The breathtaking stupidity of #BernieOrBust

I love Bernie Sanders. Through three decades of political junkiedom, he is my favorite public official other than former Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone. Few politicians exhibit the authenticity and empathy that oozes out of Bernie’s every pore. No elected official speaks as passionately about the economic struggles of everyday Americans and the corrosive impact of corporate money on our ailing democracy. Bernie has my vote in the Democratic primary and I will enthusiastically volunteer for him if he becomes the Democratic candidate this fall.

Yet I find the #BernieOrBust crusade to be one of the most breathtakingly stupid political movements ever conceived.

Though many BernieOrBusters are not old enough to realize it, we have been here before. During the 2000 presidential race, Ralph Nader and his most ardent supporters repeatedly claimed that Al Gore and George W. Bush were so similar that it wouldn't make much of a difference who won. This assertion was accompanied by talking points that reduced an election with enormous human stakes down to bumper sticker slogans which were childlike in their simplicity. Gore and Bush were "two heads of the same beast" or "Tweedledee and Tweedledum." Rather than vote for "the lesser of two evils," Naderistas counselled that one should "vote your hopes, not your fears," though there was never a remote chance that Nader would become president and the fears of a Bush Administration were more than justified.

Based on Bush's record as governor of Texas, astute observers knew that the Nader talking points were nonsense and that a Bush presidency would be a nightmare for progressive

values. They were also acutely aware, through the application of basic math, that Nader's candidacy could siphon enough votes from Al Gore to put George W. Bush in office, which is exactly what happened thanks to Nader's vote totals in Florida and New Hampshire.

The results? The appointment of ultra-right officials who were determined to undermine their agencies' historic missions. A systematic reversal of liberal-learning Clinton-Gore policies. The worst environmental record in ages. Clinton's hard-earned surplus pissed away

on tax cuts for the rich that increased inequality and failed to grow the economy. The erosion of the wall between church and state. A slew of right-wing judges who genuflected before the corporate interests that Nader routinely flogged during his presidential run. The abandonment of international treaties, a unilateral invasion based on lies, and alienation from the international community. And staggering incompetence, from the lack of action taken before 9/11 (despite numerous warnings of potential attacks) to the failure to adequately plan for the occupation of Iraq to the gutting and privatization of FEMA, which failed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, to Bush's failure to pre-empt the economic crash of September, 2008 despite clear warnings in 2007 that the housing bubble could burst. By any objective measure, Bush's presidency was a colossal disaster not only for America but for the progressive movement Nader claimed to champion.

Anyone who lives in a contested state who refuses to vote for Hillary Clinton in November of 2016 threatens to make the same stupid and reckless mistake that Nader's Florida supporters made in 2000.

No, Hillary hasn't won the Democratic nomination yet, and she was heavily favored in 2008 too, but the Bernie Sanders of 2016 is not the Barack Obama of 2008. His quest to become the Democratic standard bearer is a long shot, whether you look at polls, endorsements, betting markets, or the prognostications of data god Nate Silver, who gives Bernie a 5-10% chance of winning.

To justify not voting for the likely Democratic candidate this fall, BernieOrBusters peddle the notion that there is a major policy chasm between Bernie and Hillary, that Hillary is essentially "Republican light," but it just isn't so. During their time in the Senate, Hillary and Bernie voted together 93% of the time; far from being "Republican light," Hillary was the 11th most liberal senator, placing her to the left of 75-80% of the Democratic caucus and all of the Republicans. Over the past several months Clinton has released a long list of progressive proposals that offer a stark contrast to her Republican rivals, including policies dealing with the reform of Wall Street and drug laws, childcare, assistance to caregivers for the elderly and disabled, voting rights, prescription drug imports from Canada, LGBT rights, universal Pre-K and college debt, progressive taxation, autism, drug and alcohol addiction, Alzheimer's disease, gun control, and healthcare for veterans. 

Hillary would also appoint radically different judges to the Supreme Court than any of the GOP candidates, which is an especially crucial issue now that four SCOTUS justices are 80 and older, including cancer survivor Ruth Ginsburg. Among many other toxic decisions, the current 5-4 Republican majority has given us Citizens United, unraveled the Voting Rights Act, kept millions of poor Americans from receiving healthcare coverage, and now threatens to deliver a death blow to unions. If the replacement for any of the four liberal judges is chosen by a Republican president, expect more of the same and worse, including the end of Roe v. Wade and a return to the glory days of back alley abortions.    

