Biden's War
by Anthony Freda
Both
maniacs running are pro-war, but why does one get a pass for his Iraq
War record? Why is war such a small part of the debate?
Did you know that Biden promoted the false claims of WMD’s and wanted an invasion of Iraq before Bush ? Here are the facts:
Biden Shepherds the War Authorization
It
is difficult to over-estimate the critical role Biden played in making
the tragedy of the Iraq war possible. More than two months prior to the
2002 war resolution even being introduced, in what was widely
interpreted as the first sign that
Congress would endorse a U.S. invasion of Iraq, Biden declared on
August 4 that the United States was probably going to war. In his
powerful position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he
orchestrated a propaganda show designed to sell the war to skeptical
colleagues and the America public by ensuring that dissenting voices
would not get a fair hearing.
As Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector, noted at the time,
“For Sen. Biden’s Iraq hearings to be anything more than a political
sham used to invoke a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin resolution-equivalent
for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions – and demand
hard facts – concerning the real nature of the weapons threat posed by
Iraq.”
It
soon became apparent that Biden had no intention of doing so. Biden
refused to even allow Ritter himself – who knew more about Iraq’s WMD
capabilities than anyone and would have testified that Iraq had achieved
at least qualitative disarmament – to testify. Ironically, on Meet the Press last
year, Biden defended his false claims about Iraqi WMDs by insisting
that “everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors
said he had them.”
Biden
also refused to honor requests by some of his Democratic colleagues to
include in the hearings some of the leading anti-war scholars familiar
with Iraq and Middle East. These included both those who would have
reiterated Ritter’s conclusions about non-existent Iraqi WMD
capabilities as well as those prepared to testify that a U.S. invasion
of Iraq would likely set back the struggle against al-Qaeda, alienate
the United States from much of the world, and precipitate bloody urban
counter-insurgency warfare amid rising terrorism, Islamist extremism,
and sectarian violence. All of these predictions ended up being exactly what transpired.
Nor
did Biden even call some of the dissenting officials in the Pentagon or
State Department who were willing to challenge the alarmist claims of
their ideologically-driven superiors. He was willing, however, to allow
Iraqi defectors of highly dubious credentials to make false testimony
about the vast quantities of WMD materiel supposedly in Saddam Hussein’s
possession. Ritter has correctly accusedBiden
of having “preordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam Hussein
from power regardless of the facts and . . . using these hearings to
provide political cover for a massive military attack on Iraq.”
Supported an Invasion Before Bush
Rather
than being a hapless victim of the Bush administration’s lies and
manipulation, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq and making
false statements regarding Saddam Hussein’s supposed possession of
“weapons of mass destruction” years before President George W. Bush even
came to office.
As
far back as 1998, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of that oil
rich country. Even though UN inspectors and the UN-led disarmament
process led to the elimination of Iraq’s WMD threat, Biden – in an
effort to discredit the world body and make an excuse for war – insisted
that UN inspectors could never be trusted to do the job. During Senate
hearings on Iraq in September of that year, Biden told Ritter,
“As long as Saddam’s at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you
or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we
have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program
relative to weapons of mass destruction.”
Calling
for military action on the scale of the Gulf War seven years earlier,
he continued, “The only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is
we’re going to end up having to start it alone,” telling the Marine
veteran “it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on
foot in the desert taking Saddam down.”
When
Ritter tried to make the case that President Bill Clinton’s proposed
large-scale bombing of Iraq could jeopardize the UN inspections process,
Biden condescendingly replied that decisions on the use of military
force were “beyond your pay grade.” As Ritter predicted, when Clinton
ordered UN inspectors out of Iraq in December of that year and followed
up with a four-day bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Fox,
Saddam was provided with an excuse to refuse to allow the inspectors to
return. Biden then conveniently used Saddam’s failure to allow them to
return as an excuse for going to war four years later.
Biden’s False Claims to Bolster War
In
the face of widespread skepticism over administration claims regarding
Iraq’s military capabilities, Biden declared that President Bush was
justified in being concerned about Iraq’s alleged pursuit of weapons of
mass destruction. Even though Iraq had eliminated its chemical weapons
arsenal by the mid-1990s, Biden insisted categorically in the weeks
leading up to the Iraq war resolution that Saddam Hussein still had
chemical weapons. Even though there is no evidence that Iraq had ever
developed deployable biological weapons and its biological weapons
program had been eliminated some years earlier, Biden insisted that
Saddam had biological weapons, including anthrax and that “he may have a
strain” of small pox. And, even though the International Atomic Energy
Agency had reported as far back as 1998 that there was no evidence
whatsoever that Iraq had any ongoing nuclear program, Biden insisted
Saddam was “seeking nuclear weapons.”
Said Biden,
“One thing is clear: These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam, or
Saddam must be dislodged from power.” He did not believe proof of the
existence of any actual weapons to dislodge was necessary, however,
insisting that “If we wait for the danger from Saddam to become clear,
it could be too late.” He further defended President Bush by falsely
claiming that “He did not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not
dismiss a new inspection regime. He did not ignore the Congress. At each
pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and
deliberation.”
In
an Orwellian twist of language designed to justify the war resolution,
which gave President Bush the unprecedented authority to invade a
country on the far side of the world at the time and circumstances of
his own choosing, Biden claimed that “I do not believe this is a rush to
war. I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that
failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance
the prospects that war will occur.”
It
is also important to note that Biden supported an invasion in the full
knowledge that it would not be quick and easy and that the United States
would have to occupy Iraq for an extended period, declaring, “We must
be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the
long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.”
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