by John M. Curtis
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Copyright Feb. 27, 2008
All Rights Reserved.

aunching his first salvo, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) attacked the ever-likely Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Il.) for saying in his Feb. 26 Cleveland debate with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that he would act “if Al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq.” McCain follows President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's propaganda war that Iraq is Al Qaeda's “central front in the war on terror.” Before Cruise missiles hit Baghdad March 20, 2003, Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin A. Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice all said that Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship with Osama bin Laden, the terrorist responsible for Sept. 11. They cited no evidence, only a fictitious meeting between 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

      No reputable intelligence agency, including the CIA, German Intelligence or British MI6 ever established a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. White House officials relied on their own manufactured intelligence originating inside the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, headed by Douglas J. Feith Jr., now a professor on international relations at Georgetown University, that insisted an Al Qaeda connection and that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Bin Laden's mujahedeen fighters, once subsidized by the CIA to fight Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, now occupy Iraq. Before the U.S. toppled Saddam April 9, 2003, Al Qaeda did not exist in Iraq. Yet the White House went to great pains to link the Kurdish Sunni Islamic group Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group fighting the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to Al Qaeda.

      McCain now blasts Obama for saying he would act “if Al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq. “I have some news,” said McCain sarcastically. “Al Qaeda is in Iraq. It's called ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq,' McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas. If Barack was not accurate about an Al Qaeda base or training camp in Iraq, then why hasn't the U.S. military dialed in coordinates and blown it off the map? McCain knows that Bin Laden's mujahedeen fighters are folded into Iraq's Sunni and Shiite population, working, as they did in Afhghanistan under Soviet rule, to end U.S. occupation. McCain repeats White House talking points that if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, it risks an Al Qaeda takeover. Neither White House, Pentagon nor any other reputable source has ever confirmed this bogus theory keeping U.S. troops in Iraq. While Bush's troop surge has reduced violence and U.S. casualties in Baghdad, it hasn't resolved Iraq's warring factions.

      Obama rejected McCain's central premise that without U.S. forces, Iraq would fall to Al Qaeda. Bush's justification for the Iraq War centers on the premise that U.S. is fighting the terrorists responsible for Sept. 11. When confronted with the Aug. 21, 2004 9/11 Commission Report that concluded no connection betweem Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the White continues to insist that Al Qaeda terrorists fighting U.S. occupation in Iraq were responsible for Sep. 11. “There was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq . . . They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that is stronger,” said Obama campaigning at Ohio State University. “All he [McCain] has done,” said Barack, “is to follow George Bush into a misguided war,” setting up the battle lines for the fall campaign.

      McCain has staked his campaign on perpetuating White House propaganda on Iraq: That without U.S. forces, Iraq falls to Osama bin Laden. Without proof and asking voters to suspend all disbelief, McCain thinks that five years of war hasn't left voters more skeptical and enlightened. McCain admitted at a campaign stop Feb. 25 in Rocky River, Ohio that the success of his candidacy hinges on selling voters on Iraq. “And my friends, if we left, they [Al Qaeda] wouldn't be establishing a base,” said McCain. “They'd be taking over the country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to Al Qaeda,” repeating the Bush-Cheney mantra. McCain's statements give no credit to Iraq's new regime to prevent terrorists and insurgents from destroying the government. Without offering proof, McCain sells his snake oil.

      Today's collision between McCain and Obama on Iraq promises to give voters the clearest choice between presidential candidates and political parties in recent memory. McCain has wed himself to the White House talking points, earning Bush the lowest approval ratings since Richard Nixon and Watergate. “It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq,” said the late William F. Buckley Jr. April 28, 2007, the intellectual backbone of the modern conservative movement. Buckley opposed the Iraq War because he viewed Iraq's intractable divisions and unending terrorist attacks as an incurable disease. He also, like other conservatives, saw the war as destroying the Republican Party. McCain inherits Bush's legacy and continues the same policies that badly damaged the GOP. Instead of changing course and fixing the problem, he's chosen to perpetuate it.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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