Why We Have to Look Back

Why We Have to Look Back
Washington Post
By John Conyers Jr.
Friday, January 16, 2009; A19

This week, I released "Reining in the Imperial Presidency," a 486-page report detailing the abuses and excesses of the Bush administration and recommending steps to address them. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. popularized the term "imperial presidency" in the 1970s to describe an executive who had assumed more power than the Constitution allows and circumvented the checks and balances fundamental to our three-branch system of government. Until recently, the Nixon administration seemed to represent a singular embodiment of the idea. Unfortunately, it is clear that the threat of the imperial presidency lives on and, indeed, reached new heights under George W. Bush.

As this report documents, there was the administration's contrived drive to a needless war of aggression with Iraq, based on manipulated intelligence and facts that were "fixed around the policy." There was its politicization of the Justice Department; unconscionable and possibly illegal policies on detention, interrogation and extraordinary rendition; warrantless wiretaps of American citizens; the ravaging of our regulatory system and the use of signing statements to override the laws of the land; and the intimidation and silencing of critics and whistle-blowers who dared to tell fellow citizens what was being done in their name. And all of this was hidden behind an unprecedented veil of secrecy and outlandish claims of privilege.

I understand that many feel we should just move on. They worry that addressing these actions by the Bush administration will divert precious energy from the serious challenges facing our nation. I understand the power of that impulse. Indeed, I want to move on as well -- there are so many things that I would rather work on than further review of Bush's presidency. But in my view it would not be responsible to start our journey forward without first knowing exactly where we are.

We cannot rebuild the appropriate balance between the branches of government without fully understanding how that relationship has been distorted. Likewise, we cannot set an appropriate baseline for future presidential conduct without documenting and correcting the presidential excesses that have just occurred. After the Nixon imperial presidency, critical reviews such as the Church and Pike committees led to fundamental reforms that have served our nation well. Comparable steps are needed to begin the process of reining in the legacy of the Bush imperial presidency. I consider these three points crucial:

First, Congress should continue to pursue its document requests and subpoenas that were stonewalled under President Bush. Doing so will make clear that no executive can forever hide its misdeeds from the public.

Second, Congress should create an independent blue-ribbon panel or similar body to investigate a host of previously unreviewable activities of the Bush administration, including its detention, interrogation and surveillance programs. Only by chronicling and confronting the past in a comprehensive, bipartisan fashion can we reclaim our moral authority and establish a credible path forward to meet the complex challenges of a post-Sept. 11 world.

Third, the new administration should conduct an independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities. Just this week, in the pages of this newspaper, a Guantanamo Bay official acknowledged that a suspect there had been "tortured" -- her exact word -- in apparent violation of the law. The law is the law, and, if criminal conduct occurred, those responsible -- particularly those who ordered and approved the violations -- must be held accountable.

Some day, there is bound to be another national security crisis in America. A future president will face the same fear and uncertainty that we did after Sept. 11, 2001, and will feel the same temptation to believe that the ends justify the means -- temptation that drew our nation over to the "dark side" under the leadership of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. If those temptations are to be resisted -- if we are to face new threats in a manner that keeps faith with our values and strengthens rather than diminishes our authority around the world -- we must fully learn the lessons of our recent past.

The writer, a Democrat, represents Michigan's 14th District in the U.S. House and is chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Laborers Work to Elect Barack Obama

Daily blogs at the AFL-CIO's site that expose McCain's plan to continue George W. Bush's policies on outsourcing jobs, an unending occupation of Iraq, privatizing Social Security, taxing health care benefits, and more oil drilling combine with the McCain Revealed campaign and the Meet Barack Obama to help educate union members.

read the whole story here...

[It is exciting that the labor movement has increased its use of new information technologies to communicate and activate union members on political issues.]

The Truth About John McCain

The truth about John McCain is not very pretty. You can start with the Iraq War, when he made the flippant comment that “as far as I’m concerned, we could be in there for 100 years.”

read the whole article here...

[Additional thoughts by Joel Wendland]

I think Joelle does an excellent job of outlining the key differences between McCain and Obama on major issues that impact working families (here and abroad) at a very basic and substantive level. There is no doubt these differences are huge and require the maximum effort to defeat McCain on November 4th and to set the stage for winning real reforms that can strengthen the hand of working families for the future.

