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President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, is scheduled to have his confirmation hearing today at 2:00 p.m. ET.

DAVID SWANSON, davidcnswanson@gmail.com, @davidcnswanson
Swanson is executive director of World Beyond War and campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org, which just sent out an email to their membership urging Senators to ask Binken serious questions: “Blinken should be asked about his role in helping start wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Which of those wars does he now regret? What would he do to prevent similar catastrophes going forward?

“The trend of the past dozen years is away from ground wars in favor of air wars. This often means more killing, more injuring, and more making people homeless, but with an even higher percentage of all that suffering concentrated on the non-U.S. side. We need to know whether Blinken favors continuing this trend and how he claims to defend it morally and legally.

“Much of the U.S. public has been wanting an end to endless wars, and President-elect Biden has promised it. Blinken has suggested that endless wars shouldn’t really be ended. We need to know which of these wars, if any, he supports actually ending every U.S. role in: Yemen? Afghanistan? Syria? Iraq? Somalia?

   “Blinken co-founded WestExec Advisors, a company that helps war profiteers get contracts, and serves as a revolving door for unscrupulous individuals who get rich from private money for what they do and whom they get to know in their public jobs. WestExec has paid Blinken nearly $1.2 million for advising corporations, including seven that have recently lobbied the State Department, including Facebook, Boeing, and Blackstone.” See the full backgrounder.

See past accuracy.org news releases regarding Blinken.

Joe Biden has reportedly selected retired general Lloyd Austin III as his nominee to head the Pentagon. Michèle Flournoy had been the reported favorite for the position before her hawkishness and ties to weapons makers drew criticism.

MATTHEW HOH, matthew_hoh@riseup.net
Hoh wrote “Biden’s Moral Hazard” in November regarding the malfeasance inherent in Biden’s national security picks. He is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a Marine Corps combat veteran of the Iraq War, and is a 100 percent disabled veteran. In 2009, he resigned his State Department position in Afghanistan in response to the escalation of that war.

He said today: “Other than a difference in identity, there is not a real difference between Austin and Flournoy. Perhaps Flournoy would have been more ideological and more keen on proving her ideas and concepts of war correct, ideas and concepts formed without ever knowing the reality of war. However, Austin’s 41 years of military service do not seem to have imparted on him the wisdom of the folly, destruction and immorality of war.

“Austin was integral in the disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as well as the escalation of the vicious, illegal and counter-productive drone wars. His greatest achievement seems to have been overseeing the U.S. retreat from Iraq. Like too many in Washington, D.C., Austin quickly exposed the phony charade of public service by trading in his decades of time in uniform for a high-paying directorship with Raytheon, a stake in a military industry investment firm, and the establishment of his own consultancy whose clients are undoubtedly weapons companies.

“Biden’s pick of Austin is symptomatic of an American political system that values symbol over substance, utilizes rhetoric to cover corruption, and ignores the brutal truth of reality in favor of platitude and hagiography.

“Austin is a good pick for the American Empire, the weapons industry and the bloodthirsty foreign policy elite of the Democratic Party. Tens of millions of people in the Muslim world will continue to suffer cruelly through America’s unending wars, while U.S. taxpayers hemorrhage trillions of dollars to the war industry. Meanwhile, the true dangers to the American people: Covid, climate change, racial injustice, economic inequality, et al., continue to go unaddressed.”

MARIAMNE EVERETT, [in France], mariamne.everett@mycit.ie, @EverettMariamne
Everett wrote the piece “Biden: A War Cabinet?” just before the election. She is an intern at the Institute for Public Accuracy and radio presenter with World Radio Paris where she hosts the podcast “Hidden Paris.” She noted today about Austin:

The U.S. government is seeking to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange from Britain. This relates to his release of U.S. government material like the “Collateral Murder” video from Iraq, which provided evidence of war crimes. (See from FAIR: “Assange’s ‘Conspiracy’ to Expose War Crimes Has Already Been Punished.”)

