Thirteen years ago today, Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash while he was campaigning for re-election. Each year, on this day, I write something about Paul as a small way to remember an astonishingly great Senator--besides Bernie Sanders, he's the only politician in the last 30-40 years I'd walk over hot coals to help.
And, today, it's worth joining Paul and Bernie together to highlight a key similarity: their opposition to the Iraq War contrasted with Hillary Clinton's embrace of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld illegal and immoral war--and why that vote should disqualify her from being chosen as the Democratic nominee for presidency.
This was true of Paul, as it is true of Bernie:
``There are people who will not vote for Paul Wellstone because he's too nutty left,'' Lilly Goren, chairwoman of the political science department at the College of St. Catherine in Minnesota, said recently. ``At the same time, there are people who will vote for Paul Wellstone even if they don't agree with his politics because he's willing to speak out on stuff.''
That willingness to speak out, and to speak out courageously, was most evident in the war vote. Paul was killed (along with his wife, Sheila, his daughter, Marcia, Will McLaughlin, a campaign staff member, Tom Lapic, campaign staff member, Mary McEvoy, campaign staff member and pilots Richard Conry, captain, and Michael Guess, co-pilot) not long after he cast his vote against the war authorization.
I commend to you both Paul's speech and Bernie's speech, and how remarkably similar they are in touching on important issues--like valuing the lives of people who would be sent to war including the thousands of people who would be killed in Iraq.
Wellstone:
Bernie:
The Bernie speech Transcript:
Mr. Speaker, I do not think any Member of this body disagrees that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant, a murderer, and a man who has started two wars. He is clearly someone who cannot be trusted or believed. The question, Mr. Speaker, is not whether we like Saddam Hussein or not. The question is whether he represents an imminent threat to the American people and whether a unilateral invasion of Iraq will do more harm than good.
Mr. Speaker, the front page of The Washington Post today reported that all relevant U.S. intelligence agencies now say despite what we have heard from the White House that ``Saddam Hussein is unlikely to initiate a chemical or biological attack against the United States.'' Even more importantly, our intelligence agencies say that should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he might at that point launch a chemical or biological counterattack. In other words, there is more danger of an attack on the United States if we launch a precipitous invasion.
Mr. Speaker, I do not know why the President feels, despite what our intelligence agencies are saying, that it is so important to pass a resolution of this magnitude this week and why it is necessary to go forward without the support of the United Nations and our major allies including those who are fighting side by side with us in the war on terrorism.
But I do feel that as a part of this process, the President is ignoring some of the most pressing economic issues affecting the well-being of ordinary Americans. There has been virtually no public discussion about the stock market's loss of trillions of dollars over the last few years and that millions of Americans have seen the retirement benefits for which they have worked their entire lives disappear. When are we going to address that issue? This country today has a $340 billion trade deficit, and we have lost 10 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the last 4 years, 2 million decent-paying jobs. The average American worker today is working longer hours for lower wages than 25 years ago. When are we going to address that issue?
Mr. Speaker, poverty in this country is increasing and median family income is declining. Throughout this country family farmers are being driven off of the land; and veterans, the people who put their lives on the line to defend us, are unable to get the health care and other benefits they were promised because of government underfunding. When are we going to tackle these issues and many other important issues that are of such deep concern to Americans?
Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have, let me give five reasons why I am opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution. One, I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring Nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. War must be the last recourse in international relations, not the first. Second, I am deeply concerned about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations. If President Bush believes that the U.S. can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal objection could our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing?
Third, the United States is now involved in a very difficult war against international terrorism as we learned tragically on September 11. We are opposed by Osama bin Laden and religious fanatics who are prepared to engage in a kind of warfare that we have never experienced before. I agree with Brent Scowcroft, Republican former National Security Advisor for President George Bush, Sr., who stated, ``An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.''
Fourth, at a time when this country has a $6 trillion national debt and a growing deficit, we should be clear that a war and a long-term American occupation of Iraq could be extremely expensive.
Fifth, I am concerned about the problems of so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed and what role will the U.S. play in ensuing a civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the region who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated? And these are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.