In addition, while a Republican administration would do everything in its power to dismantle the progress of the last seven years, President Clinton would protect and expand upon the Affordable Care Act and the rest of the Obama legacy.  

For these reasons, and many, many others—including Clinton's unique qualifications for the office due to her intelligence, work ethic, experience, and public policy knowledge—Bernie recently said that she "will be an infinitely better candidate and president on her worst day than the Republican candidate on his best day." Swing state lefties who plan to stay home this November if Bernie doesn't win the primary, or waste their vote on a write-in candidate, need to remember that social progress is made by coalitions, not noble gestures.

More political writing by Dan Benbow: 

178 reasons Hillary Clinton is infinitely better than Donald Trump (even on her worst day)

Ten reasons Barack Obama is clearly the best president in my lifetime 

                          Justice Delayed: "Kill the Messenger" vindicates Gary Webb

                                              21st Century Republicans, Part IV

                                "Inequality for All" and the Elephant in the Room

                                     Memorial Day in the United States of Amnesia

                                              Romney-Ryan's Road to Perdition

          The Master of Low Expectations: 666 Reasons Sentient Citizens Are Still Celebrating                                                         the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush

Colin Kaepernick is right

Justice delayed: "Kill the Messenger" vindicates Gary Webb

“Kill The Messenger” is a movie about high-stakes, shoe leather journalism.

In July of 1995, Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner)—a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News—received a tip from Coral Baca, the girlfriend of Rafael Cornejo, who was being charged in a federal narcotics case.

During the San Diego trial, Webb discovered that Danilo Blandón (a Nicaraguan citizen and DEA informant who was testifying against Cornejo) had been involved in the sale of up to $6 million worth of cocaine per week to Ricky Ross—a major dealer in Compton during the ’80s. Some portion of the proceeds had been used to support the Contras, a CIA proxy army which had attempted to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Under cross-examination Blandón admitted that members of the CIA were aware that he was dealing drugs, launching Webb on a life-altering journey.

“Kill the Messenger,” based on a true story, moves with Webb as he follows this initial lead through the mean streets of Compton, a remote airstrip in Honduras, a dingy prison in Nicaragua, and miles of microfiche. This journey is sprinkled with depth of field shots (of potentially sinister people following Webb) and shaky camera footage which amplifies dicey situations, but generally the visual language is subtle and understated, as one would expect of a $5 million movie. “Kill the Messenger” is a small movie about big things.

Webb’s year of extensive traveling and dogged research was channeled into the "Dark Alliance" articles, 

The logo for the "Dark Alliance" series
which sent the CIA's P.R. outfit into high gear  

which were published in print and online in August of 1996 by the San Jose Mercury News.

The three-day series not only pointed out that officials in the CIA and the Reagan Administration had looked the other way while members of the Contras sold cocaine in the U.S., but claimed that the Blandón-Ross connection had been the first large-scale drug pipeline of its kind and had played a central role in the crack epidemic which—along with the punitive, racially-biased policies of Reagan’s War on Drugs—had decimated inner city populations.

In the beginning, the explosive allegations were a boon to the Mercury News. “Dark Alliance” was the first blockbuster series of its kind to go around the major media filters—the networks and the big newspapers—through the Internet. To bolster the series’ controversial claims, ample links to the sourcing (audio files, court transcripts, government reports, and other legal documents) were included on the Mercury News website. The story went viral, getting up to 1.3 million hits and generating outrage in the African-American community. Webb was a conquering hero around the newsroom, David slaying Goliath.

Webb taking notes at Rafael Cornejo's hearing

For most of the movie, this is how Renner portrays Webb: as a fearless, earnest truth-seeker who is obsessed with his work. Webb walks through doorways with swagger, aggressively presses his points home when challenged, and packs heat to protect his family.

But Goliath turned out to be a sleeping giant. After overlooking CIA connections to drugs for decades and ignoring the "Dark Alliance" story for several weeks, the Big Three (the New York Times, L.A. Times, and Washington Post), all of whom relied heavily on CIA officials for national security reporting, went after Webb and his series. The L.A. Times, a major daily which had been scooped in its own backyard by a second-tier newspaper, was particularly vicious, putting together a hit team of 17 people to comb every word of Webb’s articles in a blatant attempt to discredit the series—and Webb himself. 

