Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
[ David Swanson is a member of United for Peace and Justice Legislative Working Group and Cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org ]
President George Bush deflects criticism of his war plans by claiming that his critics have no plans of their own. Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, asserts that matters of war must be left in the hands of the President (presumably no matter how brilliant your alternative plan).
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio) has had an exit plan on his website for over three years. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D., Calif.) has held several hearings discussing exit plans over the past year and a half. Peace activists, including Tom Hayden, have published and promoted a variety of exit plans over the past couple of years, and have even gone so far as to meet and discuss them with members of the Iraqi Parliament.
More recently, former Senator George McGovern and William Polk have published a detailed exit plan, one that helped shape a bill introduced on January 17th by a dozen Democrats led by Woolsey. It's a comprehensive bill that lays out a plan to safely bring our troops home, end the war, reconstruct Iraq, and take care of our veterans for a change. The Woolsey bill is one of several new bills in Congress that would end the war. At least two others, sponsored by Congressmen Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) and Jerrold Nadler (D., New York) include, as does Woolsey's, a key component that shatters Cheney's vision of executive power: they cut off the funds for the war. Of course, they do so while providing for the safe return of our troops.
While the U.S. Constitution actually does not give to any
branch of our government the authority to launch aggressive and endless
wars against other countries, that beleaguered document does give the
Congress the authority to declare war. When that authority is
neglected by Congress or overrun by the White House, Congress can make
use of another Constitutional power, the power of the purse. While the
President might argue that he has the legal authority to continue or
escalate a war once underway, even if opposed by Congress, he cannot do
so if Congress denies him the necessary funding.
Of course,
Congress must also provide the funding to begin a war or to do anything
else whatsoever. Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack" reports that in the
summer of 2002 Bush took money appropriated by Congress for Afghanistan
and other programs and, with no Congressional notification, used it to
build airfields in Qatar and secretly begin a war on Iraq. According
to Woodward, the amount was $700 million; the Congressional Research
Service later found it was actually $2.5 billion.
Meanwhile,
Bush was marketing his proposed (and secretly begun) war to Congress
and the American public, making claims that have proven false in
virtually every detail. Amazingly, four years later, Congress has yet
to investigate this apparently fraudulent marketing campaign.
The
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the so-called WMD
Commission have both done investigations and produced reports, but both
were barred from addressing the central question of whether the Bush
administration had presented the intelligence honestly.
There
are some Democrats, newly in power, proposing to investigate this war,
just as there are some proposing to cut off the funding and end it.
But both groups are currently small minorities in Congress, even if
they speak for the majority of Americans who oppose this war and want
the truth brought to light. The only reason that even these moral
leaders in Congress have begun to act on this issue is the intensity of
the public pressure they are feeling. We are planning to dramatically
increase that pressure on every member of the House and Senate on
January 27th and 29th.
On February 15, 2003, we organized
with our allies around the world the single largest day of protest in
world history, a protest aimed at preventing this war before it began.
While we failed to influence President Bush or the Republican Congress,
our position won out in nations around the world which refused to take
part in the war, and in the United Nations which refused to sanction
it. Had our government been more democratic, more open to the concerns
of its citizens, this war would not have happened.
We now have a
Congress controlled by Democrats. Will they be more responsive than
the Republicans? There is one way to find out. On January 27th we are
organizing a massive march in Washington, D.C., followed by a day of
organized citizen lobbying for peace on January 29th. We'll find out
if the change of party we voted for in November changed something more
than the names of committee chairs. Learn more at www.unitedforpeace.org
Writings 
President George Bush deflects criticism of his war plans by claiming that his critics have no plans of their own. Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, asserts that matters of war must be left in the hands of the President (presumably no matter how brilliant your alternative plan).
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