Status Quo Did So Much More Than Just VOTE For The War Against Iraq-- But Now He Lies About His Role

If you're considering voting for Status Quo Joe in a primary in your state, it's very important for you to watch this video above about why the Senate authorized the war against Iraq-- which included Biden attacking fellow Democrats who realized what a terrible idea starting that war was. Without the help from Biden (and the other worthless Joe, Lieberman) George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could never have started that war-- and would certainly not have had the catastrophic Authorization for Use of Military Force, which still is in place and still haunts U.S. foreign policy. Why does Status Quo Joe lie about his role today when he's running for the Democratic nomination for president?

His latest presidential run looks like it's unwinding and the chances of him being in the running after March 3rd are almost nonexistent. Every poll shows him losing steam... everywhere-- and at a time when Democratic prospects against Trump are rising. This morning, in an analytical piece by Chris Kahn for Reuters, we saw that the Blue Wave-- or, more accurately, the anti-Red Wave-- that swept the country in 2018, is still strong and growing. "Americans’ interest in voting is growing faster in large cities dominated by Democrats than in conservative rural areas... If the trend lasts until Election Day on Nov. 3, it would be a reversal from the 2016 election when rural turnout outpaced voting in urban areas, helping Trump narrowly win the White House."

Even as Trump commands rock-solid support among Republicans, voters’ interest in going to the polls appears to be growing faster among those who disapprove of Trump than among those who approve of him, according to experts who reviewed the data.

The advantage in urban political engagement extends deep into the most competitive battleground states that Trump won by razor-thin margins four years ago, the data shows.

In large urban areas of the upper Midwest, a region that includes swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, for example, the number of people who said they were “certain” to vote in the upcoming presidential election rose by 10 percentage points to 67% compared with survey responses from 2015.

In smaller upper Midwest communities, the number of people similarly dedicated to voting rose by only about 1 point to 60% in that same four-year period.

Overall, the number of “certain” voters rose by 7 percentage points nationally from 2015 to 2019. It increased by more than that in the largest metropolitan areas, rising by 9 points in communities with between 1 million and 5 million people and 8 points in metros with at least 5 million people.

Smaller and rural communities lagged behind. The number of “certain” voters rose by 5 points in sparsely populated, Republican-dominated “non-metro” areas.

The rise in urban political engagement helped Democrats win political victories last year, including governor’s races in conservative-leaning Kentucky and Louisiana.

It may have also contributed to elevated voting levels in some of the more heavily populated communities and college towns in Iowa and New Hampshire, which held their presidential nominating contests earlier this month.

“Democrats are very angry,” said Nicholas Valentino, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, who reviewed some of the poll findings for Reuters.

“Many see this administration as an existential threat to the constitutional order. They’re standing ready to participate to try to change the course of this country.”

...In a “battleground” region that included Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Colorado, the number of “certain” voters rose by 9 percentage points in large metropolitan areas that have a population of at least 5 million, and 8 points in areas with 1 to 5 million, while it rose by 4 points in smaller, non-metros.

Among those living in the Upper Midwest, a region that includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, the poll found a jump in political engagement in some of the same urban areas where Democrats fell short in 2016.

Altogether, 67% of people living in metro areas of at least 1 million people rated themselves as a “10” or “certain to vote” in the 2019 poll. That is up by about 10 percentage points from 2015.

In comparison, 63% of those who lived in smaller communities of less than 1 million rated themselves as similarly certain to vote, which is up 2 points from 2015.

Trump won Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 40,000 votes combined, in part because of depressed turnout in Wayne County, Michigan, and Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin.

In the Southeast, voter engagement is surging in large metros like Miami-Dade in South Florida and Atlanta where Democrats outnumber Republicans by double-digit margins.

In 2019, about 60% said they were certain to vote in the presidential election, up 8 points from 2015. In metros with less than 1 million people, 64% said they were certain to vote, up by 7 points. In smaller non-metropolitan areas, the number of people who were locked in on voting rose by 6 points from 2015 to 60%.

The poll found that 65% of residents in the Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City and other big Southwestern metro areas planned to vote in the upcoming election. That is up by 9 percentage points from 2015. Political engagement rose by nearly the same amount-- 8 points-- in smaller metros, but it was unchanged in rural areas of the Southwest.

These numbers-- and the political demise of dull centrists with no vision beyond their own careers, like Biden and Mayor Pete-- is also predicative of big wins for Democratic candidates running for Republican-held Senate seats in Iowa, Colorado, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and maybe even Texas.

Biden Taking Iraq Lies to the Max

-by Sam Husseini
Senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy

Presidential candidate Joe Biden is adding lies on top of lies to cover up his backing of the Iraq invasion.

At Thursday night's ABC/DNC debate Biden lied about his Iraq record, just like he did at the first two debates.

In the July debate, Biden claimed: “From the moment ‘shock and awe’ started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress.”

When he first said that, it received virtually no scrutiny except for Mideast scholar Stephen Zunes, who wrote the piece Biden Is Doubling Down on Iraq War Lies. Zunes outlined much of Biden's record, including his insistence in May 2003-- months after the Iraq invasion-- that “There was sufficient evidence to go into Iraq.”

At last night's debate on ABC, Biden claimed that he voted for the Iraq invasion authorization to "to allow inspectors to go in to determine whether or not anything was being done with chemical weapons or nuclear weapons."





