Month: May 2010

Unfortunately, John McCain is very real.

But McCain’s history, and the history of events around him, are full of myths.

Back in 1999, Justin Raimondo wrote an excellent piece about many of those myths.

This month’s issue of The American Conservative magazine is revisiting John McCain’s relationship to an almost-forgotten American historical controversy: was the story of the left-behind POWs truly a myth, or was there a lot more to it. And did John McCain help to cover up the truth? Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg says that he did.

Schanberg presents an expanded version of his 2008 report on the cover-up, as well as a new article on his fight to report the truth. The articles are accompanied by commentaries on Schanberg’s report by Alexander Cockburn, Andrew Bacevich, Gareth Porter, Peter Richardson, John LeBoutillier, and Ron Unz.

Today, Antiwar.com presents these articles for our readers.

A war-weary nation breathes a sign of relief today as the last of America’s troops finally return home from Iraq, fulfilling President Obama’s campaign pledge to have them out within 16 months of taking office.

April Fools.

In all seriousness, everyone who has been following the story even a little knows that just two days after his inauguration, President Obama was already talking about the promise as “aspirational” and a month later the “16 month plan” was formally replaced with the so-called 19 month plan, which would involve having some American troops leave Iraq by August 2010, declaring combat over, and keeping 50,000 troops “indefinitely.”

At the time that pledge seemed a terrible betrayal of a campaign promise that was made the center of his foreign policy in debates. Now, even the “19 month plan” is looking pretty good by comparison, as officials admit it too is being “reconsidered.”

16 months after taking office the largest drawdown Iraq has seen was the one in early 2009, and that was set up by the outgoing Bush Administration. Since then troop levels have trickled only marginally downward, with 94,000 troops still remaining.

When the 19 month plan is formally abandoned (some officials still haven’t gotten the memo that it is virtually impossible), expect it to be replaced with the 38 month plan… where the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) actually mandates US troops to leave the nation by the end of 2011.

Of course it is far too soon to say that the 38 month plan won’t happen, but the administration’s track record of keeping its promises is not very good, and 20 months from now officials may well be looking for another excuse to “reconsider.”

It looks like Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul, has won the Republican Party nomination for senate against establishment candidate Trey Grayson in Kentucky tonight. The media has declared this a “big win for the Tea Party” — because it would seem to fit the familiar one-dimensional narrative. But after months of so-called Tea Partiers jumping on the Rand Paul bandwagon, maybe it really is their night after all.

First, let’s get it straight that Rand Paul, aside from being his own man — who told me personally had been planning a future run at politics for at least 18 years — can attribute much of his early success on the political radar to the Campaign for Liberty folks — the Ron Paul-inspired libertarians who loyally promoted his candidacy, raised money and spread the word to libertarian groups and like-minded individuals across the country. It wasn’t until he declared his candidacy and Sarah Palin gave her infamous endorsement to the younger Paul that Rand started becoming a “Tea Party candidate.” Today, on the evening of his victory, it is the Tea Party, not the individual, that seems to be getting all of the attention.

Of course, Paul did little to counter that along the way, and with good reason. He had to rely on the bedrock Kentucky Republican base in a closed primary. While independents could make noise for Rand,  unless they registered GOP by the first of the year, they could not vote tonight. Paul sensed that his predominantly Republican constituency was angry at Washington, but would identify less with his libertarian views on say, war and civil liberties, than on issues of the deficit and government bailouts and “Obamacare.”  Thus, he played down his support for medical marijuana, his opposition to the Patriot Act, and most importantly, massaged his stance on the war and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Where his father Ron has been consistently vocal about his opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rand says he is willing to put the issue of Afghanistan up for a “national debate.” While he is wary of foreign entanglements and like his father, has talked about U.S foreign policy playing a hand in unrest abroad, he only goes so far to suggest there should be a formal declaration of war in Afghanistan — if that is what the nation wants. On Gitmo, he was lambasted for previously suggesting it should be closed, but then shifted into  hawk mode somewhere this winter, warning against unleashing “terrorists” on Main Street and calling for military tribunals for the prisoners.

Polls indicate that Paul has a good chance of becoming Kentucky’s junior senator in November. That would mean two Pauls on Capitol Hill. That should be double trouble for the congressional establishment on both sides of the aisle. Or will it be? Will he be his own man or the Tea Party’s man? Will he follow through on re-0pening a real debate on the Afghanistan War policy, or spend his time dogging the president about trying Gitmo detainees in the military tribunals, which we all know are fatally flawed? Will he shy away from war issues, or become a natural voice for limited foreign intervention?

Time will tell. We know the money will come in like a tsunami from Tea Partiers across the country now. Hopefully, he will remember who brung him to the dance.

UPDATE: It’s clear from Paul’s victory speech, that he no longer sees a difference between the revolution that began with his father’s presidential run and the Tea Party of today (though he has acknowledged publicly that he believes the vast majority in the Tea Party movement voted for John McCain, not Ron Paul in 2008). “I have a message — a message from the Tea Party. A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We’ve come to take our government back,” he said during his victory speech last night. I guess we can expect a lot more rhetoric criticizing President Obama for “apologizing” to socialist dictators “for America’s greatness” and for our glorious capitalist system (like he did last night) and a lot less talk about the gushing open wound that is our U.S foreign policy abroad and the erosion of our civil liberties at home (like he used to). Though he talked about the “mountain of debt devouring this country,” there was zero mention of the trillion dollar war in last night’s speech.

So my new question is, if and when Rand Paul and the Tea Party  take “the government back,” who they will give it back to?

The Associated Press is running an article today entitled “UN powers back new sanctions against Iraq.” Of course that is a typo, because the big story today is that the US is claiming support from the P5+1 for new sanctions against Iran.

A typo, but there is a shred of truth in it, as the UN Security Council is still refusing to lift the 1990 sanctions against Iraq for “pursuing weapons of mass destruction.” To this day certain important pesticides can’t be imported to Iraq on the assumption that they are “dual use” and could be used in chemical or biological weaponry.