Maliki 'Clarification' Came After Pressure from U.S.

Earlier today, a German magazine reported that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki said that he favored Barack Obama's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq in 16 months.

But later, an Iraqi aide to al-Maliki "clarified" the remark.

The statement by an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki calling his remarks in Der Spiegel "misinterpreted and mistranslated" followed a call to the prime minister's office from U.S. government officials in Iraq.

Remember when Bush said he would withdraw troops if Iraqis asked him to do it? Now Bush is just playing blatant puppet master.



read more here...

Barack Obama and the drum beats of peace

by Joel Wendland

After the September 11th terrorist attacks, the United States had the chance to do something good and right, Barack Obama said in a major Iraq war policy speech this week. But a failure of leadership and ideas on the part of the Bush administration led us down the wrong path.

"Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives," Obama emphasized, "spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats – all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks."

Barack Obama's reassertion of his plan to end the Iraq war within 16 months of his inauguration is a welcome pledge.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday, Obama sharply contrasted his goal to the end the war and bring US troops home with Republican John McCain. The McCain-Bush war plan is a "strategy for staying" in Iraq he wrote.

McCain has called for continuing the occupation of Iraq for 100 years. McCain's recent efforts to blunt sharp criticism from all quarters by insisting that he would only stay there if U.S. troops were not in harm's way is belied by the dangerous realities in Iraq, by his own record of pushing for war in Iraq just two months after 9/11, by his support for the war all along, and by his current attempts to describe changing that policy as surrender or defeatism.

Barack Obama seems to understand the fact that it is the occupation of Iraq by foreign troops that is blocking political reconciliation. He understands that security and peace in Iraq is a multinational concern that requires a diplomatic surge with all of the region's countries involved. Even further, no social progress in the U.S. can be accomplished while we are spending $10 bill per month on the war.

While it is possible to disagree with some key features of Obama's foreign policy – points that will form the basis of renewed struggle in the event of his victory in November – ending the war in Iraq, shifting to multilateral diplomatic measures, and reengaging the international community in a unified and necessary struggle against religious extremist terrorists are points on which we can find no fault.

John McCain: Mission Accomplished

"I am saddened by the way we misled the American people, but I certainly wasn't a part of that." -- John McCain on his role in promoting the Iraq war.

See the video:



From http://www.mccainsource.com

Take U.S. Forces out of Iraq to Achieve Peace

The U.S. Bush administration is taking steps toward perpetuating the stationing of U.S. forces in Iraq ostensibly to forge cooperation with Iraq at Iraq’s “request.”

read the whole story here...

Happy May Day! Long Live the Working Class, its Past Victories, Present Struggles, and Socialist Future

by Norman Markowitz

I got a text message from a former student who is a labor organizer today wishing me happy May Day. I have never gotten a text message that wasn't a commercial and I have never sent a text message so I screwed up my answer, but I called her up and wished her a Happy May Day.

The AFL-CIO website is calling May Day International Labor Day, which would make George Meany and others turn over in their grave. This is a major step forward, but May Day can't be separated from the socialist and communist movements which have been at the center of May Day demonstrations from their beginning in 1890, from the revolutionary heritage of May Day, since it was decided to make May 1st, 1890, a day of mass protests for the eight hour day and solidarity with workers through the world at a conference in Paris in 1889 of labor and socialist representatives (with Marxists a major force in both groups) in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution.

May 1st was chosen in solidarity with the workers of the United States. The AFL-CIO website has a valuable link to the history of May Day in which it mentions the campaign launched in the U.S. on May 1, 1886 for the eight hour day. But it doesn't mention the role of anti-capitalist workers and groups in leading the May 1 demonstrations, which also were not about a holiday but about strikes to achieve the 8 hour day. In Chicago, Albert Parson's a former confederate soldier who had became a anti-racist editor fighting the KKK in Texas, then an socialist and later anarcho-socialist printer and writer well known and respected in working class circles, headed a parade of thousands of workers in Chicago on May 1, 1886. When pickets at a strike at the McCormick Harvester factory, were fired on by police a few days later, a mass protest demonstration in which Parsons was one of the leaders was organized in Haymarket Square in Chicago. After Parson's and the other organizers had left the demonstration very late in the events and a battalion of police march on the remaining demonstrators and ordered them to disperse, someone (who was never found) through a bomb and a riot ensued claiming a number of lives. Parson's and a number of his comrades in the leadership of the demonstration were tried for murder and four (even though nothing connected them to the unknown bomb thrower), including Parsons, were executed in spite of an international protest campaign from labor, socialist, and many liberal organizations and groups through Europe and the U.S. Those executed became "martyrs" for the U.S. labor movement and the resolution to make May 1st the day of protest was put forward by the U.S. delegate representing the AFL (which at the time had a large socialist contingent).