But the congressional vote happened on October 11 (see Biden's speech then). And by that time Iraq had agreed to allow weapons inspectors back in. On Sept. 16, 2002, the New York Times reported: "U.N. Inspectors Can Return Unconditionally, Iraq Says." (This was immediately after a delegation organized by the Institute for Public Accuracy-- where I work-- had gone to Iraq.)

Now, independent journalist Michael Tracey, who interviewed Biden in New Hampshire recently, reports that Biden made the ridiculous claim that he opposed the invasion of Iraq even before it started. Said Biden: “Yes, I did oppose the war before it began." See Tracey's piece: "Joe Biden's Jumbled Iraq War Revisionism" and video (up top).

Biden did initially back a bill along with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar which would have somewhat constrained Bush's capacity to launch an invasion of Iraq completely at his whim. But the Bush administration opposed the measure. One might have thought that such opposition would lead Biden to conclude that Bush insisting on not having any constrain would be a reason not to write him a blank check. But not Biden. He of course voted for the legislation giving Bush the complete license he wanted.

Bush ended up launching the war by telling the UN to get the weapons inspectors out-- thus forcing an end to their work-- before starting to bomb the country. Immediately, Biden co-sponsored a resolution backing Bush.

Tracey writes "It’s unclear whether the Delaware senator genuinely believes the tale he is currently telling, or if it’s the product of his apparent cognitive decline." But, Biden has been lying about Iraq for years and years and years and years. He was chair of the Senate Foreign Releations Committee in 2002 and presided over hearings that were called rigged at the time by actual critics of the Iraq invasion.

Still, Biden's voluminous deceits on Iraq-- which he's adding to by the day-- have yet to be adequately examined. Biden told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" in 2007 of Saddam Hussein's alleged WMDs: "The real mystery is, if he, if he didn’t have any of them left, why didn’t he say so?"

Of course the Iraqi government, in 2002 and before, had been pleading that it had disarmed. And it was widely mocked by the U.S. government and media for such claims.

Saddam Hussein told Dan Rather on 60 Minutes in February 2003: “I believe that that [the U.S. military preparations in the Gulf] were, in fact, done partly to cover the huge lie that was being waged against Iraq about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. And it was on that basis that Iraq actually accepted [the U.N.] Resolution-- accepted it, even though Iraq was absolutely certain that what it had said-- what the Iraqi officials… had kept saying, that … Iraq was empty, was void of any such weapons-- was the case. But Iraq accepted that resolution... in order not to allow any misinterpretation of its position… in order to make the case absolutely clear that Iraq was no longer in possession of any such...weapons.” (See from FAIR: "Saddam’s ‘Secret.’")

But such remarks from Iraq were derided. On Nov. 13, 2002, the New York Times reported: "U.S. Scoffs at Iraq Claim of No Weapons of Mass Destruction." "The White House dismissed Saddam Hussein's contention today that he possesses no weapons of mass destruction as a fabrication. But President Bush's advisers said they would not be taunted into revealing the intelligence they had gathered to contradict him until after Iraq delivered a full accounting of weapons stores in early December."

Similarly, the International Herald Tribune reported on December 9, 2002: "Senators dismiss Iraqi arms declaration to UN"-- "Copies of a 12,000-page Iraqi declaration on banned weapons reached UN offices in Vienna on Sunday and were en route to the United Nations in New York for analysis, but senior U.S. senators of both parties dismissed its contents as lies. And they spoke of a likely war that they said would have surprisingly broad backing." These senators did this without even having access to the documents.

The piece continued: "Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that he assumed the Iraqi report would 'totally be an obfuscation.' The Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, called the declaration 'probably a 12,000-page, 100-pound lie.'" The piece also quoted Biden saying that Bush was likely to "have all that he needs, all the help, all the bases in the Middle East" and a coalition "larger than anyone anticipated."

What Biden did was to help ensure war happened while trying to wash his hands of responsibility for it. He helped build the car for Bush, filled it up with gas, saw that Bush was drunk, gave him license to do what he wanted-- and then told him to be responsible while he handed him the keys. Eventually, Biden pretends he's shocked that the streets are littered with mangled bodies.


 


Biden is the exact opposite of Sen. Wayne Morse-- one of only two senators who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution-- a false pretext the the Johnson administration used to dramatically escalate the Vietnam war in 1964. To those-- like Biden-- who argued that you have to back the president, Morse responded that they didn't understand the Constitution or their responsibilities as Senators:

"Why, not give the president a vote of confidence? This was the lingo of the reservationists: We've got to back our president. Since when do we have to back our President, or should we, when the president is proposing an unconstitutional act? And so these reservationists said that although I'm going to back my president, I want to show him I have confidence in him. I want to warn him I'm not giving him a blank check. This doesn't mean that I don't expect him to consult me in the future. This doesn't mean that the president can go ahead and send additional troops over there without consulting me, a senator of the United States. And you know, I most respectfully, but used language that they understood, said that's just nonsense. I want to say to my colleagues in the Senate, you're being consulted right now."

Would that Biden understood his responsibilities as well.

Who Wants A Damn Compulsive Liar As President? Or A Presidential Campaign On Who's The Bigger Liar?

Trump is the biggest liar to ever occupy the White House-- by far. But if Biden ever gets there-- God forbid-- he'd be the second biggest liar to ever occupy the White House. The graphic above represents Trump's public, checked lies. I count True and Mostly True as True and everything else as lies. Half True means half false. And the one below represents Biden's record. Yes, Trump lies more than Biden... but that bar is way too low and Biden lies way too much. How many times will he say "I didn't mean to mislead" ... before going on to mislead some more?