Assange’s hearing in London began on Monday and is expected to go on for three weeks. If extradited to the U.S., Assange faces 175 years in prison and is being charged with the Espionage Act, a World War era statue.

As his administration seeks to prosecute Assange for exposing war crimes, President Donald Trump has been claiming that soldiers love him while “the top people in the Pentagon probably” don’t “because they want to do nothing but fight wars.” Meanwhile, Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden, while Vice President, was an outlier in the Obama administration in calling for Assange’s prosecution, claiming the publisher of WikiLeaks was more like a “high-tech terrorist” than a journalist.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reports: “At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, [currently in London] kevin@shadowproof.com, @kgosztola
Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola is in London covering the trial. His two most recent pieces are: “Judge Railroads Assange As Legal Team Objects To Fresh Extradition Request” and “What To Expect During Three-Week Hearing In Julian Assange’s Extradition Case.”

See his Twitter thread for Tuesday’s proceedings. He noted: “Witnesses likely to testify on Day 2 are Patrick Cockburn, Nicolas Hager, and Daniel Ellsberg.”

Gosztola writes: “The proceedings will focus on the political nature of the prosecution, the misrepresentation of facts, Assange’s political opinions, the risk of denial of justice at a U.S. trial, the risk of cruel and inhuman treatment in U.S. jails and prisons, Assange’s health, and the passage of time since materials were published.

“Assange’s legal team contends President Donald Trump’s administration pursued charges against Assange for ‘ulterior political motives,’ and they were not brought in ‘good faith.’ They indicted Assange under the Espionage Act, which makes the extradition a case involving classic ‘political offenses’ that should not be covered by the treaty between the U.S. and U.K.”

See from Gosztola from earlier this year: “Interview With James Goodale: Stunning How Few in U.S. Care About Threat Posed by Assange’s Case” with the noted First Amendment lawyer who represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case. Goodale told Gosztola that the “United States is going to end up with an Official Secrets Act, by which leaking not only is criminalized but receiving leaks in the capacity of a leakee is also going to be criminalized. And that is really bad because you’re just inviting governments, particularly authoritarian governments, to control their information.”

Gosztola is author of Truth and Consequences, a book about the U.S. government prosecution of Chelsea Manning, who was the alleged source for WikiLeaks, who was subjected to prolonged solitary confinement in the U.S. that the UN said amounted to torture. Many expect Assange will be subjected to similar methods if extradited to the U.S.

See video of “The Media Trial of the Century” from Consortium News.

Various media outlets are reporting that former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice is on Joe Biden’s “short list” to be his running mate.

STEPHEN ZUNES, zunes at usfca.edu, @SZunes
Zunes is a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He said today: “Should Susan Rice be chosen as Biden’s running mate, it would serve as yet another signal that the likely next Democratic administration would embrace a foreign policy similar to that of Bush and Cheney. Rice’s decision to repeat the lies of the Bush administration regarding the supposed threat from Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of that oil-rich country in order to undermine the anti-war movement, her support for autocratic Middle Eastern and African leaders, her attacks against the United Nations, her support for the Israeli occupation, and her defense of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law will result in further alienating the progressive Democratic base from the national ticket. Already troubled over Biden’s hawkish foreign policy views, his lies about Iraq, and his successful insistence on including center-right foreign policy planks in the Democratic platform, his possible choice of a vice-president with a record of stating demonstrable falsehoods to defend actions by the United States and its allies that violate international norms could end up suppressing turnout and enhance the appeal of leftist third parties.”

In 2013, Zunes wrote the piece “Troubling Implications of Susan Rice’s Appointment as National Security Adviser,” noting that during the buildup to the Iraq invasion, she rose to the Bush administration’s “defense by insisting that, ‘It’s clear that Iraq poses a major threat.’ This claim came despite the fact that Iraq had disarmed itself of its chemical and biological weapons and eliminated its nuclear program at least eight years earlier. Moreover, despite the success of the UN’s disarmament program, Rice asserted that Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that’s the path we’re on.'” [Audio and video clips of Rice’s statements cited by Zunes are here and here.]  

