Kucinich compares Iraq 'exit' to Bush's 'Mission Accomplished'

By Ron Brynaert | Friday, August 20th, 2010

"Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today challenged the notion that removing ‘combat brigades’ but leaving 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq constitutes an end to combat operations, let alone an end to the war," a press release sent to RAW STORY on Thursday stated.

The press release continues:

“Who is in charge of our operations in Iraq , now? George Orwell? A war based on lies continues to be a war based on lies. Today, we have a war that is not a war, with combat troops who are not combat troops. In 2003, President Bush said ' Mission Accomplished ' . In 2010, the White House says combat operations are over in Iraq , but will leave 50,000 troops, many of whom will inevitably be involved in combat-related activities.

“Just seven days ago, General Babaker Shawkat Zebari, the commander of Iraq ’s military, said that Iraq ’s security forces will not be trained and ready to take over security for another 10 years. One story is being told to the military on the ground in Iraq and another story is being told to their families back home.

“You can’t be in and out at the same time. 

“This is not the end of the war; this is simply a new stage in the campaign to lull the American people into accepting an open-ended presence in Iraq . This is not an honest accounting to the American people and it diminishes the role of the troops who will put their lives on the line. This is not fair to the troops, their families or the American people.

“The Administration and the Pentagon would be wise to level with the American people about our long-term commitment to Iraq .

“The cost of the wars has been estimated to be around $1 million per soldier per year. Each year the troop levels stay at 50,000 means another $50 billion is wasted. I object to spending billions of dollars to maintain a charade in Iraq while our own economy is failing and over 15 million Americans are out of work. I object to keeping any level troops in Iraq to maintain a war based on lies. It is time that Congress sees through the manipulation and finally acts to truly end the war by stopping its funding,” said Kucinich.

Kucinich's statement doesn't mention President Obama's name once, but the president also didn't don a military jumpsuit and fly a plane onto a carrier with a gigantic "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Many of the top liberal blogs who have criticized Obama the past year went silent on the Iraq "exit" coverage (perhaps some are on August vacation).

Aside from Kucinich, RAW STORY was only able to find a scathing editorial on the World Socialist Web Site.

The White House and the Pentagon, assisted by a servile media, have hyped Thursday’s exit of a single Stryker brigade from Iraq as the end of the “combat mission” in that country, echoing the ill-fated claim made by George W. Bush seven years ago.

Obama is more skillful in packaging false propaganda than Bush, and no doubt has learned something from the glaring mistakes of his predecessor. Bush landed on the deck of the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 to proclaim—under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished”—that “major combat operations” in Iraq were over. A captive audience of naval enlisted personnel was assembled on deck as cheering extras.

Obama wisely did not fly to Kuwait to deliver a similar address from atop an armored vehicle. He merely issued a statement from the White House, while leaving the heavy lifting to the television networks and their “embedded” reporters, who accompanied the brigade across the border into Kuwait and repeated the propaganda line fashioned by the administration and the military brass.

Three years after former President George W. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on an aircraft carrier, MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann proceeded to mock the early propagandistic call by announcing each successive night on his Countdown show that it has been "one thousand and blank" days since "Mission Accomplished was declared," RAW STORY noted yesterday.

Chances are, three years from now, even if US troops are still caught up in a quagmire in Iraq, Olbermann won't be doing a similar signoff schtick to mock the coverage that ran on NBC and MSNBC Wednesday evening.

At The New York Times Media Decoder blog, Brian Stelter reported, "The combat mission in Iraq doesn’t officially end until Aug. 31 but viewers and readers could be forgiven for thinking it ended tonight."

In a broadcast that Brian Williams said constituted an “official Pentagon announcement,” NBC showed live pictures Wednesday night as members of the last combat brigade in Iraq drove toward the Kuwait border, symbolizing an end to fighting in the country.

“We are with the last combat troops” in Iraq, the NBC correspondent Richard Engel said at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, the same time that the military lifted an embargo that had been placed on the reporters traveling with the 440 troops, a part of the 4/2 Stryker Brigade.