Remember, (a little more than) half the country (at least right now) thinks Trump is worse and half the country thinks Biden is worse. But sane people know both are really vile, horrible men, the very worst of America of what America has to offer.

Two more graphics from PolitiFact. The first one represents Trump's lies in the last week. But there were so many that these few were all I could fit on this page:

The second is Biden's lies... except that PolitiFac-- while not having gotten to the dozen lies Trump told in the last two days-- also hasn't gotten to Biden's biggest-- and most pertinent-- lie of the week: his lie about the Iraq war. He claimed "details are irrelevant in terms of decision-making.

With that long record, Biden has faced criticism over the years for his judgment on key foreign policy decisions, such as voting to authorize the Iraq War, trying to partition the country along ethnic and sectarian lines, opposing a troop surge, and overseeing the withdrawal in 2011 that some say created a power vacuum that allowed ISIS to flourish in Iraq.

"He's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades," former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his 2014 memoir.

"I think my record has been good," Biden told NPR. He explained that his rationale in authorizing the use of military force in Iraq in 2002 was based on a commitment he had received from then-President George W. Bush that he would not go to war in Iraq.

"[Bush] looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program," said Biden. "He got them in and before you know it, we had 'shock and awe.'"

Bush's office denied Biden's version of events. "I'm sure it's just an innocent mistake of memory, but this recollection is flat wrong," said spokesman Freddy Ford in an email to NPR.

The Biden campaign pointed to numerous remarks from Bush at the time where he said he hoped to go through the U.N. Security Council to avoid a military conflict with Iraq.

"Immediately, that moment it started, I came out against the war at that moment," Biden told NPR.

But in multiple public remarks made after the invasion began in 2003, Biden openly supported the effort. Biden publicly said his vote was a mistake as early as 2005, but not immediately when the war began in 2003.

"Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force, and I would vote that way again today," Biden said in a speech at the Brookings Institution on July 31, 2003. "It was a right vote then, and it'll be a correct vote today."

Biden, like Trump, is an uncontrollable, congenital liar. When those two think they can get away with it, they just lie, assuming no one will ever check. They are both absolutely hideous and shouldn't be allowed a role in government. Tuesday, writing forThe Nation, Joan Walsh, also pointed out Biden's inability to tell the truth. "The Washington Post's running tally of Donald Trump’s lies since Inauguration Day 2017 has passed 12,000," she wrote. "Biden seems to think, given that backdrop, his mistakes won’t hurt him-- or at least shouldn’t. Part of me admires the former vice president’s pluck... Maybe Biden thinks toughing this one out will keep the press focused on the bigger issue: Trump’s manifest incompetence and corruption. But I doubt it. For one thing, Biden’s Afghanistan story-telling didn’t occur in a vacuum but during a campaign in which he’s made numerous mistakes and misstatements. In just one day last month, he confused recently ousted British Prime Minister Theresa May with her long-ago predecessor Margaret Thatcher, said 'poor kids are just as talented and as bright as white kids' (inadvertently conflating 'white' with 'bright' and seeming to depict poor kids as nonwhite), and insisted Democrats should 'choose truth over facts.' Democratic primary voters rightly want to know if the 76-year-old vice president is up to the rigors of the presidency-- regardless of the fact that Trump is not. In a primary where at least 10 viable candidates are competing (if we just stick with those who made the cut for the next debate), the party’s voters don’t have to settle for someone whose own troubles with truth and facts threaten to take Trump’s off the table, as a campaign issue, come the fall of 2020."

You can't believe ANYTHING that either Biden or Trump ever says

Biden went down in flames yesterday. The smartest guy I know told me he is pretty sure Biden is already self-destructing and that he won't be able to go the distance. Shame on the self-interested staffers that are propping this poor old coot up.

One more disgusting thing about the disgusting Biden this morning. After his dishonest, lackluster appearance on CNN's Climate Forum yesterday, he prepared to head over to 2 big dollar fundraisers today, including one hosted by David Solomon of Hildred Capital Partners, whose chief investment officer, Andrew Goldman, was a finance director for Biden's 2008 campaign, was a Biden Senate advisor and a co-founder of Western LNG, a natural gas production company. Biden tried getting away-- before the howling got too loud-- with a "middle way" on the Climate Crisis, where his heart is and will always be. His current chief climate policy adviser, Heather Zichal, made a fortune from a fracking firm after leaving the Obama administration. Remind yourself what a scumbag Biden is and has always been by watch this half minute video:

Film "Official Secrets" Points to a Mammoth Iceberg

by Sam Husseini

Two-time Oscar nominee Keira Knightley is known for being in "period pieces" such as Pride and Prejudice, so her playing the lead in the new film Official Secrets, scheduled to be release in the U.S. this Friday, may seem odd at first. That is until one considers that the time span being depicted-- the early 2003 run-up to the invasion of Iraq-- is one of the most dramatic and consequential periods of modern human history.

It is also one of the most poorly understood, in part because the story of Katharine Gun, played by Knightley, is so little known. I should say from the outset that having followed this story from the start, I find this film to be, by Hollywood standards, a remarkably accurate account of what has happened to date. "To date" because the wider story still isn't really over.

Katharine Gun worked as an analyst for Government Communications Headquarters, the British equivalent of the secretive U.S. National Security Agency. She tried to stop the impending invasion of Iraq in early 2003 by exposing the deceit of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in their claims about Iraq. She was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act-- a juiced up version of the U.S. Espionage Act, which has in recent years been used repeatedly by the Obama administration against whistleblowers and now by the Trump administration against Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange.

