Hillary Clinton’s Sleaze Parade
Politics can be a rough game. Candidates need to hold their competitors accountable and challenge distortions and lies. And God knows, we need a Democratic nominee who’s willing to fight. But Hillary Clinton’s campaign has included far too many cheap shots, sleazy manipulations, and unsavory players.
New questionable actions emerge daily. You’re probably familiar with many. But it’s the broader pattern that disturbs me-how much the Clinton campaign seems to nurture questionable actions from her operatives, supporters, and surrogates. And how the campaign’s actions go beyond drawing legitimate political lines to an all-too-Rovian instinct to do whatever’s deemed necessary to take down those blocking Clinton’s potential victory. Here’s a representative list of actions that, taken together, offer a troubling portent for her candidacy and presidency.
Start with the hiring of chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn. He’s CEO of a PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, that prepped the Blackwater CEO for his recent congressional testimony, is advising the giant industrial laundry corporation Cintas in fighting unionization, and whose website proudly heralded their union-busting expertise until it became a potential Clinton liability and they removed that section. B-M has historically represented everyone from the Argentine military junta and Philip Morris to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster.
Then there are Clinton’s campaign donors. Any major candidate has some dubious supporters, but Clinton’s gotten money from particularly noxious sources. Start with her donation from Rupert Murdoch, who’s given to no other Democrat. Add in massive amounts of money from Washington lobbyists and from industries like defense, banking, health care, and oil and energy providers (though Obama’s also gotten a lot from some of these industries). Then there’s Norman Hsu, who brought in over $850,000 to Hillary’s campaign after returning to the US following his flight to evade a fraud conviction (Hsu was subsequently rearrested, sentenced to three years, and is facing further federal charges). There’s the Nebraska data processing company InfoUSA, whose CEO, Vin Gupta, used private corporate jets to fly the Clintons on business, personal, and campaign trips, gave Bill Clinton a $3.3 million consulting contract, and is now being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly diverting company money to his own personal uses. Mississippi attorney Dickie Scruggs recently canceled a major December 15 Hillary fundraiser (with Bill Clinton headlining) after being indicted for trying to bribe a judge. Major international sweatshop owners, the Saipan-based Tan family, have given Clinton $26,000, complementing their previous massive support for Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay. That doesn’t even count dubious supporters from the past, like Peter Paul, the convicted con-artist turned event producer who coordinated a massive Hollywood Clinton fundraiser during the 2,000 election. Taken together, it’s a pretty tainted constellation of backers.
Like most candidates, Clinton spends the bulk of her money on ads and mailings, and she’s taken some pretty problematic approaches there too. I wonder how many of the New Hampshire women who voted last minute for Clinton were swayed by a mailing claiming that Obama wasn’t really committed to abortion rights because he’d voted “present” on some abortion-related legislative votes. Except that Obama had done so as part of a strategy devised by Illinois Planned Parenthood to protect vulnerable swing district representatives. New England Planned Parenthood’s Board Chair strongly refuted Clinton’s letter, pointing out that Obama had a 100% record on all the votes that really mattered. But the mailing may still have damaged his support.
The distortion of Obama’s position on abortion echoes Hillary’s audacious argument that Obama really wasn’t against the Iraq war and betrayed his promises by failing to vote against war appropriation bills after the Democrats couldn’t override Bush’s veto. I wish Obama had bucked the Democratic leadership and taken a stronger stand. But it’s a gross distortion of history to equate his positions with Clinton’s overt support for the war authorization, refusal to apologize for her vote, and claim that she was really doing it all to promote more diplomatic solutions.
We can find further distortions in a mailing sent out before the Iowa caucuses by the independent expenditure committee of a key Clinton ally, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The AFSCME mailing attacked Obama on his health care plan by using a John Edwards quote that was featured so prominently that recipients could assume that his campaign was the source of the attack piece. This and other actions so disturbed a group of seven AFSCME International Vice Presidents wrote a public letter to their union president, saying that although the union had endorsed Clinton on a split vote, the political committee had no mandate to attack Obama. They demanded the committee stop what they called “fundamentally dishonest” attacks.
