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The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that investigates and exposes waste, corruption, abuse of power, and when the government fails to serve the public or silences those who report wrongdoing. We champion reforms to achieve a more effective, ethical, and accountable federal government that safeguards constitutional principles.
“20 Democratic Reflections on the 20th Anniversary of the Iraq War” is a great article that examines the Military Industrial Complex process concerning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Of course, 9/11 was the excuse for the invasion! Despite the protests of millions across the globe, anger over 9/11 was used to guarantee Congressional compliance and create massive support for the invasion by the American people! Even though this invasion of Iraq was in clear violation of our U.S. Constitution and International Law!
The progressive movement could have done a lot more to prevent the aftermath of 9/11! However, it has been a shameful and a fatal flaw of the progressive movement that they immediately assumed that the government’s 9/11 narrative was true and beyond any question. In fact, absolutely nothing was true about the government’s 9/11 narrative! The facts, science, witnesses all confirm this beyond any doubt for anyone willing to look and examine those facts.
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission Report was published while deliberately ignoring the many facts and witnesses which contradicted its narrative! Since 2005, I have offered $100K (lien on my house) to anyone who could demonstrate otherwise. No one has taken that challenge to date, an offer which is still on the table. Several years ago, I offered that challenge, including links on extensive proof backing my claims, to almost every KPFA programmer including Democracy NOW! Almost total silence! Just one acknowledgement from Doug Henwood of Behind the News telling me “Don’t send me this anymore”!
The progressive movement and its alternative media closed its mind to all the research and investigations by those in the 9/11 Truth movement who were clearly exposing the BIG LIE. The progressive movement and its alternative media further chose to join the MIC in helping to discredit, smear and attack the truth and those who dared to expose the BIG LIE! With the 20th anniversary of the Iraq upon us, the progressive movement and its alternative media still have their heads in the sand! The progressive movement and its alternative media have thus made themselves nothing but accomplices to the MIC’s Police State creation and atrocities around the world in past 22 years!
The U.S.-led war against Iraq began 20 years ago yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S. soldiers died or were severely injured.
There are multiple ways to look at what happened in the past and current lessons to be learned. One perspective is reflecting on the Iraq war through a democratic lens.
Here are 20 “democratic” reflections.
1. Wars and democracy rarely go together. Wars throughout history, including the Iraq war and occupation, were largely about military, political and/or economic power projection – expanding or protecting empires, including controlling resources – by one or both sides of the conflict. The goal is not to promote “freedom” or “democracy,” despite the fact that the 2003 U.S. action was named “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Efforts by the U.S. to impose its version of “democracy” was a “democratic disillusionment.”
2. Millions of people around the world organized mass protests against the war as early as November, 2002. This included nearly 800 cities around the world who took to the streets in mid-February. The New York Times commented “that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” The U.S. invaded anyway, defying mass public opinion around the world, including across the U.S.
3. It’s said that in war, truth is the first casualty. Bush Administration officials served up multiple lies for the March war launch: that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction or WMDs,” Iraqi leaders didn’t comply with agreed-to weapons inspections, there were links between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda and 9/11, and that Iraq posed an imminent military threat to the United States. Democracy is impossible when there’s no public trust in public officials and public officials are unaccountable for their lies and actions.
4. Administration officials used fear of the invented threat of “imminent” Iraqi military attack of the U.S. to manipulate public opinion against negotiation and to justify the March attack. This is a tried and true strategy that spans centuries. Former U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg once told President Truman that to gain public support for war, he needed to “scare the hell out of the American people.”
5. Congress possesses the exclusive constitutional authority to declare war. Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq were not declared wars, but “Extended Military Engagements.” A majority in Congress believed the Bush administration lies without proof and passed an Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) in 2002 that transferred Congressional power to limit where and when to send troops into battle, giving the president open-ended power to engage in war. Congress followed the will of the Bush Administration rather than a majority of their constituents. Since Iraq posed no direct threat to the U.S., the attack was unconstitutional.