Gun was charged for exposing-- around the time of Colin Powell's infamous testimony to the UN about Iraq's alleged WMDs-- a top secret U.S. government memo showing it was mounting an illegal spying “surge” against other U.N. Security Council delegations in an effort to force approval for an Iraq invasion resolution. The U.S. and Britain had successfully forced through a trumped up resolution, 1441 in November 2002. In early 2003, they were poised to threaten, bribe or blackmail their way to actual United Nations authorization for the invasion. See recent interview with Gun.

The leaked memo, published by the British Observer, was big news in parts of the world, especially the targeted countries on the Security Council, and effectively prevented Bush and Blair from getting a second UN Security Council resolution they said they wanted.

U.S. government started the invasion anyway of course-- without Security Council authorization-- by telling the UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq and issuing a unilateral demand that Saddam Hussein leave Iraq in 48 hours-- and then saying the invasion would commence regardless.

It was the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work (accuracy.org), Norman Solomon, as well as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who in the U.S. most immediately saw the importance of what Gun did. Dan would later comment: “No one else-- including myself -- has ever done what Katharine Gun did: Tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it. Hers was the most important-- and courageous-- leak I’ve ever seen, more timely and potentially more effective than the Pentagon Papers.”

Of course, we didn't know her name at the time. After the Observer broke the story on March 1, 2003, we at accuracy.org put out a series of news releases on it and organized a sadly sparsely attended news conference with Dan on March 11, 2003 at the National Press Club, focusing on Gun's revelations and Dan calling for more such truth telling to stop the impending invasion.

Even though I followed this case for years, I didn't realize until recently that our work helped compel Gun to expose the document. I didn't know till a recent D.C. showing of Official Secrets that Gun had read a book co-authored by Norman, published in January 2003 which included material from accuracy.org as well as the media watch group FAIR that debunked many of the falsehoods for war and was published in January of 2003.

Said Gun about the period just before she disclosed the document: "I went to the local bookshop, and I went into the political section. I found two books, which had apparently been rushed into publication, one was by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich, and it was called Target Iraq. And the other one was by Milan Rai. It was called War Plan Iraq. And I bought both of them. And I read them cover to cover that weekend, and it basically convinced me that there was no real evidence for this war. So I think from that point onward, I was very critical and scrutinizing everything that was being said in the media."

Thus, we see Gun shouting at the TV to Tony Blair that he's not entitled to make up facts, so the film may be jarring to some consumers of major media who might think that Trump invented lying in 2017.

But Gun's immediate action after reading critiques of U.S. policy and media coverage is a remarkable case for trying to reach government workers, handing out fliers, books, having billboards outside government offices, to encourage them to be more critically minded.

I honestly didn't fully appreciate the value of the exposure as much as Dan and Norman did at the time. To my mind, the lies were obvious, We debunked Bush administration propaganda in real time-- see an overview of our work that I wrote to Rob Reiner when I learned of his then-upcoming film, Shock and Awe. But Gun's revelation showed that the U.S. and British governments were not only lying to get to invade Iraq, they were engaging in outright violations of international law to blackmail whole countries to get in line.

It's funny to read mainstream reviews of Official Secrets now-- they seem to still not fully grasp the importance of what they just saw. The trendy AV Club review leads: "Virtually everyone now agrees that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a colossal mistake based on faulty (at best) or fabricated (at worst) intelligence." Well, "mistake" is a serious understatement even with "colossal" attached to it for something so fervently pursued and you just saw a movie about the diabolical, illegal lengths to which the U.S. and British governments went to get everyone in line for it. So, no "fabricated" is not the "worst" it is.

Gun's revelations showed before the invasion that people on the inside, whose livelihood depends on following the party line, were willing to risk jail time to out the lies and threats.

Other than Gun herself, the film focuses on a dramatization of what happened at her work; as well as her relationship with her husband, who happens to be a Kurdish gentleman from Turkey-- with the British government attempting to get at Gun by moving to deport him. The other key focuses in the film are her able legal team at Liberty and the drama at The Observer, which published the NSA document after much debate.

Observer reporter Martin Bright, whose stellar work on the original Gun story was strangely followed by things like predictably ill fated stints at organizations like the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, has recently noted that very little additional work has been done on this key case. We know virtually nothing about the apparent author of the NSA document-- one "Frank Koza." How prevalent is this sort of blackmail? How exactly is it leveraged? If the U.S. government does this sort of thing, why would they wait till the last minute? Does it fit in with allegations made by former NSA analyst Russ Tice about the NSA having massive files on political people?

Observer reporter Ed Vulliamy is energetically depicted getting tips from former CIA man Mel Goodman. There do seem to be subtle but potentially serious deviations from reality in the film. In the movie, Vulliamy is depicted as actually speaking with "Frank Koza," but that's not what he originally reported: "The NSA main switchboard put The Observer through to extension 6727 at the agency which was answered by an assistant, who confirmed it was Koza's office. However, when The Observer asked to talk to Koza about the surveillance of diplomatic missions at the United Nations, it was then told 'You have reached the wrong number'. On protesting that the assistant had just said this was Koza's extension, the assistant repeated that it was an erroneous extension, and hung up."