In time, even as Webb was strengthening the claims made in his original series with additional research and interviews—evidence which his newspaper never published—the Mercury News’ corporate heads got weak in the knees from pressure exerted by the CIA and its media allies. Webb, who won Journalist of the Year from the Bay Area Society of 

An explosive story idea is pitched in secret

Professional Journalists at the end of 1996, was demoted just months later to a satellite office in Cupertino, 150 miles away from his family. The Mighty Wurlitzer—the ability of the CIA to program the U.S. media like a player piano—remained undeterred.

Broken down, humiliated, and blacklisted in his chosen profession, Gary Webb committed suicide in 2004.

“Kill the Messenger” is effective at conveying these main facts, but the number of important things which are left out reflect the limitations of the biopic genre to tackle complicated historical events.

As shown by the findings of the Iran-Contra investigation, the report of the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations headed by John Kerry, the CIA Inspector General's report of 1998, and the National Security Archive release of Oliver North's diaries, in 2004, there is no question that dozens of Contras sold drugs in the U.S., that members of the CIA and Reagan Administration knew this and ignored it, and that the Reagan Administration fought to hide this information from the public.

What “Kill the Messenger” doesn’t do is probe the more disputable elements in the “Dark Alliance” series in great depth. How accurate was Webb’s speculation on the precise years of Blandón and Ross’s business relationship and the resulting extrapolation of the amount of cocaine that passed between them? What portion of the sales went to the Contras and what portion went back into Blandón’s pocket? Were these transactions—when coupled with Ross’s eventual countrywide expansion—enough to set off the crack explosion, as the series claimed, or were they just one part of a much bigger phenomena? To what extent did Webb’s book (“Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion”), which

included much more expansive sourcing than the original newspaper story, clear up these questions?

And Renner’s characterization focuses on Gary Webb the alpha journalist to the exclusion of other dimensions of Webb’s personality. The two times I saw Webb speak at Bay Area journalism events, I witnessed a relaxed demeanor and a sharp sense of humor (often mentioned by family and friends) which are mainly absent in the movie. Webb’s bi-polarity, the struggles with depression which led him to take his own life, also get short shrift.

Despite these gaps in the storyline, Jeremy Renner and the other principals behind “Kill the Messenger” deserve a public service award for bringing this project to fruition. “Kill the Messenger” is a substantial movie which honors an exceptionally brave journalist who put his livelihood on the line for the public’s right to know.

Toward the end of the movie, as Webb sits in a ballroom about to receive an award, he hears his name announced. He imagines a standing ovation, only to mount the podium to scattered applause. In a just world, “Kill the Messenger” would be playing in Multiplexes, waking the sleepwalking masses up to hidden histories in their midst.

As it is, Renner’s labor of love won’t get a fraction of the attention—from the media or the Academy—that have attended other movies about momentous journalism such as “All the President’s Men.” Eighteen years after it was published, the revelations of the “Dark Alliance” series have been completely swept under the rug. While the Woodward-Bernstein takedown of President Nixon was said to prove that “the system works,” the tepid reception of “Kill the Messenger” shows that in the case of the Contra-crack-cocaine story, the system failed.

***

           

GARY WEBB’S JOURNALISTIC AWARDS (courtesy of Wikipedia)

College journalism:

• 1975 — First place, specialty column, Kentucky Intercollegiate Press Assn.
• 1977 — Third place, specialty column, Kentucky Intercollegiate Press Assn.
  
• 1977 — Third place, non-editorial cartooning, Kentucky Intercollegiate Press Assn.

Reporting:

