Sen. Reid Dodges Iraq Oil Privatization Question

This exchange took place at a news conference with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid on Jan. 19 at the National Press Club.

Husseini: Hi. Sam Husseini from IPA Media. I have a question for each of our guests, if I could. First to Senator Reid: an article appeared in The Guardian -- "Iraqis will never appear -- will never accept this sellout to the oil corporations," in The Guardian last week by Kamil Mahdi, who's an Iraqi academic in the U.K. It paints a picture of the administration in the midst of all of the carnage pushing through a new oil law "The U.S. and the IMF and their allies are using fear to pursue their agenda of privatizing and selling off Iraqis resources" with pending Iraq oil law. Are you looking into this? You've spoken about the oil companies and so on, are you looking into this oil law that the administration is apparently trying to ram through.

Reid: Is that a morning or afternoon newspaper? No, I'm sorry I haven't read that article. Um, but that's what Speaker Pelosi and I are talking about we have to lessen our dependence on foreign oil whether it comes from private sources, or in some instances where the oil is owned by the government. We have to--we use 21 million barrels of oil a day in America, 21 million barrels a day and more than 60 percent of that comes from foreign sources. And the United States controls less than 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world, we can't produce our way out of the problems we have with oil. The only alternative we have is to look to alternative fuels: the sun, the wind, geothermal, biomass. We have to do that and that's why it doesn't matter what they do in Iraq as far as our consumption of oil. We, we, we are oil hogs here in America and we've got to lessen our dependence on foreign oil and that can only be done by recognizing that we can't produce our way out of our problems and we have to move towards alternative energy sources.

Moderator: Excuse me. Will, you could cycle back and take on the next round. We could go over here, please.

Video is currently available at C-Span.org, do a search for Pelosi and Reid or look through their recent programs; the exchange begins at 30:30 in the program.

For background, see: Pending Iraq Oil Law and Bush's Plan -- for Iraq's Oil.

For similar questions to Kennedy, Biden, Hamilton, Sestak, Smith, see Washington Stakeout.

[originally published at husseini.org on Jan. 22, 2007]

Kennedy calls for Congressional authorization of “surge,” dodges oil profit question


Coming out of the studios of Meet The Press today, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) said he expected President Bush to “describe a different Iraq than … most Americans understand and recognize” in Tuesday’s upcoming State of the Union address. He also said “the American people are entitled to require the President to come to Congress to get an authorization….”

Kennedy noted that the previous authorization of force was predicated on allegations of Hussein’s government violating UN resolutions, the alleged Iraqi possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and alleged links with Al Qaeda. The latter points being conditions now widely acknowledged not to have existed (although the Senator did not acknowledge that directly).

The Senator’s view that the lack of these conditions requires more congressional oversight of the war partly echoes the opinion of legal scholar Francis Boyle, who believes that the addition of inexcess of 20,000 troops to the approximately 140,000 alrady in Iraq constitutes substantially enlarging the force.

Boyle says this triggers the War Powers Act and quotes it: “In the absence of a declaration of war [which we do not have for Iraq], in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced … (3) in numbers which substantially enlarge United States Armed Forces equipped for combat already located in a foreign nation….”

Boyle goes further to assert that continuing the escalation beyond a 60 day limit without an authorization from Congress would be an impeachable offense. Kennedy’s view does not seem to go this far, as the Senator has not spoken of impeachment and introduced a new bill to require authorization, which the War Powers Act already seems to do.

After his comments, Senator Kennedy was asked by Sam Husseini (video of just this) on the latest developments of proposed Iraqi oil legislation, which seems to nominally keep control in the hands of the US-supported Iraqi government, but makes large profitable concessions to U.S. oil companies. In response, Kennedy asserted that “the objective for the oil distribution is … to be fair to different regions of the country,” and did not speak to the point about the role of US corporations.

Transcript

Senator Kennedy: I think next Tuesday night we’ll hear the President of the United States describe a different Iraq than what i think most Americans understand and recognize. Today Iraq is a country in crisis, is a country involved in a civil war. This Administration is going for an escalation, a surge, of American troops that’ll be placed in the midst of a civil war and it seems to me that the American people are entitled to require the president to come to Congress to get an authorization for the use of those troops and the resources that are going to expended.

