonic position of US capitalism by military force, under conditions in which it can no longer do so by virtue of its economic weight. The most important war aims of Washington are to establish a stranglehold over the oil resources of the Middle East and Central Asia, in order to gain a decisive strategic advantage over its economic rivals in Europe and Asia.
The Iraq war is not an aberration. War is the inevitable product of a world situation dominated by the increasing tensions between a globally integrated economy and the capitalist nation state system in which the decline of US imperialism poses the most explosive consequences. Despite the failure of the US adventure in Iraq, objective pressures are pushing Washington towards new confrontations with enemies ranging from China to Russia to Venezuela.
The economic crisis that is driving this policy is not merely conjunctural, but systemic. It is now acknowledged widely within financial circles that the credit crisis that has erupted with the bursting of the housing bubble has put the United States on the edge of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The sharpest expression of this economic crisis is the unrelenting growth of social inequality. The financial elite’s policy of using military force to gain control of world markets is pursued at the direct expense of the masses of working people, who are paying for it through attacks on their jobs, living standards and basic democratic rights.
The evolution of the 2008 election campaign has already made it clear that the American people will once again be denied the right to decide at the polls whether Washington should continue its criminal war against the Iraqi people. The Democratic Party, following a now well-worn path, is once again preparing to politically disenfranchise the substantial antiwar majority of the American electorate.
In the 2002 midterm elections, the Democratic leadership in Congress took a deliberate decision to deliver the votes needed to authorize the invasion of Iraq, reasoning that it would thus take the question of war “off the table” and enable it to wage a successful campaign based on economic issues. The result was a severe defeat that delivered both houses of Congress to the Republicans.
In 2004, the party leadership steered the nomination to two US senators—John Kerry and John Edwards—who had voted for the war in 2002 and who made it clear they had no intention of withdrawing American forces. Indeed, Kerry suggested that, if elected, he would launch his own “surge.”
In 2006, the Democrats won back control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in a vote that clearly represented a popular repudiation of the war. Having gained control of Congress, the Democrats proceeded to do nothing but provide funding for the war to continue.
Now, the two remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination are locked in a national security campaign aimed at proving themselves best qualified to serve as commander-in-chief. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have advanced platforms that provide for the continued presence of the US military in Iraq for purposes of counter-terrorism operations, the protection of US facilities and interests, and the training of Iraqi puppet forces—meaning that tens of thousands of troops would remain in the country indefinitely. Obama’s former senior foreign policy advisor spelled out in a recent interview with the BBC that no one should take his promises regarding troop withdrawal too seriously, as they would be scrapped the moment he entered the White House and began consultation with the military brass.
No doubt, there exist within the ruling elite bitter divisions over the conduct of the war and plans for future US policy in Iraq. These differences, however, begin from the standpoint of advancing the interests of imperialism on a world scale and whether the tying down of immense US military power in Iraq is hindering the use of that power elsewhere. Many of the Democrats advocating troop withdrawals from Iraq are calling for these same troops to be sent to Afghanistan.
The character of the supposedly liberal opposition to the Iraq war found its most grotesque expression in last Sunday’s opinion section of the New York Times in which the paper’s editorial board called upon nine “experts on military and foreign affairs to reflect on their attitudes in the spring of 2003” to the war. All nine, without exception, were advocates of the war, most of them drawn from within the administration or from right-wing think tanks. Some, such as Richard Perle and Paul Bremer, bear direct responsibility for the atrocities carried out against the Iraqi people.
The implication is that in March 2003, everyone agreed that war against Iraq was necessary. Differences arose only afterwards due to the exposure of “faulty intelligence” and because of the Bush administration’s flawed execution of this necessary act.
This is a lie. There were millions who recognized that the war was an act of criminality carried out on the basis of lies.
For its part, the World Socialist Web Site had no illusions as to what was behind the war or what it would produce.
As we wrote in “The crisis of American capitalism and the war against Iraq” on March 21, 2003: “All the justifications given by the Bush administration and its accomplices in London are based on half-truths, falsifications and outright lies. At this point, it should hardly be necessary to reply yet again to the claims that the purpose of this war is to destroy Iraq’s so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ After weeks of the most intrusive inspections to which any country has ever been subjected, nothing of material significance was discovered.”
And we predicted accurately: “Whatever the outcome of the initial stages of the conflict that has begun, American imperialism has a rendezvous with disaster. It cannot conquer the world. It cannot reimpose colonial shackles upon the masses of the Middle East. It will not find through the medium of war a viable solution to its internal maladies. Rather, the unforeseen difficulties and mounting resistance engendered by war will intensify all of the internal contradictions of American society.”