• 1980 — Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Award, small newspaper division.
• 1980 — Laurel, Columbia Journalism Review.
• 1980 — Gerald M. White Memorial Prize for Investigative Reporting, Cincinnati SDX.
• 1980 — Investigative Reporters and Editors Award (IRE) for co-authoring a 17-part series at the Kentucky Post in Covington, Kentucky with Tom Scheffey on organized crime in the American coal industry. 
• 1981 — First place, investigative reporting, Kentucky Press Assn.
• 1981 — Second place, deadline news reporting, Cincinnati SDX.
• 1981 — Third place, investigative reporting, Cincinnati SDX.
• 1982 — Third place, investigative reporting, Kentucky Press Assn.
• 1983 — First place, municipal reporting, Kentucky Municipal League.
• 1983 — Reporter of the Month, Scripps Howard Newspapers.
• 1984 — Second place, series, Ohio Associated Press Assn.
• 1984 — Third place, series, Ohio Associated Press Assn.
• 1985 — Laurel, Columbia Journalism Review.
• 1985 — First place, investigative reporting, Northeast Ohio SDX.
• 1986 — Honorable mention, enterprise reporting, Ohio Associated Press Assn.
• 1986 — Honorable mention, series, Ohio Associated Press Assn.
• 1986 — First place, investigative reporting, Northeast Ohio SDX.
• 1986 — Gold Medal, health reporting, American Chiropractic Assn.
• 1987 — First place, legal reporting, Ohio Bar Assn.
• 1987 — Second place, spot news, Central Ohio SDX.
• 1987 — Third place, projects, Central Ohio SDX.
• 1987 — Honorable mention, features, Central Ohio SDX.
• 1987 — Freedom of Information Award, Central Ohio SDX.
• 1987 — First place, investigative reporting, Ohio Associated Press Assn.
• 1988 — First place, investigative reporting, Ohio Associated Press Assn.
• 1989 — Honorable mention, features, Central Ohio SDX.  

  

  The scoop that would
  change Webb's life

• 1989 — First place, series, Central Ohio SDX.
• 1990 — Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting awarded to the San Jose Mercury News staff for its detailed coverage of the October 17, 1989, Bay Area earthquake and its aftermath.
• 1993 — Second place, series, Peninsula Press Club.
• 1994 — H.L. Mencken Award, by The Free Press Association for the series in the San Jose Mercury News on abuses in the state of California's drug asset forfeiture program.
• 1995—California Journalism Award, Center for California Studies, CSU.
• 1995 — Honorable mention, Gerald Loeb Award, UCLA School of Business.
• 1995 — First Place, local news reporting, Peninsula Press Club.
• 1996 - James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Hunter College, City University of New York.
• 1996 — Freedom Fighter Award, California NAACP.
• 1996 — Journalist of the Year, Bay Area Society of Professional Journalists.
• 1997 — Media Hero Award, from the 2nd Annual Media & Democracy Congress.

Literary:

• 1998 — Firecracker Alternative Book (FAB) Award, politics, Dark Alliance.

  

  Webb with some of his "Dark Alliance" research

• 1998 — Nominee, Best Nonfiction Book, Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, Dark Alliance.
• 1998 — Finalist, PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award, Dark Alliance.
• 1999 — Oakland PEN First Amendment Award, Dark Alliance.
• 2002 — 25 Books to Remember, New York Public Library, Into the Buzzsaw (contributor)
• 2003 — Rouse Award for Press Criticism, National Press Club, Into the Buzzsaw (contributor)

"Inequality for All" and the elephant in the room

I paid $12.50 for my ticket to "Inequality for All," a new documentary about income inequality in America. The ticket, popcorn, and soda were upwards of $25. 

Ponying up for the occasional night out is no big deal, but it illustrates one of the major points of "Inequality for All":  as my wage remains flat, everything around me gets more expensive. I can handle this type of small extravagance because I'm childless with no debt, but for working families with children, family movie night could be economically problematic.

"Inequality for All" was playing at San Francisco's Metreon, a local multiplex. As people filled screening rooms to see forgettable fare such as "Runner, Runner" and "Baggage Claim," the audience for "Inequality for All"--a film of substance and import--was small. I walked in a few minutes before showtime and had my choice of seats. Most of the forty or so people spread around were academic-looking Bay Area Baby Boomers who already knew the score - I imagined trees falling in a forest.

It's easy to see why escapism rules the day. Evil never sleeps, as Paul Krassner once said, and most political documentaries are exercises in impotent rage. Many people, particularly those working a stressful full-time job, would rather lose themselves in spectacle than "take their medicine" at the movie theater. 

"Inequality for All" tries a different approach. The movie contains depressing information,

but its story is told through the warm, engaging presence of Robert Reich, the first Labor Department secretary and conscience of the Clinton Administration. Though dead serious about income inequality (he has studied and written about the subject for decades), Reich is mild-mannered, with a good sense of humor and an underlying humanism.

In a lecture in front of a big "Wealth and Poverty" class at UC-Berkeley, speeches at a Berkeley rally and a union meeting, and snippets from a one-on-one interview, Reich explains the history and causes of economic inequality without taking partisan shots.

