More Politically Expedient Sleaze from MoveON.org

http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2005/04/index.html#000431

[April 04, 2005
Dear MoveOn, Please Get Your Facts Straight. Hard As It May be To Believe, That's Iraqi Money.
Here's an excerpt from the last MoveOn action alert:

From: "Tom Matzzie, MoveOn PAC"
Date: April 4, 2005 6:16:49 PM CDT
Subject: $82 billion more for Iraq: Demand an exit strategy.

Dear MoveOn member,

Congress has barely debated the war in Iraq or its aftermath since it voted to authorize the use of force in October 2002. Now, the Bush administration is skipping the normal budget process to ask for an additional $82 billion to fund the American presence in Iraq. Among the big-ticket items, a $600 million embassy and some 14 "enduring" bases.[1] Those bases, and the absence of an exit strategy, will worsen, not improve the situation in Iraq.

And, remember the last $87 billion Congress authorized for the war: a whopping $9 billion of it is missing because of corrupt contracting.[2] We must root out the corporate corruption that has undercut the rebuilding efforts and lost billions of taxpayers' money.



Yes, among other things, it's certainly outrageous that a "whopping $9 billion" is missing. Except that's Iraqi money the occupation authorities "lost" to American companies -- not American taxpayer money as MoveOn implies. What's even more outrageous is that the story Moveon cites in its action alert gets it right. Other reports on the same issue, such as this Newseek story, also get it right. Why can't MoveOn?

Let's try this again. THOSE BILLIONS WERE IRAQI MONEY. Readers of this blog know that I've been following this story closely for some time now (some examples here, and here), and it never ceases to amaze me how Democrats, starting with John Kerry, can't seem to stop pushing a story of American victimhood -- even when it's not true. Last year, just as it was becoming scandalously clear that billions of dollars in Iraqi money had been turned over to American corporations without accountability, transparency, or results, while the money Congress actually allocated to rebuild the country we helped destroy sat unspent, John Kerry's applause line was "we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America."

So, I ask my readers to join Pat Youngblood, who brought this matter to my attention, in asking MoveOn to correct their error:

Dear MoveOn PAC,
In your last message on Iraq you repeat an error that is becoming
common. You say that $9 billion of U.S. money (part of the famous $87 billion) has been lost. But this is not American taxpayer money. These funds came from the sale of Iraqi oil. This is the old Oil-For-Food fund, now called the Development Fund for Iraq. So, the correct story is that the US has presided over the theft of $9 billion of Iraqi resources that were supposed to be spent on the welfare of ordinary Iraqis. Even the CNN story you cite as a source gets this important fact correct. An organization with the reach of MoveOn could do a lot to correct this common misperception. It seems, however, that you're more comfortable seeing Americans as the victims, rather than Iraqis.

Please respond.
Respectfully,

Pat Youngblood
Austin, TX



(Pat's the editor of Austin's indispensable Third Coast Activist Resource Center. As well as having a sharp eye for falsehoods whatever their source, he does a great job compiling the most interesting and relevant news and analysis of the day. A highly recommended bookmark against the infoglut out there.)]

MY COMMENT:

I suspect that the "mistake" by MoveON.org is quite deliberate.

MoveON raised a significant amount of money and obtained a lot of public attention through its calculated opposition to the war in Iraq in early 2003. Calculated, because, it opposed the war on the basis that it had not been authorized by the UN, as if UN support would have legitimized it.

MoveON opposed the war this way, because it always knew that the war was inevitable, and that the Democrats it finances (after all, MoveON.org is PAC, something frequently ignored) would eventually come around to cynically supporting the occupation. This was the strategy from the outset.

As a result, MoveON spent most of last year, as you note, creating a myth of American victimization in Iraq, while ignoring the gross brutalities inflicted upon Iraqis in exponentially higher numbers. Finally, MoveON.org came around recently to admitting something it could no longer conceal: it supports the occupation.

So, I suspect that this current appeal to Americans and the illusory waste of their tax dollars in Iraq is intentional, a poll driven way of addressing the issue in a way that is useful for Democrats. And, here we have what is truly contemptible about MoveON.org. Iraqis, and their true suffering, are nothing but political foils as far as MoveON.org is concerned, something to be exploited to help Democrats win elections.

Eli Pariser and Joan Blades, the founders of MoveON.org have a lot to answer for. They, more than anyone else, helped swing liberal opinion into support for the occupation. Congratulations, Americans and Iraqis are dying daily as a result of your myopic, amoral political expediency.

--Richard