{"id":2194,"date":"2015-06-07T18:53:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T00:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=2194"},"modified":"2015-06-07T18:53:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T00:53:18","slug":"democratic-treachery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=2194","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Treachery"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we enter the preliminaries for the 2016 presidential election, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media\u2026 including such heretofore \u201cfair-minded\u201d journalists as Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday<\/em>\u2026 are trotting out their favorite \u201cgotcha\u201d questions, reserved exclusively for Republican candidates.\u00a0 To date, their two favorites are: \u201cAre you personally opposed to gay Americans or same-sex marriage? \u00a0And, \u201cIf you knew then what you know now, would you have sent U.S. ground troops into Iraq in 2003?\u201d<\/p>\n

No less a liberal icon than Bob Woodward of the Washington Post<\/em> has set the record straight on the buildup to the Iraq War.\u00a0 In a May 25, 2015, appearance on Fox News Sunday<\/em>, Woodward agreed that George Bush may have made mistakes, but that to say he had lied to get us into war was \u201cgrossly unfair and inaccurate.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cI spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq\u2026 lots of mistakes\u2026 but it was Bush telling George Tenet the CIA director, \u2018Don\u2019t let anyone stretch the case on WMD.\u2019 \u00a0He was the one who was skeptical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodward continued, \u201cAnd if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum<\/em>. That war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end people were saying, \u2018Hey, look, it\u2019ll only take a week or two.\u2019 \u00a0And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or eighteen months, and so Bush pulled the trigger. \u00a0A mistake certainly can be argued, and there\u2019s an abundance of evidence. \u00a0But there was no lie in this that I could find.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout calendar year 2002, policy-makers in Washington and around the world searched for ways in which to eliminate the threat posed by the weapons development programs of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.\u00a0 Finally, on November 8, 2002, the U.N. Security Council adopted, unanimously, Resolution 1441.\u00a0 Under Resolution 1441, the Security Council recognized \u201cthe threat Iraq’s noncompliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resolution 1441 affirmed that Security Council Resolution 678 of November 29, 1990, authorized member nations to \u201cuse all necessary means<\/em> (emphasis added) to uphold and implement Resolution 660 of August 2, 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to Resolution 660, and to restore international peace and security in the area.\u201d\u00a0 It was the authority of the U.N. that member states relied upon in their decision to use military force against Iraq.<\/p>\n

Few members of Congress were anxious to see American ground forces engaged in a ground war in the Middle East.\u00a0 Accordingly, during the summer of 2002, under the theory that no dictator can remain a dictator unless his people believe him to be both omnipotent and omniscient, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Porter Goss (R-FL), authorized funds for an \u201cInfowar,\u201d or SOFTWAR, offensive against Iraq\u2026 where SOFTWAR is defined as \u201cthe hostile utilization of global television to shape another nation\u2019s will by changing its view of reality.\u201d\u00a0 The goal of the SOFTWAR offensive was to remove one or both of the omnipotence\/omniscience advantages from Saddam, advancing the day when the Iraqi people would find it beneficial to overthrow the dictator.\u00a0 (The SOFTWAR concept was the brainchild of my longtime friend, Chuck de Caro, an Information Warfare lecturer at the National Defense University and other agencies of the U.S. defense\/intelligence establishment.)<\/p>\n

The SOFTWAR offensive authorized by HPSCI, as a supplement to its FY 2003 defense authorization, read, in part, as follows:<\/p>\n

SOFTWAR<\/em><\/p>\n

The budget request contained $63.9 million in PE65710D8Z for Classified Programs for the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence)\u2026 The Committee notes that information operations (IO) is increasingly becoming a more significant weapon in modern military, and moreover, asymmetric operations\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

The Committee is somewhat concerned that insufficient consideration is paid to developing a capability to shape the information sphere for asymmetric operations… \u00a0The Committee understands that there has been proposed a concept called Infowar<\/strong>, in which intelligence analysis of the threat Infosphere is coupled with the knowledge management functions of television, and an offensive management plan is developed for execution. \u00a0The Committee notes that this concept is different from more traditional IO approaches in that it does not \u201cattack\u201d the threat directly, but rather through the threat’s intended public information consumers. \u00a0The Committee believes this is a worthwhile new approach and believes the Intelligence Community should pursue it vigorously. <\/em><\/p>\n