The AFL-CIO website also suggests that the holiday Americans still celebrate, Labor Day, has its origins in the the activities of Peter MaGuire, a leader of the Carpenters Union in the early 1880s (the website makes the point that there is debate over this). But our readers should remember that Peter MaGuire was a leading socialist in the U.S. labor movement whose defeat years later by a conservative business unionist was seen by some (myself included) as an important symbolic event in the shift of skilled workers away from an inclusionary class conscious trade unionism toward to an exclusionary "job" conscious" unionism.

The article then goes on to make the the important point that Labor Day was declared a National Holiday by Congress in 1894 fearful of a worker backlash in response to the Cleveland administration's brutal suppression of the Pullman Strike, led by American Railway Union president Eugene Debs. The backlash did occur as the Republican party won a major victory against the conservative Democratic Cleveland administration. Debs, as the article doesn't mention, went on to become the leader of the Socialist Party of America after it was established at the beginning of the twentieth century and was its presidential candidate in four elections.

I am trying to provide this article, which contains valuable information and an overall progressive orientation in its treatment of May Day and Labor Day, with constructive criticisim. The article also quotes really prominent labor historians David Montgomery and Nelson Lichtenstein whose statements capture the essence of class struggle that May Day was and is about.Montgomery's comment that "First state governments and then the federal government adopted the day (labor day) in response to workers demands The government did not create the holiday," is especially important in understanding what May Day was about, just as the "government" responded to workers demands in 1938 in the U.S. when it created the eight hour day standard, which the original U.S. May 1 demonstrations and the later international demonstrations were initiated to establish. But its omissions undermine it signnificantly as a tool to educate working people.

You cannot omit the Marxist and socialist history of both May Day globally and Labor Day in the U.S. (in terms of MaGuire's role), not to mention the role of May Day in the global Communist and Socialist movements right up to today and understand its significance for the past, and its meaning for the present and the future. Those who separate labor from socialism, which laws like Taft-Hartley in the U.S. along with purges and blacklists sought to do after WWII, in effect strike blows against both.

I did learn something really important from the AFL-CIO article that I did not know and I can teach the AFL-CIO article's writers something about this also. In 2003, the Bush administration declared May 1st Loyalty Day, using September 11 and the "war against terrorism" as their pretext. I either didn't know this or had forgotten it since, like millions of Americans, you can only take so much of what what the Bush administration is doing without beginning to blot it out from your consciousness.

But the article omits the that this wasn't the first federal "loyalty day." In 1947, the year of Taft-Hartley and the Truman Doctrine in effect declaring the Cold War, the Veterans of Foreign Wars established and Congress later made official May 1st as "Loyalty Day." In the 1950s especially when May Day demonstrations were suppressed, "Loyalty Day" demonstrations were held as parades in which various right-wing groups, both secular and religious, proclaimed their "loyalty" to the America represented by Joe McCarthy. I assume Bush's advisors knew all of that when they pushed through "Loyalty Day in 2003. It fits the old classic definition of a reactionary---those who learn nothing from history and forget nothing from history and thus try to do the same thing over and over again.

I would also tell both our readers and the authors of the AFL-CIO website article that when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, his government officially declared May 1st "national day" to take it away from the Social Democratic and Communist trade unionists whom he was throwing into the new concentration camps. The Nazi government even banned the use of the word "proletarian" But they couldn't kill May Day, just as the McCarthyites in the U.S. couldn't kill it with their "loyalty day. The Bush administration won't kill it either with the "loyalty day" they recycled from p;d McCarthyites in 2003.

