Iraq: The Democrats War

The ongoing presence of over 50,000 US troops, many thousands
of civilian employees and tens of thousands of US-backed mercenaries raises
serious questions over the significance of the partial withdrawal of US forces
from Iraq. The August 31 deadline marking the "end of US combat operations
in Iraq" is not as real or significant a milestone as President Obama
implied in his speech. Indeed, hearing for the umpteenth time that the
US has "turned a corner" in Iraq, it makes one think that the country
must be some kind of dodecahedron.

Nevertheless, with all the attention on the supposed
withdrawal of US combat forces, it is important to acknowledge the forces that
got us into this tragic conflict in the first place.

It was not just George W. Bush.

Had a majority of either the Republican-controlled House or
the Democratic-controlled Senate voted against the resolution authorizing the
invasion or had they passed an alternative resolution conditioning such
authority on the approval of the use of force from the United Nations Security
Council, all the tragic events that have unfolded as a consequence of the March
2003 invasion would have never taken place.

The responsibility for the deaths of over 4,400 American
soldiers, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the waste of
nearly one trillion dollars of our national treasury and the rise of terrorism
and Islamist extremism that has come as a result of the US invasion and
occupation of Iraq rests as much in the hands of the members in Congress who
authorized the invasion as it does with the administration that requested the
lawmakers' approval. Indeed, the October 2002
resolution
authorizing the invasion had the support of the majority of
Democratic senators, as well as the support of the Democratic Party leadership
in both the House and the Senate.

On this and other web sites - as well as in many scores of
policy reports, newspaper articles, academic journals, and other sources - the
tragic consequences of a US invasion of Iraq and a refutation of falsehoods
being put forward by the Bush administration to justify it were made available
to every member of the House and Senate (see, for example, "The Case Against a War with Iraq"). The 2002 vote
authorizing the invasion was not like the vote on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin
resolution on the use of force against North Vietnam, for which Congress had no
time for hearings or debate and for which most of those supporting it
(mistakenly) thought they were simply authorizing limited short-term
retaliatory strikes in response to a specific series of alleged incidents. In
contrast, with regard to the resolution authorizing the use of force against
Iraq, Congress had many months to investigate and debate the administration's
claims that Iraq was a threat as well as the likely implications of a US
invasion; members of Congress also fully recognized that the resolution
authorized a full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation and a subsequent
military occupation for an indefinite period.

Violating International Legal Covenants

Those who voted in favor of the resolution authorizing the
invasion of Iraq did so despite the fact that it violated international legal
conventions to which the US government is legally bound to uphold. The
resolution constituted a clear violation of the United Nations Charter that,
like other ratified international treaties, should be treated as supreme law
according to Article VI of the US Constitution. According to articles 41 and 42
of the
UN Charter
, no member state has the right to enforce any resolution
militarily unless the UN Security Council determines that there has been a
material breach of its resolution, decides that all nonmilitary means of
enforcement have been exhausted and then specifically authorizes the use of
military force.

This is what the Security Council did in November 1990 with Resolution 678 in response to Iraq's ongoing violations of
UN Security Council resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Kuwait, but the
Security Council did not do so for any subsequent lesser Iraqi violations. The
only other exception for the use of force authorized by the charter is in
self-defense against armed attack, which even the Bush administration admitted
had not taken place.

This effective renunciation of the UN Charter's prohibition
against such wars of aggression constituted an effective repudiation of the
post-WW II international legal order. Alternative resolutions, such as one
authorizing force against Iraq if authorized by the UN Security Council, were
voted down by a bipartisan majority.

Concerned Scholars and Strategic Analysts

Members of Congress were also alerted by large numbers of
scholars of the Middle East, Middle Eastern political leaders, former State
Department and intelligence officials and others who recognized that a US
invasion would likely result in a bloody insurgency, a rise in Islamist
extremism and terrorism, increased sectarian and ethnic conflict, and related
problems. Few people I know who are familiar with Iraq have been at all
surprised that the US invasion became such a tragedy. Indeed, most of us were
in communication with Congressional offices and often with individual members
of Congress themselves in the months leading up to the vote warning of the
likely consequences of an invasion and occupation. Therefore, claims by leading
Democratic supporters of the war that they were unaware of the likely
consequences of the invasion are completely false.

