"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Is it News When Trump Is Caught Lying?
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Normally we expect presidential candidates to stick to making their case without a stream-- let alone a gusher-- of blatant lies. So far PolitiFact has checked 79 of Trump's controversial public assertions. They only found 4 to be true, although another 14 were "mostly true," which means 10% of what he said was true enough. 90% wasn't. 40% of his statements have been outright lies and another 19% for the category "Pants on Fire"-- from his assertion that Ted Cruz's father was involved with assassinating JFK to more mundane nonsense, like Hillary being unpopular among women and the federal budget funding illegal immigrants coming over the border. He'll just say anything, but bothers some people but-- since it confirms what they've been brainwashed into believing in by Hate Talk Radio and Fox News, just makes his followers happy and excited.
One of his most oft-repeated-- and full debunked-- lies in that he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning and that he was "on the record" opposing it. As the L.A. Times pointed out Tuesday night, it's just not true, even if Trump has now persuaded himself that it is. And he claims Ruth Bader Ginsberg's mind is shot! Because of all the cosmetic surgery, people sometimes forget that Trump is 70 and losing his ability to remember and, worse yet, to reason. "Over and over," wrote Michael Finnegan, "Donald Trump has stated falsely that he opposed the Iraq war from the start, and he did it again Tuesday in Indiana. 'It should have never happened,' the Republican presidential hopeful told a crowd at a rally outside Indianapolis with a potential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. 'I didn’t want to go from the beginning, and I have proof-- from the beginning. I didn’t want Iraq. I said you’re going to destabilize the Middle East, and that’s exactly what happened.' Proof? Nothing that has persuaded anyone he's tell the truth.
[I]n an audio recording unearthed by Buzzfeed News, radio host Howard Stern asked Trump whether he supported invading Iraq in an interview on Sept. 11, 2002, six months before President George W. Bush ordered the start of the war. “Yeah, I guess so,” Trump responded. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” Asked for proof that Trump had opposed the war, his spokeswoman Hope Hicks said he was “referring to a clip from Neil Cavuto” of Fox News from January 2003. Trump told Cavuto that perhaps Bush “shouldn't be doing it yet, and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations,” according to Politifact, a nonpartisan fact-checking organization. But it was false, Politifact found, for Trump to state that he “was totally against the war in Iraq” and had warned it would destabilize the Middle East. Trump’s statements Tuesday came in freewheeling remarks to supporters in Westfield, Ind., after days of sticking to carefully scripted comments in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of five police officers in Dallas. He accused Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of singlehandedly giving rise to the Islamic State terrorist group when she was secretary of State. “She’s the one who created it with stupidity,” he said. “With stupid, stupid policy.” Trump, whose rallies have repeatedly deteriorated into violent clashes between protesters and his supporters, warned of “four more years of civil unrest” if Clinton wins the election. He also said Iran had made "fools" of the United States with its deal to restrain its nuclear program. “Folks, those days are over,” Trump said. And he returned to his hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration, leading a call-and-response on his proposed border wall. “Who is going to pay for the wall?” he asked. “Mexico!” the crowd hollered back. “I don’t hear you,” Trump told the crowd. After a loud reprise, Trump continued: “They will-- 100%. And you know what? They‘ll be happy to pay for the wall.”
Of course we shouldn't be talking just about British pols. A more urgent question for those of us on this side of the pond is how many American pols "get it"? The Chilcot Report, I gather, deals only with possible British war crimes in the grand Iraq adventure. (See Nick Hopkins's Guardian report, "Chilcot exposes how Blair kept ministers and generals in the dark.") However, is there any question that the ringleaders, the master-"minds," the orchestrators of both the war crimes and the lies formulated to both promote and conceal them, are our fellow Americans?
In some quick online chatter that Howie and Noah I did, Noah underscored the point:
If I had the big badge, I would hold a big package deal Nuremberg-style trial of ALL of the political and media scum who voted and propagandized to go to Iraq. I would do it on a reality TV channel and I would have a sliding scale of various punishments for the perps that would match their degree of blame (which the trial process would determine). My TV show would start with the minor punishments such as removal of finger and toe nails to removal of limbs and blinding such as our soldiers and the civilians had to suffer. Then, for the last week of my reality mini-series, I would have Blair, Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Kindasleaza, and Blair's seconds face real life Gladiators at Wimbledon. Dump their miserable remains at sea in the same place bin Laden was dumped; mass murderers all. That just seems fair and just to me.
I regret that criminals such as Blair, and Bush et al, who created the all too predictble fiasco in Iraq, and thus enabled and gave the world the cancer that is ISIS, which now has the dream of killing whole cites at a time, if not, yet, the means, have but one life to present for punishment up to and including exection for their crimes against all humanity. If we are to be a civilized world, trials are demanded and justice for the dead, justice for the terror and havoc being visited on the living, and justice for the future victims is a moral imperative. Oh, and let's not forget the oil companies.
Jeremy Corbyn has apologised on behalf of the Labour party for its role in the 2003 Iraq war, and warned that the people who took the decisions “laid bare in the Chilcot report” must now face up to the consequences.
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The Labour leader’s apology went further than he had earlier in parliament, when he responded to the Chilcot report after David Cameron. At that point, Corbyn called the war an “act of military aggression”, arguing that it was thought of as illegal “by the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion”. (emphasis added)
Corbyn said in his House of Commons speech that he had apologized to families of military servicemen and women who lost loved ones, Iraqi citizens and war veterans "for the decisions taken by our then government that led this country into a disastrous war," explaining --
It’s a disaster that occurred when my party was in government; 140 of my then colleagues in the parliamentary Labour party opposed it at the time, as did many many party members and trade unionists.
The Guardian team writes:
Corbyn said that many more Britons had said they regretted their votes, which they had cast in loyalty to the Labour government because of the intelligence that today’s report has “confirmed to be false”.
“Politicians and political parties can only grow stronger by acknowledging when they get it wrong and by facing up to their mistakes,” he said. “So I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq in March 2003.
“That apology is owed first of all to the people of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, and the country is still living with the devastating consequences of the war and the forces it unleashed.” He said it was those people who had paid the greatest price.
Ian plucks out this bit from the Guardian report on Corbyn's apology:
As Corbyn issued his excoriating statement to the House of Commons, he was heckled by his own backbencher Ian Austin, who shouted: “Sit down and shut up, you’re a disgrace.”
Which he introduces thusly: "I very much hope this next man, who has far less worth than the toilet paper I clean myself with, is not a Labour candidate in the next election," explaining: "When you’re screaming at someone for apologizing for a war crime that is identical to that which many Nazi leaders were hung for, you’re officially a waste of human skin." He goes on:
Corbyn hasn’t actually called for “war crimes trial for Blair,” but he’s made the case. The European Criminal Court, being also basically worthless, had already said that they would not try Tony Blair, but might charge ordinary soldiers.