The AFL-CIO website mad the central point that workers on this May Day are standing up for workers rights and against the Iraq War and that the AFL-CIO is with them front and center. And that is the best news for this May Day, as the trade union movement prepares to play a leading role in the defeat of the Bush administration and its would be successor, John McCain. Happy May Day.

War and Workers’ Rights Highlight May Day Celebrations

Workers around the globe today are celebrating International Labor Day, better known as May Day, to make it clear they want to live in a world where people live in peace and prosperity.

Read the full post at the AFL-CIO's blog here...

Pentagon Researchers Label Iraq War a "Major Debacle"

by Joel Wendland

The Pentagon think-tank, National Institute for Strategic Studies, has just released a report calling the Iraq war a "major debacle." Here's some snippets from McClatchey:

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The Pentagon report also sounded off on the cost of war:

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

The article also says that the report was less than glowing in its assessment of the "surge":

"Despite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt," said the report. "Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army."

The report also appeared to sidestep the obvious criticism of the commander-in-chief, focusing its ire at Donald Rumsfeld and former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice:

The report lays much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. It says that in November 2001, before the war in Afghanistan was over, President Bush asked Rumsfeld "to begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq."

Rumsfeld, who was closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney, bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the report says, and became "the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders."

" ... the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld," it continues, "cajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning fast operation." Later, he shut down the military's computerized deployment system, "questioning, delaying or deleting units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk."

The McClatchey article also suggests political repercussions from the report in that it,

raises fresh doubts about President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

That such weak criticism of the handling of the war is viewed as such a significant story suggests internal differences and splits in the military community over the wisdom of continuing the war. It also likely reflects opportunism in the military community sensing a power shift away from the Republican Party.

Discontent with Bush-McCain Policies on the Rise

A new poll by CBS/ NY Times shows that 81% of Americans see the country as on the wrong track.

A majority, about 7 in 10, identified the Iraq war, the economy, health care, and the energy crisis as the most pressing issues. Most said the government needs to play a larger role in the economy to help homeowners and to stem the loss of jobs rather than big banks. About 2 out of 3 people identified "free trade" as a problem for the country.

Only about 28% approve of the job of George W. Bush.

These poll numbers do not bode well for Republican nominee John McCain who has so closely identified himself with staying the course on George W. Bush's policies that a McCain presidency would be little more than a third Bush term.

On the major issues, McCain offers no new course in Iraq and prefers an extended occupation. He rejected any government role in the reversing the economic crash course toward recession and essentially blamed homeowners for the subprime mortgage crisis.

His health care plan is nothing more than a scheme to raise taxes on working families by requiring that health care benefits be taxed as income. In fact, he declined to meet with workers in Jacksonville, Florida who wanted to discuss their problems with the health care system. Perhaps if they had been wealthy lobbyists for the health care industry like his campaign strategist Thomas Loeffler who works for the McCain campaign and the pahrmaceutical lobby, he wouldn't have blown them off.

He is a staunch supporter of free trade and even stated that losing more jobs to free trade is alright with him.

CPUSA Nat'l Cmte. March 29 – Report on the Peace Movement

Judith LeBlanc, who is a member of the national board of the CPUSA, delivered her report on the peace movement and the 2008 elections.

She argued that it was the people's movement – not the media or the Democratic Party – that have transformed the attitudes about the ultra right and the war in the recent years. "On the ground, people know the truth," she said. Seven years of organizing by the labor movement, the peace movement, and the various movements and communities against the Bush administration and the war have paid off and voters are ready for a big change.

She added that with regard to Iraq, the war can't wait until 2009. The peace movement has to continue the fight to end the war.

LeBlanc linked the war to the elections and the defeat of McCain and the Republicans. "In the peace movement, it is strategic to win and win big, and to have that victory interpreted as a result of the efforts of the antiwar movement," she argued. It will increase pressure on the majority in Congress and the next president to bring the war to an end.

The peace movement has developed two levels of struggle: one, direct involvement in the campaigns of anti-war candidates as a step in the struggle to end the war; two, continue to mobilize the antiwar movement to become involved in defeating McCain in November.