The resolution also contained accusations that were known or
widely assumed to be false at that time, such as claims of Iraqi support for
al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks against the
United States. A definitive report by the Department of Defense noted that, not only
did no such link exist, but that no such link could have even been reasonably
suggested based on the evidence available at that time.

The resolution also falsely claimed that Iraq was "actively
seeking a nuclear weapons capability." In reality, Iraq had long
eliminated its nuclear program, a fact that was confirmed in a report by the
International Atomic Energy Agency in 1998, four years prior to the resolution.

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The resolution also falsely claimed that Iraq at that time
continued "to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological
weapons capability." In reality, as the US government now admits, Iraq had
rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons nearly a decade earlier and
no longer had any active chemical and biological weapons programs. This
likelihood that Iraq no longer had operational chemical or biological weapons
was brought to the attention of members of Congress by a number of top arms
control specialists, as well as Scott Ritter, the American who headed UNSCOM's
efforts to locate Iraq's possible hidden caches of chemical and biological
weapons, hidden supplies or secret production facilities. As I have written elsewhere, academic journals, testimony by arms
control inspectors, newspaper articles, reports from independent think tanks
and countless other sources in the months leading up to the Congressional
authorization vote provided a plethora of evidence suggesting that Iraq had
achieved at least qualitative disarmament and was not a threat to its
neighbors, much less the United States.

No Evidence

Virtually all of Iraq's known stockpiles of chemical and
biological agents had been accounted for, and the shelf life of the small
amount of material that had not been accounted for - which, as it ends up, had
also been destroyed - had long since expired and was therefore no longer of
weapons grade. There was no evidence that Iraq had any delivery systems for
such weapons, either. In addition, the strict embargo of that country, in
effect since 1990, against imports of any additional materials needed for the
manufacture of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), combined with Iraq's
inability to manufacture such weapons or delivery systems themselves without
detection, made any claims that Iraq constituted any "significant chemical
and biological weapons capability" as claimed in the resolution
transparently false to anyone who cared to investigate the matter at that time.
Indeed, even the classified full version of the 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate, while grossly overestimating Iraq's military capability, was filled
with extensive disagreements, doubts and caveats regarding President Bush's
assertions regarding Iraq's WMD, WMD programs and delivery systems.

The House and Senate members who now claim they were
"misled" about Iraq's alleged military threat have failed to explain
why they found the administration's claims so much more convincing than the
many other reports made available to them from more objective sources that
presumably made a much stronger case that Iraq no longer had offensive WMD
capability. Curiously, except for one excerpt from a 2002
National Security Estimate
released in July 2003 - widely ridiculed at the
time for its transparently manipulated content - not a single member of
Congress has agreed to allow me or any other strategic analyst any access to
any documents they claim convinced them of the alleged Iraqi threat. In effect,
they are using the infamous Nixon defense from the Watergate scandal, claiming
that, while they have evidence to vindicate themselves, making it public would
somehow damage national security. In reality, if such reports actually exist,
they are clearly inaccurate, outdated and are in regard to a government no
longer in existence and would, therefore, be of no threat to national security
if made public.

International Opposition

The US invasion of Iraq was opposed by virtually the entire
international community, including Iraq's closest neighbors, who presumably had
the most to be concerned about in terms of any possible Iraqi military threat.
However, the members of Congress who voted to authorize the invasion were
determined to make the case that the United States - with the strongest
military the world has ever known and thousands of miles beyond the range of
Iraq's alleged weapons and delivery systems - was so threatened by Iraq that
the United States had to launch an invasion, overthrow its government and
occupy that country for an indefinite period.