I have never had any respect for the ECC, whose mandate appears to involve prosecuting the politically powerless, especially Africans, and avoiding anyone with any influence. Justice as unevenly applied as the ECC applies it is not a step in the right direction, it is actually injustice. Saying that they would not charge Blair even before the Chilcot report was out simply confirmed the primacy of political over legal considerations for them.
Yet again, Corbyn has proved he is one of very few honorable people in a den of scum. May he become Prime Minister and, once Prime Minister, may he ensure Tony Blair and those who aided and abetted him in selling the Iraq war with lies, have the fair trial they so richly deserve.
Oh, and as usual, doing so is not just the right thing to do ethically, it would be the right thing to do politically, keeping Corbyn’s primary enemies completely occupied. Because, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the people who fear actual left-wingers or people of principle the most aren’t Tories, they are Blairites.
Now, as to our team of war criminals, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the whole miserable crew . . . well, we don't even have a report to chew over, do we?
GLENN GREENWALD MUSES ON THE CHILCOT
REPORT AND THE CAUSES OF TERRORISM
Howie notes: "New Labour, like the New Dems, is confused about which side it's on -- other than whatever works to advance individual careers (their own)-- and has been relentlessly attacking Jeremy Corbyn since his loud and unswerving opposition to Blar's war. He also commends our attention to Glenn Greenwald's Intercept post today, "Chilcot Report and 7/7 London Bombing Anniversary Converge to Highlight Terrorism’s Causes," which begins (lots o' links onsite):
ELEVEN YEARS AGO today, three suicide bombers attacked the London subway and a bus and killed 51 people. Almost immediately, it was obvious that retaliation for Britain’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a major motive for the attackers.
Two of them said exactly that in videotapes they left behind: The attacks “will continue and pick up strengths till you pull your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq. … Until we feel security, you will be targets.” Then, less than a year later, a secret report from British military and intelligence chiefs concluded that “the war in Iraq contributed to the radicalization of the July 7 London bombers and is likely to continue to provoke extremism among British Muslims.” The secret report, leaked to The Observer, added: “Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalization of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the U.K. as legitimate.”
The release on Tuesday of the massive Chilcot report — which the New York Times called a “devastating critique of Tony Blair” — not only offers more proof of this causal link, but also reveals that Blair was expressly warned before the invasion that his actions would provoke al Qaeda attacks on the U.K. As my colleague Jon Schwarz reported yesterday, the report’s executive summary quotes Blair confirming he was “aware” of a warning by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-U.S./anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.”
None of this is the slightest bit surprising. . . .
Evidently Tony Blair doesn't subscribe to the old proposition "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies"
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by Ken
If you believe that Tony Blair is "one of the most respected and admired world leaders of the last 50 years," you're going to seethe with envy that I got this e-mail from NYC's 92nd Street Y and you didn't. I got it, as the e-mail explained, "because you are a loyal patron of 92Y" -- by which they mean, I presume, that back in June 2011 I indeed bought a ticket for Keith Olbermann's lollapalooza of a tribute to James Thurber, one of my idols, with participants including Calvin Trillin, another of my idols. (And it was a grand night. I wrote about it here in a post called "Thurber Tonight -- special edition: At the 92nd Street Y Thurber 'do,' Keith O gives a virtuoso performance.")
Because of my loyal patronage, I was being extended an opportunity to purchase, "in advance of the general public," "up to two tickets" to the above-trumpeted event, at which your pal Tony will offer his "unparalleled analysis of the world’s most difficult and complex issues."
The prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007, he now works to secure peace and prosperity in the Middle East, improve governance in Africa, find solutions to climate change and encourage understanding of world faiths. He talks with Rabbi Peter Rubinstein about his take on the current world situation, especially regarding the Middle East in crisis, extremism, governments and education.
Now I bet you're really eating your heart out!
In the event that you're motivated to wangle tickets for this great event -- priced, you'll note, "from $100.00" (can we not guess that from there the prices go up, not down?) -- it's only fair to advise, as the e-mail does:
Please note that for security purposes, all ticketholders’ names must be submitted at the time of purchase, and all ticketholders must bring a photo ID to the event. Tickets are non-transferable.
No backpacks, shopping bags, large handbags/purses/briefcases or cameras/recording devices will be permitted inside the building, and 92Y cannot provide storage of any such items.
Apparently there's concern that not all attendees may share your unflinching admiration for this "one of the most respected and admired world leaders of the last 50 years."
AS SO OFTEN HAPPENS IN MY LIFE . . .
News of this impending great event ricochets weirdly in my disorderly mental space. Seeing as how I am, as it happens, let's say "momentarily between jobs" (that's another whole story), I am finding this a good time to catch up on some of the John Le Carré books I somehow missed among the prodigious output of yet another favorite writer, and just now I'm reading the splendid 2003 offering Absolute Friends, whose immediate action -- though the novel also ranges back in time a couple of decades -- is the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which one character characterizes thusly (page 321 of the 2004 Back Bay paperback edition):
That war on Iraq was illegitimate, Mr. Mundy. It was a criminal and immoral conspiracy. No provocation, no link with Al Qaeda, no weapons of Armageddon. Tales of complicity between Saddam and Osama were self-serving bullshit. It was an old colonial oil war dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty, and it was launched by a clique of war-hungry Judeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-9/11 psychopathy.
Our speaker goes on:
All it takes for a war like that to start, Sasha tells me, is for a few good men to do nothing. Well, they did nothing Whether they're good men, that's another thing. The Democratic opposition did fuck-all. Stay home, sing patriotic songs till it's safe to come out, was their policy. Jesus Christ, what kind of opposition is that? What kind of moral courage?
Still later, in recognition of the nationality of the Mr. Mundy to whom he is speaking, our speaker adds -- and this is the reason I bring it up:
Forgive me, I am failing as a host. I was forgetting the vital role played by your British prime minister, without whom there might have been no war.
(In fact, I recall earlier on an even more caustic verbal assault on PM Blair, hurled at the same Mr. Mundy by the above-referenced Sasha. I don't feel up to trying to dig it out, though. It should be noted too that these are the views of the character(s) in question, not of the author. Still, I haven't found much indication that the author is in serious disagreement on these matters.)
Stuff that in your backpack, shopping bag, or large handbag/purse/briefcase.
Disgraced NYT media whore Judy Miller is back, and she's mad about being singled out for being wrong about Iraq
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Feel free to watch if you like. I don't want to, and thanks to Erik Wemple's vigilance, I don't have to.
"If that consensus was wrong, I think you can’t blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong."