United for Peace and Justice, the country's largest antiwar coalition, plans to build a voter engagement project that will help educate voters on McCain's plans to expand war and to focus efforts on winning in the general election.

Some efforts by peace activists have begun to argue that "Obama is for peace" and have taken to highlight differences between McCain, Clinton, and Obama. Some in the peace movement have begun to make the argument that Obama is the best of the three. Many in the peace movement say "Obama is the candidate who would go the furtherest on foreign policy and Iraq," LeBlanc suggested.

LeBlanc furthered urged the antiwar movement's continued efforts to respond to the unfolding crisis happening in Iraq now with the collapse of the surge and Bush's apparent glee at recent military failures there. Bush is eager to expand the occupation and combat operations.

The peace movement must continue to push to end the funding for the war, LeBlanc said, and she noted that both Obama and Clinton voted to end war funding in the 2007 session of Congress.

LeBlanc argued for the Communist Party to develop a multifaceted effort that at the same time seeks to win the best antiwar candidates in the 2008 elections, but also to work within the peace movement to raise the discussion about how funding for the war saps resources for communities. Additionally, she stated, participating and leading political discussions about connecting war and the economy and health care and more to the elections helps to build the Communist Party.

As a result people will see that the Communist Party has both a vision and concept of winning the unity of the people but also that it has a strategic concept for winning peace and social progress, LeBlanc concluded.

CPUSA Nat'l Cmte. March 29 – Report on the Elections

This report on the 2008 elections was delivered by Joelle Fishman and will be available soon in a complete form at cpusa.org.

"This election presents an historic opportunity to end ultra-right-wing rule of this country, " Fishman started.

Our role and the main goal of all progressive forces should be to defeat McCain and to win with a landslide victory in November.

"A massive voter turnout in November is needed to provide the political strength to win new priorities," Fishman said.

Obama's candidacy is new an unique. He recognizes the role of the people in bringing about progressive change. He also understands the need for maximum unity to win social progress, Fishman said.

His contribution on the issue of racism recognizes that racism holds everyone back and that ending racism benefits everyone, she said.

"Neither candidate is of the left," Fishman said, but history teaches us that when people mobilize candidates can be forced to act to do the right things.

Keeping fire on McCain and exposing the fact that he is the favorite off the ultra-right and of Wall street, is a main task for us.

"John McCain is a favorite of the military industrial complex," Fishman noted. "He is the favorite of Wall Street.

He opposes S-CHIP and universal health care; he supports obscene tax cuts for the super-rich; he supports Bush's war policy and wants to stay in Iraq endlessly and spread that war to Iran.

(Fishman noted here some examples of the key policy differences between the Communist Party and the Democratic Party. While Democratic candidates seem to favor repealing the worst of Bush's tax cuts for the rich, Communists want tax policy to be moved back to 1970s levels to ensure that the very richest people pay their fair share into the treasury and lift the burden off of working families. Democratic candidates appear to favor the ongoing war and occupation of Afghanistan, while the Communist Party calls for bringing those troops home as well as ending the Iraq war and transforming US foreign policy. Also, while the Democratic candidates have offered plans that move toward universal health care, the Communist Party seeks passage of a national health insurance program that is a single-payer, not for profit Medicare for all system.)

In addition to winning the presidency, Fishman argued, bigger Democratic majorities need to be won in Congress. Citing failed efforts to win passage of several bills that would have mandated timetables for withdrawal from Iraq as examples, Fishman said larger majorities could override vetoes and block Senate Republican filibusters.

"There is a need to increase the pro-labor and pro-peace members of Congress," she said.

The Communist Party plans to watch closely 28 House races, 4 Senate races, 2 governorships, and several ballot initiatives across the country, Fishman announced.

Fishman also reported on the role of "core forces" in the 2008 election cycle. The Communist Party uses the term "core forces" to refer to those communities in our country who have a special role within the working class and around the working class in bringing about social progress.

Fishman stated that Latino, youth and women voters have dramatically increased their votes for the Democratic candidates, while African Americans have increased their turnout in the South.

Labor is making a huge national effort to win the presidency for a Democratic candidate. Additionally, the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition are launching a massive postcard campaign to get 1 million signatures in support of passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and for universal health care. While some AFL-CIO unions have endorsed Obama and some have backed Clinton, the federation itself is waiting to endorse the Democratic nominee. CtW has backed Obama.