Today, an effective struggle against the war cannot be waged based on protests and appeals to the existing two-party system, or on yet another attempt to place greater power in the hands of the Democrats by putting Clinton or Obama in the White House and giving the party a larger majority in the Senate. What is required is a rejection of imperialism itself.
Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and defeating the already well-advanced plans for further and even bloodier wars in Iran and elsewhere is possible only through the fight to mobilize the working class against the capitalist system that is the source of war.
This means an irreconcilable break with the Democratic Party and the building of a new mass political movement of working people based on a socialist and internationalist program.
This is the alternative which the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site will fight to place at the center of the struggles to come in the run-up to the November election, advancing the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and demanding that those who conspired to launch these wars of aggression be held accountable, both politically and legally.
We urge all of our readers and supporters to draw the lessons of five years of the Iraq war and join us in this fight for the independent political mobilization of working people in the United States and internationally against imperialism.
Original article posted here.More on Eliot's being spit
Why Spitzer was Bushwhacked
By F William Engdahl
The spectacular and bizarre release of secret FBI wiretap data to the New York Times exposing the tryst of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, the now-infamous client "No 9", with an upmarket call-girl had relatively little to do with the George W Bush administration’s pursuit of high moral standards for public servants. Spitzer was likely the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence one of the most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.
A useful rule of thumb in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures is to ask who might want to eliminate that person. In the case of former governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the spectacular "leak" of the government's FBI wiretap records showing that Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute US$4,300 for what amounted to about an hour’s personal entertainment, was politically motivated.
The press has almost solely focused on the salacious aspects of the affair, not least the hefty fee Spitzer apparently paid. Why the scandal breaks now is the more interesting question.
Spitzer became governor of New York following a high-profile record as a relentless state attorney general going after financial crimes such as the Enron fraud, and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the 2002 dotcom bubble era. Spitzer made powerful enemies by all accounts. The former head of the large AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg, was among his detractors. He was bitterly hated on Wall Street. He had made his political career on being ruthless against financial corruption.
Most recently, from his position as governor of the nation’s second largest state, home to its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high-profile attacks on the complicity of the Bush administration in covertly arranging bailouts of its Wall Street friends at the expense of ordinary homeowners and citizens, all paid for by taxpayer funds.
Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70% of the vote, has not been charged with any crime. However, the day the scandal broke, New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial were he to refuse to resign. Spitzer could be asked to testify in any trial involving the Emperors Club prostitution ring. But so far he hasn’t been charged with a crime.
Prostitution is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a case in process. The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington and not state authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of the Spitzer "Watergate".
The New York Times said Spitzer was an individual identified as Client 9 in court papers filed last week. Client 9 arranged to meet with "Kristen", a prostitute who officially charged $1,000 an hour, on February 13 in a Washington hotel. Whatever transpired, Spitzer paid her $4,300, according to the official documents. The case is clearly political when compared with more egregious recent cases involving Republicans. Republican Mark Foley was exposed propositioning male interns in Congress and Rudolph Giuliani was discovered cheating on his wife, but no or few Republican calls for resignations were heard.
Why the attack now?
Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration for the nation’s current financial and economic disaster. He testified in Washington in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee on the problems in New York-based specialized insurance companies, known as "monoline" insurers. In a national CNBC TV interview the same day, he laid blame for the crisis and its broader economic fallout on the Bush administration.
Spitzer recalled that several years ago the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) went to court and blocked New York State efforts to investigate the mortgage activities of national banks. Spitzer argued that the OCC did not put a stop to questionable loan marketing practices or uphold higher underwriting standards.
"This could have been avoided if the OCC had done its job," Spitzer said in the interview. "The OCC did nothing. The Bush administration let the housing bubble inflate and now that it's deflating we're dealing with the consequences. The real failure, the genesis, the germ that has spread, was the subprime scandal," Spitzer said.
Fraudulent marketing and very low "teaser" mortgage rates that later ballooned higher, were practices that should have been stopped, he argued. "When mortgages are being marketed, there is a marketplace obligation to ensure the borrower can afford to pay back the debt," he said.
That TV interview was only one instance of Spitzer laying blame on the Bush Republicans. On February 14, Spitzer published a signed article in the influential Washington Post titled, "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers."
That article, laying clear blame on the administration for the development of the subprime crisis, appeared the day after his ill-fated tryst with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. Just a coincidence? Spitzer wrote, "In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks."
In his article, Spitzer charged, "Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."
Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "predator lenders' partner in crime". The president, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet. Spitzer wrote, "When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably."