There must doubtlessly be many aspects of the film that have been simplified or altered regarding Gun's personal experience; notably absent from the film are the roles played by her parents, which I believe are considerable. A memoir from her would be a valuable historical document. A compelling part of the film-- apparently fictitious or exaggerated-- is the apparatchik of GCHQ security questioning Gun to see if she was the source, recounting her ethical and educational background, particularly that she was raised largely outside of Britain.

One similarity between this and Knightley's other work is its distinct Anglocentrism. Gun's revelation had the biggest impact on several non-permanent members of the Security Council members, in all likelihood, especially Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Pakistan, Mexico and Chile. I've seen very little about what exactly happened in those countries and in those delegations. The most is probably know about Mexico, which was represented by Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. After the invasion, he spoke in blunt terms about U.S. bullying-- saying it viewed Mexico as its patio trasero, or back yard-- and was compelled to resign by Vicente Fox. He then, in 2004, gave details about some aspects of U.S. surveillance sabotaging the efforts of the other members of the Security Council to hammer out a compromise to avert the invasion of Iraq, saying the U.S. was "violating the U.N. headquarters covenant.” In 2005, he tragically died in a car crash.

Official Secrets director Gavin Hood is perhaps more right than he realizes when he says that his depiction of the Gun case is like the "tip of an iceberg," pointing to other deceits surrounding the Iraq war. His record with political films has been uneven till now. Peace activist David Swanson derided his film on drones, Eye in the Sky. In a showing of Official Secrets in D.C., Hood depicted those who backed the Iraq war as now having been discredited. But that's simply untrue. Now leading presidential candidate Joe Biden-- who not only voted for the Iraq invasion, but presided over rigged hearings on it 2002-- has recently repeatedly falsified his record on Iraq at presidential debates with hardly a murmur. Nor is he alone, those refusing to be held accountable for their Iraq war lies include not just Bush and Cheney, but John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi. Biden has actually faulted Bush for not doing enough to get United Nations approval for the Iraq invasion. In fact, as the Gun case helps show, the legitimate case for invasion was non-existent and the Bush administration had done virtually everything both legal and illegal to get United Nations authorization.

Most everyone attempts to distance themselves from the Iraq invasion, but it has effectively enveloped our culture. The wars it spawned, as in Syria, and Iraq itself, and arguably elsewhere, continue with minimal attention or protest. The U.S. regularly threatens Iran, Venezuela and other countries. The journalists who pushed and propagandized in favor of the Iraq invasion are prosperous and atop major news organizations-- the editor who argued most strongly against publication of the NSA document at The Observer, Kamal Ahmed, is now editorial director of BBC News. After the U.S. and Britain failed to get a second resolution before the invasion, they got a resolution after the invasion effectively accepting the U.S. as the Occupying Power in Iraq (UNSCR 1472) on March 28, 2003; see accuracy.org news release on the same day-- "U.N.-- Accessory After the Fact?"

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept in 2016 boasted of how the NSA “during the wind-up to the Iraq War ‘played a critical role’ in the adoption of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The work with that customer was a resounding success.” The relevant document specifically cites resolutions 1441 and 1472 and quotes John Negroponte, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: “I can’t imagine better intelligence support for a diplomatic mission.” (Notably, The Intercept has never published a word on "Katharine Gun.")

Nor were the UN Security Council members the only ones on the U.S. hit list to pave the way for the Iraq invasion. Brazilian Jose Bustani, the director-general of the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. was ousted in an effective coup by John Bolton in April of 2002. Bolton of course is now National Security Adviser.

The British government-- unlike the U.S. government-- did ultimately produce a study ostensibly around the decision-making leading to the invasion of Iraq, the Chilcot Report in 2016. But that report-- called "devastating" by the New York Times-- incredibly made no mention of the Gun case. See accuracy.org release from 2016: "Chilcot Report Avoids Smoking Gun."

Thus, Official Secrets refers not only to the Official Secrets Act, but also to the actions of so many who revere officialdom and abide by the decorum of not acknowledging clear truths that would show the brutal face of the authorities.

Spoiler: After Katharine Gun's identity became known, we at the Institute for Public Accuracy brought on Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR, to work with Hollie Ainbinder to get prominent individuals to support Gun. The film-- quite plausibly-- depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared that a high profile proceeding would effectively put the war on trial, which to them would be nightmare.

Some have said that what Gun did was ineffectual, that it didn't stop the invasion. Some have said the same about the quasi-global Feb. 15, 2003 protests against the invasion. It's an absurd, rotten notion. The solution to some truth telling not being enough to stop the war, as Dan Ellsberg would put it, is more truth telling. The solution to some powerful protests not being enough to stop the war is more effective protests. Had there been coordinated global protests beginning in September 2002 for example, rather than February 2003, that could well have made all the difference. If other numerous government officials had done what Gun did, and spoken the truth when it mattered most, that could have made the difference.

And, as these wars and lies continue, it still may.

Among The Dems Running For President, Who's For War, Who's For Peace?

Before we look at what they're saying now, let's look at the records of some of the candidates running for president who have records. Let's start with the 2002 vote to authorize the attack on Iraq. 21 Democratic senators and 126 Democratic Reps voted against going to war. Some of them are running for president-- as are some of the people for voted for the wat, either because they're war mongers or because they're too stupid to understand when they're been played-- in either case, m unfit for public office. None of the senators who voted NO are among the current candidates. Only one asshole voted to authorize Bush's and Cheney's war: Joe Biden.