The labor campaign will also work to expose the real McCain. He is not on the side of workers. He supports NAFTA unquestioningly. He opposes universal health care. And he will seek to expand the war.

African Americans have been inspired and energized by the Obama campaign. Massive new efforts to register Black voters are underway. If African American voters in some southern states like South Carolina and Georgia vote in proportion to their populations, they could flip those states from red to blue, Fishman argued.

Fishman also described as "hype" the notion that Latino voters will not back Black candidates. Latino voters have voted in the primaries 79% for Democratic candidates (up from 60 in 2004 general election). Latino turnout has tripled. New registration drives among Latino voters aim for 12 million registered with 10 million voter turnout.

Fishman called for Democratic candidates to reject the divisiveness promoted by the ultra-right Republicans on the immigration question.

Women voters have also turned out higher for the Democratic candidates.

Additionally, youth voters, environmentally-oriented, and peace voters have an opportunity to make their mark on this election.

For its part, the Communist Party will develop multimedia/Internet tools and printed pamphlets that expose the real McCain and his record and introduce voters to the election platform of the Communist Party. Communist Party members will work in local communities registering voters from the core forces and mobilizing them to defeat John McCain and to win bigger majorities in Congress.

Obama Discusses Costs of Bush's War in Iraq

By Joel Wendland

In West Virginia today, Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama continued his criticisms of Bush's handling of the Iraq war. He focused his remarks on the costs of war.

"We honor the brave men and women serving this nation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. A grateful nation slautes them," he stated.

No one pays as a high a price for war as troops themselves and the people who love them, he said. But we are all paying a high price for the war.

When National Guard troops are diverted to Iraq and aren't here to provide aid during natural and other disasters in their home states, that is a cost of this war, Obama pointed out. He cited the 2005 hurricanes in the Gulf Coast and massive flooding in West Virginia.

Obama also cited the Bush administration's diversion of resources from the fight in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda to Iraq, a strategic cost that has not made anyone safer.

Additionally, the Iraq war has cost US prestige and leadership on major global issues that impact our country as well, Obama added, including global poverty, disease, genocide, and nuclear proliferation.

The diversion of federal resources to give tax breaks for the wealthy and no-bid contracts to administration-friendly corporations like Halliburton has come at the expense of providing adequate funding for veterans health care. Obama cited Ft. Drum in New York, where recent reports indicate that returning veterans are waiting months to gain access to the VA system due to a lack of adequate funding.

Economically, Americans are paying for the war in other ways as well. Each household, he said is paying about $100 per month for the war. Skyrocketing gas prices – four times higher now than they were before the war – are not only taking a toll on working families' pocketbooks but also on the general economy pushing up prices across the board.

"The cost of this war has been far higher than what we were told it would be," Obama said. Obama cited recent estimates that put the final cost of the war at about $3 trillion.

Bush administration officials convinced many Americans to support the war by promising it would cost as little as $50 or $60 billion. Bush didn't tell us the truth, Obama said.

Dennis Kucinich: 5th Anniversary of the start of the Iraq War

From here...

Cost of War Harms Children, Health Care

By Joel Wendland

The National Priorities Project estimates the cost of war in treasure has harmed the US in ways that are only now becoming clear.

In Pennsylvania, for example, the people of that state have so far paid close to $20 billion for the war. This bill has come at the expense of health care, educational, public safety and other crucial needs.

NPP reports that this same amount of money could have provided close to 5 million people with health care or could have built more than 1,000 elementary schools. It could have created more than 3 million slots in Head Start for pre-school aged children or hired 315,000 elementary school teachers.

In Indiana, the money the taxpayers of that state have spent on the war could have paid for provide more than 7 million homes with renewable energy resources or provided 3.7 million children with free health care.

North Carolina taxpayers could have hired more than 360,000 public safety officers or more than 200,000 port container inspectors with the money they have contributed to the Bush-Mc Cain war in Iraq.

West Virginians could have funded more than 20,000 affordable housing units for low-income working families or provided 650,000 children with health care if the war had not been launched.

