LaRouche in California Proves Victory Possible, and Kennedy Signals A Shift

From Volume 2, Issue Number 42 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Oct. 21, 2003

This Week You Need To Know

LaRouche in California Proves Victory Possible, and Kennedy Signals A Shift

Lyndon LaRouche announced in an Oct. 12 campaign statement that the "Democratic Party would have carried the state," in the California recall election, "had any second leading Democratic Presidential candidate, or former President Bill Clinton, associated himself with me in my fight to bring about the defeat of recall in California..."

LaRouche, the second of only two of the nine Democrats to be certified by the Federal Election Commission for Federal matching funds, said that "In effect, when faced with a brutally nasty adversary—George Shultz's muscle-bound Hitler, Arnie "the Beast-man" Schwarzenegger—the Democratic National Committee Chairman reacted like a scared rabbit, and, figuratively, froze and died a political death, on that spot."

LaRouche noted as "proof of the pudding," so to speak, that in areas of California where the LaRouche Youth Movement deployed heavily, there were positive results, showing that his approach worked. This was particularly obvious in the results in Los Angeles County, the only major county in southern California where the recall was defeated, and the area in which the deployment of the LaRouche Youth Movement was the most intense.

"In the first serious test of 2004, the California Recall fight, the present pack of my remaining rivals on the list, including retired General Clark, have exposed themselves as losers. That is the issue on the plate of the Democratic National Committee today, and every state Democratic Committee today: Cooperate with me in the race now, or lose everything next year. We can save the party, but not with candidates who behave as my would-be rivals have performed so far.

"The crucial test has been conducted in California, and all my rivals failed: They either did not show up, or performed like bozos, staging moral, intellectual prat-falls at the starting line. Every Democratic Party figure worth taking seriously will now mobilize around me to win in 2004. It is time to line up for 2004."

LaRouche is bringing the California "proof of principle" to Washington, D.C. on October 22, with his next international webcast, schedule for 1 P.M., EDT, where he will elaborate on the significance of Arnold "Beast-Man" Schwarznegger's candidacy for the Cheney-Bush Administration policy of perpetual wars of aggression. Already, high level political sources "inside the beltway" in Washington have reported that LaRouche's campaign to remove — by impeachment if necessary — Vice President Dick Cheney is rocking Washington, as the opposition to Cheney mounts (See this week's EIW InDepth).

Shift to the Senate

But, even before this happens, there are clear signs that leadership in the Democratic Party has shifted away from the now-discredited-by-California Democratic National Committee and pack of candidates. Two "old men" of the U.S. Senate have now taken the lead, instead. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), and Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) have stepped forward to say "no more" to capitulating to the lies of the Cheney-Bush Administration's drive for Empire.

The hard-hitting, thorough indictment of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war in Iraq, given by Sen. Kennedy in the Senate debate of Bush's request for $87 billion on Oct. 16, represents a move toward the political demise of Dick Cheney and his neo-cons, if not of President Bush himself. Kennedy's speech will be a point of reference for the developments of the next weeks, which are likely to come to a head in November. For his part, Sen. Byrd elaborated on Oct. 16, how the Emperor Has No Clothes — as shown by the fact that there is no evidence of WMD, and no links of Iraq to terrorism, and, increasingly, no credibility because of the war in Iraq (Read more in this week's USA Digest).

Looked at in historical perspective, Kennedy's speech could be compared to the decisive intervention by Edward R. Murrow in 1953, which started the landslide against the witchhunts of Sen. Joe McCarthy. A parallel process, Watergate-style, is also under way, around the questions of the criminal leaks of the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. While it is not knowable which will be successful, it is clear that LaRouche and his publication have played a major role in catalyzing the growing fight.

Senator Kennedy's Indictment

Senator Kennedy began his speech by characterizing the invasion of Iraq as "an unnecessary war, based on unreliable and inaccurate intelligence," and described it as "mindless, needless, senseless, and reckless." "Before the war, week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie," Kennedy charged.

He then turned to attacking the idea that the United States should become a colonial power. He said:

"Surely, in this day and age, at the beginning of the 21st Century, we do not have to re-learn the lesson that every colonial power in history has learned. We do not want to be, we cannot afford to be, either in terms of character or in terms of cost, an occupier of other lands. We must not become the next failed empire in the world.

"The Administration seeks to write a new history that defies the lessons of history. The most basic of those lessons is that we cannot rely primarily on military means as a solution to politically inspired violence. In those circumstances, the tide of history rises squarely against military occupation. The British learned that lesson in Northern Ireland. The French learned it in Algeria. The Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are re-learning it every day in Chechnya. America learned it in Vietnam, and we must not re-learn it in Iraq...."

But the virtual knock-out punch came when Senator Kennedy quoted President Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, and his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, from their joint memoir on the 1991 Gulf War. This quotation reflects the fact that, behind the scenes, leading representatives of the elder Bush's Administration are working with traditionalists like Senator Kennedy in trying to stem the disastrous course which the Cheney-controlled Administration is taking. The Senator said:

"In their joint memoir, A World Transformed, President George H.W. Bush and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, reflected on their own experiences with Iraq and the Gulf War in 1991. They had been criticized in some quarters for halting that war after their dramatic victory in Kuwait, instead of going on to Baghdad to depose Saddam Hussein.

"Here is what they wrote: 'Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see.... Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome.' "

A reiteration of that evaluation cannot fail to strike any thinking person, as it did Senator Kennedy, as describing precisely the situation into which the Cheney policy has led the United States. It now remains to remove the chief enforcer of that policy, the Vice President, before he and his cohorts expand it to accomplish broader destruction. In this aim, Senator Kennedy is playing a crucial role.

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