Other surrogates have attacked Obama’s character. Twice they’ve tried to raise Obama’s early drug use as a campaign issue-despite his having addressed it directly and frankly in his book Dreams From My Father. Hillary’s New Hampshire campaign chair, Billy Shaheen, mentioned it first, claiming that he was only worried about how the Republicans might use it. Sheehan resigned from the campaign after a storm of criticism, then Black Entertainment Television CEO Robert Johnson (who’s backed Bush on issues like the estate tax) raised it again, with Clinton standing next to him at a South Carolina rally. After Johnson’s words drew major heat, Clinton belatedly distanced herself from them, but the smear still stands, along with the disingenuous claim that those making it were just neutral participants, only trying to serve the Party’s best interests.
Clinton’s campaign also attacked the John Edwards campaign for appearing in New Hampshire with the parents of Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old leukemia patient who died after CIGNA refused her a liver transplant. Clinton press secretary Jay Carson claimed that the US needs to elect “somebody who’s actually going to help people and not use them as talking points.” Never mind that the Sarkisyans had initiated the chance to speak out by contacting Edwards about appearing at a Manchester New Hampshire town hall campaign appearance. To the Clinton campaign, their appearance had to be suspect, because they were supporting Edwards and his ideas.
The campaign has also attempted more directly to discourage participation by voters who might support Clinton’s opponents. A judge just shut down the lawsuit filed by the pro-Clinton leadership of the Nevada teacher’s union, which sought to prevent long-scheduled caucuses from being held at central locations on the main casino strip, where workers largely represented by the Obama-endorsing Culinary Workers Union would find it easier to attend. When asked, Hillary Clinton claimed to have “no opinion on the lawsuit” and Bill Clinton overtly supported it.
New Hampshire saw parallel voter suppression tactics, as the campaign encouraged the New Hampshire Democratic Party to evict Obama get-out-the-vote observers from the polls. In Iowa, the Clinton Campaign tried to discourage out-of-state students from returning to their campuses to participate in the caucuses. In the Michigan primary, Clinton kept her name on the ballot after the state violated Democratic National Committee rules by moving its primary ahead of the Feb 5 “Super Tuesday” vote, while Edwards and Obama took theirs off.
Campaigns can have either closed or open information styles. Clinton’s comes far too close to the Bush-Cheney model, as when the Clintons successfully killed a major story in the national men’s magazine GQ about Clinton campaign infighting. Author Josh Green had written a long critical previous piece on Clinton for The Atlantic, and campaign press secretary Jay Carson threatened to deny the magazine access to Bill Clinton for a separate cover story on his international foundation work. GQ acquiesced and pulled the critical piece.
The flip side of trying to stop negative coverage is manufacturing praise. Clinton’s campaign did this when they gave planted questions to Iowa student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, and according to Chasanoff, to other students as well. After being driven to a public event by Clinton interns, Chasanoff was introduced to a Clinton staffer who showed her a list of suggested questions to ask, one of which she used at Clinton’s forum. It’s not quite like Bush inviting the softball inquiries of former male-prostitute turned right-wing blogger Jeff Gannon. But it isn’t so different either.
Taken together, these examples echo the Bush’s administration’s tendency to attack anyone who challenges them. They echo Clinton’s refusal to apologize for her Iraq war vote or for an Iran vote so reckless that Jim Webb called it “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.” They hardly bode well for reversing the massive erosions of transparency of the past seven years.
The list could go on, but it’s the pattern that’s important. It’s true that one person’s cheap shot artist is another’s fierce competitor. Obama himself has called politics “a full-contact sport,” and used legal maneuvers to block a long-time state legislator when he first ran for office. And Democrats will need to be fierce in their campaigning if they’re going to defeat the right-wing Swiftboating machine that gave Bush the last two presidencies. So maybe I’d be more charitable if I didn’t disagree so strongly with Clinton’s Iraq and Iran votes, and utter failure to take leadership in standing up to Bush when he was riding high in the polls. But I think I’d still have a problem. I look at the actions of her campaign, and see an ugly example, a ruthlessness not remotely equaled by either Obama or Edwards. I’ll vote for the last Democrat standing, because the Republicans will continue the current administration’s disastrous priorities. But Hillary’s scorched-earth approach threatens to fracture the party if she does get the nomination, and to leave a trail of bitterness even if she wins. We can do better for the Democratic nominee.
Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org To receive his articles directly email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles
Candidates do not control their supporters nor can they spend the preciously small amount of press/media time they have (or must pay for) addressing the mis-speakings of people backing them! While you might get some idea of a candidate by the people drawn to them - I do not think it fair or reasonable to expect a candidate be accountable for the millions of opinionated folks in their political arenas!
I really wish writers would do more excavation and exposure of candidate records and actions and less on this sort of opinion generated blather. If Candidates could actually control all this - they would be GODS not running for President!
You are saying that Mrs. Clinton has no control over ads running right now in Nevada with blatant lies about other candidates. Please! We know sleaze when we see it and the Clintons are masters of swift-boating.
There is precious little or no change in Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, else why whould she have chosen Madeline “We think the price is worth it” Albright, who, by the way, was champing at the bit to go to war against Iraq long before Cheney and Rumsfeld took advantage of the opportunity represented by the 9/11 attacks. The Clintons have their own stable of neocons, or perhaps it would be more accurate to write that Democratic Party neocons own a team of Clintons and long to see them back in harness. See: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/18/town.meeting.folo/
What else do you expect from a carpet-bagging politician who began her political activism as a Barry Goldwater admirer? Seriously.
Face it, the Clintons are Rockefeller Republicans.
Hillary bears an uncanny political resemblance to GW Bush. The Clintons play hardball, just like Karl Rove. Aside from everything Loeb mentioned in the article, recall that it was Hillary who brought the repulsive Dick Morris (the very Rove-like FOX News talking head, noted for his scandals with prostitutes) into the White House, & who pushed hard for the NATO bombing of Kosovo.
Hillary served on the board of Walmart. She gets huge donations from defense contractors. Rupert Murdoch endorses her. At a time when corporatism and militarism are the two ugliest features of the US political landscape, how can it possibly help to put a corporatist/militarist in the White House? At a time when handing the presidency from one Bush to another Bush has entirely discredited US democracy, how can it help to hand the presidency from one Clinton to another Clinton — particulary considering that the Clintons are constantly sucking up to the Bushes?
Meanwhile, as two other articles on CD today point out, the other leading Evilcrat, Obama, admires Ronald Reagan. That’s a hell of a choice being put before the voters — do you prefer the Evilcrat who bears a striking resemblance to GW Bush, or the Evilcrat who admires Reagan?
I haven’t seen a presidential campaign this sleazy since 2004, and in 2000 before that. I wonder what Karl Rove is up to these days?
The Clintons learned who butters their bread. And it’s not the shrill poor and middle classes ingrates who demand, accuse, namecall and have nothing to give.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t know a thing about sleaze. She should take lessons from Condi.
Hillary ’s people are trying to commit voter suppression, an anti-democratic effort. That’s what the Republicans have been doing for the past decade.
Contemptible.
… and then there is THIS page of facts about Hillary:
http://www.sonic.net/~taryfast/Hillary.html
In spite of what the media try to tell us, we DO have a choice (if we dare make it). If all those who say they agree with Dennis Kucinich’s brand of progressive populism would have enough gumption to vote for the man, instead of being scared sh*tless by the drumbeat of the corporate media, Kucinich could actually win the nomination…or at least make a big enough dent in the politics-as-usual machine that the Dem Party apparatchiks would think twice before handing the nomination to some jerk like John Kerry or Hillary Clinton again.
It’s only because the Republican-Lite ‘Democrats’consider our progressive votes to be ‘in the bag’ that they keep getting away with nominating candidates who are hopelessly reactionary on almost all the issues. If we progressives don’t somehow find the courage to vote for genuinely progressive candidates, the bullies and the cynics will keep on fielding nominees who will continue to come oh-so-close to winning the general election.