-- former NYT dimwit Judith Miller, in her book
by Ken
There's ample reason to feel general gratitude to washingtonpost.com's Erik Wemple for the watchful eye the Erik Wemple Blog keeps on the hamsters who turn the wheels in their cages to power the infotainment noozemedia. But there are times when I have to positively bless the man. Like now, when it means he's got his eye on the likes of former NYT noozemonger Judy Miller, meaning I don't have to.
You'd have to have achieved an even higher level of obliviousness that I've managed in order to not be aware that our Judy is Out There, just this close to being Among Us -- so close, she's almost within spitting range. But of course she's too smart to get that close, even now when she has to pretend to care what we think because at the moment she has, in case you hadn't guessed, a book to flog.
We'll come back to the Erik Wemple Blog report in a moment. First let's quickly dispose of the preposterous argument embodied in the the line I've put at the top of this post: "If that consensus was wrong, I think you can’t blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong." As we'll see in a moment, our Judy places great stock in That Consensus (I'm surprised she isn't capping the phrase herself); it seems to be what grounds her reality.
Which is why she's crap as a reporter, because a serious reporter, especially of the elite kind our Judy pretended to be, is supposed to be interested, not in That Consensus but in The Reality. Contrary to the claims we're about to hear her make, That Consensus, far from having never been wrong, has probably hardly ever been right if you take the trouble to look closely enough. The only difference in the case of the mess that That Consensus made of "Come Invade Me" Iraq is that That Consensus was so hugely and visibly and disastrously wrong.
We can chatter a bit more afterward, but now let's turn the floor over to EW (lotsa links onsite):
As HBO comedian Bill Maher noted on his program Friday night [see the YouTube clip up top], former New York Times reporter Judith Miller has served as the spokeswoman for all the various journalists who screwed up the WMD coverage prior to the 2003 launch of the Iraq war against Saddam Hussein. “I take your point when you say you were singled out,” said Maher in an interview with Miller.
That said, Miller has trouble renouncing the credulous pieces that bore her byline in the run-up to the war. Asked by Maher whether she would have been more skeptical about the claims from the Bush administration and others, Miller insisted: “I couldn’t have been more skeptical. I was more skeptical. Every time I got information that contradicted something that we had reported, I went back and did a second story, sometimes a third story.” Miller left the Times in 2005 after her bizarre involvement in the I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby case.
Why is Miller talking with Maher about WMD 12 years after the fact? To promote her new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, in which the reporter lashes back at her many critics. “Relying on the conclusions of American and foreign intelligence analysts and other experts I trusted, I, too, got WMD in Iraq wrong. But not because I lacked skepticism or because senior officials spoon-fed me a line,” Miller writes.
Maher’s program, Real Time With Bill Maher, proved somewhat hospitable to Miller’s self-rehab project. “The New York Times was not alone. Almost every paper in the country was reporting this,” Miller said to Maher. “But beyond that, this information was coming from the men and women who had gotten Osama bin Laden right, who understood that the country was vulnerable to a biological weapons attack. I was relying on those same sources. They had never lied to me, they were usually right, we had lots of qualifiers in the story.”
Another point: There was a consensus behind the intelligence, said Miller. “If that consensus was wrong, I think you can’t blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong,” said Miller in the interview. “Though, I wanted to go back and say, ‘How did this happen?’ That’s why I wrote the book — how did this happen, how did they get it so wrong?”
The pages of The Story betray any such motivation. Far from reading like an attempt to inquire how the prewar Iraq intelligence was off, the book’s thrust takes on the narrower imperative of contextualizing and defending its author’s role in the whole mess.
Speaking of which, Miller’s discussion of an intelligence “consensus” omits her own role in cementing it. On Dec. 20, 2001, for example, Miller wrote about the claims of Iraqi defector Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who said that “he had personally visited at least 20 different sites that he believed to have been associated with Iraq’s chemical or biological weapons programs.” A number of other incriminating details about Hussein’s WMD programs spill from the story.
What happened to this Miller exclusive? It got footnoted in a version of a White House background report on WMD, titled “A Decade of Deception and Defiance.”
When you write for the New York Times, you can never shrink from your role in bringing about a “consensus.”
JUST A FEW THINGS --
About our Judy being "singled out"
No, this isn't going to fly. You can't go around with your nose sniffing the heavens and your feet resolutely refusing to touch the ground in consequence of your journalistic divinity as an elite sage of the NYT, privileged with a galaxy of "inside" sources, only to shrink back to "Gosh, I'm just one little reporter" when the you-know-what hits the fan. For example, how many of those other reporters who got it wrong were helped in getting it wrong by editors who kept beating them over the head with our Judy's NYT reports? The fact is, those other reporters have taken some heat for getting it wrong. Not as much as they should have, but our Judy's got no beef for taking something closer to the amount of heat she deserved.
In fact, there were reporters who got it right
Again, they haven't gotten anything like the credit they deserved for getting it right, but unlike our Judy, those braver and more competent reporters didn't go along with That Consensus, and were generally reviled for it. They may not have accounted for a large percentage of the infotainment noozers, but they were hardly insignificant in number. I get the impression that our Judy isn't paying any more attention to those people now than she did back when they, unlike her, were ferchrissakes doing their effing job. I mean, how smart did you have to be to know that every word that came from everyone connected to, or merely in agreement with, the likes of "Big Dick" Cheney and "Chimpy the Prez" Bush was lying, or at least likely to be woefully misinformed. Let me say once again: There were plenty of people at the time screaming that we werre being lied to.
Is any of this included in our Judy's book supposedly exploring how That Consensus got it so miserably, diastrously wrong? From what Erik says, I'm guessing no way, Jose.
Say what?
Our Judy one more time, slower:
"If that consensus was wrong, I think you can't blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong."
What? Forget the reporters for a moment; of course we can blame them. (By the way, did they ever mention to their readers and viewers that they weren't "reporting" reality but That Consensus?) She can't possibly have meant to say that we can't blame the intelligence analysts who got it wrong, can she?
What am I missing here? Isn't blaming the intelligence analysts who got it wrong -- or at least taking a mighty close look at their work -- one of the first things we should have been doing? (Of course there were also plenty of intelligence analysts who didn't get it wrong but were bullied into silence by thugs like Big Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, busily hammering their consensus into submission. But then, even now our Judy doesn't seem to know anything about this.)
Say, doesn't our Judy's worship of That Consensus have a familiar ring?
Anytime That Consensus is put to the test, doesn't it come up smelling really bad? Just a couple of examples:
• Wasn't there a That Consensus about our involvement in Vietnam -- both our reasons for being there and the glorious job our forces and our stalwart South Vietnamese allies were doing?
• And when our Judy yammers about the unimpeachable wisdom of That Consensus, isn't this just the sort of thing that a couple of young metro reporters named Woodward and Bernstein heard from the wise old hands above them at the Washington Postall through their Watergate coverage?
