Washington Post Wrong: The Iraq war was NOT authorized by U.N. Security Council

The following is from the Web Site Media Matters:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200702260008

Wash. Post parroted White House claim that Iraq war was authorized by U.N. Security Council

Summary: Disregarding its own reporting, The Washington Post uncritically reported the White House's claim that "the United States went [into Iraq in March 2003] as a multinational force under United Nations authorization to take military action against Iraq." In fact, days before the invasion, the Bush administration failed to obtain the votes necessary from the U.N. Security Council clearly authorizing new military action against Iraq.

In a February 24 article on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) efforts to block a Democratic proposal to repeal the 2002 Iraq war authorization, The Washington Post uncritically reported that White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto "said the United States went [into Iraq in March 2003] as a multinational force under United Nations authorization to take military action against Iraq." The Post failed to note that Fratto's claim is disputed. On March 19, 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, the Post itself reported (purchase required) that President Bush tried and failed to obtain a resolution from the U.N. Security Council clearly authorizing new military action against Iraq:

From Beijing to Mexico City, governments expressed regret that the United States had given up on diplomatic efforts at the United Nations to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government. Many said war was not justified at this time, especially without the blessing of a new United Nations Security Council resolution that Washington unsuccessfully sought.

The weblog Think Progress also debunked Fratto's statement, pointing to a Post article from March 18, 2003, reporting that the Bush administration failed "in its months-long effort to win the blessing of the U.N. Security Council to forcibly disarm the Iraqi leader":

Earlier in the day, British and U.S. diplomats, facing certain defeat on the Security Council, withdrew a resolution that would have cleared the way for war. Though Bush on Sunday vowed another day of "working the phones," it quickly became clear that as many as 11 of 15 council members remained opposed and the effort was abandoned by 10 a.m.

The withdrawal of the resolution without a vote was a double climb-down for Bush. On Feb. 22, he had predicted victory at the United Nations, and on March 6 he said he wanted a vote regardless of the outcome.

The Bush administration maintains that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified by Saddam's violations of several earlier U.N. Security Council resolutions, going back to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

From the February 24 Washington Post article:

Democratic architects of the new initiative, including Reid, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) and Armed Services Chairman Carl M. Levin (Mich.), have argued that the 2002 authorization is no longer valid, because the intent was to destroy weapons of mass destruction -- which were never found -- and if necessary to depose Saddam Hussein, who has since been captured, tried and executed.

The second part of the authorization, Fratto said, "is still important and envisioned the changing nature there." Even Bush has acknowledged the shift, he said: "The president said this isn't the fight we entered in Iraq but it's the fight we're in."

Fratto said the United States went in as a multinational force under United Nations authorization to take military action against Iraq and was there as an occupying force. "And now we're there at the invitation of the sovereign elected government of Iraq," he said, adding that "U.N. Security Council resolutions that came subsequent to the war authorization, you know, envisioned those kinds of changes."

Biden responded in a CNN interview that while the Constitution allows Bush to conduct war, it does so "only if the Congress gave him the authority in the first place."

—B.A.
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To brush up on the details maybe the Washington Post should try reading:

Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

A blogger expresses outrage over new Washington Post piece revealing the conditions of top Army Medical Facilities.

1. The bloggers comments
2. The Washington post story


#1 The real treason. Our maimed soldiers are living in cockroach infested ghettos back here in the states.
by John in DC 2/17/2007 07:20:00 PM http://americablog.blogspot.com/

While the Republicans were posturing all week about how the Democrats hate the troops, the Sunday Washington Post takes a look at how the Bush administration and the Republican congress have been treating our hurt and maimed troops back here in the US: in cockroach infested ghettos.

It is absolutely sickening. Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi should lock the Congress down until every single one of these problems is finally fixed.
This is beyond sickening. We have to sit back and listen to GOP members of Congress, George Bush's White House, and that pig General Petraeus dare to tell us how WE'RE the ones turning our backs on the troops, when all three of them knew this was going on under their watch and none of them lifted a finger to fix it.

Our soldiers were lied to about this war, they were lied to about their enlistment, they were never given a plan for victory or the numbers of troops they needed, they still don't have the armor they need for their vehicles. And now, the young men and women wounded and maimed for our country are living in government-run pig-stys not fit for farm animals. The American Taliban and the detainees in Guantanamo get better conditions than this, all courtesy of the Republicans.

The Republicans want to talk about treason? They want to talk about slowly bleeding our troops to death? Fine. Forget the agenda Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid had planned. It's high time we helped our troops. And if the Republicans won't do it, then we will. Let's ensure that the American people and our troops know which party got them into this mess, and which party is getting them out of it. Let the hearings and investigation and legislation begin until we fix these problems once and for all.

Read the article, then send it to ten friends. I am sick and tired of being called a traitor by right-wing scum who love the troops when the cameras are rolling, then spit in their faces over and over again. The Republicans want to talk about emboldening the enemy and harming the troops, great. Let's start talking about it, loudly and often.



#2
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility

By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; Page A01

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.

Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.

"It creates resentment and disenfranchisement," said Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker at Walter Reed. "These soldiers will withdraw and stay in their rooms. They will actively avoid the very treatment and services that are meant to be helpful."

Danny Soto, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans who helps dozens of wounded service members each week at Walter Reed, said soldiers "get awesome medical care and their lives are being saved," but, "Then they get into the administrative part of it and they are like, 'You saved me for what?' The soldiers feel like they are not getting proper respect. This leads to anger."