82 Democrats joined 215 Republicans (all but 6) to make the war bipartisan. Among the Democrats who voted NO there is only one current candidate: Bernie. Among the Democrats who voted for the war, most were subsequently defeated or now lobbyists, dead, retired or in prison. The only ones left in Congress are Sanford Bishop (BlueDog-GA), Eliot Engel (New Dem-NY), Steny Hoyer (Crook-MD), Ron Kind (New Dem-WI), Nita Lowey (NY), Stephen Lynch (New Dem-MA), Carolyn Maloney (NY), Ed Markey (MA), Frank Pascrell (NJ), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Adan Schiff (New Dem-CA) and Brad Sherman (CA). None of them are running for president.

In 2002, one was smart enough to vote against the war in Iraq and one was stupid enough to vote for it

Another way to gage this kind of thing is to go back and look who co-sponsored anti-war and pro-war resolutions. For example, when Bernie introduced to remove the US Armed Forces from the Yemen conflict, 4 senators who are now candidates for president signed on as co-sponsors-- Cory Booker (NJ), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and, almost a year after it was introduced, Kamala Harris (CA). And when it was voted on, all the Democrats voted for all it in the Senate.

Ro Khanna introduced a companion bill in the House. Cosponsors included presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard, Beto and, eventually-- the last co-sponsor to sign on-- Eric Swalwell. Conspicuously absent were John Delaney (New Dem-MD), Tim Ryan (OH), Seth Moulton (New Dem-MA). It passed on February 13 of this year with all Democrats present voting YES. One Democrat was absent, Tim Ryan.

Dave Jacobson, writing for The Hill yesterday, asked if Democratic presidential candidates will make ending the war in Afghanistan a priority. He started his opinion piece by remind his readers that "Since its inception, the 18-year war in Afghanistan has cost Americans tremendously in blood and treasure. The AP recently noted that as of early 2019, 'the U.S. has spent $737 billion on the war and lost more than 2,400 military lives, according to the Pentagon.' And that’s not the totality, unfortunately. In fact, the Pentagon recently said that the war in Afghanistan costs taxpayers $45 billion per year… with no end in sight they may have to keep footing that bill for years to come. At a time when public opinion for the war’s foreverness is waning, data suggests that, 'About half of adults (49 percent) say the United States has mostly failed in achieving its goals there.' All this begs the question of why Democratic candidates leading in the polls aren’t talking more about such a major issue."

This dynamic represents a sharp contrast from the last Democrat to successfully win the presidency. In 2008, Barack Obama made an anti-war message of ending the war in Iraq a core pillar of his campaign. At the time, the Iraq war was enormously unpopular, while the majority of Americans still supported the war in Afghanistan.

Since then, the tables have turned, and Americans have soured on the continued presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan as the war approaches nearly two-decades in duration.

To be clear-- it’s not that candidates haven’t taken a position on the seemingly endless war; on the contrary, a slew of the top-polling Democratic White House hopefuls have made public their desire to bring an end to the war that started in October of 2001:

• Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has Tweeted, “The American people do not want endless war.”
• Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) noted that, “she supports a ‘political solution’ to the war that would allow U.S. troops to return home.”
• Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a veteran who served in Afghanistan, “supports pulling troops out of Afghanistan.”
• Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said, “I think it’s right to get our troops out of Afghanistan.”
• Former Vice President Joe Biden internally opposed the 2009 Afghanistan troop surge, and has said that, “Nation building in a country as destitute and decentralized as Afghanistan, he argued, was hopeless…” Still, as a newly announced candidate for President in 2020, he hasn’t yet spelled out a specific plan for Afghanistan moving forward.
• Former Congressman Bet O'Rourke (D-TX) has been less detailed on the issue as well.

Even though a number of top-tier candidates have drawn a line in the sand when it comes to their position on ending America’s longest war, the reality is that none of them has made it a hallmark their campaign, or for that matter, harnessed a potent anti-war message like Obama successfully did in '08 with the unpopular war in Iraq.

Lesser-knowns, such as Congresswoman and Iraq war veteran Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), have tried to brand themselves as being the anti-war candidate, but from the start her campaign has failed to take off or generate momentum.

Still, public opinion data increasingly suggests that many Americans have grown tired of the war in Afghanistan. With such a vast array of candidates jockeying for the job of commander-in-chief, and particularly within the crowded upper echelon of the field, it’s an open question as to whether or not one of the leading Democrats will grab ahold of the anti-war mantle, own it, and define their campaign with it. If they're looking for a way to stand out from the pack and gain some altitude by breaking through with voters who are juggling with the embarrassment of riches when it comes to the candidates, such a move could help.

Do you want another clueless president who's going to do whatever he's told to do by the Military Industrial Complex? You do? OK, meet a real idiot who's rapidly losing his grip on reality:

Why Everyone in the U.S. Who Counts Wants Julian Assange Dead

Before and after images of the van that came to pick up the bodies of eleven men shot to death by circling American helicopters in Iraq in 2007. Both children in the van were wounded. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle," said one of the pilots. "That's right," replies another. From the video Collateral Murder.

by Thomas Neuburger

Below is a full video version of Collateral Murder, the 2007 war footage that was leaked in 2010 to Wikileaks by Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning. This version was posted to the Wikileaks YouTube channel with subtitles. It will only take about 15 minutes of your life to view it.

It's brutal to watch, but I challenge you to do it anyway. It shows not just murder, but a special kind of murder — murder from the safety of the air, murder by men with heavy machine guns slowly circling their targets like hunters with shotguns who walk the edges of a trout pond, shooting at will, waiting, walking, then shooting again, till all the fish are dead.