Reich is a committed capitalist who acknowledges that some degree of inequality is inevitable to reward hard work and ingenuity. But income inequality in the United States is extreme. The U.S. has the most inequality in the developed world, an income gap between rich and poor comparable to that found in Uruguay, Jamaica, and Cameroon.

Americans work more hours than anyone else in the first world, and though their productivity has steadily increased over the years, wages for most have stagnated due to the

decline of unions and the downward pressure on pay scales brought by globalization. In 1978, the top 1% of Americans made $390,000 annually, while the average worker earned $48,000 (in today's dollars). By 2010, the average worker made just $34,000, while the median one-percenter had an income in excess of a million dollars. And the 400 richest Americans today have more money than the bottom 50%.  
Reich shows direct correlations between excessive CEO compensation and both inequality and economic stagnation for average Americans. The movie profiles a handful of struggling families to put a human face on the ways in which working Americans fall behind as the cost of housing, healthcare, education, and childcare rise faster than incomes. 

Technological change plays a role in the sluggish job market. Though Amazon.com clears a huge volume of product, it has just 60,000 employees. If Amazon's merchandise was sold merchant-by-merchant, 10-15 times that many people could be employed. Also, with capital flowing so freely across borders, opportunistic U.S. companies outsource jobs to the lowest bidder, to countries with cheap labor costs and lax regulations, in a race to the bottom. 

But technology isn't the only culprit; income inequality in the United States is to a large degree man-made. As Reich points out, there's no such thing as a pure free market. Every country regulates certain sectors of the economy and deregulates other areas. 

The question becomes: what rules are made, and whom do those rules benefit? 

Over the past 35 years, the rules have shifted greatly in favor of the wealthy and business interests, to the detriment of society at large. Due to loopholes and tax

breaks on investor income, many of the 1%--such as presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose tax rate was under 14%--pay effectively lower rates than working-class Americans. Despite the stark contrast in job growth after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich (21,000,000 new jobs) and George W. Bush lowered taxes on the rich (-646,000 jobs), the right continues to claim that increasing taxes on the wealthy (the "job creators") will hurt economic growth.    

Nick Hanauer, a wildly successful and civic-minded entrepreneur, begs to differ. According to Hanauer, customers are the major job creators, as consumer spending is 70% of the economy. While a representative member of the 1% has 30 times the income of the average American, they often own just one or two cars, one or two houses, etc. The bulk of their money doesn't generate any economic activity; it sits in investment accounts, what Hanauer refers to as "underutilized capacity." 

The American economy grows from the middle out, not the top down. When Americans are

employed, they have money. When they have money, they buy goods. When they buy goods, jobs are created to meet consumer demand. When jobs are created, those new employees spend money too. The heightened economic activity increases tax revenue, which enables the government to invest in education, producing a better-educated, higher-paid job force, and so on, in a virtuous cycle.

Government policy in '50s America provides a sharp contrast to our Social Darwinist present and a glimpse at how things could be with the right political leadership and governing priorities. 

During that decade--the high point of America's middle class--unionization was at its peak (a third of American workers were unionized); most workers had stable jobs and wages and the ability to support a family with one income. The federal government invested heavily in education, which generated a marked increase in Americans with degrees; by the late '50s, the U.S. had the best-educated workforce in the world. And Republican Dwight Eisenhower kept tax rates on the richest Americans at 91%. The 1% did fine, but so did most other Americans. How times have changed.

***

"Inequality for All" is informative and accessible, but avoids the elephant in the room:  the

Occupy - Portland

direct and aggressive role the Republican Party and its benefactors have played in magnifying all of the ugly trends identified in the movie.

The film mentions that UC-Berkeley, where Reich teaches, had free tuition in the '60s, tuition of just $700 (in today's dollars) in the '70s, and now has tuition of $15,000 for in-state students. This fact is wheeled out, but the reasons for the skyrocketing tuition (decades of cuts to education spending initiated by state and federal Republican politicians and activists) go unmentioned. 

The effect of inequality and economic stagnation on social polarization--as reflected by Occupy on the left and the Tea Party on the right--comes up, but no contrast is drawn between these movements. The viewer could easily presume that both are grassroots in nature, with equally valid grievances. No attempt is made to explain how the corporate-funded Tea Party has benefited some of the very same economic elites who contributed to the 2008 crash and continue to make working Americans' lives so difficult. 

