John McCain and his lame-duck mentor in the White House are desperate to 'win' something in Iraq behind the devastating sacrifices of our nation's defenders. Like every other warmongering campaign waged by Bush for the presidency, McCain is promising 'victory' in Iraq (conveniently) by the end of a term in office.
However, it's already been quite a long haul for the troops he and Bush have so blithely deployed to construct and perpetuate their show of aggression, and this new republican campaign by McCain is bound to ultimately represent just another wearying and tragic procrastination for those who are waiting for some definition of their mission beyond digging further into the sand behind the artificial berms they've constructed to separate themselves from the Iraqis McCain and Bush are pretending to defend.
In 2002, McCain claimed that a 'success' behind his deceitful coup was going to be 'easy,' despite his acceptance of the inevitable casualties.
“Because I know that as successful as I believe we will be, and I believe that the success will be fairly easy, we will still lose some American young men or women,” McCain told CNN in 2002. Days later, he backtracked to make a self-serving assurance that American lives would not be squandered for his manipulations in Iraq.
“We’re not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad," McCain told CNN. "We may have to take out buildings, but we’re not going to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies.”
By the next year, McCain was cocky enough to predict a 'win' behind the invasion and occupation, telling MSNBC that "we will win this conflict. We will win it easily."
That was in 2003. That was in the period where the Bush administration and their cohorts in Congress were frantically organizing separate teams of military investigators to comb Iraq for the weapons of mass destruction they had promised they were defending Americans against. As that cynical effort failed to produce any evidence of any weapons or weapons systems which remotely threatened the U.S. they set themselves to the diverting task of organizing and consolidating the real motive behind their opportunistic invasion; the overthrow of Saddam's hapless regime and the installation of their 'interim' junta.
John McCain's friend and primary instigator, enabler, and author of the lies used to justify the U.S. campaign for 'regime change' in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, began his deceptions in exile during the Clinton administration and was gifted with the leadership of the 'authority' which was constructed after the invasion to impose and lord their military dominance over the Iraqis.
Chalabi, who McCain called a "patriot," was finally driven out of the leadership by predictable charges of the same manipulative corruption which had been his moniker. Even as he was elevated by the Bush administration to lord over Iraqis behind the sacrifices of our troops, Chalabi was under indictment for embezzlement and fraud. Chalabi was paid $335,000 a month as he promoted his lies about WMDs to the administration and their enablers in Congress. It was reported in 2004 that Chalabi's group-in-exile, the 'Iraqi National Congress,' received $39 million in tax dollars over 5 years as they promoted their lies.
When confronted about the complete lack of any proof that what he'd sold his U.S. supporters in the administration and Congress, Chalabi shrugged. "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful," Chalabi said. "That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."
"We are heroes in error," Chalabi was quoted as saying.
In the fall of 2002 the 'Committee for the Liberation of Iraq' was established in the Washington offices of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. The CLI engaged in educational and advocacy efforts to mobilize U.S. and international support for policies aimed at ending the regime of Saddam Hussein. This advocacy came at the same time that Condoleezza Rice and her then-deputy Stephen Hadley were engaged in a series of briefings with foreign policy groups, Iraq specialists and other opinion makers that was termed as a "new phase," by a White House spokesman, who described the goal as building fresh public support for Bush administration policy vs. Iraq.
Members of the CLI met in November of 2002 with President Bush's national security adviser, Rice, in an effort they described as "education and advocacy efforts to mobilize U.S. and international support freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny." Members of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq included, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, William Kristol, General Barry McCaffrey, and former CIA director James Woolsey. George Shultz, Amb. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, and Elliot Abrams were also involved with the group. Abrams and Bolton were founding members of the CLI.
The CLI lobbied for the installation of the so-called Iraqi National Congress to replace the Hussein dictatorship. This group was the creation of the U.S. Congress which, following testimony from Chalabi, and defense policy executive, Zalmay Khalilzad (later appointed ambassador to Iraq), and the co-sponsoring of Sen. John McCain, passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, and sanctioned the new U.S. policy of regime change.
Among the other participants in the CLI were, Gary Schmitt (director of the conservative foundation, Project for the New American Century) and Richard Perle, (chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, also closely associated with PNAC. Also involved was co-founder, president and executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Randy Scheunemann who served as a consultant on Iraq to Donald Rumsfeld and now serves as John McCain's top foreign policy aide.
In a scheme to hijack the next-generation of defense dollars, which our soldiers desperately need, and our country can scarcely afford McCain's Randy Scheunemann heads a Washington lobbying firm called Orion Strategies, which just happens to share Chalabi's address and the location of his old CLI enterprise. His is just one of the investment groups who sprang to life in the wake of the invasion who hope to benefit from the blood and sacrifice of our soldiers.
His firm is also involved in securing U.S. reconstruction dollars in Iraq for members of the former Soviet bloc. Undoubtedly the main instigator behind John McCain's hard-line on the Russia/Georgia conflict, Scheunemann concealed the fact that he'd been a paid lobbyist for Georgia until as late as December 2007.
In fact, Schennemann was partners in his Iraq lobbying with another facilitator for the former Soviet states, Bruce Jackson, the founder and president of the 'Project on Transitional Democracies', an organization which guided ‘newly independent', former Soviet provinces through the congressional appropriations process to connect the foreign leaders with U.S. tax dollars. Their influence led to the acceptance of many of these countries into NATO compliance and membership. The introduction of these former provinces into the NATO resulted in a boon for weapon's manufacturers as the new republics were required to modernize their military forces to comply with NATO defense requirements.