When—the last time the Congress authorized Americans to go to war was for Weapons of Mass Destruction, and because Saddam Hussein had violated United Nations resolutions resolutions and because of Saddam Hussein’s operational association with Al Qaeda. None of those conditions exist today and the American people are entitled to accountability — accountability by the president, accountability by their elected representatives. The people in America said that they wanted a change in policy last November; the generals that have appeared before the Armed Services Committee have opposed a surge, feeling that will only delay the time that Iraqis will assume responsibility for their own future; Republicans are indicating their reservations about a surge — this President ought to come to congress and explain it and I would hope that he would speak to that issue on the State of the Union on Tuesday night.

Reporter: There’s been a big increase this weekend in violence in Iraq, do you think that has anything to do with [inaudible] because of the US?

Senator Kennedy:Well, the loss of some twenty American live sin the last day, third highest loss in the whole struggle with Iraq, just reaffirms—confirms—that Americans are fighting and dieing in a civil war. I don’t think that the American people would vote for sending Americans into a civil war in Iraq. That is what the issue is that the present time and the President is—as a go-it-alone strategy he’s taken generals that have differed with him, that opposed to the surge, and he’s shut them out from and separated himself from them. This is the wrong policy at the wrong time and the President ought to come to the congress to get the justification for it.

We’ll get one more—

Sam Husseini: Many are concerned about the pending Iraq oil law. An Iraqi academic writing in the British Press said that the US, the IMF and their allies are using fear to pursue their agenda of privatizing and selling Iraq’s oil resources. Isn’t it unseemly of the US to be pushing an oil law that might benefit US oil companies in the midst of all this and the—

Senator Kennedy: Well, I think the objective for the oil distribution is so that it was going to be a distribution that is going to be fair to different regions of the country, I think that is the objective to it. And I think that there is some, obviously some reasons for that. I think that’s what was contemplated. Thanks.

Posted by Matthew Bradley

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Jan. 21, 2007; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

Sen. Biden, staffer, queried on pre-war hearings


These questions took place outside of the studios of NBC News in Washington, D.C. on January 7, 2007.

Transcript

Sam Husseini: Let me read you what Scott Ritter wrote on July 30th, 2002 about the hearings that you were just about to convene as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “For Senator”–you were head of foreign relations at that time as well–”For Senator Biden’s Iraq hearings to be anything more than a political sham used to evoke a modern day Gulf of Tonkin resolution equivalent for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions and demand hard facts concerning the real nature of the weapons threat posed by Iraq.” Ritter seems to obviously have been correct about this. Do you agree?

Senator Joseph Biden: What’s your question?

Husseini: Do you agree that Ritter was right about that, that you presided over hearings that didn’t ask the necessary questions–

Biden: No, I don’t agree with that. We did ask the necessary questions–

Husseini: –And, and, and in effect for a Gulf of Tonkin resolution–

Biden: No, I don’t agree with that. Your question, Mam? ...

Biden: Thank you all very much. 

Husseini: Why isn’t Ritter correct, sir? Wasn’t it in effect a Gulf of Tonkin resolution?
Tony Blinken: Have you even read the hearing transcripts?

Husseini: Yeah, I’ve read chunks of them.

Blinken: You’ve read them?

Husseini: Are you with him?

Blinken: Yeah, I’m Tony Blinken. How — you are?

Husseini: Hi Tony.

Blinken: What’s your name? I’m sorry?

Husseini: Sam Husseini, I’m with-Now, so, I’m mean what’s wrong with that? Wasn’t it, in effect, a Gulf of Tonkin resolution?

Blinken: Read the hearing transcripts–

Husseini: No, no, no! I’m talking to you–

Blinken: Every hard question was answered–

Husseini: Who was there–

Blinken: He said there was no yellowcake–

Husseini: Who? Who? Who was there–

Blinken: He said there was no aluminum tubes–

Husseini: Who was there?

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Jan. 10, 2007; posted on Posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

Martin Luther King Jr.: "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967:

A Real Audio file hosted here.

The sermon which I am preaching this morning in a sense is not the usual kind of sermon, but it is a sermon and an important subject, nevertheless, because the issue that I will be discussing today is one of the most controversial issues confronting our nation. I'm using as a subject from which to preach, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."

Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

Polls reveal that almost fifteen million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. And even those millions who do support the war [are] half-hearted, confused, and doubt-ridden. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.

Yes, we must stand, and we must speak. [tape skip]...have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam. Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. And so this morning, I speak to you on this issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.

This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Nor is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful resolution of the problem. This morning, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is...a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hope of the poor at home. It was sending their sons, and their brothers, and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same school room. So we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village. But we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta. Now, I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years--especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, "So what about Vietnam?" They ask if our nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent. Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they've applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can't do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement--we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor;when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark. There's something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There's something wrong with that press!

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964. And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was a commission--a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances. But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong, or to Castro, or to Mao, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life? Finally, I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.

Now, let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little-known fact, and these people declared themselves independent in 1945. They quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom, and yet our government refused to recognize them. President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we fell victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years trying to re-conquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America. It came to the point that we were meeting more than eighty percent of the war costs. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that, and after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought, in a real sense, to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition. People were brutally murdered because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence and by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government and the press generally won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support and all the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps, where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women, and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Oh, my friends, if there is any one thing that we must see today is that these are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our freedom songs, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around!" It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of mankind. And when I speak of love I'm not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of John: "Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us."

Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."

Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job...means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy, "Why do you have to go to jail so much?" And I've long since learned that to be a follower to the Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it--bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" With this faith, we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more.


[originally published at husseini.org on Jan. 10, 2007]

Brent Scowcroft on Iraq sanctions, lead-up to war


These questions took place outside of the studios of ABC News in Washington, D.C. on January 7, 2007.

Transcript

Sam Husseini: You, of course, were National Security Advisor under the first Bush Administration–

Brent Scowcroft: Yes.

SH: and one of the policies after the Gulf War was to maintain the sanctions regardless of what the Iraqi regime did? Was that a mistake?

BS: No, I don’t think it was a mistake because it accomplished what we were trying to accomplish and that is to make sure that Saddam was not a threat, and as it turned out, he was not a threat. The sanctions kept the army incredibly weak. We wiped it out in three weeks. So, Saddam was not a threat to the region under the sanctions. Did they hurt the Iraqi people? Yes, they did.

SH: And do you think that was worth it?

BS: In the overall results–yes.

SH: What estimates would have as to what the negative results were of the sanctions? How many people died because the sanctions remained in place?

BS: I don’t know how many people died. But nobody had to die, they died because of the way Saddam administered the sanctions. The oil, the Food for Oil Program was quite adequate had he done it right to feed any people hurt by the sanctions.

SH: The U.N. resolution said the sanctions would be removed once he complied with his obligations under the disarmament resolution.

BS: Yeah.

SH: –your policy was to say, even if he does comply–

BS: No, no, no, no, no, no.

SH: That’s what Jim Baker said and that’s what George Bush said in May of two thousand — of 1991.

BS: Well, I don’t recall the details of that.

SH: Regardless of your compliance–

BS: But he never did comply with the sanctions–

SH: He never complied with the disarmament obligation?

BS: No.

SH: So where are the weapons of mass destruction?

BS: No.

SH: Where are the weapons of mass destruction if he didn’t comply?

BS: He didn’t comply in the sense that we didn’t know that there weren’t weapons of mass destruction because he did not open for the inspectors until 2001–two.

SH: Hussein Kamel, are you familiar with the testimony of Hussein Kamel? When were you aware Hussein Kamel–

BS: Yes.

SH: –said that everything was destroyed.

BS: We were not in office at that time.

SH: When did you become aware of it, though?

BS: I don’t know that we became aware of it until after the Second Gulf War. Virtually, everyone thought there were weapons of mass destruction. We did. The Europeans did. Virtually everybody did. Hussein Kamel said they were destroyed and we didn’t believe him.

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Jan. 10, 2007; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

Rep. Obey queried on Congress’ war powers, obligations


These questions took place outside of the studios of ABC News in Washington, D.C. on January 7, 2007.

Transcript

[Note: David Obey is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.]

Sam Husseini: Why not withhold funds for a surge? The troops aren’t there.

Representative David Obey: Well the troops are gonna be there before we really have any opportunity to act on it number one and number two the president would simply veto it. So we would have spend not time — the President isn’t going to sign any legislation that cuts off funding for the troops.

SH: But, you have war making authority under the Constitution, you have the power of the purse and you’re telling us that you have nothing —

DO: The problem is the President is the Commander in Chief, he has the authority to expand operations and to move military units around. We will be faced with a reality. You can’t repeal a reality.

SH: But what happens if he just keeps waging the war and you can have all the hearings that you want, so how you going to affect what’s on the ground?