After Woodward and Bernstein cracked the case, it was abundantly clear that the job could only have been done by reporters who had no stake in That Consensus, who didn't get any rewards from it and didn't owe it anything. Of course that young Woodward fellow went on to become a pillar of That Consensus, establishing a brand as manufacturer of his very own version of it. But that's another story.
Calling Out Rachel Maddow On Her Ill-Informed Whitewash Of Iraq War Democrats
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Maybe I was wrong. I mean Rachel Maddow is very smart and has great sources and I really trust her more than almost anyone on TV other than Ragnar Lodbrok. But Monday night when she said (in the clip above about how we look at contemporary history) "In American politics, there were plenty of Democrats who went along with the Iraq War 10 years ago, who believed it, who fell for it, who advanced it and made the lie more convincing by virtue of their Democratic endorsement. On the Democratic side though, since, that at least has since become a source of shame. It's a strike against you in Democratic politics, right? It's part of the reason we have a president named Barack Obama, who was not part of that mess, and not a president named Hilary Clinton who, frankly, was part of that mess. In the Democratic Party people who were wrong on the Iraq War are seen as having been wrong about the Iraq War. They have had to apologize and explain why they were wrong. That vote for the Iraq War is held against them." I'm sure she goes to different cocktail parties than I do-- actually, I don't go to cocktail parties; I've never even tasted a beer in my entire life. But those lines above that I took the liberty to make bold... I don't know what she's talking about. Other than Hillary having to wait 8 extra years before being allowed to move back into the White House and Dick Gephardt being forced to take a job as a millionaire sleazy K Street lobbyist, which Democrats have been held accountable for their pathetic role in pushing the Iraq war-- or even "had to apologize and explain why they were wrong?" The roll call on that fateful October day in 2002 shows 81 House Democrats voting with Bush (and Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt) and 126 Democrats voting against Bush and with soon-to-be Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. But when you look at the names of the Democrats who voted for the war, who, in Rachel's words, "who believed it, who fell for it, who advanced it and made the lie more convincing by virtue of their Democratic endorsement," you see a lot of current party leaders-- and not a lot of politicians who have apologized or explained anything-- at least not on a level of Republican Congressman Walter Jones (NC), for whom that vote was a road to Damascus moment that cured him of warmongery forever. Those Democratic leaders... not a chance. We'll come back to party big shots in a moment. Let me start with a less-known figure. Eliot Engel, an AIPAC stooge and barely concealed agent of Israel's far right Likud Party, purportedly represents New Yorkers in the Bronx, New Rochelle, Mt. Vernon, Yonkers, Scarsdale, Rye, Hastings-On-Hudson. He was most recently in the news bolstering Republican lies about Chuck Hagel being too anti-Israel to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense. Just before that he was in the news because House Democrats voted that he would be their new Ranking Member on-- what else?-- the House Foreign Affairs Committee. If the Democrats recapture the House in 2014, unapologetic warmonger and Iraq War booster Eliot Engel-- who would like the U.S. to attack Iran immediately-- becomes the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Did Rachel miss that one? Nancy Pelosi, essentially the lame duck leader of the House Democrats-- she's practically begging to retire-- is surrounded by a team of Iraq War boosters, none of whom have apologized for anything and none of whom have learned the kinds of lessons Walter Jones has learned about war. Here's her team in order of rank within the caucus:
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Whip/heir apparent- voted for war • Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Assistant Leader- voted against war • Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Caucus Chair- voted against war • Joe Crowley (D-NY), Caucus Vice Chair- voted for war • Steve Israel (D-NY), DCCC Chair- voted for war • Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), DNC Chairman/Speaker-in-waiting- AIPAC shill but wasn't in Congress in 2002
Let's look at a random dozen of some of the other Democrats who voted for Bush's Iraq War but who were never held accountable (other than karmically in a few cases), a where are they now paragraph: • Shelley Berkley (NV)- virtually the only Democratic serious contender to lose a Senate bid in 2012 • Rod Blagojevich (IL)- serving time in federal prison • Leonard Boswell (IA)- one of the only Democratic House incumbents defeated in 2012 • Harold Ford (TN)- banking lobbyist/Fox TV clown; has become a national punchline for late night comics • Ralph Hall (TX)- switched parties; now a Republican beset by teabaggers • Jane Harman (CA)- driven out of electoral politics; now a glorified AIPAC lobbyist • Tim Holden (PA)- one of only 2 Democratic incumbents defeated in a 2012 primary • William Jefferson (LA)- serving time in federal prison • Ron Kind (WI)- new chairman of Wall Street-oriented New Dems • Jim Matheson (UT)- single biggest supporter of Boehner inside the Democratic caucus; ProgressivePunch crucial vote score for 2013- 18.18%, worse than 37 Republicans • Mike McIntyre (NC)- teetering on the brink of defeat, rescued by immense DCCC expenditures last year & looking forward to the same support this year, despite a consistent GOP voting record • Al Wynn (MD)- defeated by Donna Edwards in a primary; currently a crooked K Street lobbyist. Since it's anniversary time, let's take a look at Juan Cole's clear-eyed examination of what the U.S. actually accomplished in Iraq through the war that much of our political elite supported (unapologetically). I recommend the whole piece (at the link) but I'll just go to his conclusion.
The US destroyed the Iraqi state. It dissolved the army. It is not true as Bush apologists say, that the army was anyway gone. If they had offered soldiers money to show up at their barracks and report to their sergeants, they would have, for the most part. It still is unclear who exactly got rid of the Iraqi army and why. Jay Garner, the first proposed US viceroy in Iraq, suggested that the Bush administration was afraid that a Baathist army devoted to socialism and a strong state would get in the way of their plans for an Eastern European style “shock therapy” in the country. (One of the many motivations for the invasion of Iraq was to further destroy the socialist model for global south economies). Of course, some elite units were heavily Sunni Arab, but they could have been integrated. Instead, they were fired and sent home (it was even threatened that they would not even get pensions). Some of them joined the guerrilla resistance. The US also destroyed the public sector, dissolving state-owned companies and creating massive unemployment, especially in Sunni provinces such as al-Anbar, which naturally emerged as among the most violent centers of resistance.