Good thing you all can’t hear Hillary in private. Everyone, from state police in Arkansas to secret service in Washington have testified as to her foul profane mouth. i ceratinly don’t want her in any position of power to abuse people.
Hillary and her husband are two of the sleaziest phonies who ever slithered around on this planet.
Maybe Hillary can tell us about the$$$$$ One Million dollar $$$$$ consultant Fee her loved
one, “Bill Clinton” recieved from Dubai Ports
to help them buy our Eastern Ports..Why isn’t this an issue with the Candidates? How about
Madeline’s financial investments in the Middle East and beyond? How about the doings of the
Carlyle Group, the Bush Family investment?
Why hasn’t this become an issue?
Are our demmies controlled by Rove?
Is exposing this crowd considered Negative??
So be it, they need to be exposed on sites like “Common Ground”
Oh for crying out loud. Of course! It’s all sleaze. We need to get over it and talk about what we’re going to do about it. As for these elections, the theater is keeping everyone hanging onto every word, as if that in itself is going to change anything.
Does anyone here actually expect anything different from the largest, militarily strongest, most brutal Empire the world has known?
We have a socio/political system which is organized by money and power. It’s not so much that we have corrupt politicians (we do, of course)- there will always be corruptible people, it’s human nature - it’s that the system attracts and promotes these types of human beings - the ones who will sign off to have a million innocent people killed, for example, and then sign off again and again, all for their careers and more power (money). But, the aphorism here is: You can’t stop human nature but you don’t have to elevate psychopaths to high office. they either need treatment or jail time.
But are these psychopaths any more to blame than we the people? We give them credibility by taking seriously anything they say and we don’t work for real substantive change. If someone moves outside the status quo and begins to forge a new way, the well oiled mind control apparatus (the two-parties and their spokespeople) take time and energy to discredit that person. The “progressive left” then falls back in line. Remember all the negativity that spewed out towards Ralph Nader? The majority of “progressives” then followed suit, baaaaa. So, we deserve what we get. this time around progressives seem even more maleable … at least so far. Hmmm, Obama or Clinton. Hmmmm. Can’t decide.
Oh for crying out loud. Of course! It’s all sleaze. We need to get over it and talk about what we’re going to do about it. As for these elections, the theater is keeping everyone hanging onto every word, as if that in itself is going to change anything.
Does anyone here actually expect anything different from the largest, militarily strongest, most brutal Empire the world has known?
We have a socio/political system which is organized by money and power. It’s not so much that we have corrupt politicians (we do, of course)- there will always be corruptible people, it’s human nature - it’s that the system attracts and promotes these types of human beings - the ones who will sign off to have a million innocent people killed, for example, and then sign off again and again, all for their careers and more power (money). But, the aphorism here is: You can’t stop human nature but you don’t have to elevate psychopaths to high office. they either need treatment or jail time.
But are these psychopaths any more to blame than we the people? We give them credibility by taking seriously anything they say and we don’t work for real substantive change. If someone moves outside the status quo and begins to forge a new way, the well oiled mind control apparatus (the two-parties and their spokespeople) take time and energy to discredit that person. The “progressive left” then falls back in line. Remember all the negativity that spewed out towards Ralph Nader? The majority of “progressives” then followed suit, baaaaa. So, we deserve what we get. this time around progressives seem even more maleable … at least so far. Hmmm, Obama or Clinton. Hmmmm. Can’t decide?
Paul Loeb writes: “Then there are Clinton’s campaign donors. Any major candidate has some dubious supporters, but Clinton’s gotten money from particularly noxious sources. Start with her donation from Rupert Murdoch, who’s given to no other Democrat…”
Like Ms Clinton, the biblical Judas Iscariot figure was also delighted at the thought of receiving blood money from the dark forces…
And just like him - she too will spend many long and difficult lives, trying to repay all those she’s sold down the river for a handful of silver.