6. The First Amendment right to dissent against the war and subsequent occupation was labeled by the dominant culture as un-American. Whatever tolerance existed for public protests by administration officials and the corporate media prior to March 19 vanished afterwards. Patriotism and nationalism ruled. Out came U.S. flags and yellow ribbons to “support our troops.” Dissent was seen as unpatriotic. Blind loyalty was expected. This dramatically reduced protests around the country – that and the fact that mass public opinion was ignored. People were demoralized and intimidated.
7. Corporate media was mostly a mouthpiece of government propaganda (especially conveying that Iraq possessed WMDs), cheerleader for the war and occupation and sports-like, play-by-play commentators on television and in print of the battles on the ground and in the air in Iraq. New York Times journalist Judith Miller’s coverage claiming Iraq possessed WMDs was so fraudulent that she was eventually forced to resign. In her defense, she claimed, “My job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.” So much for the media being an independent “fourth branch of government” with a mission of holding the President and Congress accountable by providing truthful information to the public for them to make informed decisions.
8. Pro-war, neoconservative extremists who propelled the war emboldened and legitimized Islamic extremists in Iraq and in the Arab world. The massive killings of innocent Iraqi civilians legitimized those in Iraq who called for terrorist attacks against the U.S. Efforts to resolve conflict through negotiation, deliberation, compromise are undermined when one side resorts to extremist violence. Such actions strengthen those on the other side suggesting extremist actions. U.S. neocons and religious extremists in Iraq needed one another to justify their own existence. This undercut those working for democracy in Iraq and democratic efforts by peace groups and some in Congress to end the conflict.
9. Wars dehumanize people. It’s essential prior to killing or oppressing people to first treat them as less than human beings. Racism, xenophobia and religious discrimination were means used by many politicians and the corporate media to define Iraqis as non human. In fact, all dark-skinned, middle-eastern looking people in the U.S. were possible “Islamic terrorists.” The voices of Iraqis were not heard about their people, country, conditions and perspectives. Many became targets of the local police and federal authorities under the Patriot Act.
10. “This is what democracy looks like ” was a common refrain of anti-war protesters before and after the war launch. While protest participants in the U.S. and around the world were in many instances reflective of human diversity, legitimate democracy is not only about the power of street protests, but being at the table where legitimate decisions are made that create and advance justice, peace and a livable world. While the massive street protests, as well as instances of nonviolent civil disobedience, before and after the war began no doubt limited the extent of U.S bombings, they were unable to define policies since We the People didn’t control the institutions of power.
11.Wars and occupations strengthen corporate rule. The Iraq war produced more profits from arms sales, access to more and cheaper resources, cheaper labor, access to new markets and privatization/corporatization (i.e. Halliburton and Blackwater corporations) for military contractors and transnational companies. Chiseled above an entrance to the U.S. Department of Commerce is this quote: “Commerce defies every wind, overrides every tempest, invades every zone.” Increased corporate profits translated into political power and influence. This reduced the political power of individuals requesting basic domestic needs for themselves and their communities.
12. Wars concentrate political power. Presidents are also Commanders in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. There is enormous cultural pressure on Congress during wars not to question, challenge or debate on military policies for fear of appearing divided and, thus, militarily weak or compromising “national security.” Wars directly connect government (especially the Executive Branch and Pentagon) and military contractors and transnational corporations. Meanwhile, citizen anti-war organizations demanding truth and public accountability are ignored or criticized as naive or aiding the enemy.
13. Warfare deters exploring political alternatives to war. Diplomacy, including bringing all parties to the table, to negotiate is not an option when fighting is at a peak or when one side feels it has the upper hand. Even when wars bog down, negotiations prove challenging since military contractors prefer perpetual war – to maintain perpetual war production. War only involves generals and top politicians. The voices of the victims of war are rarely heard. There is also pressure to keep fighting, as was stated during the Iraq war, to “ensure that U.S. soldiers who died didn’t do so in vain.”
14. Wars create debt and the pressure to privatize/corporatize public services. The cost of the Iraq war is at least $2 trillion. As the U.S. debt rose, pressure mounts to cut public spending. One way is to privatize/corporate public services. President Bush pushed to privatize Social Security during his second term. The same call for privatizing/corporatizing Social Security and Medicare is happening today in response to exploding costs of military spending in Ukraine. Privatization/corporatization of any service reduces public influence on services and costs and transparency compared to those services provided by public agencies.
