Iraq Study Group Report = John Kerry Report ?

Poor Kerry should have come out against the war. At least then he would have been right. Edwards, "I was wrong." - Yes you were John Edwards...

Fact is, Iraq is not ready for a unified, pro west democracy. We needed folks to stand up before we made this mistake.

that is how one solves a problem. or..... golly gee, look at today for the answers. i wonder

...

words of the resolution. words are important, yet are ignored. so i can suggest.... those that tend to "change" history for sake of agenda, equally cause damage, firstly

secondly, in learning lesson of history does not mean sitting in it totally non productively. it means sitting in the now, resolving.

military conflict.

When we were off to war, only Braun, Sharpton, Kucinich, and Dean stood with the peace movement.

Kerry is one of the best we have.

Resolving now must include recognition that when strong voices were needed, they were silent. Only the strong voices will be heard now.

:kick:

He was one of the strongest voices in summer and early fall arguing against Bush unilaterally going to war. He was a strong voice for involving both the UN and Congress. He was considerably more anti-war in that period than Dean was.

In early 2003, he spoke out strongly against Bush rushing to war and got in trouble for calling for "regime change at home" when Bush invaded. He was correctly labeled as anti-war in that period. It is notable that this is when the majority of Americans were FOR the war.

Kos has a post where he looks back at his first cattle call ever from November 8, 2002. Here’s his entry on John Kerry:

John Kerry

Pros: Distinguished war hero. Distinguished peace movement hero. Wife is worth a fortune. New England liberal.

Cons: Stiff. Crazy hair. Senator. New England liberal.

Kerry has become a media darling, kind of the Bradley of 2004. He’s extremely intelligent and pursues the sort of liberal policies certain to excite the party faithful. He’s also untouchable on foreign policy matters (though I said the same about Max Cleland), and has been one of the few voices from the Democratic side of the aisle criticizing Bush’s war efforts directly. The fact that he’s a New England liberal should prove helpful during the primaries, but it remains to be seen if it will prove a negative amongst moderates. (Republicans are so enamored with Bush that it’s irrelevant what they think. They won’t abandon the president.)

and proving invasion was not necessary. He said so throughout 2004. Media kept pounding the Rove storyline that IWR was a vote for war, but IWR was actually being violated from the moment the weapon inspectors' NEW, ontheground reports were ignored and Bush decided that old intel would best make his case in favor of invasion.

there were a couple Dems that clearly stated that they opposed military intervention in Iraq - Carol Mosley Braun, Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich, and Howard Dean.

I'm sure that Kerry, Clinton, Edwards, et all thought it was an awful idea; they just would never publicly say so.

and IWR guidelines, then he would oppose it - and that is what he did. Media helped convince many on the right and left that IWR was a vote for war and gave Bush war powers - it did not. Gonzalez admitted that under oath last summer. That is why they included the signing statement that they did. But they certainly wanted media to play up the lie that IWR gave Bush all the power with NO GUIDELINES.

Did you ever notice that UN gave Bush a resolution, too, and he was in violation of THAT, as well? The IWR and the UN resolutions were not going to stop this war, but they did manage to give BushInc the opportunity it needed through their MEDIA WHORES to distract from Bush's violations of those resolutions by casting the votes as votes supporting war no matter what.

before it started. He reiterated that war has to be a last resort - and as he said millions of times in 2004, it wasn't.

Actually, he opposed the war in 2004 saying it was the wrong war at the wrong time, in the wrong place. He has since apologized as far back as 2005 and said he was wrong to have given the President the authority he did in You mention Edward's. Yes, he came out and said his vote was wrong for the IWR, however, I believe Kerry's apologize came first.

I just ... wish... for ... more...

And nobody suggested doing nothing. That little detail is always overlooked.

Who do you think said this?

"The President should be authorized to take action to deal with Saddam Hussein as being in material breach of the terms of the truce and therefore a continuing threat to the security of the region. To this should be added that his continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially a threat to the vital interests of the United States. But Congress should also urge the President to make every effort to obtain a fresh demand from the Security Council for prompt, unconditional compliance by Iraq within a definite period of time. If the Council will not provide such language, then other choices remain open, but in any event the President should be urged to take the time to assemble the broadest possible international support for his course of action."

Kerry did say his IWR was wrong in Oct 2005 in his Georgetown University speech - a month before Edwards' op-ed.

Because Kerry was never for the going to war when Bush did his rejection of his vote is necessarily more complex than Edwards'. Edwards in voting for the IWR actually did vote for going to war - and was a cheerleader for it throughout 2003. Edwards' vote and "I was wrong" together tell us nothing on his philosophical views on when war is justified - though he very clearly thinks Iraq was a mistake. I seriously don't know whether Edwards as President would have taken us to war, I know Kerry wouldn't have.

If you read the section on war in Kerry's Pepperdine speech, you can see why Kerry both states unequivically that his vote was wrong and summarizes why the vote was NOT a vote for war. Kerry's error was in thinking there were people (GHWB etc) or institutions (the UN) which could stall and possibly derail the war GWB was clearly already fighting for. He also trusted that on matters of war and peace, the President would not lie. Consider how sharp Kerry's comments on trusting Bush were in his torture speech - it is clear that Kerry profoundly regrets having his name on the IWR and will never trust Bush again.

