What
Is Wrong With Joe Lieberman?
Is He Hallucinating or Lying?
by
Kevin B. Zeese
by Kevin B. Zeese
In an op-ed
in The Wall Street Journal on November 28, Sen. Joe Lieberman
(D-CT) put forward an argument for staying the course in Iraq. Of
course, his argument in "Our Troops Must Stay" was filled
with false information.
Lieberman describes
"real progress" and "self-securing nationhood."
What are the facts? Rep.
Murtha laid them out clearly saying the "war in Iraq is
not going as advertised" and, more specifically:
"Oil
production and energy production are below pre-war levels. Our
reconstruction efforts have been crippled by the security situation.
Only $9 billion of the $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction
has been spent. Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean
water is scarce. Only $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated
for water projects has been spent. And most importantly, insurgent
incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in
the last year. Instead of attacks going down over time and with
the addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically.
Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have
doubled. An annual State Department report in 2004 indicated a
sharp increase in global terrorism."
And, on the
same day as Lieberman's column, United
Press International reported that U.S. deaths in Iraq were on
the rise saying: "The latest figures issued by the Department
of Defense and other U.S. and Iraqi official sources reveal an insurgency
still raging unabated in which the number of total casualties inflicted
on U.S. troops is once again climbing, and where the insurgents
appear to be switching resources from targeting Iraqi security forces
to carrying out Multiple Fatality Bomb (MFB) attacks."
UPI went on
to report that in the last 14 days 45 American soldiers have been
killed in Iraq. MFB attacks are rising, UPI reports: "In all,
40 of these attacks have been recorded so far in November up to
Nov. 27, making this month the second worst so far in the whole
insurgency. Only September was worse, with 46 of them. Up to Nov.
27, MFBs had killed 401 people and wounded 519 more in less than
four weeks."
This does not
sound like a self-securing nation! And, if Lieberman were right
that Iraq was "self-securing" wouldn't that mean U.S.
troops were not needed and it was time to come home? Not only are
his arguments based on false information but they make no sense.
And, Lieberman
also makes the claim that Iraqi's want the U.S. to stay. This after
opinion polls showing over 80 percent want the U.S. to leave. And,
a week after a statement
issued in Cairo by Iraqi officials covering the political and
ethnic spectrum of Iraq called for U.S. withdrawal. At the end of
an Arab League Conference the Final Statement of the National Accord
Conference said three times that the Iraqis called for a U.S. withdrawal
expressing the sentiment of the Iraqi people saying: "The Iraqi
people are looking forward to the day when the foreign forces would
leave Iraq."
Time Magazine
Baghdad bureau chief Michael
Ware showed the absurdity of Liberman's comments when he said:
"I and some other journalists had lunch with Senator Joe Lieberman
the other day and we listened to him talking about Iraq. Either
Senator Lieberman is so divorced from reality that he's completely
lost the plot or he knows he's spinning a line. Because one of my
colleagues turned to me in the middle of this lunch and said he's
not talking about any country I've ever been to and yet he was talking
about Iraq, the very country where we were sitting."
Sen. Lieberman
is so divorced from reality that he can no longer be taken seriously.
Yet, The Wall Street Journal published this nonsense. The
Iraq War and occupation is too serious for any more arguments based
on false information. The security of the world is at stake if the
United States continues to handle this situation wrong. Not only
are Americans and Iraqis dying, and billions being wasted but Iraq
is becoming a destabilizing force that attracts and trains terrorists.
Elected officials like Sen. Lieberman are part of the problem, not
part of the solution.
November
30, 2005
Kevin
Zeese [send him mail]
is Director of Democracy
Rising. You can comment on this article by visiting
the blog.
Copyright
2005 Kevin Zeese
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