This shows a frighteningly low threshold for effectively
declaring war, especially given that, in most cases, these members of Congress
had been informed by knowledgeable sources of the widespread human and material
costs which would result from a US invasion. It also indicates that they would
likely be just as willing to send American forces off to another disastrous war
again, also under false pretenses. Indeed, those who voted for the war
demonstrated their belief that:

  • the United States need not abide by its
    international legal obligations, including those prohibiting wars of
    aggression;
  • claims by right-wing US government officials and
    unreliable foreign exiles regarding a foreign government's military
    capabilities are more trustworthy than independent arms control analysts
    and United Nations inspectors;
  • concerns expressed by scholars and others
    knowledgeable of the likely reaction by the subjected population to a
    foreign conquest and the likely complications that would result should be
    ignored; and, faith should instead be placed on the occupation policies
    forcibly imposed on the population by a corrupt right-wing Republican
    administration.

As a result, support for the 2002 Iraq war resolution is not
something that can simply be forgiven and forgotten.

Democrats' Responsibility

The Democrats who voted to support the war and rationalized
for it by making false claims about Iraq's WMD programs are responsible for
allowing the Bush administration to get away with lying about Iraq's alleged
threat. For example, Bush correctly noted how "more than a hundred Democrats in the House
and the Senate - who had access to the same intelligence - voted to support
removing Saddam Hussein from power." In a speech attacking anti-war
activists, Bush noted, "Many of these critics supported my opponent
[Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry] during the last election, who explained his
position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to
give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if
necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly
arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat and a grave
threat, to our security.'"

The resolution also claimed that "the risk that the
current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise
attack against the United States ... or provide them to international
terrorists who would do so ... combine to justify action by the United States
to defend itself." In other words, those members of the House and Senate
who supported this resolution believed, or claimed to believe, that an
impoverished country, which had eliminated its stockpiles of banned weapons,
destroyed its medium and long-range missiles and eliminated its WMD programs more
than a decade earlier and had been suffering under the strictest international
sanctions in world history for more than a dozen years, somehow threatened the
national security of a superpower located more than 6,000 miles away.
Furthermore, these members of Congress believed, or claimed to believe, that
this supposed threat was so great that the United States had no choice but to
launch an invasion of that country, overthrow its government and place its
people under military occupation in the name of "self-defense,"
regardless of whether Iraq allowed inspectors back into the county to engage in
unfettered inspections to prove that the WMD, WMD programs and weapons systems
no longer existed.

It's also important to recognize that not everyone in Congress
voted to authorize the invasion. There were the 21 Senate Democrats - along
with one Republican and one Independent - who voted against the war resolution.
And 126 of 207 House Democrats voted against the resolution as well. In total,
then, a majority of Democrats in Congress defied their leadership by saying no
to war. This means that the Democrats who did support the war, despite being
overrepresented in leadership positions and among presidential contenders, were
part of a right-wing minority and did not represent the mainstream of their
party.

Despite this, the Democratic Party has largely rewarded their
right-wing minority who did support the war. Since casting their fateful vote
and making their false statements about WMD, Harry Reid (D-Nevada) was elected
senate majority leader, John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) has been selected to head
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has
been selected to chair the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the House, Steny
Hoyer (D-Maryland) was elected House Majority leader and Howard Berman
(D-California) was selected to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And,
in 2004, after the lies which led up to the war had already been exposed and US
occupation troops were being dragged down into a bloody counterinsurgency war,
the Democrats chose to nominate two pro-war senators - Kerry and John Edwards
(D-North Carolina) - as their presidential and vice presidential candidates,
both of whom at that time continued to defend their vote to authorize the
invasion and to continue prosecuting the war. As a result, many anti-war
Democrats refused to support their party's nominees, resulting in their narrow
defeat.