15. Wars justify government secrecy. Policies, operations and “black budgets” are often marked “Classified” to maintain “national security.” Nearly 400,000 released Wikileaks documents detailed unreported casualties, torture, lack of investigations of incidents of torture, failed missions, chaos among corporate military contractors and downplaying democracy efforts in Iraq. This lack of transparency makes public accountability of government agencies and officials impossible.
16. The illegal war in Iraq using overwhelming weaponry that resulted in deaths, injuries and sometimes torture of innocent people of color has a domestic counterpart. Local U.S.police departments have increasingly become militarized with over $15 billion worth of free surplus military equipment available from Iraq and other past military actions along with Iraq war veterans joining their ranks. This equipment has been disproportionately used against people of color, especially African Americans, who are targeted in communities across the country. Possessing massive weaponry incentivizes using it. A culture and law that gives overseas soldiers enormous discretion to use violence in the field in a way legitimizes the qualified immunity of local police officers. Innocent people are increasingly killed by officers with no opportunity to defend themselves in court.
17. Wars centralize economic power, inhibiting alternative democratic economic systems. Given the close relationship between government and military contractors coupled with the deindustrialization and off-shoring of civilian manufacturing, production of military equipment constitutes the #1 planned industrial policy of the U.S. with all the public benefits of research and development that goes with it. The Iraq war reinforced this economic system and power. This makes planned economic conversion to other high-tech civilian production and more democratic models of enterprises, like worker cooperatives, extremely difficult.
18. A permanent war economy perverts grassroots public support for war. Since weapons manufacturing, perpetuated by the endless war and occupation of Iraq, provides good paying jobs and a predictable local tax base (i.e., weapons production is not sent abroad for national security reasons), military industrial workers and their unions, local public officials and other community stakeholders dependent on military production become grassroots lobbyists for continued military production, regardless of whether more jobs could be created per dollar spent on civilian production and/or whether the military products have no military purpose, are too expense, don’t work or are considered, if used, to provoke military escalation.
19. Passing HJR48, the We the People Amendment, is a part of the solution to reducing the drive for wars and occupations. Ending corporate constitutional rights and money defined as free speech will eliminate powerful tools military contractors, transnational corporations and the rich use (i.e. political campaign contributions) to create, promote or perpetuate military conflicts. Sign up to lobby your Congressperson to enact HJR48 at https://www.movetoamend.org/lobby
20. Abolishing corporate constitutional rights and political money spent in elections as free speech, however, is only part of what’s needed. Just as changing the culture to no longer accept the inevitability of corporate power, we must work to change our culture of violence as an appropriate means of resolving conflict, “might makes right,” belief that the U.S. is policeman of the world, Manifest Destiny, and that all U.S. wars are fought to defend or expand democracy and freedom instead of empire building and greed.
Many, if not most of the above factors, relate to the Ukrainian “war,” There are some differences since the U.S. is not directly involved, but funding and supporting Ukrainian surrogates.
If it’s true that “there is no way to peace, peace is the way,” then it is also true that “there is no way to democracy, democracy is the way.” Working for authentic peace and democracy are inextricably connected.
By Nicholas M. Horrock Special to The New York Times
March 27, 1978
Credit…The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from March 27, 1978, Section A, Page 14Buy Reprints
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WASHINGTON, March 26—A former finance officer for the Central* Intelligence Agency has testified before the House Select Committee on ‘ Assassinations that his colleagues had told him that Lee Harvey Oswald was a secret operative for the agency in Japan in the late 1950’s.
The witness, James B. Wilcott, wno said that he had served in low‐level jobs With the C.I.A. from 1957 through. April 1966, contended in an interview that conversations with colleagues in the agency’s Tokyo station . after President Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, convinced him that Oswald, who had served as a marine in the Far East, had been recruited by the agency to infiltrate the Soviet Union.
Mr. Wilcott, who acknowledged that his memory of events. 15 years ago was often sketchy, said that he testified under oath at a closed session of the House committee on Wednesday, supplying the names of several officials of the C.I.A. who might be able to give further details on the matter.