The film also shows war crimes that implicate the entire structure of the U.S. military, as everyone involved was acting under orders, seeking permission to fire, waiting, then getting it before once more blasting away. The publication of this video, plus all the Wikileaks publications that followed, comprise the whole reason everyone in the U.S. who matters, everyone with power, wants Julian Assange dead.

They also want him hated. Generating that hate is the process we're watching today.

"Everyone" in this case includes every major newspaper that published and received awards for publishing Wikileaks material; all major U.S. televised media outlets; and all "respectable" U.S. politicians — including, of course, Hillary Clinton, who was rumored (though unverifiably) to have said, "Can't we just drone this guy?"

Yes, Julian Assange the person can be a giant douche even to his supporters, as this exchange reported by Intercept writer Micah Lee attests. Nevertheless, it's not for being a douche that the Establishment state wants him dead; that state breeds, harbors and honors douches everywhere in the world. They want him dead for publishing videos like these. 

Please watch it. The footage shows not only murder, but bloodlust and conscienceless brutality, so much of it in fact that this became one of the main reasons Chelsea Manning leaked it in the first place. As she said at her court-martial: “The most alarming aspect of the video for me, was the seemingly delight of bloodlust they [the pilots] appeared to have. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging with, and seemed to not value human life in referring to them as ‘dead bastards,’ and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers.”

The Wikileaks page for the video is here. A transcript is here.

This was done in our name, to "keep us safe." This continues to be done every day that we and our allies are at "war" in the Middle East.

Bodies pile on bodies as this continues. The least we can do, literally the least, is to witness and acknowledge their deaths.
  

Iraq War Lies: My Letter to Rob Reiner on "Shock and Awe"

-by Sam Husseini

Here's a letter that was sent to Rob Reiner in April 2016. At the time, he was directing the film Shock and Awe which would be released the following year.

Dear Rob Reiner,

I've of course enjoyed your work over the years.

I recently tweeted "Finally saw The Big Short. Good. Sure they'll produce a film about folks who were right about Iraq wmds any decade now."

Immediately, a couple of McClatchy reporters I know responded, tweeting that you are working on Shock and Awe.

At the Institute for Public Accuracy, we got a lot of critical information out scrutinizing claims regarding alleged Iraq WMDs from 2002-03 and I thought you'd be interested in learning of it.

A sample: in October, 2002, John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, noted on one of our news releases: "Recently, Bush cited an IAEA report that Iraq was ‘six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.’ The IAEA responded that not only was there no new report, ‘there’s never been a report’ asserting that Iraq was six months away from constructing a nuclear weapon." That's just the tip of the iceberg of what was knowable at the time. See other such news releases we put out from before the invasion: "White House Claims: A Pattern of Deceit" and "Bush’s War Case: Fiction vs. Facts at Accuracy.org/bush" and "U.S. Credibility Problems" and "Tough Questions for Bush on Iraq Tonight."

Something of a mythology developed after the invasion that "now we know" that Bush lied. That itself was false. It was knowable before the invasion that the Bush administration was putting forward falsehoods.

Like The Big Short, different people were reaching the same conclusion-- the Iraq war case was based on lies-- from different angles before the war. Knight-Ridder was doing their work and we were doing ours. They had internal anonymous sources, we dealt with things in the public record, but made the effort to seriously scrutinize the claims.

We also got delegations to Iraq lead by our executive director, Norman Solomon: One with the actor Sean Penn, another with former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, yet another with former Sen. James Abourezk and Rep. Nick Rahall (Iraq allowed the inspectors-- which had been withdrawn during the Clinton administration-- back in Iraq just after that delegation urged them to do so.)

One trip we'd planned, that would have done the most to address the WMD issue, was with former WMD inspector Scott Ritter. However, just before the trip, news leaked that he was accused of interacting online with sexual content with under aged girls. So that trip never happened.

Many critical aspects of the Iraq war lies have never seriously been dealt with. For example, lots of people who voted against authorizing war still claimed that Iraq had WMDs, effectively helping the case for war while voting against it. One was Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. I questioned her about that after the invasion. Virtually the entire upper echelon of Obama's foreign policy team backed the Iraq invasion, the 23 senators who voted against it were effectively iced out. Here's a news release we did in 2013 on Kerry claiming he was opposed to the Iraq war.

Some who went the last mile to expose the war lies were never meaningfully acknowledge. Katharine Gun, who worked with British intelligence, leaked a memo from the NSA ordering a surge of spying at the UN to help obtain a second UN resolution authorizing the invasion-- presumably by attempting to get info to blackmail or bully other Security Council members. U.S. officials had said there would be a second UN resolution, but this leak helped block that. After the war, we organized an effort to prevent the British government from prosecuting Gun under their official secrets act. I wrote a piece looking back on this case in 2014.

Another aspect that's still poorly understood is the role of torture in producing the case for war. It's a liberal mantra that "torture doesn't work" but that's not really true. It does work-- to produce false but useful (dis)information. For example, Ibn Shaykh al-Libi was tortured by the Mubarak regime into falsely "confessing" that Iraq was tied to Al-Qaeda and was helping it to obtain chemical and biological weapons. That claim ended up in Colin Powell's UN speech before the Iraq invasion. Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson has since written about this fairly forthrightly. I questioned Powell about this in 2009, but he was still refusing to admit meaningful wrongdoing. See a piece of mine: "'Both Sides' Are Wrong: Torture Did Work-- to Produce Lies for War."