Most damaging of all, the US backed the ‘debaathification’ program championed by Shiite politicians like Ahmad Chalabi, which actually involved firing some 100,000 Sunnis from government jobs (even, often, fairly low-level ones) and then giving those jobs to members of the Shiite parties that were coming to power. As late as 2010, the debaathification commission was trying to interfere in the parliamentary elections. This massive piece of social engineering did more than anything to fan the still-burning flames of sectarianism, since it awarded material benefits on the basis of ethnic and sectarian identity. You can’t do much about your ethnic and sectarian identity. If you were punished for belonging to a party, you could change parties. But the Sunnis in particular weren’t allowed to escape their former political history (many Shiites who had been Baath Party members escaped punishment). If you’re punished for being who you are, and it is signaled that that will go on forever, then you might be tempted to turn to violence. The vaunted ‘sons of Iraq’ or ‘awakening councils’ program that the US adopted from late 2006 involved organizing what were essentially pro-American Sunni militias to fight radical Sunnis. The Shiite government did not want these some 100,000 armed Sunnis left behind as a problem. It declined to give most of them employment as the Americans withdrew. It actually prosecuted some of them for their former guerrilla activities (before they switched teams and joined the awakening councils). Not only were they often left unemployed, but they no longer had the command of military force to protect themselves from reprisals by the radicals.
The political system the US imposed on Iraq is a one-chamber parliamentary system. It has been demonstrated by political scientists in societies with a structural minority, this system virtually guarantees frustration and violence (Sunni Arabs are probably like 18% of the population, Shiites 60%, with the rest Kurds, Turkmen and a dwindling number of Christians). Assuming Shiites can get their act together (not a foregone conclusion), they can always dominate the government. The prime minister in Iraq faces few de facto checks on power, assuming he or she can avoid a vote of no confidence. PM Nouri al-Maliki stands accused by his rivals of making the military and security forces his personal fiefdom and using them for his own purposes. Iraq’s broken political system has what is more or less a permanent hung parliament, since the Sunnis, Kurds and two major Shiite factions can never for very long unite behind a particular prime minister. There is no relief from this political gridlock on the horizon. The US actually stole billions from Iraqi petroleum receipts, which is illegal in international law, using it to badly administer the country and possibly just embezzling large amounts of it. More billions of US taxpayer funds also went missing. Most reconstruction efforts were poorly suited to the local conditions and most of that effort and money were wasted. Iraq needs 14 gigawatts of electricity generation but has only 9 gigs (the government keeps promising that new plants will open this year). Much of the country lacks potable water and people are forced to drink sewage. Half of the country’s physicians were forced abroad in the last decade, and many Iraqis still have to seek medical care outside the country. The war was illegal in international law. Since the US had no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, likely there would have been an Iraqi spring in 2011 and the regime would have been prevented, as in Libya, by US air power from putting it down with military force. The regime would have been gone, but by the Iraqi people acting unitedly, instead of by a foreign imposition that championed one ethnic group over others. The outcome would surely have been more stable. The worst thing was, the whole nightmare was unnecessary.
Should Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel and Joe Crowley-- who did all they could to push that war forward for Bush-- be leading the House Democrats now... and after Pelosi retires? We'll have to ask Rachel.
No, Not "Everyone" Fell For The Bush-Cheney Call To War In Iraq
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National Memo kicked off the week reminding us that not everyone fell for the Bush-Cheney war propaganda and not everyone went along with their rush to war in Iraq. There were, in fact, millions of people who protested and, in terms of insiders, National Memo spotlights people who criticized the invasion risking their careers and reputations to do so. They focus on Tyler Drumheller, head of CIA operations in Europe, the Knight Ridder Newspaper chain, Al Gore, blue chip journalists Dana Milbank, Walter Pincus, and Maureen Dowd, Jimmy Carter, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, Carne Ross, the U.K.'s Iraq expert at the UN Security Council, and then an unknown Illinois state Senator from Chicago, Barack Obama. His speech on October 2, 2002.
Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars. After Sept. 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income-- to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear-- I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with bin Laden and al-Qaida, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair. The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not-- we will not-- travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.
And they also highlighted one Member of Congress, a conservative Tennessee Republican in fact, Jimmy Duncan, one of only six House Republicans to vote against authorizing the war in 2002. In all 133 Members of the House voted against Bush's rush to war in Iraq, Duncan and 5 other Republicans plus 126 Democrats. The shameful resolution to Authorize the Use of Force Against Iraq passed 296-133. Democratic Whip Nancy Pelosi split with Minority Leader Gephardt, who supported the war and persuaded 81 Democrats to give Bush the margin he needed to start it. That, in effect, ended Gephardt's political career. He had dreams of the Speakership and the presidency but today he's a sleazy, tawdry K Street lobbyist today with an ugly reputation as one of the assholes responsible for some much death and destruction in our time. Here's how Duncan remembers it from the GOP perspective:
I was called down to the White House for a briefing with Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet and John McLaughlin,” he recalled in a 2005 interview with the American Conservative. “I asked, ‘How much is Saddam Hussein’s total military budget?’ It was a little over two-tenths of one percent of ours. He was no threat to us whatsoever. He hadn’t attacked us. He hadn’t threatened to attack us. He wasn’t capable of attacking us.” The U.S. invasion, said Duncan, was “like the University of Tennessee football team taking on a second-grade football team-- it’s unbelievable.” In a March 6, 2003 speech, Duncan presented a kind of unassailable logic rarely seen on that side of the aisle, explaining: "It is a traditional conservative position to be critical of, skeptical about, even opposed to the very wasteful, corrupt United Nations, yet the primary justification for this war, what we hear over and over again, is that Iraq has violated 16 U.N. resolutions. "Well, other nations have violated U.N. resolutions, yet we have not threatened war against them." The chance he was taking was not lost on him, however. As he told the American Conservative, “When I pushed that button to vote against the war back in 2002, I thought I might be ending my political career.”