Robert Blakey, the chief counsel and Pfaff director of the committee, declined to comment on the testimony. However, an interim report issued by the committee indicated that, although the staff had conducted some 1,400 field interviews, the committee chose to fly relatively few witnesses to Washington to obtain formal, sworn testimony like that supplied by Mr. Wilcott..
According to several sources, the committee was investigating Mr. Wilcott’s testimony..
Mr. Wilcott said that he joined the C.I.A. as a low‐ranking finance officer in 1957 and was sent to Tokyo in 1960. At the Tokyo station, which was in building that ostensibly housed ‘ United States Air Force personnel, M. .Wilcott said, his responsibilities included making cash disbursements for projects’ identified only by code names called “cryptos.”
– He said’ that his wife was a clerical employee of the agency at that time and that he stood “watch shifts” to earn extra money. .
Mr. Wilcott said. that although the traditions and the regulations , of the agency separated members of the support staff such as himself from intelligence officers and other officials, he fraternized with operational personnel while he was on night‐watch’ duty, in occasional off duty conversations and at the. teller’s cage where he made his disbursements.
He said that in the months after Kennedy’s death he had several conversations with personnel involved in covert operations. Those talks, he said, convinced him that Oswald, who had been stationed at Atsugi Air Base, Japan, had been recruited to infiltrate the, Soviet Union as a spy.
Mr. Wilcott. said that he could recall only one specific conversation, which occurred shortly after Jack Ruby shot Oswald in Dallas. .In an account of the conversation that he prepared for publication, Mr. Wilcott noted, “I. was talking with someone, I can’t recall who for sure, and I expressed disbelief about Oswald even being a C.I.A. project, I was told something like, ‘Well, Jim, so and so drew an advance sometime in the past from you for Oswald’ or ‘for that project under such and such: a crypto.’
at the time, which I have since forgotten, as well as the time, that the advance of funds was drawn,” he wrote. ,
There appear to be several discrepancies in the recollections of Mr. Wilcott, gray‐haired man of medium height For instance he remembered having learned of the Kennedy assassination on an aft ernoon flight of a ‘private plane. However, Kennedy was shot at midday in Dallas, which would have been early the next. morning in Japan.
Oswald served in the Far East from 1957 until November 1958 and was discharged from the Marine ‘Corps before Mr. Wilcott was sent to Tokyo. Mr. Wilcott said that, he had been told that Oswald had been taken to Japan for questioning after returning from the Soviet Union in 1962.
There has been speculation about whether Oswald came under the control of the intelligence agency in ‘Japan. In a recent book, “Legend, the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald,” Edward Jay Epstein describes Oswald’s interest, in the Russian language and his strange contacts with Japanese civilians. ‘
But officials of the agency have denied under oath having ever recruited, trained or manipulated Oswald, and former senior officials of the agency have angrily denounced as irresponsible attempts to connect the agency to the assassination.
The agency will not say whether it has employed individuals. Mr. Wilcott said that after leaving Tokyo in June 1964 he served at the agency’s offices in Rossly, Va.; at the main headquarters, in McLean, Va., and at the station in Miami. He said that he resigned in April 1966.
Mr. Wilcott said that after leaving the agency he became active in the movement against the Vietnam War and developed an interest in left‐wing political causes. He said that he began circulating his account of the conversations concerning Oswald several years ago but that they were never published.
According to one• source, the House committee learned about Mr. Wilcott’s story from Philip Agee, a former agent of the C.I.A. who published several’ years ago a book attacking the agency’s operations in Latin America.
Mr. Wilcott was represented at the committee hearing by Williams H. Schaap, one of Mr. Agee’s lawyers.
An unredacted memo adds depth to our understanding of the CIA’s response to allegations that Oswald worked with the spy agency.