Using documentation and grassroots action to challenge corporate dominance over our political life.

Citizen Action: Vets Confront Biden Over His Backing Iraq War

Two veterans confronted @JoeBiden about his record of supporting war during his campaign stopover in Oakland on Super Tuesday. Read more here- https://t.co/ushpLvVXK5 #DroptheMIC #NoMoreWar #VetsAgainstWar pic.twitter.com/M7iGZa7DOs

— About Face: Veterans Against the War (@VetsAboutFace) March 4, 2020

ANDREW BACEVICH, bacevich at bu.edu, @QuincyInst
President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Bacevich said today: “Polls suggest that Americans have had their fill of ‘endless wars.’ Yet the questions posed by journalists at the most recent Democratic presidential debate never bothered to explore even the possibility of a less bellicose approach to U.S. policy.  A missed opportunity, to put it mildly.”

SAM HUSSEINI, sam at accuracy.org, @samhusseini
Senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini said today: “The CBS debate last night echoed a familiar pattern: Corporate media outlets, especially during presidential debates, questioned candidates from a more militaristic, at times xenophobic perspective.” See @accuracy2020.

Husseini continued: “Moderators in South Carolina speaking in a hall where people paid thousands of dollars to enter perpetuation the claims of U.S. government officials,  that have been disseminated without supporting evidence (that Russia is helping Bernie Sanders for example). They questioned how withdrawing troops would help security — without questioning how continuing U.S. wars would help security. They questioned in the strongest terms the conduct and trustworthiness of other countries — China, Cuba, Russia, Syria — which is fine in principle except the U.S. establishment and its allies are effectively immune from any meaningful scrutiny whatsoever. Rather, U.S. government action and intervention was continuously depicted as the solution to problems, not the origin of them. The only foreign government whose point of view was sympathetically cast was Israel. Such framing completely warps the world view presented to the U.S. public so that it is aligned with the U.S. foreign policy establishment as much as possible. This process is anathema to meaningful journalistic principles.

“The previous debate virtually completely ignored foreign policy. The word ‘Iraq’ was uttered exactly once last night.” Husseini’s pieces include “Joe Biden won’t tell the truth about his Iraq war record — and he hasn’t for years.”

The major foreign policy questions asked by the CBS moderators were:

Gayle King: “Mayor Buttigieg…why would the Russians to be working on behalf of Bernie Sanders?”

Norah O’Donnell: “You said, Senator Warren, you said you wanted to bring home all troops from the Middle East and then you walked that back to say you want to bring home combat troops. … How does that protect America’s national security?”

King: “Would you close the borders to Americans who have been exposed to the coronavirus in order to prevent an outbreak here in this country?”

Margaret Brennan: “Would you allow Chinese firms to build critical U.S. infrastructure?”

Brennan: “Can Americans trust that a democratic socialist president will not give authoritarians a free pass?”

Whitaker: “If it is proven that Russia has interfered in the 2020 elections, would you, as president, launch a retaliatory cyber attack?”

Major Garrett: “What would you say to American Jews who might be concerned you’re not, from their perspective, supportive enough of Israel? And specifically, sir, would you move the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv?”

O’Donnell: “Senator Klobuchar, if you were commander-in-chief, would you meet with the North Korean leader?”

Brennan: “The Syrian regime and Russia are targeting schools, bakeries, and hospitals. What would you do as president to push back regime and Russian forces and stop the killing of innocent civilians?”

Brennan: “Senator Warren …. What would you do to stop the mass murder in Idlib, Syria?”

JEREMY KUZMAROV, jkuzmarov2 at gmail.com
Kuzmarov is co-author of the new book The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce.

He said today: “While the Democratic impeachment managers have accused Trump repeatedly of dishonesty — often with good reason — they themselves have twisted the truth to serve their own political agenda.

