Saturday, April 4, 2020

PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE: Joe Biden’s History of Selling the Iraq Invasion, Expanding Prisons & Pulling Democrats to the Right

My heart hurts about so many things. Included is a corporate funded American mainstream media that has consistently deprived we the people of the facts, the truth, the reality of larger pictures which have always been so essential to know. We need to know that Joe Biden was the longest supporter of the Iraq War. We need to know Biden's true history. These are life and death issues that we all need to care about.
Without consistently turning to independent media which bring us the voices of true investigative journalists, we’re tragically left in the dark and are poisoned with polarizing propaganda which divides us up with its lies rather than empowering us to unite behind the truth.
Our belief systems, perceptions, and whether or not we’re aware and informed or misinformed and unaware will fluctuate widely depending on who we’re listening to and what we’re hearing — whether or not we’re tuning into CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NPR/PBS and other corporate funded mouthpieces for the powerful or independent resources and voices like Democracy Now!, The Intercept, Truthout, Common Dreams, Chris Hedges, Dahr Jamail, Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, Glen Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, Henry Giroux, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, David Korten, Riane Eisler, Joanna Macy, Vandana Shiva, and countless other truth-tellers and wisdom-keepers.
Tragically, again and again we the American people are systematically convinced to back politicians whose ideology, whose record, whose corporate donors, whose lack of integrity and courage and commitment to fight for the highest good for our nation and the planet is severely impaired and a danger to the well-being of us all.
We haven’t come to this place we’re at today overnight. Both major political parties, a complicit corporate media, and the insatiable greed of the most wealthy have brought us the catastrophic devastation of the climate and ecological crises, endless wars and worldwide militarism, NAFTA and other trade deals which have shipped jobs overseas and served to only further enrich the powerful, crime bills that result in the incarceration of millions — mostly people of color, other racist and economic policies which fuel pervasive inequality and crushing poverty, a healthcare system based on profit and greed that results in 30,000+ deaths and 500,000 bankruptcies every year (all of which will now increase exponentially with the coronavirus), 43% of Americans living at or below the poverty line and 500,000 Americans — including 30,000 veterans — living on the streets, 78% of Americans having no deep understanding of the greatest crisis humankind has ever faced — the climate crisis — and therefore backing candidates and politicians who either call man made climate change a hoax or state that we cannot afford the Green New Deal... And the list goes on.
If we Americans were informed, Trump would never have been elected, and candidates like Joe Biden and other corporate democrats would never have had a chance of being nominated or elected. But we’re largely not informed. And we’re instead tragically indoctrinated into shooting the messengers who attempt to bring us the truth. So sadly, and this makes my heart hurt, we so often turn on each other rather than unite within movements devoted to radical change and transformation and economic, racial, social, and environmental justice.
This must change. Truth-tellers such as those found in this interview are essential if there’s to be any chance of dismantling the deadly status quo that has long been tragically devastating and destroying our nation, other nations, and the planet. Truth, justice, and love are vital to not just to defeating Trump, who is but a horrifying symptom of late stage predatory capitalism and its ideology of domination, but also to the revolutionary changes that are crucial to creating a just and caring society and sustaining a livable planet.

We’re all needed in this great struggle for a New Story, a New World, a paradigm shift and evolutionary leap that our children and grandchildren and all the children of all the species are counting on us to unite behind. We’re all needed. We’re all in this together. ― Molly