The $3 Trillion War (and that's a conservative estimate)

By Joel Wendland

Wonder why they just canceled music and art classes at your child's public school? Or why the state is trying to balance its budget by raising fees or cutting Medicaid benefits? Do you question why the potholes on your street haven't been fixed for a couple years, or the city transportation system is cutting bus lines? Have you questioned why there seems be no federal money for environmental clean-up, bridge repair, levee repair, or investment in green energy alternatives?

If you haven't asked these questions or others like them you are among a dwindling number of Americans.

The plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face answer to each of them is Bush's $3 trillion dollar war.

And according to a recent op-ed in the Washington Post by Harvard economist Linda J. Bilmes and former World Bank economic adviser Joseph Stiglitz, "The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending."

Bilmes and Stiglitz remind us that the Bush administration overcame some concerns about the war in 2002 and 2003 by pretending it would cost as little as $50 or $60 billion, going so far as to fire one adviser who let it slip that it might cost the astronomical sum of $100-$200 billion. The administration even claimed that Iraqi oil would pay the bill, winning votes from even a minority of congressional Democrats along the way.

Bilmes and Stiglitz prove, however, that the cost of war far exceeds the up-front costs allocated by spending resolutions and supplementals, which alone total close to $600 billion.

The total cost of war includes the massive amounts added to the federal debt under the Bush administration, which adds up to an additional $1 trillion. The Bush people refused to ask that the war be paid for and promoted tax cuts instead. Therefore, the war, in true American fashion, has simply been put on the credit card, to be paid for by the next generation.

Write Bilmes and Stiglitz:

Our vast and growing indebtedness inevitably makes it harder to afford new health-care plans, make large-scale repairs to crumbling roads and bridges, or build better-equipped schools. Already, the escalating cost of the wars has crowded out spending on virtually all other discretionary federal programs, including the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and federal aid to states and cities, all of which have been scaled back significantly since the invasion of Iraq.

In addition to this the necessary costs for caring for returning veterans from their health care, job retraining and education, and disability benefits will add to the price tag in direct costs and additional debt financing.

In the process, mired in recession and a desperate credit crunch, Wall Street is rapidly selling itself to the highest, even sometimes any bidder overseas.

Bilmes and Stiglitz further state:

While Washington has been spending well beyond its means, others have been saving -- including the oil-rich countries that, like the oil companies, have been among the few winners of this war. No wonder, then, that China, Singapore and many Persian Gulf emirates have become lenders of last resort for troubled Wall Street banks, plowing in billions of dollars to shore up Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and other firms that burned their fingers on subprime mortgages. How long will it be before the huge sovereign wealth funds controlled by these countries begin buying up large shares of other U.S. assets?

The economic downturn and the costs to recover from it will add another $1 trillion to US debt.

Bush recklessly entered the Iraq war in an imperialist drive for geopolitical gain and resource control. While the harm this policy has inflicted on the people of Iraq is visible in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and a destroyed country racked by a civil war provoked by a foreign military presence, the damage to our own is just becoming clearer.

Bilmes and Stiglitz, in their closing, make a crucial point:

As we head toward November, opinion polls say that voters' main worry is now the economy, not the war. But there's no way to disentangle the two. The United States will be paying the price of Iraq for decades to come. The price tag will be all the greater because we tried to ignore the laws of economics – and the cost will grow the longer we remain.

Bush has bequeathed is policy of endless war funded by a credit card to John McCain who has promised to carry on without changing course.

Other presidential candidates have promised to begin to think about the process of ending the war on day one. But in a time of economic crisis and with big plans for universal health care and boosting public education there can be no waffling on ending Bush's $3 trillion war.

Having solid national security credentials isn't just about how many earmarks you gave arms maker Northrop Grumman or how many threats you can make toward Iran, Cuba, or any other members of Bush's "axis of evil."

One hopes that the economic security and social health of our communities would be first on the list of national security concerns. We know that Bush doesn't prioritize our communities. The Democratic candidates need to clarify that they will not follow his game plan but will demand real change.

Senate Republicans Filibuster Home Foreclosure Bill

by Joel Wendland

Senate Republicans today filibustered a modest attempt to ease the home foreclosure crisis. The bill would have modified credit counseling and bankruptcy laws to ease the ability of homeowners to renegotiate mortgages with lenders. It would also have provided funds to state and local communities to purchase foreclosed homes.

