News Release

Funding the Iraq War: Congress at a Crossroads

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ANTHONY ARNOVE
Arnove, the author of the recent book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, spoke yesterday on Capitol Hill at a forum of the congressional “Out of Iraq” Caucus. “There are differences between Vietnam and Iraq,” he said. “But there are all too many similarities. I fear we are in a moment analogous to the period after the Tet Offensive, when the U.S. faced defeat in Vietnam, but rather than retreat escalated the war and expanded it to Laos and Cambodia, using arguments much like the ones we now hear in this administration’s threats against Iran and Syria.”

He added: “The other night, on ’60 Minutes,’ President Bush said ‘Everybody was wrong on weapons of mass destruction.’ Yet millions of us who protested this war before it started were right, and were ignored. We did not have access to any special intelligence. We simply used our intelligence. And today we have the intelligence to know that each day we continue the occupation of Iraq, the situation gets worse. Every time we have been told ‘we are turning the corner,’ the situation gets worse. And we have the intelligence to know that you cannot oppose the war, as some Democrats have proclaimed, and yet fund this war. To those who say we cannot withdraw ‘precipitously,’ there is nothing precipitous about pulling out after four years of occupying another country against its will. And to those who say we are abandoning the troops, the best way to support the troops is to bring them home now.” Arnove is in Los Angeles through Sunday.
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STEVE COBBLE
Cobble is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He said today: “History is instructive here. We’ve been down this road before. Part of the way we stopped President Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia and forced President Ford out of Vietnam was by Congress limiting the funding for the war.” Cobble is in Washington, D.C.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167