- As I pointed out last week, the Democratic war-funding
legislation gave the president (in fine print) every possible loophole
for NOT withdrawing from Iraq. So, why the veto? Partly, it was the Bush
administration's dogged agenda of asserting the primacy of the Executive
over Congress in matters of war--which is improper. However, the real reason
is that the globalist cabal that controls this administration has no intention
of leaving Iraq.
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- It is obvious that the administration does not want the
public to have any expectations of withdrawal--something that a fixed date
for initiating withdrawal would certainly promote. The globalists' purpose
in Iraq is not to end the civil war (which isn't possible to do by force
anyway) but to prepare for further incursions on Iran and Syria.
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- There are little hints in the news that surface now and
then that confirm this extended warmongering agenda. Just this week sources
in Israel revealed that the Bush administration continues to veto any attempt
by Israel to reach a comprehensive peace deal with Syria.
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- Stephen Zunes writes in Foreign Policy In Focus: "Even
as American officials reluctantly agreed last month to include Syrian representatives
in multiparty talks on Iraqi security issues, the Bush administration continues
to block Israel from resuming negotiations with Syria over its security
concerns.
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- "Indeed, when Israeli officials asked Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice about pursuing exploratory talks with Syria,
her answer, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was, 'don't even
think about it.' Similarly, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reports
that Israeli government officials 'understood from President Bush that
the United States would not take kindly to reopening a dialogue between
Israel and Syria.'"
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- This same treatment has been more obvious relative to
Iran, which also was allowed to participate in group talks on Iraq, but
refused any direct negotiations with the US over the uranium issue (because
of the US demand of total capitulation as a precondition for talks). It
is obvious that the US wants Syria and Iran kept in the status as international
pariahs to make future administration attack plans more palatable to the
American public. Even Ms. Rice's brief talks with the Syrian foreign minister
in Cairo yesterday was just for show-to establish a token record of having
spoken to the other side so as to give the impression that the US "tried
to solve this diplomatically" before going to war.
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- As the Democrats dutifully meet at the White House to
hammer out a compromise on emergency war funding, I can only ask: What
is there to compromise? The answer: only the withdrawal date. However,
it will be a sellout not a compromise--although the president's men may
suggest euphemistic language that allows the Dems the appearance of compromise.
I suspect they will resurrect the meaningless "benchmark" ruse
as a pacifier to the anti-war crowd. Naturally, that makes it appear as
if all future failures are the fault of the puppet Iraqi government, not
the Americans in Washington who call the shots.
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- I get weary of the Republican shills in Congress continually
harping on the line: "Setting a date for withdrawal is stabbing our
troops in the back." Polls of troops in the military show that a portion
of our troops are angry with the continued deployments and have grave doubts
about our real purpose in Iraq. Many of our troops and their parents want
us out of Iraq as well. Congress telling the president to pull back from
Iraq isn't a betrayal of our troops, but the only (and democratic) way
to escape this quagmire and avoid further bloodshed.
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- Another popular charge is that Congress is "micro-managing
the war" and "usurping the prerogatives of the Command-in-Chief."
Baloney! If Congress has the exclusive power to declare war (which it does),
it also has the exclusive power to rescind that declaration, which is what
the date of withdrawal really means. It is important to note that Republicans
and Democrats in Congress specifically spurned Rep. Ron Paul's demand that
they formally declare war on Iraq rather than rely on a constitutionally
weak "authorization to use force." Nevertheless, if the president
has to seek such authorization from Congress, it cannot be unlimited in
time, and Congress certainly has the power to withdraw that authorization.
It is true that the president and his military advisors can run the day-to-day
operations as they see fit, but the president cannot claim to continue
a war indefinitely if Congress says "no" anymore than the military
can claim to be free from civilian control.
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- WHO'S TO BLAME FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ?
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- In these briefs, I have clearly blamed the war agenda
on the Bush administration, in particular the Cheney wing of the White
House that controls this Neo-con/Globalist strategy. But the insiders clearly
had help from members of Congress, the CIA leadership, and the media, as
amply documented by Bill Moyers in his exposé of the media's complicity
in shilling for the war rationale.
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- Moreover, members of the key Senate Intelligence Committee
also knew something fishy was going on and kept silent--using the bogus
excuse that Senate secrecy rules prevented their disclosure. Sean Lengell
of the Washington Times reports that "[t]he Senate's No. 2 Democrat
says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war
but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the
intelligence committee. 'The information we had in the intelligence committee
was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't
believe it,' Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday
when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.
I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because,
in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside
the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in
direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this
Congress.'"
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- Absolutely untrue! Durbin could have said exactly that--as
long as he didn't refer to anything specific intelligence revealed. He
could have told all the world that there was a massive contradiction of
information, and demanded that the Senate NOT rely upon the White House
statements. After all, that is what the Senate has an Intelligence Committee
for--to judge the nature of the White House claims.
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- Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution
permitted.
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- Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief
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- http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com
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