There's obviously a lot more I could go into-- I'd been tracking Iraq fairly closely through out the 1990s, including Clinton administration deceits around its strikes and the perpetual sanctions policy Bill Clinton tragically adopted from the first Bush administration as he came into office.

Here's a Washington Post op-ed I wrote in 1999: "Twisted Policy on Iraq." Unfortunately, such media were incredibly closed after 9/11-- up top is a video of Bill O'Reilly cutting my microphone two days after 9/11.

Certainly, I don't doubt that one could do a 20-hour documentary and not get at all the deceit around the Iraq invasion. There was a staggering amount of fabrication from the Bush administration and so many foibles from the antiwar movement and other quarters. But I'd be very happy to help in making your effort as meaningful and compelling as possible.

Best regards

Ecuador Hints It May Hand Over Assange

Part of the "Collateral Murder" video that Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning gave to WikiLeaks. It's worth watching to the very end. Two staff members from Reuters news were among those murdered on the street, along with others from a van shot up while trying to collect the wounded. Visible in the van were two children, who were also wounded. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle," says one of the Americans doing the shooting. The Americans were the only ones shooting.

by Gaius Publius

Ecuador may hand over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the British, and thus, to the American government after all. He's currently in political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but that may be about to change.

Ecuador hints it may hand over Julian Assange to Britain and the US

... Remarks made this week by Ecuador’s foreign minister suggest that her government may be preparing to renege on the political asylum it granted to the WikiLeaks editor in 2012 and hand him over to British and then American authorities.

On March 28, under immense pressure from the governments in the US, Britain and other powers, Ecuador imposed a complete ban on Assange having any Internet or phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his friends and supporters from physically visiting him. For 45 days, he has not been heard from.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa stated in a Spanish-language interview on Wednesday that her government and Britain “have the intention and the interest that this be resolved.” Moves were underway, she said, to reach a “definite agreement” on Assange.

When you think of Julian Assange, don’t think just of his role in the last election, though that’s important to look at. Think also of WikiLeaks' many CIA releases, as well as Chelsea Manning’s ​bombshell revelation (video above, Guardian reporting here), which earned her years of torture.

And then there's this:

If Assange falls into the hands of the British state, he faces being turned over to the US. Last year, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that putting Assange on trial for espionage was a “priority.” CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, asserted that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

In 2010, WikiLeaks courageously published information leaked by then Private Bradley [now Chelsea] Manning that exposed war crimes committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. WikiLeaks also published, in partnership with some of the world’s major newspapers, tens of thousands of secret diplomatic cables, exposing the daily anti-democratic intrigues of US imperialism and numerous other governments.

I think if the American state acquires Assange, it may torture and kill him. It certainly wishes to. Chelsea Manning was tortured for exposing a whole lot less, and Manning's crime included revelations about torture and murder.

GP
  

Alan Grayson Endorses Dennis Kucinich For Ohio Governor

Grayson has his own campaign to worry about and his own campaign funds to raise, but Kucinich is not just an old friend, but someone who inspired him Yesterday he officially endorsed Kucinich and asked his own supporters to contribute to Kucinich's campaign.

A Nobel Prize-winning economist put the cost of the War in Iraq at $6 trillion. That is almost 100 times as much as the federal education budget, and ten times the annual cost of the Medicare program.

Imagine what could have been accomplished with such an investment besides the destabilization of an entire section of the globe. With that consideration fresh in mind, here is a quick quiz. Who said the following, and when, and where?

“There is no world support for invading Iraq.”

“There is no proof that Iraq represents an immediate or imminent threat to the United States.... The Administration has refused to provide the Congress with credible intelligence that proves that Iraq is a serious threat to the United States, and is continuing to develop chemical and biological and nuclear weapons.”

“The Iraq regime has never attacked, nor does it have the capability to attack the United States.”

“There is no credible intelligence that connects Iraq to the events of 9/11 or to participation in those events by assisting al Qaeda.... There is no connection between Iraq and the events of 9/11.... There is no credible evidence that Iraq harbored those who were responsible for planning, authorizing or committing the attacks of 9/11.”

“There is no credible evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”

“Congress has not been provided with any credible information, which proves that Iraq has provided international terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.”

“Unilateral action against Iraq will cost the United States the support of the world community.”

So, who said this? Me? No-- I wish it were me. It was Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

And when? On October 2, 2002, six months before the War in Iraq began.

And where? On the Floor of the House, and in a letter to his colleagues in Congress.

Was it clarity? No, it was more than clarity. It was almost clairvoyance.

At a time when almost every public figure in America was hoodwinked, bamboozled, and flimflammed by Bush Administration propaganda, Dennis Kucinich was not. Dennis Kucinich saw the truth, and he said the truth. And Dennis Kucinich followed through, doggedly opposing the war in Iraq from alpha to omega.

Take my word for it: Congress is full of replaceable parts. But Dennis Kucinich is not one of them. Dennis Kucinich is unique.

And now, 40 years after he was elected Mayor of Cleveland, and 20 years after he was elected to Congress, Dennis Kucinich is running for Governor of Ohio. Think about what it would mean to have a tough, principled liberal leading this swing state. We need Dennis Kucinich as Governor of Ohio. This could be our best chance this year to put a bold progressive in a position of power. Dennis’s primary is just one month away.

And as the Washington Post put it yesterday, "'Kucinich was ahead of his time in terms of having that progressive politics before it’s popular, before it’s cool,' says Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, the national progressive advocacy group born out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign."