Fuck experience: in this election, it equals betrayal

Actually, it has equaled betrayal for a couple of decades if not always.

If you look at the ''experienced'' candidates' record in power, it is largely one of betraying the middle class and kowtowing to corporations, particularly on trade and foreign policy.

While the war in Iraq is the most glaring example of this, their support of trade deals that eviscerated American jobs and neoliberal shock therapy for other countries that reduce most people to poverty and demand the end to any New Deal type social programs have been going on for decades with bipartisan support.

After 9/11, experts familiar with what Wall Street has directed our foreign policy to do to other countries said they were surprised the hijackers weren't from Latin America given our century of crushing their desire to raise their standard of living and control their own natural resources since it would have cut into mining, sweatshop, and banana plantation corporations' profits.

In the Middle East, our experienced leaders have supported vicious dictators like Musharraf, the Saudi royal family, the Shah of Iran whose rule led to our current bad relations with that country, and even Saddam Hussein until 1991. So long as these guys played ball with American corporations, our experienced leaders did not give a rat's ass about what they did to their own people and even trained them in how to keep the plebes in their place.

In Iraq, already a profit-making machine for defense and rebuilding contractors, Bush is twisting the arm of the Iraqi parliament to pass an oil law that will give 88% of their oil wealth to big oil companies, a deal other oil-rich countries would never accept without a gun to their head. Do you think that might some Iraqis mad enough to have killed some of our 4,200 troops who are dead? Was giving that oil to ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, and BP worth killing over a million Iraqis and spending up to half a trillion tax dollars, more than the whole federal budget was in 1988.

And in case you haven't noticed, those corporations have a bad track record of sharing the profits from those foreign assets acquired with our military with the rest of us. The privatize the profits and socialize the cost.

Our representatives in Congress knowingly lied about the causes of the Iraq War as well. Every member of Congress is old enough to remember the Cold War knows that even if Saddam Hussein or any other third rate dictator gets a handful of nukes, he would not dare use them on us or give them to terrorist who would because we have 10,000 nuclear warheads and would burn their country off the map before the mushroom cloud cleared here. And we would still have enough left over to do the same to every other country on earth every day for a week. That was enough to stay the hand of the Soviet Union for four decades even though they had MORE nukes than us. Americans may have forgotten that, but the rest of the world has not.

To the degree that we have a legitimate need for defense, it is in part to protect us from those who have suffered at the hands of our experienced leaders.

I would trust someone more who isn't on a first name basis with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, George Shultz, Colin Powell or any of the other technicians of these policies.

With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, presidential candidates in both parties have the ''experience'' of largely supporting these policies that impoverished average Americans and the rest of the world. Kucinich is largely ignored and mocked by the media precisely to prevent him from getting power or even being able to force the debate to the realities of our policies and away from haircuts and fairy tales about spreading democracy and fighting the boogey man.

This makes two relatively inexperienced candidates, Edwards and Obama, look more attractive. Both have their drawbacks. Neither would cut insurance companies out of health care altogether. Obama takes corporate donations. Edwards voted for the Iraq War. But their relative inexperience means they are more likely to change their ways just as a relatively inexperienced JFK did once in office and as his brother did before he ran for president.

So in this election, fuck experience.

FACTS Missing from the Iraq Debate (updated)

NOTE: cross-posted at John Edwards website to make his staffers actually consider bringing it to his attention. Consider doing the same to other candidates.

If Democrats were serious about ending the war, they would make the GOP lies about the war all the more obvious by giving up on vague platitudes and state the facts about Iraq plainly and often.

Some of the facts I have in mind have been covered in the press on page A13 or further back, but have only been acknowledged by a handful of Democrats, not the leadership, and NO republicans.

The main ones: the war is about oil, the Iraqis want us to leave, the insurgency is NOT al Qaeda, and the Iraqi government is only "sovereign" as long as they agree with Bush.

If a member of your family was killed, and the cop assigned to the case never got more detailed in his updates on the case than saying, "Well, he was in a dangerous neighborhood, and we all know what happens there," you would rightly be worried about whether he was actually working the case.

Unfortunately, that is the case with most Democrats and Iraq. While they did an admirable job of exposing the lies about why we went into Iraq, they never dropped the other shoe and loudly explained the truth.

I could almost buy that they are trying to avoid kicking the dragons and quietly back out of the war except for a couple of nagging details--many back the Hydrocarbon Law that Iraqis rightly see as theft of their oil income, and many Democratic withdrawal proposals have massive loopholes about leaving some troops for counter-terrorism, force protection, and training Iraqis

Some of the facts I have in mind have been covered in the press on page A13 or further back, but have only been acknowledged by a handful of Democrats, not the leadership, and NO republicans.