[Note: One focus of the article concerns a memorandum and Congressional testimony of a James Wilcott. I personally knew Jim back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We were both deeply involved with the 3 yearlong 24/7 Nuremburg Actions vigil at the Concord Navel Weapons Station in Concord, CA protesting U.S. weapons shipments to Central American dictators. Jim was the sweetest of people! Jim always kept his home open to us fellow activists when we needed some respite from the outdoor protest. Spent many an evening listening to Jim discussing how the CIA operates. I don’t remember Jim saying much about his personal CIA activities. It might have been because his role as CIA payroll officer for all of Japan was relatively mundane and uninteresting. Both Jim and his wife who was deceased at the time I knew Jim were CIA agents. Jim always suspected that the CIA might have had some involvement in his wife’s cancer!
There was one personal CIA incident that Jim did tell us about on numerous occasions. That was when President John F. Kennedy was supposedly assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. Jim was shocked when all those in his office suddenly broke into cheers! Confused Jim sought an explanation. He was told that Oswald was one of them (CIA). In fact, Jim was told that he had been issuing payroll to Oswald all that time. Jim declared that he had never done that, only to be told it that it had been under another name.
A while after the protest action had wound down, Jim came down was terminal cancer. At some point my wife and I became Jim’s caregiver. One morning I assisted Jim as best I could before I went to work. Later that day, my wife came to help and discovered that Jim had passed away. I wish I had realized that the end was so near for Jim, as there was no one to comfort him in the end. I also regret that I was unable to get access from relatives to any of Jim’s papers because they might have been politically interesting. MEK]
THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION declassified a new clue last week to the relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the intersections between Oswald and the CIA, his time as a young Marine at the Atsugi naval air facility in Japan in 1957 is high among them.
Atsugi was a launching pad for U-2 spy flights over the Soviet Union and was also a hub of the CIA’s research into psychedelic drugs. “A CIA memo titled ‘Truth Drugs in Interrogation’ revealed the agency practice of dosing agents who were marked for dangerous overseas missions,” wrote author David Talbot in “The Devil’s Chessboard,” his 2015 biography of former CIA Director Allen Dulles.
Talbot’s exploration of the link ended there: “Some chroniclers of Oswald’s life have suggested that he was one of the young marines on whom the CIA performed its acid tests.”
A new document released in full last week relates directly to Oswald’s time at Atsugi, revealing details about the CIA’s response to testimony from a former agency accountant that the spy service had employed Oswald — who went on to be a gunman in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
The CIA’s role in Kennedy’s assassination remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of American history. A majority of Americans believe the president was killed as part of a conspiracy that went beyond Oswald, and roughly a third believe the CIA or elements within the CIA had a hand in it.
The CIA’s role in Kennedy’s assassination remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of American history.
The main theory posits the assassination as a response to Kennedy’s firing of Dulles, a cloak-and-dagger powerbroker, following the failed CIA Bay of Pigs operation to unseat Fidel Castro’s Communist government in Cuba. Some believers of the theory also point to evidence Kennedy was souring on the Vietnam War or militarism in general. If Dulles did orchestrate a coup against Kennedy, it would be far from his first.
A memorandum from 1978 reports that a finance clerk with the CIA, James Wilcott Jr., had informed a House panel exploring the assassination that “the CIA hired Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald served in Atsugi.” The memo goes on to cast doubt on Wilcott’s claim, noting that he arrived in Tokyo in 1960, after Oswald had left the base, suggesting that Wilcott’s claim is based on “second hand” information.
A version of the document was declassified by the Trump administration in 2017, though it redacted a portion of a note that runs along the bottom of it. That redaction obscured the name of a CIA official, Dan Nieschur, who fielded requests from congressional investigators in the 1970s and searched Oswald’s files. Jefferson Morley, editor of the Substack newsletter JFK Facts, said that inconsequential lifting of such redactions seems to be common in this latest document release, allowing the government to claim it is releasing thousands of documents, while most had largely already been in the public domain.
The memo, written to a person identified only as “JHW,” explains that CIA official Russ Holmes “inherited the so-called Oswald files, but that he has assured me the Agency had no contact with Oswald.” The memo says that “contrary records” might be in “EA” — a likely reference to the CIA’s East Asia desk — and that they would be searched for and checked if found.” “He is after it,” the memo says of Holmes, who became legendary for his now-declassified CIA archive on the assassination.
The new JFK files include a number of personnel records connected to Wilcott, whose testimony before the House committee in the late 1970s made news at the time. Read more
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