 Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States." -- Joe Lieberman, August, 2002
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998 “The so-called Duelfer Report, which a lot of people read to say there were no weapons of mass destruction - concluded that Saddam continued to have very low level of chemical and biological programs. ... [Saddam] was trying to break out of the U.N. sanctions by going back into rapid redevelopment of chemical and biological and probably nuclear [weapons]. -- Joe Lieberman in interview with ABC Radio host Sean Hannity, November 30, 2005 "I have no regrets [that the U.S. toppled Saddam.] ... I think we can finish are job there, and as part of it - really transform the Arab-Islamic world." -- from the same Hannity interview
From a commenter on ABC News' Political Punch blog: Lieberman and McCain have had long friendship with then Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, who drummed up bogus WMD claims and helped lead the United States into war, going all the way back to 1991.
It’s worth remembering that it was Lieberman, along with Trent Lott, who led the effort in the Senate to fund Chalabi and the Iraq National Congress through passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998, and it was Lieberman and McCain who served as the two “honorary co-chairmen” of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), the elite group that was put together by the administration and Chalabi’s pals at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), to lobby for invading Iraq in the fall of 2002.
That post prompted me to do a Google search of "Joe Lieberman, Ahmad Chalabi," which turned up this detailed post on the Cooperative Research History Commons site. We'll pick things up after swindler-turned-liar-turned Iranian spy Ahmad Chalabi's failed 1995 coup attempt, against Saddam Hussein, which was first backed, and then abandoned, by the CIA (a message delivered by now-author Robert Baer.) The scheme was supposed to sweep Chalabi into power in Iraq, his family having been ejected from the country in the late 1950s. A year later, Chalabi moved from sipping tea in London to sipping coffee in D.C., where he made nice with neocon "intellectuals," a live-in lobbyists named Francis Brooke, and members of Congress -- mostly Republicans, including Trent Lott and John McCain, but also some Democrats, including former Sen. Bob Kerrey, and a certain now-former Democrat named Joseph Lieberman.  More from the Commons: Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brooke find allies in the US Senate’s Republican leadership. They provide the Republicans with details about the events surrounding the INC-CIA’s 1995 failed plot against Saddam Hussein (see March 1995) and Iraq’s subsequent incursion into Kurdish territory (see August 1996) which the Republican senators use against the Clinton White House and the CIA. “Clinton gave us a huge opportunity,” Brooke later recalls. “We took a Republican Congress and pitted it against a Democratic White House. We really hurt and embarrassed the president.” The Republican leadership in Congress, he acknowledges, “didn’t care that much about the ammunition. They just wanted to beat up the president.” Senior Republican senators, according to Brooke, are “very receptive, right away” to Chalabi and Brooke’s information, and Chalabi is soon on a first-name basis with 30 members of Congress, including senators Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, and Newt Gingrich. [Alternet, 21 May 2004.')" New Yorker, 7 June 2004.) Then in May, 1998, the Project for a New American Century, which has formed to advance the neoconservative worldview in Washington, sends a letter addressed to Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich, calling on them to pressure the White House to change U.S. policy toward Iraq: ... The letter argues that the Clinton administration has capitulated to Saddam Hussein and calls on the two legislators to lead Congress to “establish and maintain a strong US military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect [US] vital interests in the Gulf—and, if necessary, to help removed Saddam from power.” [Century, 5/29/1998] On September 1998, the PNAC got their way in Congress, as the Iraq Liberation Act was introduced, first in the House as HR 4655, and then, on September 29th, in the Senate. The Act clears the way for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress to receive more than $17 million to gather information about the Saddam Hussein regime (almost all of which will be a) shared with members of the U.S. media including the New York Times' Judith Miller, and b) flat out wrong, made up, or otherwise completely useless.
Those who were surprised by Lieberman's determination to stay in the Senate at all costs, and his zeal to back John McCain, even if it costs him his chairmanship and seniority in the Senate, should take a close look at this history. Joe Lieberman isn't backing John McCain simply because they are friends. He is backing John McCain because the Iraq policy that McCain promises to continue indefinitely isn't just the project of a "new century," it isn't just a project of the neocons (of which Lieberman is clearly one); it isn't even just a policy of the Bush administration. It's a McCain-Lieberman policy, which they helped to craft, to germinate, and to push into both the congressional and executive branches.
In short, John McCain and Joe Lieberman are fighting this election in order to continue their war.
Take action: Visit LiebermanMustGo.com to sign the petition calling on the Senate Democratic leadership to strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship.
| Labels: Iraq war, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, neocons |