Conservative Republicans Walter Jones (R-NC) and Jimmy Duncan (R-TN)
Today North Carolina Republican Walter Jones is sorry-- very sorry-- he didn't make the same decision Duncan did. Unlike those 81 Democrats who have Bush the margin he needed, Jones has apologized-- and his voting record ever since his YES vote has reflected a change of heart. I wish we could say the same for the high ranking Democratic leaders who joined Gephardt in his support for Bush and Cheney that day. Most Democrats joined Nancy Pelosi in opposition, But the war boosters included some of the same awful Democrats today who are eager to "compromise" with Republicans in whittling away at the social safety net for American seniors. A coincidence? Many of the worst Democratic warmongers have been defeated and retired from public life-- from Rob Blagojevich (IL), Jane Harman (CA), Harold Ford (TN), Shelley Berkley (NV), and Howard Berman (CA) to Gene Taylor (MS), Ike Skelton (MO), Nick Lampson (TX), Tim Holden (PA), Baron Hill (IN), Leonard Boswell (IA), Al Wynn (MD) and Blue Dog founder Charlie Stenholm (TX). But many of the Democratic bad guys in 2002 are, sure enough, the Democratic bad guys in 2013:
• Steny Hoyer (MD), #2 ranking House Democrat • Steve Israel (NY), chairman, DCCC • Joe Crowley (NY), Democratic caucus vice-chairman • Eliot Engel (NY), House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member • Ron Kind (WI), chairman of the Wall Street-oriented New Dems • Rob Andrews (NJ) • Jim Matheson (UT) • Adam Schiff (CA)
Walter Jones: "Never Does Anyone Apologize For Buying Into A Lie To Send Young Men And Women To Die"
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Speaking of his congressional colleagues, North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, in explaining the book he's writing, God Forgive Me, told an audience, "Too many times in Washington, no one ever apologizes, especially when you send young men and women to die. We apologize if we get caught by the police driving drunk. If we have an affair, then we apologize. But never does anyone apologize for buying into a lie to send young men and women to die." Last week, when we looked at Rachel Maddow's presentation of Hubris, one of the things that struck us is how virtually none of our political elites have been held to account for the disaster of the Iraq War. War-mongers John McCain and Lindsey Graham are still on Sunday TV dispensing their wisdom every week. Bush, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Rumsfeld... the whole crew are more or less retired with some sense of respect they don't deserve. And many of the congressional leaders-- Dick Gephardt, now a lobbyist, being the exception-- of the rush to rubber-stamp Bush's rush to war have seen their status, power and prestige grow. Warmongers Boehner and Cantor now lead the House. Buck McKeon is now the head of the House Armed Services Committee and most of the GOP House chairmen were the ones who pushed the phony war stories. On the Democratic side of the aisle, Hoyer is now the #2 man in the caucus, Steve Israel is the head of the DCCC, Joe Crowley is rising rapidly in the caucus leadership, and Israeli agent Eliot Engel is the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. The only apology I've heard for this disaster is from Walter Jones, the Republican whose district includes the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune. I can't urge you strongly enough to take the time to watch the video of him above. Now he regrets that he didn't vote his conscience. "I regret that-- and I will 'til the day I die." He voted his conscience ever since and, although I don't agree with him on a whole range of issues, he's proven himself to be the best Republican in the House... and better than too many of the Democrats. Boehner just kicked him off the House Financial Services Committee because, according to Ryan Lizza, he didn't use the position to raise money (i.e.- take bribes) from the banksters for the GOP. "War is serious," he said. "And those of us who make the policy have an obligation to the Constitution-- and not to either party-- just to follow what they say is mandatory or necessary... War is hell... I am so fed up with people who do not understand the pain of war... My disappointment is with my own side." Jones, the deep-thinking, third-ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, explains why he's very enthusiastic about Chuck Hagel being confirmed as Secretary of Defense-- "I like him, I trust him; he's a man of integrity." He's real southern gentleman but beneath the polite veneer, you can see him seething about what a scumbag John McCain has turned out to be, not just about Hagel, but about war policies in general. He asked Eric Cantor to allow a serious hearing and debate on the role of Congress when it comes to war. Cantor turned him down. He hopes that this year the libertarians in Congress will put some real pressure of Cantor and Boehner. "I don't say this with any malice: I don't think John Boehner has ever visited Walter Reed. I don't think he's ever seen the broken bodies... Eisenhower hit a home run when he said 'Beware of the Military-Industrial Complex.'... Congress will not hold anyone to blame. Lyndon Johnson is probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War. He probably needs to make room for Dick Cheney." It's very odd to feel so much admiration for a Republican-- a conservative Republican, by the way-- and so much contempt for the corporatist, careerist phony "liberals" in the Democratic Party who don't have the personal integrity to stand up and look the voters in the eye and explain why they made such a big mistake. My own congressman, Adam Schiff, is one of those Democrats-- along with the aforementioned party leaders like Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel, Joe Crowley and Eliot Engel.
Have You Met The Andersons-- They Know How To Beat Slimy Republicans
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Would you vote for this used car dealer?
There are all these rumors that Chris Matthews is going to run, as a Democrat, against Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Senate race in 2010. I have kind of mixed feelings about him, but if he was auditioning yesterday-- and will campaign like this-- when he ripped Republican extremist Eric Cantor (R-VA) to shreds on Hardball he's certainly going to get my support.
Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, on the other hand, aren't running for any office. They're just a couple of Minnesotans who lost their son, Major Stuart Anderson, in Iraq. They could be the parents of anyone in America. Like half the people in Minnesota, the Andersons think Norm Coleman's got to go. Watch:
I know Norm Coleman. We were co-secretaries of our class at PS-197 in Brooklyn long before he had all those face lifts and cosmetic plastic surgeries to make himself look younger. My impression of Coleman is a lot like the Andersons'-- a yes man. He's tried to paint himself as a moderate and-- especially as election day started looming-- an independent voice. But when you examine his record... pure Bush rubber stamp. Since being elected in a fluke-- when Senator Paul Wellstone was killed in a mysterious plane crash many people attribute to Karl Rove's machinations-- Coleman has participated in 43 Iraq-related roll calls. He hasn't strayed from the Bush-Cheney line on any substantive matters. He voted with the Democrats and half the Republicans to provide humanitarian food assistance in connection with U.S. activities in Iraq on April 3, 2003 and then two years and a couple dozen rubber stamped bill later he broke with Bush over a budgetary accounting procedure.
When the tough votes come up Norm Coleman is always there for Bush and Cheney and never for folks like the Andersons. And Americans in general are starting to see McCain the same way that Minnesotans like the Andersons see Coleman. The NY Times is reporting some interesting polling data this morning that shows Americans look at John McCain as less likely to bring change and that he "is widely viewed as a 'typical Republican' who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies." And this year there is letter worse than being viewed as a "typical Republican."
Anatomy Of A Deceptive Election Ad: Meet Republican Rubber Stamp Gordon Smith
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A few days ago when we looked at Chris Shays' deceitful TV ad attempting to tie himself to Barack Obama's popularity in Connecticut, we also noted how Shays' had taken a cue from Oregon rubber stamp Gordon Smith who had already done a similar TV ad and subsequently quit as McCain's Oregon campaign chairman. Rasmussen's most recent August polling shows Obama beating McCain by 10 points.
Smith is desperate to do eveything he can to appear to distance himself from the Republican Party and from the party's radical right agenda. He's keeping away from the GOP HateFest in St Paul, hoping Oregon voters will forget he's part of the much-loathed Republican Party. But he still refuses-- as does Shays-- to give back the thousands and thousands of dollars he has received from reactionary swiftboat financier, one of the earth's worst polluters and most corrupt men, billionaire Harold Simmons of Dallas. Simmons will give whatever it takes to keep Smith in office-- even as he spends millions on smearing Barack Obama, the same way he did in 2004 to John Kerry. But forget for a moment that Harold Simmons has been buying Gordon Smith's votes for years and let's just look at Smith's voting record on Iraq, the subject of his new ad (below).