The Obama Administration

To his credit, Barack Obama - then an Illinois state senator who
had no obligation to take a stand either way - took the initiative to speak at
a major anti-war rally in Chicago in October 2002. While his future rivals for
the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination Hillary Clinton, John Edwards,
Christopher Dodd and Joe Biden were making false and alarmist statements that
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was still a danger to the Middle East and US
national security, Obama had a far more realistic understanding of the
situation, stating: "Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat
to the United States, or to his neighbors."

Recognizing that there were alternatives to using military
force, Obama called on the United States to "allow UN inspectors to do
their work." He noted, "that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that
the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength and that in concert with
the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty
dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history."

Furthermore, unlike the Iraq war's initial supporters, Obama
recognized that "even a successful war against Iraq will require a US
occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined
consequences." Understanding the dangerous consequences to regional
stability resulting from war, Obama accurately warned that "an invasion of
Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will
only fan the flames of the Middle East and encourage the worst, rather than
best, impulses of the Arab world and strengthen the recruitment arm of
al-Qaeda."

Indeed, he referred to it as "a dumb war" and
"a rash war," nothing less than a "cynical attempt by Richard
Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this
administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats,
irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."

It was this prescience, contrasted with Hillary Clinton's
blind support for the Iraq war, that played a decisive role in Obama upsetting
her for the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nomination. Indeed, as a
candidate for president, Obama promised that not only would he end the Iraq
war, he would "end the mindset that led to the Iraq war."

Unfortunately, the majority of President Obama's appointees to
key positions dealing with foreign policy - Biden, Hillary Clinton, Robert
Gates, Dennis Blair, Janet Napolitano, Richard Holbrooke and Rahm Emanuel -
have been among those who represent that very mindset.

Their support for the invasion of Iraq was not simply a matter
of misjudgment. Those who supported the war demonstrated a dismissive attitude
toward fundamental principles of international law and disdain for the United
Nations Charter and international treaties which prohibit aggressive war. They
demonstrated a willingness to either fabricate a nonexistent threat or naively
believe transparently false and manipulated intelligence claiming such a threat
existed, ignoring a plethora of evidence from weapons inspectors and
independent arms control analysts who said that Iraq had already achieved at
least qualitative disarmament. Perhaps worst of all, they demonstrated an
incredible level of hubris and stupidity in imagining that the United States
could get away with an indefinite occupation of a heavily populated Arab
country with a strong history of nationalism and resistance to foreign
domination.

Nor does it appear that they were simply fooled by the Bush
administration's manufactured claims of an Iraqi threat. For example, Napolitano, after acknowledging that there were not really
WMD in Iraq as she had claimed prior to the invasion, argued, "In my view,
there were lots of reasons for taking out Saddam Hussein." Similarly, Clinton insisted months
after the Bush administration acknowledged the absence of WMD that her vote in
favor of the resolution authorizing the invasion "was the right vote"
and was one that, she said, "I stand by."

Clearly, then, despite their much-touted
"experience," these Obama appointees demonstrated, through their
support for the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq, a
profound ignorance of the reality of the Middle East and an arrogant assumption
that peace, stability and democratic governance can be created through the
application of massive US military force.

Given that the majority of Democrats in Congress, a larger
majority of registered Democrats nationally and an even larger percentage of
those who voted for Obama opposed the decision to invade Iraq, it is
particularly disappointing that Obama would choose his vice president, chief of
staff, secretary of state, secretary of defense, secretary of Homeland Security
and special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan from the right-wing minority who
supported the war.

The most striking examples of Obama's betrayal of his anti-war
constituency have been his appointments to the influential positions of vice
president and secretary of state.

Biden

It is difficult to overestimate the critical role Biden played
in making the tragedy of the Iraq war possible. More than two months prior to
the 2002 war resolution even being introduced, in what was widely interpreted
as the first sign that Congress would endorse a US invasion of
Iraq, Biden declared on August 4 that the United States was probably going to
war. In his powerful position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, he orchestrated a propaganda show designed to sell the war to
skeptical colleagues and the America public by ensuring that dissenting voices
would not get a fair hearing.

As Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector, noted
at the time, "For Sen. Biden's Iraq hearings to be anything more than a
political sham used to invoke a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin resolution-equivalent
for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions - and demand hard facts
- concerning the real nature of the weapons threat posed by Iraq."

It soon became apparent that Biden had no intention of doing
so. Biden refused to even allow Ritter himself - who knew more about Iraq's WMD
capabilities than anyone and would have testified that Iraq had achieved at
least qualitative disarmament - to testify. Ironically, on "Meet the
Press
" in 2007, Biden defended his false claims about Iraqi WMD by
insisting that "everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons
inspectors said he had them."

Biden also refused to honor requests by some of his Democratic
colleagues to include some of the leading anti-war scholars familiar with Iraq
and Middle East (myself included) in the hearings. These involved both those
who would have reiterated Ritter's conclusions about nonexistent Iraqi WMD
capabilities as well as those prepared to testify that a US invasion of Iraq
would likely set back the struggle against al-Qaeda, alienate the United States
from much of the world and precipitate bloody, urban, counterinsurgency warfare
amid rising terrorism, Islamist extremism and sectarian violence. All of these predictions ended up being exactly what transpired.

Nor did Biden even call some of the dissenting officials in
the Pentagon or State Department who were willing to challenge the alarmist
claims of their ideologically-driven superiors. He was willing, however, to
allow Iraqi defectors of highly dubious credentials to make false testimony
about the vast quantities of WMD materiel supposedly in Saddam Hussein's
possession. Ritter correctly accused
Biden of having "preordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam
Hussein from power regardless of the facts and ... using these hearings to
provide political cover for a massive military attack on Iraq."

Rather than being a hapless victim of the Bush
administration's lies and manipulation, Biden was calling for a US invasion of
Iraq and making false statements regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed possession
of WMD years before President George W. Bush even came to office.

As far back as 1998, Biden was calling for a US invasion of
that oil rich country. Even though UN inspectors and the UN-led disarmament
process had led to the elimination of Iraq's WMD threat, Biden - in an effort
to discredit the world body and make an excuse for war - insisted that UN
inspectors could never be trusted to do the job. During Senate hearings on Iraq
in September of that year, Biden
told Ritter
, "As long as Saddam's at the helm, there is no reasonable
prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that
we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam's program relative
to weapons of mass destruction."

Calling for military action on the scale of the Gulf War seven
years earlier, he continued, "The only way we're going to get rid of
Saddam Hussein is we're going to end up having to start it alone." He told
the Marine veteran, "it's going to require guys like you in uniform to be
back on foot in the desert taking Saddam down."

When Ritter tried to make the case that President Bill
Clinton's proposed large-scale bombing of Iraq could jeopardize the UN
inspections process, Biden condescendingly replied that decisions on the use of
military force were "beyond your pay grade." As Ritter predicted,
when Clinton ordered UN inspectors out of Iraq in December of that year and
followed up with a four-day bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Fox,
Saddam was provided with an excuse to refuse to allow the inspectors to return.
Biden then conveniently used Saddam's failure to allow them to return as an
excuse for going to war four years later.

In the face of widespread skepticism over administration
claims regarding Iraq's military capabilities, Biden declared that President
Bush was justified in being concerned about Iraq's alleged pursuit of WMD. Even
though Iraq had eliminated its chemical weapons arsenal by the mid-1990s, Biden
insisted categorically in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war resolution that
Saddam Hussein still had chemical weapons. Even though there is no evidence
that Iraq had ever developed deployable biological weapons and its biological
weapons program had been eliminated some years earlier, Biden insisted that
Saddam had biological weapons, including anthrax and that "he may have a
strain" of small pox. And, even though the International Atomic Energy
Agency had reported as far back as 1998 that there was no evidence whatsoever
that Iraq had any ongoing nuclear program, Biden insisted Saddam was
"seeking nuclear weapons."