But maybe Ms Clinton will wisely use at least little of this tainted cash, -these very ill-gotten gains- to buy copious amounts of flea powder, for as we all know, ‘if you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas’…
______________________________
In his book, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, William Blake once wrote: “The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction”.
We might take that thought as our inspiration.
We progressives have a clear duty to keep hammering noisily on the door to help awaken the sleepers inside the tomb of der Kapital, and help them to move on from these dire charades being played out on the penny-dreadful political stage right now.
The day will dawn when the scales will tip, - and a wide enough consensus of the awakened public will shout, “An end to this tragi-comedic horror show!” and at that moment these faux leaders, -these knaves and fools, will have to pack up their House of Horrors show and fade into the obscurity that most befits them.
Then we as a race will be less encumbered and able to spend more of our time doing what we came here to do: help invent and create a world fit for *enlightened* civilizations!
The answer is to ally with the Paul campaign, work on consensus issues and debate the rest while achieving what we can. The guy may be quirky and a First Amendment absolutist but he’s no racist. Isn’t ending the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, restoring civil liberties and balancing the budget at the expense of the military budget worth getting past stereotypes?
Sometimes the answer to the problem is counter-intuitive. Sometimes it takes a capitalist to catch a capitalist pig.
Uh, Paul Loeb, are you checking in?
Here’s the big problem with your critique:
“I’ll vote for the last Democrat standing …”
You’ve just given them license to do exactly what they’ve been doing for a generation.
The Democrats depend upon claiming your vote and millions like it solely on the basis of being not-Republican.
If your political position is “Gee, I wish you wouldn’t do that, but you have my vote anyway,” then you’re going to get what you deserve. Sadly, everyone else gets saddled with it too.
ask her about all the deaths Re: Mena
or go to this web site
wake up sheeples
just another bush bitch
and hey come after me like you did the others,
serious problemo for all you and your families, promise, not threat
Viva El Frente
best to legalize all then cocksuckers like her and bush then would not make as much $$$$$$$
maybe best in Black Muslim man for VP and slick haircut that grew up poor for prez
yeah, he has money suing corporate assholes, [I know,corporate mentality many were clients from IBM, Northen Telecom, Burroughs Wellcome, Glaxo, Raytheon, GE etc etc etc
good money but very fucking bad for the Karma]
but at least he[John E] worked in ‘the system’ however ‘legit’ it is supposed to be for it
if these guy are not heads of USA 2008
then all kiss your ass goodbye
Muslims, Indigenous,Hispanics, and yes us Buddhist, tired of it
even some military fucks with some sense are tired of it
read ‘Term Limits’
whatever, you all will be fighting the Chinese in the streets maybe in 2 years
5000 year old memories they DO have [Boxer and Opium Wars]
time for USA to get some respect and not as we are perceived now, all; over the world, it gets embarrassing, fortunately a smile goes a long way and most all know it is not the citizen fucked up,needing elimination , but the current status quo
so all over the world one as a USA person can have nice experiences from the locals
Viva La Revolucion
lots of blood will spill soon if not a serious change
abolish the military is first
B-52’s and 6 submarines is all we need to defend us from ANY country
and use Spec Ops,SEALS,PJ’s!!!! Dick Marchinko’s Crew[this guy is brilliant] and pinpoint specifics and eliminate early
who gonna mess with us?
and of course legalize any substance any one wants to put in their body as long as they legally pay for it
when we become more copacetic individuals and less [yes again, Mikey’s 5; less 1. arrogant, 2. greedy, 3. ignorant 4. obese. 5. xenophobic]
then less in the world,
the billions that now have access to the web will know we are less consumers, and destroyers of culture,people and the environment
Good Luck, but oh where was I Hilary, ummm another toke
she IS NOT the answer
Clinton will do anything to extend her reach of power even if it means bringing the entire party down in the dirt where she wallows and rubs dung all over her face: and everyone else who does not pay homage to her and Bubba.
