Asked if they could guarantee that, if elected, that would withdraw all troops from Iraq by 2013, the front runners revealed that their attitude is "The people be damned. I'll do what I want."
Hillary Clinton: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."
John Edwards: "I cannot make that commitment."
Barack Obama: "I think it's hard to project four years from now."
Really? If it's hard to project four years from now, then possibly they should all abandon their alleged health care plans. If they can't tell the American people -- which overwhelming wants troops out of Iraq before Bully Boy leaves office -- that they'll do as the people wish, they're telegraphing that they are no better than Bully Boy and that, when push comes to shove, should they get into the Oval Office, expect four more years of a bully.
As candidate Dennis Kucininch (who pledged to have troops out within three months of being sworn in as president) noted during the debate, "It is fairly astonishing to have Democrats who took back the power of the House and Senate in 2006 to stand on this stage and tell the American people that the war will continue till 2013 and perhaps past that."
Of the other candidates, Bill Richardson hit on the points the strongest in the debate and by following that with a press release the next day repeating his remarks, "I have a fundamental difference with Senator Obama, John Edwards, and Senator Clinton. Their position is changing the mission. My position is to end this war. Six billion dollars on cancer research equals two weeks of spending on the war. As long as we do not end the war, we cannot invest in critical needs like cancer. The American people want to end the war. You cannot start the reconciliation of Iraq, a political settlement, and possibly this issue of a separation, which I think is a possible solution, until we get all our troops out. Unlike Senator Clinton, I do not believe the Congress has done enough. We have been able to move 240,000 of our troops in three months in and out of Iraq through Kuwait. It would take persuading Turkey. I would leave behind some of the light equipment. Leaving any troop behind will prevent us from moving forward toward stability in the region. I would talk to Iran. I would make sure the entire issue is tied to stability in the Israeli-Palestinian issue. You have to deal with the entire issue."
Richardson was followed closely by Chris Dodd who declared, "The idea that we could be emborlied in combat for at least another five years should set off alarm bells for anyone with a modicum of foreign policy experience. Sacrificing American lives to engage in a civil war is a deeply corrupt strategy and one I have been working to combat in Congress. I call on my fellow candidates to help me bring and end to this war before 2013 -- we need to end this war now before it passes Vietnam as the longest war in American history."
Candidate Mike Gravel responded to the question with, "Well, the first thing, you stop the debate by voting every single day on cloture, every day, 20 days, and you'll overcome cloture. The president vetoes a law; it comes back to the Congress, and in the House at noon, every single day, you vote to override the president's veto. And in 40 days, the American people will have weighed in, put the pressure on those -- you tell me that the votes aren't there, you go get them by the scruff of the neck. That's what you do. You make them vote." Remember that because we'll come back to it.
Moderator Tim Russert appeared shocked and asked if Gravel was suggesting that those candidates in office (Biden, Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich and Obama) stop their campaigns to -- heaven forbid! -- do their job by voting against the illegal war day after day for 40 days, Gravel replied, " If it stops the killing, my God, yes, do it! And, Tim, you're really missing something. This is Fantasyland. We're talking about ending the war; my God, we're just starting a war right today. There was a vote in the Senate today -- Joe Lieberman, who authored the Iraq resolution, has offered another resolution, and it essentially a fig leaf to let George Bush go to war with Iran. And I want to congratulate Biden for voting against it, Dodd for voting against, and I'm ashamed of you, Hillary, for voting for it. You're not going to get another shot at this, because what's happened if this war ensues -- we invade and they're looking for an excuse to do it. And Obama was not even there to vote."
Candidate Joe Biden hedged the answer. He said yes and he said no. He declared, "Just from Iraq. You're going to bring all troops home from Iraq. If in fact there is no political solution by the time I am president, then I would bring them out because all they are is fodder.
But -- but -- if you go along with the Biden plan that got 75 votes today and you have a stable Iraq like we have in Bosnia -- we've had 20,000 Western troops in Bosnia for 10 years. Not one has been killed -- not one. The genocide has ended. So it would depend on the circumstances when I became president. " He would bring them all home . . . unless his plan to partition Iraq into three sections came to be and since it won the support of 75 idiots in the Senate, it's very likely that Iraq will be carved up into three areas if the US has the last say. In which case, Biden's answer is "no."
It was a very important moment and it was hard to miss since it was the first question of the night. "Will you commit that at the end of your first term, in 2013, all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq?" Ava, Jess and C.I. were on a college campus, watching it in a student lounge and the boos as each of the front runners gave a pledge to fighting a 'longer' illegal war made it very difficult to hear. Students grasped the point, it was your independent media that was too damn stupid to get how important that moment was. Especially important was noting Gravel's point because the lie that gets repeated over and over is that Democrats in Congress have done all that they can to end the illegal war, that their weak ass measures and weak ass actions are all they are capable of because, though they control both houses, they don't have enough votes to override a presidential veto. You don't have to override a veto. You filibuster and filibuster and no appropriations bill get passed. Independent media had a sorry ass week that they should all be ashamed over. But the failure to highlight this debate, to make it a focal point of their broadcasts and columns, goes a long way to explaining how an illegal war that the people are strongly against could drag on this long. And it demonstrated that, as of Wednesday night, if any of the three 'front runners' were elected (or Biden), the illegal war would continue through 2013.
When this crap doesn't get covered, doesn't get loudly called out, we're all in trouble. For those who've forgotten, after winning the Democratic Party's nomination in 2004, John Kerry ran increasingly to the right of Bully Boy in an attempt to outflank him. Kerry was never an anti-war candidate. Kerry was also, once, dismissive of the opposition to the Patriot Act ("tea cup," he infamously said). Attacking John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act moved more funds Kerry's way consistently and the tea cup remarks got so many complaints that Kerry never again was that dismissive. Before there's even a declared nominee, independent media is willing to ignore the statements on prolonging the illegal war.
What Kerry's primary campaign demonstrated was that if he grasped he'd offended a huge section of supporters, he dropped that line. That should have been applied to his position on the illegal war but everyone (including many in independent media -- forgetting they were supposed to be journalists -- supposed to be) was too busy giving him a pass on Iraq, refusing to press him on it, saying "Anybody But Bush!" when not hissing "Ralph, Don't Run!" Kerry should have been pressed on Iraq.
Apparently independent media isn't even prepared to press in the primaries. It all seems strangely familiar and, honestly, incredibly pathetic. Doing what independent media can't (because they refuse to) is Isaiah with his comic strip The World Today Just Nuts. Below is his latest, posted this morning, "Bloody War Hawks." It's too bad independent media doesn't have the same spirit as a comic artist.