The criterion Kerry enumerates that Bush publicly promised are needed for sensible foreign policy and are required to make this a "just war" as defined by St Augustine. Beyond even his Vietnam anti-war history, this goes to his core beliefs. Look at how many phrases here match Kerry's 2002 and beyond comments on Iraq.

In the Pepperdine speech, Kerry says:

"Augustine felt that wars of choice are generally unjust wars, that war -- the organized killing of human beings, of fathers, brothers, friends -- should always be a last resort, that war must always have a just cause, that those waging war need the right authority to do so, that a military response must be proportionate to the provocation, that a war must have a reasonable chance of achieving its goal and that war must discriminate between civilians and combatants.

In developing the doctrine of Just War, Augustine and his many successors viewed self-restraint in warfare as a religious obligation, not as a pious hope contingent on convincing one's adversaries to behave likewise.

<snip>


For me, the just war criteria with respect to Iraq are very clear:
sometimes a President has to use force to fight an enemy bent on using weapons of mass destruction to slaughter innocents. But no President should ever go to war because they want to -- you go to war only because you have to. The words "last resort" have to mean something .

In Iraq, those words were rendered hollow. It was wrong to prosecute the war without careful diplomacy that assembled a real coalition. Wrong to prosecute war without a plan to win the peace and avoid the chaos of looting in Baghdad and streets full of raw sewage. Wrong to prosecute a war without considering the violence it would unleash and what it would do to the lives of innocent people who would be in danger."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

As to Kerry's position on the IWR and the war itself:

Here's part of the reason given by Kerry in voting for the IWR,

"Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days — to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent — and I emphasize "imminent" — threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has recognized a similar need to distinguish how we approach this. He has said that he believes we should move in concert with allies, and he has promised his own party that he will not do so otherwise. The administration may not be in the habit of building coalitions, but that is what they need to do. And it is what can be done. If we go it alone without reason, we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed.

Let there be no doubt or confusion about where we stand on this. I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances"

In true fact, Kerry did not and would not vote for the nearly unilateral war of choice that occurred. Bush went against the promises he publicly made to get the votes. Kerry's Senate speech was absolutely consistent with things he said before the vote where he was as against the war as anyone and with his statement of his beliefs at Pepperdine.

Although Clinton usurped Kerry's reason in voting for the IWR for all Democrats except Lieberman, neither he or his wife or most Democrats who voted for the IWR spoke out against the war before it started or during the first few popular months - as Kerry did. That speaking out - promised in Kerry's floor speech - confirms he voted for the reasons given and should have made it clear it wasn't political. Had the war been a huge success, those comments would have labeled Kerry correctly as against the invasion.

Kerry disagrees with parts of the ISG report, like the training embedding and a lack of a DATE CERTAIN to get all troops out of there. However, there is a date. A date by the ESTABLISHMENT in DC -- first quarter 2008. We all need to take note of that date. If it arrives and nothing's happened, then we should say over and over again "James Baker would have had us out of there by now." Not exactly extremist lefty talk, is that?

the path forward in Iraq. However, many of the things suggested in the report were ideas Kerry pushed for a while ago. It is a shame the public and other politicians were so slow to come around.

We know that it's about oil and corporate profits (weapons makers & Halliburton type contractors) while the war is purposely bankrupting all liberal social programs) nothing more, that's why Bush will never leave and the fucking democrats won't say it's only about oil! The Iraqi's sure as fuck know it's about American imperialism out to steal their oil.

December 8, 2006

WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies." This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.

This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are preferred by the oil industry but rejected by all the top oil producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies than the governments. The Heritage Foundation also released a report in March 2003 calling for the full privatization of Iraq's oil sector. One representative of the foundation, Edwin Meese III, is a member of the Iraq Study Group. Another, James J. Carafano, assisted in the study group's work.

For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to apply to all the country's oil fields, Iraq has to amend its constitution and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is ambiguous as to whether control over future revenues from as-yet-undeveloped oil fields should be shared among its provinces or held and distributed by the central government.

This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake, because only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have been developed. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Recommendation No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq's oil revenues in the hands of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the U.S. government to "provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare a draft oil law."

This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired the consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.

Plans for this new law were first made public at a news conference in late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department officials, Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice president) explained how this law would open Iraq's oil industry to private foreign investment. This, in turn, would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies." The law would implement production-sharing agreements.

Much to the deep frustration of the U.S. government and American oil companies, that law has still not been passed.

In July, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced in Baghdad that oil executives told him that their companies would not enter Iraq without passage of the new oil law. Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that U.S. oil companies considered passage of the new oil law more important than increased security when deciding whether to go into business in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group report states that continuing military, political and economic support is contingent upon Iraq's government meeting certain undefined "milestones." It's apparent that these milestones are embedded in the report itself.

Further, the Iraq Study Group would commit U.S. troops to Iraq for several more years to, among other duties, provide security for Iraq's oil infrastructure. Finally, the report unequivocally declares that the 79 total recommendations "are comprehensive and need to be implemented in a coordinated fashion. They should not be separated or carried out in isolation."

All told, the Iraq Study Group has simply made the case for extending the war until foreign oil companies — presumably American ones — have guaranteed legal access to all of Iraq's oil fields and until they are assured the best legal and financial terms possible.

We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-juhasz8dec08,0,4717508.story?track=tothtml


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of our dependence on ME oil being a reason. Maybe not in the strident tones you want - but even in 2004 - one of the reasons he pushed alternative furl research and development, in addition to the economy and the environment was taht we were held hostage to the ME.