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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 26, 2003 Contact: Press Office, 802-651-3200 Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz Must Go
A decision to send our sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters to war is the most solemn decision any president can
make. As president, I will not
hesitate to send our military anywhere in the world to defend the
For officials at the highest levels of this Administration to exploit the emotions of the American people regarding the attacks of September 11 to achieve their political objectives is unacceptable.
This Administration has demonstrated no link between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of 9/11, nor was there any significant link between Saddam and al Qaeda. For the President and Vice President to continue to blur the facts and imply that there was such a connection is a corruption of democracy, which is based on the principle that leaders are honest with the people they govern.
And these assertions come in the wake of a long line of problematic statements from the highest levels of the Administration, from the discredited line in the President�s State of the Union address regarding Iraq�s supposed attempts to acquire uranium from Niger to the Vice President�s claim that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program to Secretary Rumsfeld�s claim that he had �bulletproof� evidence of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. This pattern of deception is but one major reason that this Administration deserves to be fired by the American people.
A second major reason is the abject
failure of planning for the post-war period in
Americans are contemplating the President�s request for $87 billion -- and wondering why they are being stuck with the bill. They are asking why they will be asked to sacrifice so much to pay it, while the wealthiest in our society continue to reap the benefits of the President�s tax cuts.
Let me be clear on the spending request: We must support our troops, and we must do so by repealing the reckless Bush tax cuts. For the President not to make the political sacrifice of repealing his tax cuts means he is asking the troops on the ground to bear the entire burden of this war. After all, they are the ones on the frontlines fighting and dying every day.
Furthermore: our soldiers continue
to fight the fight virtually alone because this Administration has damaged our
relationships with our friends and allies to such a degree that most are not
willing to commit meaningful numbers of troops or financial contributions to
what they view as
This is the team that told us that
General Shinseki was �wildly off the mark� when he testified that the occupying
force needed to number several hundred thousand. We now have fewer than 150,000 in
This is the team that told us we
knew exactly where the weapons of mass destruction were �in the area around
Tikrit and
This is the team that told us the
war would cost �something under $50 billion� and that
And this is the team that quite clearly failed to plan adequately to win the peace. With their unrealistic assumption that we would be greeted as liberators, it seemed to catch them by surprise that we have instead been dogged by persistent, organized resistance. As Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz put it, �Some important assumptions turned out to underestimate the problem.� Those assumptions have cost us lives; the absence of realism in their planning is both stunning and inexcusable.
Even their overall vision of
transforming the department with their grand plans of cutting as much as two
divisions from the service while relying more heavily on technology is proving
incredibly short-sighted. More
technology wasn�t needed to confront the enemy in
We are in
To succeed, we will need the assistance of our allies and the international institutions that this Administration has so recklessly alienated. To rebuild those relationships, credibility must be restored to every aspect of the operation.
Until we have new leadership at the Department of Defense, that credibility will be nearly impossible to achieve. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz must go.
The Mulindwas
Communication Group |