“Impeachment manager Adam Schiff, for example, claimed that ‘more than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies’ and that the military aid [which Trump subverted] was for ‘such essentials as sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers, radar… and other support for the war effort.’

“While the military aid may have assisted the war effort, Schiff’s comments are misleading because the majority of those killed have been Eastern Ukrainians who died at the hands of the Ukrainian military that the U.S. has armed — not the Russians. …

“At the hearings, Schiff frequently referenced the danger of ‘Russian expansion’ and its efforts to ‘remake the map of Europe’ and quoted a witness who stated that ‘the U.S. aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.’ …

“By spreading misleading or outright false information about Russia and Ukraine, and drumming up anti-Russian sentiment, the consequences of the hearings, however, could be even more damaging than the Trump presidency.”

Kuzmarov also recently wrote the piece “Biden’s Shameful Foreign Policy Record Extends Well Beyond Iraq” for Counterpunch. A piece on Schiff is slated to be published Tuesday on Counterpunch and on Antiwar.com. His prior books include Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State and Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century.

On Thursday afternoon, the U.S. government indicted Julian Assange of WikiLeaks for publishing material allegedly obtained from Chelsea Manning that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq, including the killing of Reuters journalists there in the Collateral Murder video. The government used the Espionage Act against Assange, the first such use against a journalist or publisher. Manning is now in jail for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify in front of a grand jury targeting WikiLeaks.

Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the Pentagon Papers, just said in an interview with The Real News: “I was sure that the Trump administration would not be content with keeping Julian Assange in prison for five years, which was the sentence for the one charge of conspiracy that he was charged with earlier. So I was sure they would go after him with a much longer sentence under the Espionage Act. I was charged with 12 counts, including one of conspiracy, in 1971, for a possible sentence of 115 years. In this case they brought 17 counts under the Espionage Act, plus the one conspiracy. …

“These indictments are unprecedented. And I would say they are blatantly unconstitutional. … This is an impeachable offense, to carry on a prosecution this blatantly in violation of the Constitution, which the president and the attorney general are sworn to uphold. …

“What is most ominous to me, by the way — it’s not obvious — is that they referred to 2010, when he was dealing with Chelsea Manning. … I followed that fairly closely, including in the Chelsea Manning trial. That clearly was shown to result in no damage, no harm to any individual, which was precisely what they’re charging him now with having risked.”

In 2017, Ellsberg warned: “Obama having opened the legal campaign against the press by going after the roots of investigative reporting on national security — the sources — Trump is going to go after the gatherers/gardeners themselves (and their bosses, publishers).” See accuracy.org news release: “Ellsberg: Trump Threats to WikiLeaks “Nuclear Option” Against the First Amendment.”

In the Obama administration, Joe Biden led the charge against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. In 2010, Biden called him a “hi-tech terrorist” and outlined a legal attack against Assange similar to what the Trump administration is following now. His stance, the Guardian reported at the time, contrasted with “more sanguine comments from other senior figures.” Former Attorney General Eric Holder’s spokesperson in the Obama administration Matthew Miller just tweeted of the indictment: “Dangerous and probably unconstitutional. DOJ doesn’t get to decide who is deserving of First Amendment protections and who isn’t. There’s a reason we wouldn’t charge this in the Obama administration.”

While much media have focused on Trump rhetoric against various media outlets, few have scrutinized the legal attack on journalism, including against sources and now a publisher. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette just published a rare editorial: “Amend the Espionage Act: Public interest defenses must be allowed.”

JOE EMERSBERGER, jemersberger at aol.com, @rosendo_joe
Emersberger’s pieces for the media watch group FAIR include: “Assange Case Shows Support for Free Speech Depends on Who’s Talking” and “Assange’s ‘Conspiracy’ to Expose War Crimes Has Already Been Punished.”

He has also written for the British publication The Canary: “Amnesty International still doesn’t recognize Chelsea Manning as a Prisoner of Conscience,” “A human rights commission has just monumentally failed Julian Assange” and “Amid Assange’s ongoing censorship, all leftists must learn from Ecuador’s hostile takeover.”