With that article, Spitzer may well have signed his own political death warrant.
F William Engdahl is author of the book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, about to be released by Global Research Publishing, and of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press. He may be reached via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
Original article posted here.
By F William Engdahl
The spectacular and bizarre release of secret FBI wiretap data to the New York Times exposing the tryst of New York State governor Eliot Spitzer, the now-infamous client "No 9", with an upmarket call-girl had relatively little to do with the George W Bush administration’s pursuit of high moral standards for public servants. Spitzer was likely the target of a White House and Wall Street dirty tricks operation to silence one of the most dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial market crisis.
A useful rule of thumb in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public figures is to ask who might want to eliminate that person. In the case of former governor Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, it is clear that the spectacular "leak" of the government's FBI wiretap records showing that Spitzer paid a high-cost prostitute US$4,300 for what amounted to about an hour’s personal entertainment, was politically motivated.
The press has almost solely focused on the salacious aspects of the affair, not least the hefty fee Spitzer apparently paid. Why the scandal breaks now is the more interesting question.
Spitzer became governor of New York following a high-profile record as a relentless state attorney general going after financial crimes such as the Enron fraud, and corruption by Wall Street investment banks during the 2002 dotcom bubble era. Spitzer made powerful enemies by all accounts. The former head of the large AIG insurance group, Hank Greenburg, was among his detractors. He was bitterly hated on Wall Street. He had made his political career on being ruthless against financial corruption.
Most recently, from his position as governor of the nation’s second largest state, home to its financial industry, Spitzer had begun making high-profile attacks on the complicity of the Bush administration in covertly arranging bailouts of its Wall Street friends at the expense of ordinary homeowners and citizens, all paid for by taxpayer funds.
Curiously, Spitzer, who had been elected governor in 2006, defeating a Republican by winning nearly 70% of the vote, has not been charged with any crime. However, the day the scandal broke, New York Assembly Republicans immediately announced plans to impeach Spitzer or put him on public trial were he to refuse to resign. Spitzer could be asked to testify in any trial involving the Emperors Club prostitution ring. But so far he hasn’t been charged with a crime.
Prostitution is illegal in most US states, but clients of prostitutes are almost never charged, nor are their names usually leaked in a case in process. The Spitzer case is in the hands of Washington and not state authorities, underscoring the clear political nature of the Spitzer "Watergate".
The New York Times said Spitzer was an individual identified as Client 9 in court papers filed last week. Client 9 arranged to meet with "Kristen", a prostitute who officially charged $1,000 an hour, on February 13 in a Washington hotel. Whatever transpired, Spitzer paid her $4,300, according to the official documents. The case is clearly political when compared with more egregious recent cases involving Republicans. Republican Mark Foley was exposed propositioning male interns in Congress and Rudolph Giuliani was discovered cheating on his wife, but no or few Republican calls for resignations were heard.
Why the attack now?
Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush administration for the nation’s current financial and economic disaster. He testified in Washington in mid-February before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee on the problems in New York-based specialized insurance companies, known as "monoline" insurers. In a national CNBC TV interview the same day, he laid blame for the crisis and its broader economic fallout on the Bush administration.
Spitzer recalled that several years ago the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) went to court and blocked New York State efforts to investigate the mortgage activities of national banks. Spitzer argued that the OCC did not put a stop to questionable loan marketing practices or uphold higher underwriting standards.
"This could have been avoided if the OCC had done its job," Spitzer said in the interview. "The OCC did nothing. The Bush administration let the housing bubble inflate and now that it's deflating we're dealing with the consequences. The real failure, the genesis, the germ that has spread, was the subprime scandal," Spitzer said.
Fraudulent marketing and very low "teaser" mortgage rates that later ballooned higher, were practices that should have been stopped, he argued. "When mortgages are being marketed, there is a marketplace obligation to ensure the borrower can afford to pay back the debt," he said.
That TV interview was only one instance of Spitzer laying blame on the Bush Republicans. On February 14, Spitzer published a signed article in the influential Washington Post titled, "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers."
That article, laying clear blame on the administration for the development of the subprime crisis, appeared the day after his ill-fated tryst with the prostitute at the Mayflower Hotel. Just a coincidence? Spitzer wrote, "In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks."
In his article, Spitzer charged, "Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."
Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "predator lenders' partner in crime". The president, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet. Spitzer wrote, "When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably."
With that article, Spitzer may well have signed his own political death warrant.
F William Engdahl is author of the book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, about to be released by Global Research Publishing, and of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press. He may be reached via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
Original article posted here.
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