Following former Vice President Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday wins, we continue our extended interview with Branko Marcetic, author of “Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our look at the comeback candidate of Super Tuesday. Yes, former Vice President Joe Biden, who won nine states, including delegate-rich Texas, while the AP reports Senator Bernie Sanders won the largest prize of the night, California. Sanders used his speech in his home state of Vermont Super Tuesday night to emphasize his difference with Joe Biden.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: One of us in this race led the opposition to the War in Iraq. You’re looking at him. Another candidate voted for the War in Iraq. One of us has spent his entire life fighting against cuts in Social Security and wanting to expand Social Security. Another candidate has been on the floor of the Senate calling for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ programs.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined for Part 2 of our interview with Branko Marcetic, staff writer at Jacobin magazine, reporter at In These Times, author of the new book Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! Let’s continue with Sanders’ point around the Iraq War. Now, many people who have supported Joe Biden might say, well, he, like Hillary Clinton, and a number of other Democrats did support the Iraq War. They voted for it. Your point in your book is that he didn’t just vote for it. He was a leader. He was George W. Bush’s partner in pushing others to support, especially Democrats, of course — to support the war. Can you explain what he did? He then now says it’s a mistake. So, what are your thoughts on that, as well?
BRANKO MARCETIC: Well, you know, 2001, September 11 happened. The country was angry. It was hurt. It was scared. The Bush administration, and really in concert with the media, was really pushing this kind of feeling of vengeance and anger. And Biden was facing reelection in 2002. He had fought that opponent in 1996. He was the first opponent, really, in his career up to that point that could rival him in fundraising. And his opponent made clear he was going to go after Biden for not being supportive enough of Bush on the Iraq War. And Biden did what he always did in elections, you know, since 1978 up to then, which was just to basically try and extinguish his opponent’s attack line by adopting his platform.
So, you’re right. Biden had this choice. And the Wilmington News, at the time, actually talked about this. You know, Biden could either try and be a block on Bush’s agenda and block on Bush’s plans for Iraq — which he actually ended up doing about 2005, 2006, when it was way too late and the winds had shifted — or he could go along with him and get behind him and basically just let him do what he wanted. And Biden at the time was the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. And Biden elected to do the latter. He said, you know, the 90% of the country that was supporting Bush — that was his approval rating, it had gone skyrocketing upwards — he said, “Count me in the 90%. I’m fully behind him.” Biden’s aides told the press that he had privately told Bush that he was OK with the Iraq War, as long as it met certain conditions.
For the next months, many months, throughout 2002, Biden would go on the Sunday shows and on news stations, basically saying that Saddam was a danger, he had to be removed, whether it was now or later, that he had weapons of mass destruction, that he was maybe even in cahoots with terrorists. He praised a covert plan to get rid of Saddam. And he said, “If this doesn’t work, we’re just going to have to go for an overt strategy.” In around the middle of that year, as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, he held hearings on the Iraq War. And he stacked the witness list with people who were overwhelmingly pro-Iraq War. They were saying that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, who were saying that Saddam had ties to terrorists. And actually, Biden even opened the hearings by saying, “We have to get rid of Saddam at some point. Saddam must be removed from power.” He then, after arranging that testimony and leaving out critics like Scott Ritter, skeptics who were saying that Saddam probably did not have weapons of mass destruction, he then went on those same shows, on those Sunday shows, and he then used the testimony, the lopsided testimony that he had arranged, to then argue in favor. He was saying, “Well, look, the experts are saying that Saddam is a threat, so we have to do something about this.”
Of course, there’s the famous vote for the Iraq War, which Biden now claims, “Well, that, you know, I didn’t think they were going to go to war. I didn’t think this was really going to happen. This was a way to give Bush bargaining power.” But that doesn’t explain why a month after, a month or two months after, Biden actually went on a tour — and by the way, he was saluted by the Delaware Republican Party, who said, “Thank you for supporting George Bush, Mr. Biden. We wish you a great trip.” And he went on this tour around Europe and the Middle East to drum up support for the impending Iraq War. He went to Jordan. He went to Israel. I believe he may have gone to Qatar, if memory serves me right. And he also went to the Kurdish Parliament, and he said — you know, he did this speech to the Kurdish Parliament basically saying that the United States will be with you, basically signaling that if the Kurds join them in the war against Saddam, the United States will back them.
And then, contrary to his claims now — and, you know, I know there’s a lot of debate about is Biden lying, is he legitimately confused about his own record. And I think, with the Biden of 2020, it’s fair to not know which one to say. But I think in this case, the record is clear enough. It’s been fact-checked many times, and Biden keeps saying the same line. So I think he knows he’s being dishonest. But Biden says that he supported — he opposed, I’m sorry, the Iraq War. Immediately after it began, he knew it was a mistake. Completely untrue. Biden was probably one of the longest-running supporters of the Iraq War. Even as the Democratic Party and even the public began to sour on the war, Biden was all in favor of it. He went on Fox, and he said that the — when asked if the position of the Democratic Party should be the position that was being advanced by Howard Dean, who was then sort of, you know, launching into his own sort of progressive insurgent run and famously was very antiwar, Biden flatly said no. By August of 2003, he was calling for something like 40,000 to 60,000 more troops to be pumped into Iraq. His entire case wasn’t that the Iraq War had been a mistake, but actually that Bush was a poor manager of the war, that he had managed a strategy badly, that the causes was good, but it was just it hadn’t been done well.
To continue the transcript, and for the full video, please go here: https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/5/joe_biden_s_history_of_selling  
 

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