Aftermath of alleged coalition strike on Mosul May 21 2015 (via Mosul Atek)

President Obama, speaking from Turkey Monday claimed: “What’s been interesting is, in the aftermath of Paris, as listened to those who suggest something-else-needs-to-be-done, typically, the things they suggest-need-to-be-done are things we’re already doing. The one exception is there have been a few who suggested we put large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground.” [Video at 3:15.] But these analysts give critical background, some pointing to continuing Western interventions and support for Saudi Arabia as major problems fueling the spiral of violence:

CHRIS WOODS, freelance.woods at gmail.com, @chrisjwoods
Woods is with airwars.org, which monitors “the international coalition’s airstrikes against Islamic State (Daesh) in Iraq and Syria.” While many are calling for more bombing of Syria in the past 466 days the group has documented that there have been over 2,800 strikes in Syria and another 5,300 in Iraq.

JAMES PAUL, james.paul.nyc at gmail.com
Author of Syria Unmasked, Paul was executive director of Global Policy Forum, a think tank that monitors the UN, for nearly 20 years. He was also a longtime editor of the Oxford Companion to Politics of the World and executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project. He just wrote the piece “Grasping the Motives for Terror,” for Consortium News which states: “In 2003, the U.S. (in partnership with the United Kingdom) attacked Iraq, seeking regime change from the former ally Saddam Hussein. Washington stayed for eight years until 2011, creating fiendish Islamic militias as part of a vicious counter-insurgency program created by much-admired U.S. General David Petraeus and later turned into doctrine at the Harvard Kennedy School.

“There was round-the-clock bombing, huge prison camps, torture and ongoing military operations throughout the country, leading to a tremendous loss of life among Iraqis (more than a million perished) and complete destabilization of the country.

“In 2011, the U.S. and various allies intervened again, this time in Libya, using air strikes and special operations forces to produce  another ‘regime change.’ The CIA and its Persian Gulf friends armed Islamic militias opposed to the Gaddafi government, while U.S. and allied air forces bombed the capital and other cities, overthrowing the government and creating internal violence and political chaos that continues down to the present.

“In short order, Washington again intervened in Syria — in yet another ‘regime change’ project. A peaceful Arab Spring protest was transformed by the Western powers and their regional allies as they armed and financed rebel groups (including Islamic groups). Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other regional allies had a hand in the conflict. …

“The evidence is clear. Decades of violent Western policies in the Middle East have caused state collapse, political chaos, civil war and immense human suffering. These policies must change if the terror threat is to decline and the peoples of the region are to enjoy a decent life again.”

ALI AL-AHMED, alialahmedx at gmail.com, @AliAlAhmed_en
The French interior minister stated Sunday he would start the “dissolution of mosques where hate is preached.” Al-Ahmed is director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, which just released a report on “the Saudi government school in Paris and the content of its schoolbooks that promote terrorism and hatred.” He said today: “The solution for this tragedy is not to go around shutting down mosques in France. A huge problem has been the support and weapons the Saudi regime has gotten from France, the U.S. and other countries. Virtually no major political figure in the U.S. has spoken out about this. During the Democratic debate on Saturday, Hillary Clinton said: ‘Turkey and the Gulf nations have got to make up their minds. Are they going to stand with us against this kind of jihadi radicalism or not?’ which was somewhat interesting given how compromised she is by money she’s taken from despotic Saudi and GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] monarchies. Bernie Sanders called on the Saudis to get even more involved in Syria — that they should ‘get their hands dirty.’ The Saudis have through a variety of means fueled the tragedy in Syria and are now bombing Yemen, killing thousands. Their hands are plenty dirty and it’s past time to address that.” See: “France: Saudi Arabia’s New Arms Dealer.”