If a unilateral American invasion of Iraq is not the best approach, what should we do? In my view, the U.S. must work with the United Nations to make certain within clearly defined timelines that the U.N. inspectors are allowed to do their jobs. These inspectors should undertake an unfettered search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and destroy them when found, pursuant to past U.N. resolutions. If Iraq resists inspection and elimination of stockpiled weapons, we should stand ready to assist the U.N. in forcing compliance.[emphasis added]
As Bernie says today, he did not believe George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
Stand up please: is there any Democrat among you who believed those three people, all of who should have been impeached and removed from office for lying to Congress and the American public and/or indicted later for war crimes?
There was at least one: Hillary Clinton. This was the most consequential vote she cast, as a U.S. Senator, when she had the power of a vote.
This wasn't just one vote--as people argue who want to cover up the devastation this vote caused for political gain.
At the cost of tens of thousands of lives, American and Iraqi, and at a financial cost of $2-$3 trillion dollars (and counting--based on the analysis by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz), Hillary Clinton voted for the war.
At the feet of Hillary Clinton, and all those who voted for the war, lies this reality: the war spawned ISIS. But for the war, ISIS, and the fracturing of the entire region into a landscape of carnage, would not have occurred. And because of that carnage, thousands of more people die in the region, and we pour billions of dollars more into more war and more war.
Today, she lamely, and disingenuously, says, oh, it was a mistake to vote for the war--but she never quite explains what the mistake was...
Was it that she believed Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld--which would, at the very least, disqualify her as being entirely incompetent to judge such a momentous policy decision of war and peace, a moment when it was her vote to cast, as distinguished from serving the policy of someone else in her role of Secretary of State (a role that remains, in my opinion, pretty hazy beyond the campaign hagiography about what she actually accomplished).
Was that she didn't bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate, which was available to Senators to view in a secure room, before voting? Former Sen. Bob Graham has publicly stated that he urged her to read the Estimate because he said it demonstrated the falseness of the Administration’s stated rationale for the war. He specifically urged Clinton to do so—and she did not bother to do so.
Hillary Clinton's war vote was entirely about one thing, and no matter how much fog and fraudulent weak papering over the sycophants want to do today, tens of thousands of people lost their lives and we lost trillions of dollars we could have used for schools, health care and a whole host of things for a simple reason: Clinton's future political career and the need for her "to look tough" if she wanted to stake a claim to what the Clintons view is their right to the presidency. If she wasn't incompetent in her believing the Bush Administration, then, there is no other explanation. You see the bind, the obvious conclusion that no one wants to say repeatedly until we get a straight answer?
Look, the traditional media seems to not dig very deeply into this and Anderson Cooper was more interested in red-baiting Bernie Sanders than pressing Clinton about her vote for the war.
And you can live in a fantasy world and believe all the other promises, and you can believe the flip-flops on TPP and Keystone are real (I'm looking for a bookie to place a bet that, if god forbid, Clinton is sworn in on January 2017, within a year, there will be all the moaning and whining about the "new" positions on trade, Keystone) and you can turn a blind eye to what the phrase "I get things done" and a pledge to working with Republicans means (uh, you think Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of the Catfood Commission, who held a one percent fundraiser for HRC, with the candidate in attendance, won't be trying to dust off that immoral Commission document and convince her to make a deal to implement that shit, which is effectively a cut in Social Security and Medicare) and on and on.
But the Iraq War consequences are fact, not debate.
Thousands of people wake up every day in this country still devastated by the loss of a father, son, mother, daughter or friend who was killed in that illegal war. They were sacrificed for politics. Their lives tossed away for political gain in the status quo global machinations of power and leverage and influence.
Tens of thousands of others will live to the end of their lives with horrendous wounds that will never heal. Personally, when I hear HRC and others utter that completely empty phrase "I support the troops and honor their sacrifice," I feel deep revulsion, almost to the point of wanting to puke, because it's a political phrase with not an ounce of authenticity.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed and wounded in the war. The lives of those who survived remind me of that phrase "The living will envy the dead."
This is what a political revolution is about. It's the integrity inherent in the memory of people like Paul Wellstone, and in the integrity in what Bernie Sanders represents.
People who will not let people die for political gain.
The rest of them: it's all the status quo. And a status quo built on bloodshed and violence.
We cannot--CANNOT--let that status quote have the reins of power. ever again.
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ORDER THE ESSENTIAL BERNIE SANDERS AND HIS VISION FOR AMERICA