Due to an insistence on being non-threatening to a broad audience, "Inequality for All" leaves us short of realistic political strategies for reducing economic inequality. While explaining how floods of campaign cash, low tax rates on the wealthy, austerity policies, and the disintegration of unions have driven economic inequality to record highs, the filmmakers fail to provide the simple and essential context that one party and one side of the political spectrum are overwhelmingly to blame for these developments and show no signs of reversing course. Lacking a diagnosis of the cancer that ravages our political system, "Inequality" offers no clear prescription for curing what ails us. 

Despite these man-made challenges, Reich is optimistic about the future. Progressive

change is hard to come by in the United States due to checks and balances and entrenched interests, but dark (or just plain uneventful) stretches of American history have been interrupted every few decades by periods of reform, from the Progressive era to the '30s to the '60s to January 1, 2014, when the United States will take the first step toward universal healthcare coverage.

As Winston Churchill said, "Americans always do the right thing eventually - after they've exhausted all other possibilities."

***

                                                 Other "Truth and Beauty" film reviews:

                                                                  "A spoiler-free review of 'Mud'"        

 "Truth is in the Eye of the Interpreter:  a Review of 'Room 237'"

"No!"

"Searching for Sugar Man"

"Honest Abe Makes Sausage" (about "Lincoln")

"First Glance:  'The Master'"

"Errol Morris Strikes Again" (about "Tabloid")

Memorial Day in the United States of Amnesia

“I think they had a plan from day one; they wanted to do something about Iraq. While the World Trade Center was still smoldering, while they were still digging bodies out, people in the White House were thinking: ‘Ah! This gives us the opportunity we have been looking for to go after Iraq.’”

-Richard Clarke, George W. Bush's counterterrorism adviser

Each Memorial Day, Americans fly flags and express gratitude for veterans who have sacrificed on our behalf. But while the day is filled with rituals and ceremonies honoring vets (as it should be), discussions about what role our military should play abroad or how veterans are treated when they return home are cordoned off by the rules of polite society. 

Yet is there a day more appropriate to discuss the fate of our troops than Memorial Day? 

If not today, when the spotlight is on our often-invisible volunteer forces, then when?

Many Americans are reflexively allergic to looking back, but we can't move forward until we've absorbed the lessons of the past. When assessing the challenges of today's veterans, from homelessness to PTSD to head injuries to healthcare accessibility to suicide, the elephant in the room is the invasion of Iraq, a large-scale, unilateral war of choice that eclipsed and then prolonged the more limited multilateral effort against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. 

The cheerleaders of the Iraq invasion (the few that remain) continue to claim that Bush/Cheney didn't really want to invade Iraq, that they were convinced of the necessity by flawed pre-war intelligence which inflated Saddam's WMD threat. But the mass of evidence and testimony from repentant administration officials shows that

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had their eyes on Iraq well before 9/11, which gave them the political capital they needed.

Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, said the administration began planning an invasion of Iraq within days of W’s inauguration, in January of 2001. In March of that year, Dick Cheney's secret Energy Task Force met and discussed "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," displayed here. Vanity Fair reported that the "US Was Targeting Saddam 'Just Days after 9/11.'" 

As early as February of 2002, more than a year before the supposedly reluctant invasion, special operations personnel and Predator drones were secretly being moved from Afghanistan to Iraq. 

In July of 2002, while George W. Bush and Tony Blair were publicly claiming that they wanted weapons inspections in Iraq to run their course before taking military action, British officials had the infamous meeting captured in the Downing Street Memo, in which "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy [invasion]." 

That fall, the Bush Administration preyed on the American public's post-9/11 fear and vulnerability with an orchestrated media campaign to manufacture a case for war. Not coincidentally, this campaign began in the run-up to congressional elections in which the Republicans sought to regain control of the Senate by turning the media focus to national security issues. 

Asked why the administration had waited until September to make their case for pre-emptive war, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told the New York Times, “From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." 

The next day, the Bush Administration's principals fanned out to media outlets to parrot lines about the purported threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

The effort culminated on February 5, 2003, when Colin Powell made a long list of false accusations about Saddam Hussein's fictitious WMD ambitions and connections to al Qaeda in a speech to the United Nations. Though much of the intelligence cited was based on questionable sources - including single sources who hadn’t even been interviewed by U.S. intelligence - Powell told the world, "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." Powell’s Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, who had helped craft the speech, later referred to Powell's U.N. presentation as "the lowest moment of my life."