Candidates do not control their supporters nor can they spend the preciously small amount of press/media time they have (or must pay for) addressing the mis-speakings of people backing them! While you might get some idea of a candidate by the people drawn to them - I do not think it fair or reasonable to expect a candidate be accountable for the millions of opinionated folks in their political arenas!
If a candidate can’t control their own campaign apparatus, what makes us think they’ll be able to control the government enough to reform it?
Why is it always Hillary these writers pick on? I haven’t read a word about what’s in Obama’s closet.These Hillary haters make me sick. Whether you like it or not Hillary is a good Mother, Senator and candidate for president.Most of the Hillary haters can’t stand her because she is a woman smarter than they are. I could never understand why because we need a smart person in the White House after 7 years with a moron.
Hillary/Clinton is the smartest of the contenders because she knows what needs to be done to get elected. As long as it takes millions to get out there on the tube and press, she/he (she has her husband for advice) know its also not going to get her elected if she presses issues and speaks the truth. And why is this writer so forgiving of Obama who needs a reality check on American History. Hillary and her counterpart know what they can and cannot do to keep out there in everyone’s faces. And she may just be the next President because she’s playing her cards smart and drumming up support from the elitists who run and own the country. She’s no fool and in today’s oppression by Big Business, true policies that need addressed will not be addressed for many years to come until Presidential contenders are allowed equal time on the air and tube, until education catches up so people know who and what they are voting for, until people don’t have to work two or three jobs just to put food on their table,and until people have jobs and enough money to buy and keep their home, etc. Hillary/Bill know what to do get elected so give her some points for being the smartest.
Hillary Republican Clinton looked like she was close to losing her temper when John Edwards said something she didn’t like during a debate (I hope the sleazy old lecher husband of hers won’t be occupying the White House again).
i just don’t think it’s a good idea to make negative comments (true or not) about the possibly first Empress of the United States of Israel.
Paul Loeb again? The political writer who admitted that Kucinich’s idea are the best out there and yet won’t endorse the guy? That Paul Loeb?
Herein lies the problem, the same problem we’ve had in this country for who knows how long: Very few will endorse (or vote for) the candidate they really believe in because they’re afraid of wasting their endorsement (or vote).
How do we get past this problem? I don’t know. Do you, Mr. Loeb?
There are sleaze on both sides. Seems that we know some of the culprits:
Dirty tricks in race to White House …
The charge that he had sold out his comrades is back.
An accompanying text reads: “The former PoW turned congressman, turned U.S. senator has managed to gloss over his failures as a pilot and his collaborations with the enemy to become America’s PoW hero presidential candidate.”
This time, McCain has responded quickly – so effectively, in fact, that there has been pushback from other campaigns, suggesting he was “whining” or milking sympathy from a national media corps eager to exaggerate the South Carolina slime.
McCain’s cellmate at the “Hanoi Hilton,” Orson Swindle, was quick to jump to McCain’s defence.
“The truth is, the North Vietnamese offered John McCain early release, and he refused,” Swindle said.
“He stuck to the time-honoured military code of first-in, first-out, and stood by his fellow PoWs until the end – even at the risk of his own life.”
The flyer has been traced to a member of the same group that “Swift Boated” 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, producing commercials that alleged he lied in order to be awarded medals for his Vietnam service.
It went further, however. Delegates to the 2004 Republican convention wore children’s smiley-face bandages to mock Kerry’s war injuries.
In 2002, Republicans in Georgia convinced voters that Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam veteran, was soft on terror. They used pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein with Cleland’s in television ads.
When he rallied to Kerry’s defence in 2004, right-wing commentators charged he lost his limbs in a freak grenade accident, not through any act of heroism.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster was the chair of the state Republican party and neutral in 2000, but he remembers the flyers anonymously placed on car windshields in parking lots and the “vicious” whisper campaign.
Today, he heads McCain’s so-called Truth Squad, which is aggressively countering the phone calls and the emails this time around.
Karl Rove, Bush’s long-time political aide is often blamed for the campaign, as is Warren Tompkins, a prominent Columbia Republican who helped run Bush’s South Carolina campaign.