DAN LAZARE, dhlazare at aol.com
Lazare, author of numerous books including The Frozen Republic, just wrote the piece “How Saudi/Gulf Money Fuels Terror” for Consortium News, which states: “In the wake of the latest terrorist outrage in Paris, the big question is not which specific group is responsible for the attack, but who’s responsible for the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in the first place. The answer that has grown increasingly clear in recent years is that it’s Western leaders who have used growing portions of the Muslim world as a playground for their military games and are now crying crocodile tears over the consequences.

“This pattern had its beginnings in the 1980s in Afghanistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency and the Saudi royal family virtually invented modern jihadism in an effort to subject the Soviets to a Vietnam-style war in their own backyard. It was the case, too, in Iraq, which the United States and Great Britain invaded in 2003, triggering a vicious civil warfare between Shi‘ites and Sunnis. …

“In December 2009, Hillary Clinton noted in a confidential diplomatic memo that ‘donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.’ In October 2014, Joe Biden told students at Harvard’s Kennedy School that ‘the Saudis, the emirates, etc. … were so determined to take down [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war … [that] they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad- except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda.’ …

“In April 2003, Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 commission’s neocon executive director, fired an investigator, Dana Leseman, when she proved too vigorous in probing the Saudi connection. [See Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2008), pp. 110-13.]

“Strangest of all is what has happened to a 28-page chapter in an earlier joint congressional report dealing with the question of the Saudi complicity. While the report as a whole was heavily redacted, the chapter itself wound up entirely suppressed. Although Obama promised 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser shortly after taking office to see to it that it was made public, it remains under wraps.”

The New York Times is reporting: “President Obama plans to nominate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts as secretary of state, a senior administration official said. He would succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton and become the first member of Mr. Obama’s second-term national security team.”

STEPHEN ZUNES [email]
Professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, Zunes said today: “John Kerry’s attacks on the International Court of Justice, his defense of Israeli occupation policies and human rights violations, and his support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq raise serious questions about his commitment to international law and treaty obligations. His false claims of Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and his repeated denial of human rights abuses by allied government well-documented by reputable monitoring groups raise serious questions about his credibility. …

“Kerry’s vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq was not simply a matter of poor judgment. It demonstrated a dismissive attitude toward fundamental principles of international law, and disdain for the United Nations Charter and international treaties which prohibit aggressive war. Kerry revealed a willingness to either fabricate a non-existent threat or naively believe transparently false and manipulated intelligence claiming such a threat existed, ignoring a plethora of evidence from weapons inspectors and independent arms control analysts who said that Iraq had already achieved at least qualitative disarmament.” Zunes wrote the piece: “While Criticizing Implementation, Kerry Endorses Bush’s Unilateralist Agenda.”

SAM HUSSEINI [email]
Communications director for the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini said today: “Kerry’s reported nomination continues a pattern: Barack Obama, who originally got the Democratic nomination in 2008 based largely on his having given a speech critical of the Iraq invasion before it took place (though he didn’t have to vote on it) has without fail appointed individuals to top foreign policy positions who voted for or otherwise backed the invasion. This includes Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Robert Gates as well as Chuck Hagel, who is reportedly under consideration to head up the Pentagon. There were 23 senators and 133 representatives who voted against giving Bush authorization. Diplomats who resigned in protest against the invasion, such as Ann Wright, have remained outside of government — and critical of it.”

“Particularly noteworthy are the contortions individuals like Kerry have gone through. For example, when I questioned him in 2011 about voting to authorize the Iraq war, he said: ‘I didn’t vote for the Iraq war. I voted to give the president authority that he misused and abused. And from the moment he used it, I opposed that.’ [Video at WashingtonStakeout] However, a look at the record shows that after the Iraq invasion, Kerry did the opposite, outflanking Bush’s war stance in 2003: ‘I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy.'”

Background — John Kerry: “Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don’t even try? … According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons … Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents. …” (Oct. 9, 2002) See 2008 IPA news release: “Anti-War Candidate, Pro-War Cabinet?“