The Associated Press, Fox News, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera and other news media outlets also reported Wednesday evening that the last combat troops were crossing into Kuwait. Only NBC broadcast it live, in asymmetrical image to the invasion that captured the nation’s attention on television seven years ago.

Coverage by most media outlets on the "last combat brigade" leaving Iraq paint an almost rosy picture with their headlines, which suggest that not only will the close to 60,000 troops left behind not be fighting anyone, but that there is no chance of any future surge.

"As the United States military prepares to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning a remarkable civilian effort, buttressed by a small army of contractors, to fill the void," the New York Times reports.

However, the Associated Press and many liberal blogs instead chose to criticize Fox News for not covering the "exit" with the same gusto.

Perhaps another network could have covered the extensive coverage MSNBC was provided by the Pentagon instead.

Pentagon: No one has declared the end of the Iraq war

US stresses military role in Iraq
By Agence France-Presse
Friday, August 20th, 2010

US troops will still be in combat and taking on Islamist militants in Iraq even as the American military moves to an "advise and assist" role with a smaller force, officials said.

The withdrawal of the last US combat brigade at dawn on Thursday was hailed as a symbolic moment for the controversial American presence in Iraq, more than seven years since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Under cover of darkness, the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, crossed into neighbouring Kuwait ahead of the planned declaration of an end to US combat operations in Iraq by an August 31 deadline.

The pullout came two days after a suicide bomber killed 59 people at a Baghdad army recruiting centre in Iraq's deadliest attack this year, sparking concern the country's forces are incapable of handling security on their own.

Story continues below...
But while the remaining 50,000 troops will no longer have a formal combat mission after September 1, they will be well-armed and possibly coming under fire as they join in manhunts for Al-Qaeda figures or other extremists.

"I don't think anybody has declared the end of the war as far as I know," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told MSNBC.

"Counter-terrorism will still be part of their mission," said Morrell, referring to the fight against militant networks.

From next month the US mission in Iraq will be called "Operation New Dawn" instead of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- the name given to American operations since the invasion.

The remaining force will operate in six "advise and assist brigades," taking part in operations at the request of Baghdad authorities and playing a supporting role to Iraqi units.

The US troops "will continue to conduct partnered counter-terrorism operations" in an effort "to help Iraqi security forces maintain pressure on the extremist networks and protect the citizens of Iraq," Major Christopher Perrine told AFP.

The brigades are equipped with robots, unmanned aircraft and dog teams to help track militants and roadside bombs, along with experts in intelligence and logistics, he said.

Recent bombings have underscored the threat still posed by Al-Qaeda and other militants in Iraq, even though the Qaeda network has suffered severe setbacks with the deaths of senior leaders and a shortage of cash.

Even as the Pentagon draws down the force in Iraq, US special operations command -- which focuses on counter-terrorist operations -- will stay at the same level of 4,500 troops.

The shift in the US military role has been underway for months, with June 2009 serving as a turning point when Iraqi security forces took the lead in the country's major cities and towns.

"At that point, we were not unilaterally conducting any combat operations anymore," Morrell said.

"So when they have a bad guy they need to go after and they want our assistance doing it, there's a warrant, they ask for our assistance and we go after them together."

He added that US forces will have the right to defend themselves in any situation "should that become necessary."

The US military presence, while dramatically altered, may continue long after the end of 2011, when all American forces are supposed to depart under a security agreement.

Top military leaders in both countries acknowledge Iraq still may need help from the US armed forces after 2011.

"We're obviously open to that discussion," US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week. "But that initiative will have to come from the Iraqis."

Iraq's top military officer told AFP last week that American forces may be needed for another decade.

A future accord with Iraq might include continued air patrols with US F-16s, as officials admit Baghdad's air force is a long way from being able to fend off attacks from fighter jets.

To make up for a scaled back US military force, Washington meanwhile plans to rely on large numbers of private security contractors, US officials said Thursday.

The State Department said it will double the number of contractors it employs in Iraq to about 7,000.