Nothing has ever been proved.
David Wilkins was also instrumental in winning South Carolina for Bush and was rewarded with his posting as ambassador in Ottawa.
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/295576
“The pundits judged the political winds to be blowing in the direction of the President. Despite - or perhaps because of how much experience they had in Washington, too many politicians feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions. Too many took the President at his word instead of reading the intelligence for themselves. Congress gave the President the authority to go to war. Our only opportunity to stop the war was lost.
I made a different judgment. I thought our priority had to be finishing the fight in Afghanistan. I spoke out against what I called “a rash war’ in Iraq. I worried about, ‘an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.’ The full accounting of those costs and consequences will only be known to history. But the picture is beginning to come into focus.”- Barack Obama
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/
http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
“All of us have heard this term ‘preventative war’ since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time… I don’t believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower
“As Blair has said, in war there will be civilian was well as military casualties. There is, too, as both Britain and America agree, some risk of Saddam using or transferring his weapons to terrorists. There is as well the possibility that more angry young Muslims can be recruited to terrorism. But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam.” -Bill Clinton, March 18, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,916233,00.html
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”- Dwight D. Eisenhower
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower
“During a campaign swing for his wife, former President Bill Clinton said flatly yesterday that he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning” - a statement that is more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/politics/28clinton.html
“Bill Clinton’s Own Fairy Tales on Obama’s Views on Iraq”
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14219.html
“Hillary Clinton on Iraq”
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4802
I guess this means that, in the end, our decision this fall will be between Hillary and Guliani. The road to that point will be full of exciting debate and suspenseful moments but in the end it will come down to the candidates who have already been pre-selected by those shadowy powers that be. If the popular vote doesn’t elect the proper candidate then there are always the courts to set the situation right as they did in the last Presidential election.
Mainstay January 18th, 2008 1:10 pm
“Candidates do not control their supporters…”
I agree.
There is no need to point to the slime around the candidates, just examine their records. By their deeds you shall know them.
Sen. Barack Obama, your pro-war candidate.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/oct2004/obam-o01.shtml
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
Democratic keynote speaker Barack Obama calls for missile strikes on Iran
By Tom Mackaman
…”In an interview with the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune published September 26, Democratic Senate candidate Barack Obama said he would favor the use of “surgical” missile strikes against Iran if it failed to bow to Washington’s demand that it eliminate its nuclear energy program. Obama also said that, in the event of a coup that removed the Musharraf regime in Pakistan, the US should attack that nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Obama, the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, is being hailed as a “rising star” in the Democratic Party. In his Tribune interview, he said explicitly what is implicit in repeated statements by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and other party leaders. They have frequently attacked the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq on the grounds that it is diverting attention from supposedly greater threats, in particular Iran and North Korea.
Obama told the Tribune, “[T]he big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures, including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point are we going to, if any, are we going to take military action?”
Answering his own question, Obama said, “I hope it doesn’t get to that point. But realistically, as I watch how this thing has evolved, I’d be surprised if Iran blinked at this point.”
Obama advanced a racist argument for attacks on Iran and Pakistan. Making a comparison between the “Islamic world” and the Soviet Union, he argued that the religious outlook of Iranians and Pakistanis made them less prone to compromise and reason and more warlike.
He said: “With the Soviet Union, you did get the sense that they were operating on a model that we could comprehend in terms of, they don’t want to be blown up, we don’t want to be blown up, so you do game theory and calculate ways to contain. I think there are certain elements within the Islamic world right now that don’t make those same calculations.”
In the case of Pakistan, the Senate hopeful added, “I think there are elements within Pakistan right now—if Musharraf is overthrown and they took over—I think we would have to consider going in and taking those bombs out, because I don’t think we can make the same assumptions about how they calculate risks.”
…”Obama’s statements underscore the Democratic Party’s acceptance in principle of the “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war—a doctrine that contravenes international law and provides a rationale for US military interventions against any country deemed an obstacle to US imperialist interests around the world.”…