Smith wants Oregon voters to know he doesn't support Bush and the radical Neocon agenda on Iraq. Yet he still claims to support McCain for president, whose entire rason d'etre for being in the race is to fulfill that agenda and stay the course. McCain says Smith is still part of his "kitchen cabinet" and in the past-- before he saw the polling on how much Oregionians disagree with McCain's ideas about continuing the occupation of Iraq, he said. "President Bush has set our country on the course of recovery at home and strength abroad. We are safer today because this president has had the backbone to follow terrorism where terrorists are and go after them, and they have failed to strike us again on our own shores since 9-11… President Bush represents economic recovery and American leadership."
When we asked Jeff Merkley, the progressive, anti-war Democrat who's taking Smith on this year, why Smith was trying to portray himself as a moderate and independent and make believe he opposed the war, he had an interesting perspective: "Smith had a responsibility to investigate the Iraq threat and failed. Then he criticized people like me who opposed the war from the beginning. Smith says he read a book in July of 2006 that made him change his mind about the war. But after changing his mind Smith did nothing about it. Imagine, a U.S. Senator decided the Iraq war was wrong and did nothing about it for seven months. Not until six of his Republican colleagues lost reelection in 2006 did Smith decide to speak out and, even then, refused to take a tough stance to bring our sons and daughters home. America needs leaders who believe in what they fight for and will fight for what they believe in. Some times that is politically inconvenient, but that is what real leadership is all about."
That's why Blue America has been so enthusiastic in its endorsement of Jeff. Please consider donating what you can to his campaign at the Blue America ActBlue page.
Smith has participated in 49 roll call votes regarding Iraq since he enthusiastically supported the Bsh-Cheney position of the use of force 6 times on October 10 and 11, 2002. He was a 100% war hawk at the time. He claims he's changed. Has he? Well, he rubber stamped every single Bush-Cheney initiative in Iraq (19 roll calls) until he finally found something non-binding and innocuous to oppose in June, 2004. And then it was back to the good ole Smith rubber stamp shuffle for another year when another innocuous procedural vote came up that he could safely "support"-- along with even far right Republican kooks and warmongers like George Allen (R-VA), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Norm Coleman (R-MN), John Sununu (R-NH), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)... even his pal McCain... so not exactly a profile in courage. For the rest of 2005, all of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, when he started remembering he would soon have to face Oregon voters again, he never wavered from his rubber stamp support for the Bush Cheney Iraq agenda-- he was 100% in the bag. In March, 2007 there was a non-binding resolution and some assbackwards Neocon joke that he voted with the Democrats on, neirther being anything more than symbolic. And then the opinion polls of Oregon voters started coming in and Smith noticed his job approval rating was predicting a defeat in 2008. (October, 2007 and May, 2008) At that point he started flip flopping around, voting with Bush-Cheney-McCain and the radical right on some issues and against Bush-Cheney-McCain on other issues. Still, when the tough, hardcore votes come up-- the ones that would actually end the war, like Russ Feingold's amendment to redeploy U.S. forces in September, 2007, Smith's "no" vote cancelled out Wyden's "yes" vote. And on July 9, 2008, Smith lined up with the right-wing of his party to oppose Arlen Spector (R-PA) who offered an amendment to the FISA bill that would not have permitted retroactive immunity for criminal telecom executives (many of whom had "donated" to Smith's career), again cancelling out Wyden's vote. It might be worth noting that when you discount senators running for president , Gordon Smith was the 6th biggest recipient of "donations" from those telecom giants he voted to grant retroactive immunity. If that isn't out and out bribery, I don't know what is. They've lavished $169,710 on him in his political career.) Anyway, watch his deceptive ad and then think about it... does a senator who rubber stamps Bush for 5 years, then changes his positions a little after seeing some polls showing voters are angry merit re-eelection?
In politics, no one is perfect (except Donna Edwards... though Tammy Baldwin and Linda Sánchez come close enough). Still, there are patterns that develop over time, patterns that show the frightening consistency of Democrats who always vote with the Republicans on substantive matters. We've been referring to them as "the Republican wing of the Democratic Party." Who joins? Well... no one running as a Democrat-- not even Jim Marshall or John Barrow would ever admit they're part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (RwotDP). Even while Barrow was accepting money from a vicious anti-union political action committee and Republican front group 2 weeks ago-- which he said he was honored to be endorsed by-- BIPAC, he was still trying to persuade Georgia Democratic primary voters that he is Barack Obama's long-lost fraternal twin. Watch him move to a more... nuanced position as the general election approaches: "Barack who????"
Let's forget about Republicans for a while, since every single one of them is even worse than the worst Blue Dog or DLC Democrat, and see if we can find any patterns by examining some of the most crucial votes that have shaped today's political landscape. I want to start with the NAFTA vote on November 17, 1993, during which Bill Clinton dispatched a thuggish White House operative to cajole, beg, bribe and... when necessary, break arms and legs to get enough Democrats to cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans on one of the most damaging trade bills ever conceived.
The majority of Democrats, 156, voted against it (as did 43 Republicans). But joining the 132 pro-NAFTA Republicans were 102 Democrats. Clinton's most grotesque operative, a then barely known Rahm Emanuel, had just earned himself a rotten borough for his efforts and was soon after given a congressional seat in a Chicago district previously slated for extinction.
I know that some of these Democrats now realize they made a grievous error-- and have atoned by voting against similar bills and by fighting long and hard for Democratic principles since then. One of my neighbors, Xavier Becerra, fits into that category. So do Congressman Ed Markey and then congressmen/now senators Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, Maria Cantwell, and Ron Wyden. However, there are some Democrats who voted for NAFTA who have continued-- even after the disastrous effects of NAFTA became apparent-- to vote with the GOP on trade policy and on other key issues adversely effecting their constituents' well-being. That's what we mean by the RwotDP. These are Democratic members who voted for NAFTA who are still in Congress and still voting with the Republicans way more frequently than they should:
Jim Cooper (D-TN)* Norm Dicks (D-WA) Chet Edwards (D-TX) Bart Gordon (D-TN)* Steny Hoyer (D-MD) Solomon Ortiz (D-TX) John Tanner (D-TN)*
Fast forward a dozen years to July 28, 2005. Congress had already seen all the evidence of NAFTA's horrible impact on American working families. And the Bush Regime was pushing CAFTA. This time only 27 Republicans abandoned their party's right wing orthodoxy and opposed this bill. And instead of 102 Democrats, only 15 voted for CAFTA. Still, it passed-- by two votes, 217-215. These are the 15 Democrats, even with all the evidence in on NAFTA, who voted for CAFTA:
Melissa Bean (D-IL)* Jim Cooper (D-TN)* Henry Cuellar (D-TX) Norm Dicks (D-WA) Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX) William Jefferson (D-LA) Jim Matheson (D-UT)* Gregory Meeks (D-NY) Dennis Moore (D-KS)* Jim Moran (D-VA) Solomon Ortiz (D-TX) Ike Skelton (D-MO) Vic Snyder (D-AR) John Tanner (D-TN)* Edophous Towns (D-NY)
Even some of the Democrats' worst corporate hacks, like Hoyer and Emanuel, had migrated back to the Democratic position on trade. Even before they brought up CAFTA, the Bush Regime was pushing it's attack on Iraq. On October 10, 2002 the House voted on the Authorization For the Use of Force Against Iraq, a bill that cost then-Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, who conspired with Bush against the American people and against his own caucus, his job. Only 6 of 223 Republicans voted against Bush while 126 (61%) of 208 Democrats voted against the disastrous resolution.