Bush and the Republicans cited the bill's price tag as too steep, even though the $4 billion allocated for the measure is lest than half of the monthly price tag for the Bush-McCain war in Iraq.

In related news, John McCain was sharply criticized this week for failing to develop any ideas to ease the housing crisis.

Protesters gathered at a McCain campaign event in Cincinnati, Ohio on Tuesday to protest McCain's inaction. Protesters pointed out that many McCain campaign bundlers come out of the finance, real estate, and insurance industries.

These vested interest appear to not want to see any changes to regulations that may restrict their speculative activities or to bankruptcy laws that aid homeowners.

These charges came the same week that Federal Elections Commission Chair David M. Mason, a Republican, wrote to John McCain telling him that his current campaign spending may be illegal. Ethics charges have haunted McCain this past week, giving wings to a rumor that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may reenter the race.

Bush Admin. Made 935 False Statements about Iraq Before War

by Joel Wendland

A recently published study by the Center for Public Integrity documents 935 false statements by officials in the Bush administration in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

Since the summer of 2003 when US inspectors admitted finding no weapons of mass destruction and fabrications about Al Qaeda and Saddam were demonstrated false, Bush and his folks claimed that they too were the victims of faulty intelligence, which, I guess, is another false statement.

But the CPI report shows that indeed the 935 false statements before the war and hundreds after the invasion was launched were not just statements reflecting bad intelligence. The intelligence was clear: there was no evidence for the certainty with which administration officials made their claims, no evidence to make the administration's case for war a "slam dunk." And certainly not worth the price of 4,000 US lives, as many as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and the trillions it will cost us and our next generation.

According to a press statement by CPI, Bush and Powell delivered the most false statements about the case for war with 260 and 254 respectively.

While for most people this information may not be new and many post-invasion accounts have exposed the administration's role in cooking intelligence and manipulating the media to help spread these 935 lies, it is a compelling study that documents the administration's systematic effort to start a war. It also will be a permanent page in the history of the Bush administration.

Part of what made this pattern of lying remarkably successful was the failure of the big media to dig into the stories, press sources, take risks, or demand to see real evidence. I don't know if the fifth estate as a whole was "complicit" consciously in starting the war, but they sure did nothing to stop it. They went with the flow. Don't make waves and you could get a book deal. Meanwhile, without access to official sources or to secret insider sources, the independent media seemed to have their finger on the pulse of the truth about the war.

So support your local independent media outlet: People's Weekly World and Political Affairs.

Bush Vetoes Children's Health

Behind closed doors and with the TV cameras off, Bush just vetoed the S-CHIP bill. With one stroke of his pen, he said tax cuts for the rich, loopholes for big oil, and the war on Iraq based on lies are matter more than children who need shots, their teeth fixed, expensive medicines for chronic illnesses like asthma, diabetes, or allergies.

Bush, in the name of his discredited and despicable conservative ideology, told America what his values are: lucrative private contracts for Blackwater without oversight to kill Iraqis, torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and spying on your phone calls rank higher in importance than making sure that working families whose children need to have tubes inserted in their ears to prevent recurring infections or operations to fix their eyesight can afford to do so.

With a stroke of his pen, he said to the children of working families, you don't count in my book, and I don't care about your future.

Bush also lied – surprise, surprise. He explained that he opposed the $5 billion dollar a year S-CHIP bill because he believes in fiscal responsibility. Lie. Over his presidency he has signed spending bill after spending bill paid for with debt mounted on the backs of the very children he scorned today with his veto. The amount he (abetted by the previous Republican-controlled Congress) personally has added to the national debt is in the trillions.

He also called the S-CHIP bill, supported by right-wing members of Congress, private insurance lobbyist, medical associations, and liberal children's advocates alike, was a kind of creeping socialism.

His gesture, by vetoing children's health, is one of the most spiteful, small and despicable acts I can imagine. But then again he led us into a war with lies and now as many as 1 million Iraqis have lost their lives.

Republicans (and any Democrats) who vote to support the president's veto should lose their jobs in 2008. They do not represent America or any version of "family values" and cannot be relied on to care for our future: our children.