Is It Madness or Merely More Lying?

The Hallucinations of Joe Lieberman
By KEVIN 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 destablizing force that attracts and trains
terrorists. Elected officials like Sen. Lieberman are part of the
problem, not part of the solution.

Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising.



http://www.counterpunch.com/zeese11302005.html