Therefore, the Committee recommends $73.9 million in PE65710D8Z, an increase of $10.0 Million in Classified Programs-C3I, for the SOFTWAR program.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, the U.S. Senate, comprised of 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, changed from Republican to Democratic control on May 24, 2001, when Sen. Jim Jeffords (R-VT) left the Republican Party to become an Independent, aligning himself with senate Democrats.\u00a0 As a result, when the HPSCI authorization arrived in the U.S. Senate as a supplement to the FY 2003 Defense Appropriations bill, senate Democrats decided that it was more important for them to have a political issue to use against George W. Bush in his 2004 reelection campaign than to avert a ground war in Iraq.<\/p>\n

During the months of September and October, 2002, when the HPSCI proposal was hopelessly stalled in the U.S. Senate, I assisted Chuck de Caro in lobbying key senators, seeking to gain their support for HPSCI\u2019s SOFTWAR offensive.\u00a0\u00a0 We met with senior staff aides to then-Senator Dick Shelby (R-AL), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and then-Senator John Warner (R-VA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.\u00a0 And we met on several occasions with senior aides to then-Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who, along with the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, were the key players in the effort to fund the SOFTWAR offensive in Iraq.\u00a0 But the enthusiasm of aides to Rockefeller and Byrd were not in sync with the political games that their employers were playing.<\/p>\n

While Democrats made impassioned speeches on the floor of the senate, insisting that the Congress could not give George W. Bush the war powers he sought, and that a way had to be found to remove Saddam Hussein through non-violent means, they were busy behind closed doors instructing the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee to kill the HPSCI SOFTWAR authorization\u2026 our last best hope of averting a ground war in Iraq.\u00a0 Senate Democrats were so intent upon creating an issue to use against George W., Bush that when they were asked to fund the project for a single dollar, just to get the offensive \u201cin the pipeline,\u201d with supplemental funding to be added during the 108th<\/sup> Congress, they refused even that.<\/p>\n

Thus, as coalition forces prepared for war with seeming unstoppable momentum, the Iraq War Powers Act, P.L. 107-243, passed the Republican-controlled House on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133, and the Democrat-controlled Senate on October 11 by a vote of 77-23.\u00a0 Twenty-eight Democrats, including Senators Rockefeller, Clinton, Kerry, and Biden voted in favor of the war powers resolution.<\/p>\n

But that was not the last we heard of Sen. Rockefeller\u2019s role in sabotaging the Iraq war effort.\u00a0 \u00a0In the December 3, 2005 edition of the Canada Free Press<\/em>, writer Joan Swirsky published an article describing events before and during the Iraq War, titled, \u201cRockefeller\u2019s Treachery<\/em>,\u201d republished in the May 21, 2015 edition of the RenewAmerica<\/em> website.<\/p>\n

Ms. Swirsky reminds us of Rockefeller\u2019s November 14, 2005 appearance on Fox News Sunday, <\/em>during the period in which he served as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.\u00a0 In that interview, Rockefeller recalled, \u201cI took a trip by myself in January of 2002 (months before the HPSCI proposal was approved by the House of Representatives) to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq \u2013 that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9\/11.\u201d\u00a0 It was an entirely baseless charge.<\/p>\n

Ms. Swirsky went on to say, \u201cBy himself, and fully armed with America\u2019s most sensitive intelligence, Sen. Rockefeller decided to go to three Arab countries \u2013 including Syria, which is on the State Department\u2019s list of terrorist regimes and a close ally of Saddam Hussein \u2013 and literally alert them to what might befall a neighboring Arab state.\u201d\u00a0 Putting this sharply into context, Ms. Swirsky reminds us that, \u201cThis was Sen. Rockefeller\u2019s judgment only four months after<\/em> September 11th<\/sup> and a full year before<\/em> President Bush expressed any intention to go to war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, on March 20, 2003, with all multi-national coalition forces in place, the invasion of Iraq commenced.\u00a0 And while Democrats continue to this day to try to convince the American people that George Bush and Dick Cheney lied to launch the Iraq War, there is a strong case to be made that it was their own politically-motivated treachery that was most responsible for our entrance into the war.\u00a0 In that war, some 4,500 American men and women, and countless Iraqis, paid with their lives.\u00a0 Clearly, their blood is on Democrat hands, not on Bush and Cheney\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Paul R. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of the U.S. Electoral College.\u00a0 He currently lives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma\u2019s Green Country.<\/em><\/p>\n

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As we enter the preliminaries for the 2016 presidential election, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media\u2026 including such heretofore \u201cfair-minded\u201d journalists as Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday\u2026 are trotting out their favorite \u201cgotcha\u201d questions, reserved exclusively for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2195,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions\/2195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}