Many Democrats crossed the aisle that day, to their eternal shame. Many, though by no means all, of the Jewish congressmen abandoned their progressive allies to vote the Likud-AIPAC line. But many of the Democrats who voted Republican that day are the same old regular suspects who are mainstays of the RwotDP and who keep abandoning Democratic values and principles whenever push comes to shove:
Shelley Berkley (NV) Howard Berman (CA) Marion Berry (AR)* Sanford Bishop (GA)* Leonard Boswell (IA)* Rick Boucher (VA) Allen Boyd (FL)* Norm Dicks (WA) Chet Edwards (TX) Eliot Engel (NY) Bob Etheridge (NC) Bart Gordon (TN)* Gene Green (TX) Jane Harman (CA)* Baron Hill (IN)* Tim Holden (PA)* Steny Hoyer (MD) William Jefferson (LA) Ron Kind (WI) Nick Lampson (TX)* Jim Matheson (UT)* Mike McIntyre (NC)* Dennis Moore (KS)* Collin Peterson (MN)* Mike Ross (AR)* Adam Schiff (CA)* Ike Skelton (MO) Adam Smith (WA) John Tanner (TN)* Ellen Tauscher (CA) Gene Taylor (MS)*
Let's compare that list of traitors to the 80 Democrats who crossed the aisle June 19 to make sure Bush could keep the Iraq War going. If these treacherous "Democrats," led by Hoyer and Emanuel, would have stuck with the majority of Democrats, led by the hapless Pelosi, Bush would be outlining his plan for bringing the troops home safely now. Many of these members are new in Congress, but see how many names were on the previous list of war authorizers (hint, their names are bolded) :
Jason Altmire (PA) Brian Baird (WA) John Barrow (GA)* Melissa Bean (IL)* Shelly Berkley (NV) Howard Berman (CA) Marion Berry (CA)* Sanford Bishop (GA)* Dan Boren (OK)* Rick Boucher (VA) Allen Boyd (FL)* Nancy Boyda (KS) Chris Carney (PA)* Don Cazayoux (LA) Travis Childers (MS) Jim Cooper (TN)* Jim Costa (CA)* Henry Cuellar (TX) Norm Dicks (WA) Joe Donnelly (IN)* Chet Edwards (TX) Brad Ellsworth (IN)* Rahm Emanuel (IL) Bob Etheridge (NC) Bill Foster (IL) Gabby Giffords (AZ)* Kirsten Gillbrand (NY)* Charlie Gonzalez (TX) Bart Gordon (TN)* Gene Green (TX) Baron Hill (IN)* Ruben Hinojosa (TX) Tim Holden (PA)* Steny Hoyer (MD) Ron Kind (WI) Nick Lampson (TX)* Dan Lipinski (IL) Tim Mahoney (FL)* Jim Marshall (GA)* Jim Matheson (UT)* Mike McIntyre (NC)* Charlie Melancon (LA)* Harry Mitchell (AZ) Dennis Moore (KS)* Collin Peterson (MN)* Mike Ross (AR)* Dutch Ruppersberger (MD) John Salazar (CO)* David Scott (GA)* Heath Shuler (NC)* Ike Skelton (MO) Zach Space (OH)* John Tanner (TN)* Gene Taylor (MS)*
The FISA vote, allowing for warrantless wiretaps and retroactive immunity also saw Hoyer and Emanuel lead a minority-- a very large minority-- of Democrats across the aisle to pass unconscionable legislation demanded by the Bush Regime and huge corporate donors. It passed 293-129 but would have failed if not for the Hoyer-Emanuel coalition of bought off Democrats. This list is a little different because it only includes Democrats who voted for this FISA bill plus the war funding bill:
Jason Altmire (PA) Brian Baird (WA) John Barrow (GA)* Melissa Bean (IL)* Shelley Berkley (NV) Howard Berman (CA) Marion Berry (AR)* Sanford Bishop (GA)* Dan Boren (OK)* Leonard Boswell (IA)* Rick Boucher (VA) Allen Boyd (FL)* Nancy Boyda (KS) Corrine Brown (FL) Chris Carney (PA)* Don Cazayoux (LA) Ben Chandler (KY) Travis Childers (MS) Jim Clyburn (SC) Jim Cooper (TN)* Jim Costa (CA)* Bud Cramer (AL)* Henry Cuellar (TX) Artur Davis (AL) Norman Dicks (WA) Joe Donnelly (IN)* Chet Edwards (TX) Brad Ellsworth (IN)* Rahm Emanuel (IL) Eliot Engel (NY) Bob Etheridge (NC) Gabby Giffords (AZ)* Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)* Bart Gordon (TN)* Gene Green (TX) Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)* Ruben Hinojosa (TX) Tim Holden (PA)* Steny Hoyer (MD) Paul Kanjorski (PA) Dale Kildee (MI) Ron Kind (WI) Nick Lampson (TX)* Dan Lipinski (IL) Tim Mahoney (FL)* Jim Marshall (GA)* Jim Matheson (UT)* Charlie Melancon (LA)* Harry Mitchell (AZ) Jack Murtha (PA) Solomon Ortiz (TX) Collin Peterson (MN)* Earl Pomeroy (ND)* Silvestre Reyes (TX) Ruben Rodriguez (TX) Mike Ross (AR)* Dutch Ruppersberger (MD) John Salazar (CO)* David Scott (GA)* Joe Sestak (PA) Heath Shuler (NC)* Ike Skelton (MO) Vic Snyder (AR) Zach Space (OH)* John Spratt (SC) John Tanner (TN)* Gene Taylor (MS)* Mark Udall (CO) Charlie Wilson (OH)*
And those little asterisks (*) some people have and others don't? The asterisks are members who have publicly admitted to being Blue Dogs. It is suspected that there are some members who have asked their membership to stay hush-hush.
When you talk to professional Inside the Beltway Democrats they will try to persuade you that all that's bad in the world flows from the fact that there are Republicans. Just elect more Democrats, they say, and everything will be hunky dory. The record shows otherwise. Without these Democrats above there would be no war in Iraq, no FISA bill, no job-killing trade legislation. That's why Blue America is all about BETTER Democrats, not "more Democrats."