The pullout coincided with Wednesday's arrival of new US ambassador James Jeffrey, who takes up his post amid political deadlock, with no new government yet formed since elections in March.

"The readiness of the Iraqi security troops is quite enough to combat the threat," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. "The plan is going on, irrespective of the political situation."

But there was fierce criticism in Iraq about the pullout, which also came during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, when insurgent attacks typically peak.

"This is an irresponsible withdrawal," said Hamid Fadhel, political science professor at Baghdad University.

"There are dangers to do with security of the country, concerns and fears for Iraq's external security, because of the lack of a military that is able to protect the country."

Many Iraqis agreed, voicing doubts about their own security forces.

"It would have been better for the Americans to wait until the Iraqi army and police complete their training and become a truly loyal force," engineer Ali Khalaf, 30, told AFP.

Obama Scraps Iraq Withdrawal Plan

Pushed Around By the Generals
By DAVID SWANSON

So, we elected a president who promised a withdrawal from Iraq that he, or the generals who tell him what to do, is now further delaying. And, of course, the timetable he's now delaying was already a far cry from what he had promised as a candidate.

What are we to think? That may be sad news, but what could we have done differently? Surely it would have been worse to elect a president who did not promise to withdraw, right?

But there's a broader framework for this withdrawal or lack thereof, namely the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), the unconstitutional treaty that Bush and Maliki drew up without consulting the U.S. Senate. I was reminded of this on Tuesday when Obama and Karzai talked about a forthcoming document from the two of them and repeatedly expressed their eternal devotion to a long occupation.

The unconstitutional Iraq treaty (UIT) requires complete withdrawal from Iraq by the end of next year, and withdrawal from all Iraqi cities, villages, and localities by last summer. Obama's latest announcement doesn't alter the lack of compliance with the latter requirement. Nor does it guarantee noncompliance with the former. But it illustrates something else, something that some of us have been screaming since the UIT was allowed to stand, something that pretty well guarantees that the US occupation of Iraq will never end.

Imagine if Congress funded, defunded, oversaw, and regulated the military and wars as required by our Constitution. Imagine if the president COULDN'T simply tell Congress that troops would be staying in Iraq longer than planned, but had to ask for the necessary funding first. Here's the lesson for this teachable moment:

Persuading presidents to end wars only looks good until they change their mind. Cutting off the funding actually forces wars to end.

When the US peace movement refused to challenge the UIT, it left Bush's successor and his successors free to ignore it, revise it, or replace it. Congress has been removed from the equation. If Obama decides to inform Congress that the occupation of Iraq will go on into 2012, Congress' response will be as muted as when the Director of National Intelligence informed Congress that killing Americans was now legal. And what can Congress say? It had no role in ratifying the UIT in the first place.

And the peace movement is in large part on the same path with Afghanistan, working to pass a toothless, non-binding timetable for possible redeployment of troops to another nation. Congress sees itself as advisors whose role it is to persuade the president that he wants to cease the activity that most advances presidential power. And activists share that perspective.

But what happens if the president becomes unpersuaded about ending both of these wars? What in the world are we supposed to do then?

We have an alternative to painting ourselves into this corner. The alternative is to build a movement of war opponents (and advocates for spending on human needs and/or tax cuts) that can pressure the House of Representatives to cut off the funding for the wars. Of course, this isn't easy. It's much harder than collecting signatures on a toothless resolution. And it's dramatically harder than watching the president create an unconstitutional treaty (something Bush was forced into primarily by the people of Iraq) and then stepping aside to celebrate.

But there is no stronger message that could be used to persuade a president than a growing caucus of congress members denying him the money. And once a majority is reached in the caucus of war defunders, then the war simply has to end, whether the president is persuaded of anything or not.

So, the lesson to be learned from Obama scrapping his current plan for an Iraq withdrawal is not that we should phone the White House and complain. It's not that we need 20 more cosponsors of the nonbinding timetable for Afghanistan. The lesson is that we must tell members of the House of Representatives that they can vote against war funding or we will vote against them.

Not a new lesson, I realize, but the Constitution is always less read than talked about.