DO: I don’t think that the American people are going to let him keep waging the war. The President needs to understand that if he continues to wage the war — if he follows a — a so-called, ‘surge policy’ which, as I said, is really just an expansion and an intensification of the existing effort, that means that we will be stuck there for all of this presidency. If that happens, there will be disastrous results for his own party in the next election. I hope that pressure will force him to recognize that he’s got to have a major change in policy. This is an — we’ve got to have an active effort at persuasion going on here.

SH: So you are hoping that the political reality will dawn on him rather than looking at this as a Constitutional matter, as to what your Constitutional responsibilities are?

DO: I take no lectures from anybody on Constitutional responsibilities. I voted against going to war in the first place. But the fact is, there are certain realities that we have to face. We do not have a majority in the Senate, I don’t believe, to cut off funds, I don’t believe in futile efforts. I believe in doing things that will have some results.

SH: Have you declared war?

DO: Have I declared war? Of course not!

SH: Has Congress declared war? So why are we —

DO: The Congress took a duck, and what the Congress did under the previous Republican leadership was to take a duck and shove the responsibility off on the President which is why I voted against it.

SH: Was that Constitutional?

DO: Was it Constitutional?

SH: — to take that duck?

DO: Who knows, all I know –

SH: You’re just a member of Congress.

DO: I’m not a lawyer and I’m not a member of the Supreme Court, so lets just –

SH: (laughing)

DO: Lets quit playing word games. We are trying to do the best be can to persuade the President we need a strong change in policy and you don’t do that by engaging in futile gestures which the White House laughs at.

SH: He lost the election, he got rid of Rumsfeld. And now he’s talking about a surge –

DO: That’s correct and I think it’s wrong.

SH: So, what are you gonna do?

DO: I’ve already answered that question twice. It may not be an answer that suits you, but its my answer. You’ve got the right to ask a question and I’ve got the right to answer it my way.

SH: I’m saying that, beyond holding hearings, beyond hoping that the political realities dawn on him…He seems — if he seems impervious to that —

DO: [Opening each side of his jacket] Do you see a magic wand in this pocket? Or do you see a magic wand in this pocket?

SH: I see Constitutional powers.

DO: Not if you can’t pass it. We are not the Supreme Court, we don’t have the power to unilaterally do anything. What we are trying to do is persuade the President that he’s wrong and that’s the end of my comments on that. We can continue to chew this same rag all day, your questions are going to be the same and my answers are gonna be the same…

SH: No, my questions aren’t gonna be the same –why not go to the Supreme Court?

DO: How would you suggest we do that?

SH: You’re a member of Congress, I assume you have some sort of standing regarding war powers —

DO: Well, when you figure it out, send me a note and we’ll talk about it.

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Jan. 9, 2007; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

Haikus on Ford Funeral

Ford's praised for pardon

Saddam's killing warns despots?
Theopocrisy!

Ford: A time to heal
Empires need healing as well
Evil resurgent

Let us look forward?
Ford was against Iraq war?
Or acts assured it?

If there is a hell
Of course teevee shows people
There destined in "church"

Church'n'state become like one
Why National Cathedral?
Heresies must fall

Let's stop the next war?
Face the deeper malady
From them to ourself

[originally published at husseini.org on Jan. 2, 2007]

Rep.-Elect Sestak: Iraq war funding, redeployment; Sen. Levin on air power


Representative-Elect Joe Sestak (D - PA) answered questions from Sam Husseini regarding the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation to privatize the Iraqi oil industry and whether or not Congress’ funding of the Iraq war was also support for Bush’s administration of the war. Husseini also asked Sestak about his support for a plan that would include increased use of U.S. air power in Iraq and his position on some the Bush administration’s other policies with respect to Israel and Palestine.

Sestak admitted “our way” of doing things may not be best of the Iraqis and lent ostensible support to the principle of self-determination, that Iraqis best decide what works for them.

The new Representative refused to support war budget cuts to force a withdrawal, rather he endorsed moving some components of war funding into the normal budget process, as opposed to these hypothetical programs being a part of emergency supplemental funding.

Sestak was also asked for the form of redeployment he supported which highlights increased use of air power. Sestak claimed “we do air power very well without doing a lot of casualties.”

Sestak was also asked about the U.S. role in the Israel-Palestine situation.

Levin on Air Power

Last week Senator Levin was asked about his position on scenarios for redeploying troops in Iraq that included increased air power.


[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Dec. 17, 2006; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]