A study of the media offensive by the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity found that

key members of the administration (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz) had made 935 false statements to the press. In the words of Scott McLellan, the second White House press secretary, the administration's p.r. campaign was nothing but "propaganda.” 

After ignoring last-minute peace offerings from Iraqi officials, the Bush Administration got their war on. The campaign of fear and fabrication which was the Iraq invasion's original sin was compounded by dire consequences, including but not limited to:

-The transmogrification of the rare national unity and near-universal international support the U.S. had after 9/11 into raw divisiveness domestically and ill will internationally

-The destruction of some of the the world’s oldest, most precious antiquities throughout Iraq

-Astonishing human suffering (four-five million refugees and up to [and maybe over] one million dead civilians) 

-The abandonment of Afghanistan (at the very moment when the U.S. had a big coalition and could have built on the military victory there to help create a safe, civil society), which re-empowered the Taliban when they were on the ropes and dragged the conflict out to the present and beyond

-4,804 dead American troops and many times that injured physically and/or psychologically 

-The over-extension and diminution of the American military through multiple tours and deployment of National Guard members for combat purposes (which robbed New Orleans of badly needed Guardsmen after Hurricane Katrina)

-An exacerbation of tension with Muslims worldwide and increase in terrorist recruitment, the very thing the Bush Administration was claiming to counteract in Iraq 

The direct long-term costs of the Iraq invasion - which was initiated not long before the U.S. treasury was starting to absorb the staggering costs of Baby Boomer retirement - are up to six trillion dollars. 

The opportunity costs of the invasion of Iraq are immense. Every dollar spent on this ill-conceived adventure has robbed us of a dollar for the elemental priorities of a civilized society back home while the war was going full bore, and now, as Republican Paul Ryan and his ilk (many of whom supported the invasion) use the budget deficit as an excuse to take the budget ax to programs for both those who need assistance most - the poor, elderly, and disabled - and for the struggling, shrinking middle-class. 

Across the pond, the right-leaning Economist brought in the recent 10-year anniversary of the invasion with an honest, reflective piece titled "Anniversary of a mass delusion." But the anniversary came and went with little fanfare in the States. Mainstream media (who'd served as the Bush Administration's biggest enablers in the fall of 2002) tended to mention the story in passing, without context, alt-left outlets preached to the choir for a day or two, right-wing media continued to spin fairy tales, and most Americans went on with their lives as if it had never happened. Welcome to the United States of Amnesia. 

 ***

Jeff Heaton is making sure people in his neck of the woods don't forget. Inspired by the Pentagon's ban on photos of soldiers' coffins to bring the costs of war out into the open, Heaton

a view of the Crosses of Lafayette from the BART station

 (along with Louise Clark, now deceased) erected a memorial to the Iraq War's fallen troops on Veteran's Day 2006, just days after George W. Bush had suffered a rare moment of accountability at the polls. 

With the help of volunteers, Heaton and Clark started the Crosses of Lafayette with fifteen crosses on a high-visibility hillside across from the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in Lafayette, California, a wealthy suburb of San Francisco.
   

Not long after, vandals removed the crosses and the death toll sign (pictured 

in this article). Unbowed, the founders of the Crosses of Lafayette put their display back up, after which the Lafayette City Council stepped into the fray. 

Taking a restrictive view of the 1st Amendment, the council forced Heaton and Clark to reduce the size of the sign tabulating the total number of troop deaths in Iraq (which later included troop fatalities in Afghanistan), and pre-empted similar local efforts by limiting the number of signs citizens could put on their own land.

Despite these initial hiccups, the Crosses of Lafayette live on, and have now been seen millions of times by commuters going to and from San Francisco. 

Walking up to this moving memorial across sun-parched grass, one is overwhelmed by a

feeling of loss. The loss of the individual soldiers' lives and all the potential those lives held, the loss felt by children who will never see their mother or father again, spouses who will have to raise children alone, and parents who see a being they raised and nurtured from infancy stolen from them in an instant.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on us. The best way to celebrate Memorial Day is to learn from the mistakes of the past, give troops the care they need when they return from the field of battle year-round, and keep tomorrow's men and women in uniform out of harm's way unless all peaceful means of self-defense have been exhausted.