{"id":283,"date":"2007-05-01T05:59:07","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T10:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=283"},"modified":"2007-05-01T05:59:07","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T10:59:07","slug":"bidens-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=283","title":{"rendered":"Biden&#8217;s War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Language\" content=\"en-us\" \/> <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=windows-1252\" \/><title>Happy May Day<\/title>Happy May Day!  I&#8217;ll be brief because this is labor&#8217;s day for  reinvigorating the cultural battle for <em>less work<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Senator Joseph Biden made an April 29, 2007 appearance on NBC&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/18381961\/print\/1\/displaymode\/1098\/\">Meet  the Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Set aside, for the moment, Biden&#8217;s assertions about the future (&#8220;all of us  have been arguing&#8230; in both parties, that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to have to leave forces  behind in Iraq&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Biden&#8217;s most interesting comments concern the past.  Biden&#8217;s explanation <em>and justification<\/em> for the invasion gets to some of the &#8220;truth&#8221; <em>behind<\/em>  the lies:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[W]e were talking then about whether or not we could keep the pressure of  \tthe international community on Iraq to stay in the box we had them in.  And  \tremember, you had the French and others say the reason all those children  \twere dying in Iraq, the reason why hospitals didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have equipment is  \tbecause of what we, the United States, were doing, imposing on Iraq these  \tsanctions.  And that was the battle.  The battle was do we lift these  \tsanctions or do we in fact increase the sanctions?  And everyone at the time  \twas talking about\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom the secretary of state to even the president\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat  \tthis was to demonstrate to the world the president of the United States had  \tthe full faith and credit of the United States Congress behind him to put  \tpressure on the rest of the world to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, look, you lift the  \tsanctions, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to be on our own here.  Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lift the  \tsanctions.  Get the inspectors back in.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That was the context of the debate,  \tto be fair about it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"textBodyBlack\">MR. RUSSERT:  But you said Saddam was a threat.  He  \thad to be&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"textBodyBlack\">SEN. BIDEN:  He was a threat.<\/p>\n<p class=\"textBodyBlack\">MR. RUSSERT:  In what way?<\/p>\n<p class=\"textBodyBlack\">SEN. BIDEN:  The threat he presented was that, if  \tSaddam was left unfettered, which I said during that period, for the next  \tfive years with sanctions lifted and billions of dollars into his coffers,  \tthen I believed he had the ability to acquire a tactical nuclear weapon\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot  \tby building it, by purchasing it.  I also believed he was a threat in that  \the was\u00e2\u20ac\u201devery single solitary U.N. resolution which he agreed to abide by,  \twhich was the equivalent of a peace agreement at the United Nations, after  \the got out of\u00e2\u20ac\u201dafter we kicked him out of Kuwait, he was violating.  Now, the  \trules of the road either mean something or they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.  The international  \tcommunity says \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to enforce the sanctions we placed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or not.  And  \twhat was the international community doing? The international community was  \tweakening.  They were pulling away.  They were saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, wait a  \tminute.  Maybe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not so bad.  Maybe we should lift the no-fly zone.   \tMaybe we should lift the sanctions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That was the context.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"textBodyBlack\">In light of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-tenet1may01,1,4694838.story?coll=la-headlines-nation\"> recent controversies over George Tenet&#8217;s new book<\/a>, <em>At the Center of the  Storm<\/em>, and his sense of the origins of the invasion plan, it might be worth  noting that Biden&#8217;s justification for the invasion is not very different from  the one offered, on the eve of the invasion, by Right Zionist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newamericancentury.org\/iraq-20030224.htm\">Richard Perle<\/a>  over at the Project for a New American Century:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"textBodyBlack\">&#8220;Let&#8217;s be candid about it. France has found a way  \tof dealing with Saddam Hussein that simply wouldn&#8217;t work for the United  \tStates because it entails a degree of cooperation that is not acceptable for  \tus. The commercial relationship between France and Saddam&#8217;s regime is on  \thold owing to the sanctions but I think it&#8217;s clear that the moment the  \tsanctions are removed there is a pipeline of contracts that would be  \tpromulgated and they&#8217;re important for France. We shouldn&#8217;t kid ourselves,  \tthey&#8217;re important for France. It&#8217;s my understanding that the Total contract  \twith Saddam is worth $40 billion to $60 billion\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. So there are commercial  \tinterests and for those people who accuse the United States in being  \tinterested in oil in this matter, I submit to you that our interest in oil  \tis in purchasing it on the world market. That could best be accomplished by  \tlifting the sanctions, hardly by going to war against Saddam Hussein. The  \tFrench interest in the promulgation of contracts that will only go forward  \twith this regime is perfectly obvious.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But there&#8217;s a second French attitude that I think we have to come to grips  \twith and understand and that is the desire on the part of France to build  \tthe European Union as a counterweight to the United States. Counterweight is  \tthe term most frequently employed by the French, by Chris Patten in Brussels  \tand by others. For a long time the United States and France have been  \tallies. Good allies. Vital to each other&#8217;s security at many times in our  \thistory and never in the period in which we were allies who supported one  \tanother did either of us think of describing the other as a counterweight. A  \trelationship that can be described by the term counterweight is not a  \trelationship of alliance&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t think we have the luxury of changing priorities from one  \tday to the next. There was a review of Iraq policy underway on September  \t11th and the administration hadn&#8217;t decided at that point what to do, but one  \tthing was very clear: the consensus behind the sanctions which had become  \tthe central element of western United Nations strategy for dealing with  \tSaddam Hussein was crumbling. France and Russia had already indicated they  \twere opposed to continuing the sanctions. The French wanted to weaken the  \tsanctions regime. The so-called smart sanctions policy of the United States  \twas really a response to the eroding support for those sanctions and it was  \tvery clear that if something wasn&#8217;t done that Saddam was going to emerge the  \tsurvivor who had outlasted the United Nations\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.So it was urgent to deal with  \tIraq, and we set on a course of dealing with Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The specific &#8220;crisis&#8221; that generated the US invasion of Iraq was the collapse  of the sanctions regime, understood in terms of Great Power Rivalry, was &#8220;not  acceptable to us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All that remains, it would seem, is to understand the contours of US policy<em> <\/em>after the invasion, i.e., the<em> <\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmag.org\/content\/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10185\">geopolitical  rationale for <em>de-Baathification<\/em> <\/a>(rather than, say, &#8220;grabbing&#8221; Iraq  but maintaining Baathist rule).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy May DayHappy May Day! I&#8217;ll be brief because this is labor&#8217;s day for reinvigorating the cultural battle for less work. Senator Joseph Biden made an April 29, 2007 appearance on NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press. Set aside, for the moment, Biden&#8217;s assertions about the future (&#8220;all of us have been arguing&#8230; in both parties, that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,3,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}