I'm willing to listen to any proposals provided they squarely and upfront acknowledge the FACTs. Conversely, the less I hear about these things, the more I suspect the person talking is lying.

OIL

There is a more grown up, intellectual lie about why we invaded Iraq than the terrorist boogey man that says we went in to ensure access to a cheap source of oil to run our economy. Right wingers Pat Robertson and Tom Friedman said this plainly. Friedman said if the war went well, the price could drop to as little as $6 a barrel.

An additional reason this may have seemed strategically urgent is the world's oil supply has either peaked or is about to, and as it declines, the Middle East will be the last region sucked dry.

I could see why this would make sense to someone and even make some in the Pentagon see a need to play along with the lies because it was in our best interest. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff falls into this camp.

The only problem is, the behavior of the oil companies, the loyalties of the Bushies, and as BBC journalist Greg Palast found, the CIA's top oil analyst all undercut this argument.

And why exactly would oil men want to lower the price of their product, so they have to pay more and work harder to make the same or lower profits?

In fact, they wanted to make sure Saddam didn't pump too much and drive prices down, as even the Oil & Gas Journal said before the war. So we went to war to keep the price at the pump HIGH.

Recent price gouging and record profits by oil companies shows how much they care about the rest of us.

Timeline of oil company machinations regarding Iraq

Detailed study on how Bush's plan for Iraq's oil compares to Gulf neighbors

Restructuring Iraq's oil during a military occupation to favor our oil companies is probably a war crime.


The Hague Convention of 1907 (IV) see articles 47, 53, 55

The Geneva Convention of 1949 (IV) we've broken almost every section of article 147, and Bush has personally broken article 148.


The mechanism for giving the bulk of the profits from the oil, up to 80%, to major oil corporations is the Hydrocarbon Law that Democrats included in the benchmarks Iraqis must meet. Iraqi oil workers, scholars, and bureaucrats from the Saddam era strongly oppose this law, and sent a letter to Congress saying so. The vice president of Iraq even said the Hydrocarbon law screws Iraqis.

Screwing Iraqis out of their oil income is so important to the Bushies that they fired Gen. Garner, the first colonial governor of Iraq, when he correctly said delaying elections and privatizing oil would inflame resistance to the occupation.

Watch interview with Jay Garner




IRAQIS WANT US TO LEAVE

80% or more of Iraqis want us to leave according to a British intel commissioned poll. That Brit poll found that only 1% of Iraqis feel safer because we are there.

This is pretty consistent with the spring 2004 polls by Gallup and the Bush appointed CPA. To Jack Murtha's credit, he actually acknowledged these polls in his floor statement.

The Gallup poll in Spring 2004 found that 57% of Iraqis wanted us to leave immediately, and 71% viewed us as occupiers not liberators.

The Bush appointed CPA poll spring 2004 had similar results. 86% wanted us to leave after the January 2005 election and 82% viewed us as occupier not liberators.

Even Iyad Allawi, the thug who used to be an enforcer for Saddam that Bush appointed prime minister of the provisional government recently said the human rights situation in Iraq is at least as bad now as it was under Saddam.

At the Cairo Conference on Iraq, the Iraqi participants from all factions agreed that while insurgent attacks on civilians were wrong, those on occupation forces are not.

The war in Iraq has had an even worse effect on opinion of us in the Arab world. While some Americans may still believe the crap and platitudes about fighting terrorism and spreading democracy, few in the Arab world did, and the number is approaching absolute zero. It is not that they oppose democracy or "aren't ready" for it (one of the most racist bipartisan talking points ever) but that they know Bush cares about as much about democracy in the Arab world as he did about black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.




THE INSURGENCY IS NOT AL QAEDA

Israelis and Saudis separately studied our interrogations of foreign fighters captured in Iraq and found that most had no prior connection to al Qaeda and were motivated by our invasion, not religious fundamentalism.

The military admits they inflated al Qaeda and Zarqawi's role in the insurgency for propaganda purposes in both Iraq and the US The military admits they inflated Zarqawi's role in the insurgency for propaganda purposes in both Iraq and the US.

The Iraqis don't like al Qaeda. The Bushies use this to make the leap to say that they don't like all the insurgency. The reality is Iraqis recognize al Qaeda is responsible for attacks on civilians and are trying to inflame sectarian violence, and sectarian violence is one of our excuses for staying.

IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS FAILING BECAUSE THEY ARE ONLY SOVEREIGN WHEN THEY AGREE WITH BUSH

The Iraqis are not apes who just descended from the trees, and can't figure out how to put a military and police force together. You might recall that they successfully invaded Kuwait, fought the much bigger Iran to a draw in the 80s, and Bush convinced us they were going to invade the US even without a navy or being able to put a plane in the air without our permission.

Bush fired all the qualified people as soon as we invaded. And the current problem is getting troops and cops to fire on their own people who they know may have a legitimate beef with us being there. Which sounds a hell of a lot like Vietnam. Wasn't that the big plan there? Train the Vietnamese to fight for us in our absence? Although it was never put that bluntly, that's the real problem. When the perception and reality are we are there to screw them out of their natural resources and kill those who protest too much with either airstrikes or death squads, it's going to be tough to find people to consistently fight for us. Those who do are unlikely to be choir boys, and likely inspire even less love for the puppet government.

When the Iraqi government does show signs of independence, Bush pulls on their choke chain HARD. Bush told them to fire their first elected prime minister Jafari, the guy who wanted to meet Noam Chomsky, and he wasn't.

The current prime minister, Maliki has said Bush will FIRE him if he doesn't get the Hydrocarbon Law passed.

The Iraqi parliament has asked to please have a say in whether the occupation continues. Bush and even Congress are very careful about never asking Iraqis what they would prefer, but the Iraqi parliament understands that their legitimacy with their own people depends on asking the US to leave.

I don't expect Republicans to be honest on these issues. Like NASCAR racers, they wear their corporate sponsorship on their sleeve and read the talking points their owners fax them.

I do expect Democrats who want progressives to vote for them to be honest about these issues because too many have divided loyalties with one foot in the corporate camp, and one foot with the American people. Getting them to tell the truth about Iraq is one way to find out if the foot on our side isn't going to be on our neck if they get elected.

Edwards apologized with a lie

In an editorial in the Washington Post, John Edwards offered this version of his Iraq War vote apology:

The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.

John Edwards. "The Right Way in Iraq"
The Washington Post. Nov 13, 2005.

That's very nice.

The only problem is, Dick Durbin who served on the senate intelligence committee with Edwards said they had the information to know Bush was lying and exaggerating about the intelligence.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/28/sen-durbin-dro...

Senator Bob Graham was disturbed enough by the difference between the public rhetoric and what the committee was hearing that he asked CIA director George Tenet to draft a public letter summarizing the intel and analysis on Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

Tenet slanted the letter toward Saddam being more dangerous than he was, but he had to admit that Saddam would not have used WMD against us or given them to terrorists who did unless his life and grip on power were in immediate jeopardy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2312369.stm

And anyone serving on the senate intelligence committee might have a passing knowledge of our ability to retaliate against a WMD attack would take fewer of our 10,000 nukes than we lose to spoilage every year, they might be old enough to remember Mutually Assured Destruction that kept the Soviets at bay when they had as many or more nukes than us, and they might know the rest of the world is acutely aware that we are the only nation that has ever used a nuclear weapon--that senator might wonder why Saddam would be a threat to us if he got nukes anyway, apart from the action movie level view of Arabs as bad guys who live to run in front of our guns and be shot.

Individuals may go on suicide missions, but nations do not, nor do thugs who worked hard to get and hold power like Saddam.

So in essence, what Edwards didn't know when he voted that he knows now is that the war would become unpopular, not that the intelligence was faulty, which was not the case. The same is true for any politician who uses the same excuse.

This shows a serious flaw in the approach of the Democrats: they want to tell lies that are less extreme and mean than the republican ones, and fewer of them if possible, but still want to keep the real reasons for doing things and deliberations behind closed doors where the "little people" like us can't interfere.

The Democrats on the intel committee who voted for the war have shown that's what they are doing, and even those who voted against the war are showing that loyalty to the good old boys is greater than loyalty to our country. If they were motivated by patriotism, they could broken their vow of secrecy and the courts likely would have backed them up as they did with Daniel Ellsberg when he leaked the Pentagon Papers. That leak would have been in the public interest and would have saved hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Edwards says he wants to do things for poor people, and I believe him. I believe he would do them. LBJ did things for poor people too, but the deals he made with the corporate suits for war in Vietnam was a price we shouldn't have had to pay for the good things LBJ did. And if those same people show up at President Edwards door asking for a war in Iran or Venezuela, I'm not so sure he'd give them the boot in the ass they deserve.

apology john edwards dick durbin george tenet wmd intelligence iraq war resolution senate intelligence committee democrats candidate