U.S. ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns explained Jackson's role to the Dallas Morning News in 2002: "In Europe, he coaches officials of candidate countries on whom to see, what to say and how to behave in Washington. He also browbeats them on what reforms they need to make and what issues they must address, such as lingering anti-Semitism, if they expect the Senate to let them into NATO."
Bruce Jackson and McCain's Schennemann are political opportunists who thoroughly enmesh themselves in the focus and direction of our nation's foreign policy through the establishment of policy institutes and think-tanks which issue corporate-influenced policy documents and public statements that support, encourage, or echo legislative initiatives in Congress. Jackson described his think-tank activities outside of the corporate boardroom as "hobbies."
"There is no doubt Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," Scheunemann had reportedly claimed before the Iraq invasion, promoting the fiction of his fellow nation-builder, Chalabi. It was that self-serving fiction (and others) which he and his nation-building partners used to influence the form, basis, and direction of John McCain's foreign policy.
The McCain/Chalabi collaboration was described in the book by award-winning journalist Aram Roston, "The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi." Roston
writes that McCain was "Chalabi's favored candidate in the 2000 election since Chalabi knew that he would be able to free up the $97 million in military aid plus millions pushed through in Congress and earmarked for Chalabi's exile group."
According to one
report, McCain had initially pressured the administration to give Chalabi more money, signing a letter with four other Republican senators complaining that Chalabi's INC wasn't being funded.
What did Chalabi 'win' in Iraq behind his relationship with Scheunemann and McCain's exploitation of American life, limb, and resource? In 2004, it was reported that Chalabi had leaked intelligence to Iran, informing the Iranians that the U.S. had broken their secret communications code. U.S. officials complained that the disclosures meant that Iran's security agencies would have to redo their codes and that, for, perhaps years, American intelligence wouldn't be able to read the transmissions. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice promised Congress a 'full investigation', at the time, but none materialized from the administration.
Also, in 2004 it was reported that Chalabi was counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars - which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam’s regime . . . Police found the counterfeit money along with old dinars in Chalabi’s house during a raid.
The most important value Chalabi has provided the Bush administration's hawks on Iraq recently, has been the position he was gifted in the new Iraqi regime as the administration's shill within the Iraqi government for their latest escalation of force. Chalabi's job was to serve as an intermediary between Baghdad residents and the Iraqi and U.S. security forces as they destroyed homes, lives, and livelihoods in Iraq which found themselves in the way of Bush's swaggering advance. The WSJ reported that Chalabi job was to "help Iraqis arrange reimbursement for damage to their cars and homes caused by the security sweeps in the hope of maintaining public support for the strategy." It's almost certain that Chalabi had his hands all over the unaccountable multi-million dollar money pile the Pentagon reportedly used to pacify the resisting Iraqi communities to facilitate their 'surge.'
In an amazing defiance of the rationale for the pimping he provided for Bush and Petraeus' escalation of force, Chalabi was reported to have 'sabotaged' reconciliation efforts with the Batthists (Chalabi as head of Iraq’s 'de-Baathification commission'); the enabling of which was the main argument Bush gave for his escalation of force to Iraq. The NYT reported that, "Chalabi and members of his organization had sabotaged the American-backed plan by rallying opposition among Shiite government officials in southern Iraq, then taking their complaints to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric."
Chalabi's disruptive and self-serving efforts mirrored McCain's foreign policy advisor Scheunemann's initial, ill-conceived opposition to leaving any members of Saddam's Baath party in government positions in his 2003
declaration that: "It is very difficult for me to conceive of democratic institutions being established in Iraq with the Baathist power structure mostly intact."
What is it that John McCain wants to 'win' in Iraq? It's been over five years with over 4100 American lives lost for an aggression of opportunity (that McCain supported, advocated, and voted for) based on lies about a 'threat' to our 'national security.' Is his open-ended support for keeping our troops bogged down there tied to his foreign policy guru Scheunemann's profit-taking and deal-making behind the sacrifices of our nation's defenders and the draining of our hard-earned sacrifices from our nation's treasury?
Certainly, McCain's bellicose response to Russia's military assault on their neighbor was a slam-dunk for his partner Scheunemann's Georgia client's investment. For Scheunemann and his boss McCain, constructing and facilitating faux-democracies abroad behind the sacrifices of American life, limb, and resources is a lucrative enterprise which they intend to perpetuate as our nation's most important and necessary priority. Questions about the efficacy or correctness of this new military expansionism are to take a back seat to the ambitions of these nation-builders and money-grubbing opportunists.
McCain
told veterans in Florida on Monday that, "victory in Iraq is finally in sight" and claimed that troops in Iraq are pleading with him for them to stay in Iraq and "Let us win, just let us win." However, the impatience of our troops in Iraq with the foot-dragging and political posturing of McCain and Bush on Iraq is reflected in the total of contributions to the two presidential candidates from troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan which have been reported as favoring McCain's Democratic rival, Barack Obama, by more than 6 to1.
There is a fundamental misreading of our nation's purpose and intention in McCain's macho cheerleading of Bush's blundering occupation and in the Arizona senator's blustering, opportunistic rebuke of Russia. The intention of Americans was clearly expressed in the last congressional election in which they replaced McCain's fellow republican cheerleaders with Democrats pledged to end the occupation. We're not looking for more cowboy militarism or new nation-building boondoggles.
As McCain lectures veterans (and his Democratic rival) about the importance of "good judgment" in matters of national security, he's face-to-face with his own judgment in supporting the Iraq debacle, from it's inception to it's bloody muddle. Whatever McCain hopes to 'win' there will require even more lives and treasure from the shell and ticket-shocked Americans he's expecting to put him in charge. Whatever that is, he's definitely promising to engage our military even further into the muck his lame-duck WH mentor will leave behind.
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