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Democrats Fail to Hold Bush Responsible for War Deceptions. |
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GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES Democrats failed to challenge the Bush Administration when it mattered -- before the invasion of Iraq, say Greens, who assert that the White House's deceit was evident long before the war began. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Greens charge that Democratic Party leaders are dragging their feet on holding the Bush Administration accountable for massive deceptions it made in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. "Except for a brave few, Democrats waited until the occupation started to become unpopular, with daily killings of American soldiers and the realization that we face a prolonged, multibillion-dollar occupation while the U.S. economy is failing," said Nathalie Paravacini, secretary of the Green Party of the United States. "Only now are they standing up to question both the motives and justifications for the costly invasion of Iraq, when hundreds of thousands of their own constituencies have voiced their concerns from the start." "Greens will make bipartisan complicity in Bush's deceit a major issue in the 2004 local and national elections," Paravacini added. "It's possible that the only justice we'll see is if outraged voters vote out both the liars and the spineless next year." Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) claims that the Senate Intelligence Committee will "review" rather than investigate evidence that numerous administration officials, including Vice President Cheney, knew that the documents showing that Saddam had purchased weapons-grade uranium from Niger were fake. Former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr has revealed that the CIA was pressed by the White House to doctor intelligence about Iraq's WMDs, and acknowledged that there was no credible connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. "In the ten weeks since Bush declared an end to the war, no signs of an active WMD program or storage have been found, despite widespread searches," said Mark Dunlea, chair of the Green Party of New York State. "This confirms the initial findings of the U.N. inspection team that Bush had interrupted in his rush to invade Iraq. Saddam's failure to use any such weapons to repel the U.S. invasion confirms that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the U.S. or any other nation. The war was launched for other reasons, especially to gain political control over Iraqi oil resources." Greens note that current administration members have been drafting blueprints for the invasion for at least a dozen years, especially under the auspices of the Project for a New American Century, which urged President Clinton to invade Iraq in 1988. "There was plenty of evidence before the war began that President Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and other officials were deceiving the American public and the world about their motivations for invading," said J. Roy Cannon, chair of the Peace Committee of the Green Party of Delaware. "The Green Party spoke out consistently about the deception, manipulative propaganda, and insincere appeals to patriotism and security that informed President Bush's January 28 State of Union speech and Powell's testimony before the U.N. in early February. Greens joined the worldwide protests, while many Democrats cheered Bush." "If the Democrats had challenged Bush's deceit, a lot of war, death, and pillage might have been avoided," added Dunlea. "Instead, the Democratic mainstream, including many liberals, was so fearful of being called unpatriotic by Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly that they rubberstamped the war from the beginning, surrendering Congress's constitutional power to declare war over to the White House. Democracy was betrayed by Democrats as much as by Republicans." NOTE: The Green Party of the United States will hold
its 2003 national meeting at the Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut
Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. from Friday, July 18 through Sunday, July
20. For media registration for the conference, visit http://www.gp.org/forms/conf2003form.html. search: prty, irq, dpol, fpol |