Said Biden, "One thing is clear: These weapons must be
dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must be dislodged from power." He did not
believe proof of the existence of any actual weapons to dislodge was necessary,
however, insisting that "If we wait for the danger from Saddam to become
clear, it could be too late." He further defended President Bush by
falsely claiming, "He did not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not
dismiss a new inspection regime. He did not ignore the Congress. At each
pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation."

In an Orwellian twist of language designed to justify the war
resolution, which gave President Bush the unprecedented authority to invade a
country on the far side of the world at the time and circumstances of his own
choosing, Biden claimed, "I do not believe this is a rush to war. I
believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly
support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will
occur."

It is also important to note that Biden supported an invasion
in the full knowledge that it would not be quick and easy and that the United
States would have to occupy Iraq for an extended period, declaring, "We
must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the
long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after."

Despite all this, Obama offered him the vice presidency and
has given him a leading role in his administration's foreign policy.

Clinton

The most critical foreign policy appointment is that of
secretary of state. For this position and despite enormous skepticism regarding
the war among most State Department veterans, President Obama chose Clinton,
one of the Senate's most outspoken supporters of Bush's Iraq policy. In order
to justify her vote to authorize the US invasion of Iraq in October 2002,
despite widespread and public skepticism expressed by arms control experts over
the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had somehow rearmed itself, Senator
Clinton was insisting that Iraq's possession of biological and chemical weapons
was "not in doubt" and was "undisputed." She also falsely
claimed that Iraq was "trying to develop nuclear weapons."

Nonexistent WMD were not the only false claims Clinton made to
justify a US invasion of Iraq. For example, she insisted that Saddam had given
aid, comfort and sanctuary to al-Qaeda terrorists

Even after US forces invaded and occupied Iraq and confirmed
that Iraq did not have WMD, active WMD programs, offensive delivery systems or
ties to al-Qaeda as she and other supporters of the war had claimed, Clinton
defended her vote to authorize the invasion anyway. As a result, she
essentially acknowledged that Iraq's alleged possession of WMD was not really
what motivated her vote to authorize the war after all, but was instead a ruse
to frighten the American people into supporting the invasion. Her actual
motivation appears to have been about oil and empire.

During the first four years following the invasion, Clinton
was a steadfast supporter of Bush administration policy. When Rep. John Murtha
(D-Pennsylvania) made his first call for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq
in November 2005, she denounced his effort, calling a withdrawal of US forces a
big mistake. In 2006, when Senator Kerry sponsored an amendment that would have
required the redeployment of US forces from Iraq in order to advance a
political solution to the growing sectarian strife, she voted against it. She
came out against the war only when she began her presidential campaign,
recognizing that public opinion had turned so decisively in opposition that
there was no hope of her securing the Democratic nomination unless she changed her
position.

She has also decried Iran's "involvement in and influence
over Iraq," an ironic complaint for someone who voted to authorize the
overthrow of the anti-Iranian secular government of Saddam Hussein despite his
widely predicted replacement by pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalist parties. She
also went on record repeating a whole series of false, exaggerated and unproven
charges by Bush administration officials regarding Iranian support for the
Iraqi insurgency, even though the vast majority of foreign support for the
insurgency had come from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, and that the
majority of the insurgents are fanatically anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite.

Where's the Hope?

A foreign policy team like this in charge raises serious
questions as to whether Obama - despite his admirable anti-war position during
the period leading up to the invasion - can really get us out of Iraq. His
August 31 speech failed to condemn the decision to go to war or the politicians
of both parties who lied about the alleged Iraqi threat.

Nor is it likely that the US Congress, the leadership of which
is largely composed of pro-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans, will provide
pressure to accelerate the withdrawal or demand that all troops be out by next
year as promised. The way the Democratic Party has essentially rewarded those
who made possible the needless sacrifice of American lives, treasure and
credibility in the world leaves little incentive for those like Clinton, Biden,
Kerry, Reid, Feinstein, Berman and Hoyer to get us out of Iraq and little
disincentive for leading us into another senseless and tragic war.

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