The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.
"Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.
The activists -- key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House -- fear he is drifting from the antiwar moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy. Obama has eased the rigid timetable he had set for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he appears to be leaning toward the center in his candidates to fill key national security posts.
The Common Ills thinks they were foolish to believe him in the first place and foolish to make the war their central case against Hillary Clinton;
...an IVAW contingent already embarrassed themselves publicly in Denver. They staged a protest at the Democratic Party convention. They were getting press attention inside the convention because -- as the press gas bagged -- wasn't Barack the alleged 'anti-war' candidate and here was IVAW protesting him. Phones were buzzing, it was going to be the big story. And Team Obama was being asked to comment. So Team Obama sent Tall Tales from Texas out to the protest to make a lot of meaningless remarks that sounded like promises but were nothing more than standard 'rap session' b.s. ("I know where you're coming from," said Barnes.) They bought into that crap hook, line and sinker. And gave interviews where they were excited about Barack (the War Hawk!) and he was going to do this or that and maybe they'd be onstage tonight during his big speech and . . . . It was all so thrilling people might pee their pants!
Reality check, they were punked and everyone knew it right away (including the press -- not always notorious for grasping reality immediately) except IVAW.
They stopped their protest and there was no story (certainly nothing that would embarrass Barack). Barack turned them into props for the 2008 election.
I said the same thing and several times since. While Code Pink declares that they ended the war in Iraq by electing Obama, while IVAW chirps about meetings with Obama's staff, they still don't realized they're just being strung along. They threw Hillary Clinton under the bus for her vote in 2002, so now they get her for Secretary of State. And they're also getting the Senate Majority Leader who wrangled the vote for the war in Iraq and the airline bailout for his wife's industry in 2001 - Tom Daschle - in the Obama cabinet. Even King of the Dolts, John Kerry, is being considered for a posting. From the Richter LA Times piece;
"It's astonishing that not one of the 23 senators or 133 House members who voted against the war is in the mix," said Sam Husseini of the liberal group Institute for Public Accuracy.
Not really astonishing - I've been saying all along that they were being played by Obama. I remember that Jon DeWald, the IVAW's new intellectual spokesman, came here and explained how this was a genuine gesture on the part of the Obama campaign. So who gets the last laugh?
Would they be better off with Hillary? Not as far as the war is concerned, but at least they knew where she stands on a issue, she wouldn't necessarily intentionally lie as Obama apparently has done.
Kevin Martin, executive director of the group Peace Action, said that although Obama had campaigned as an agent of change, the president-elect is "a fairly centrist guy" who appears to be choosing from the Democratic foreign policy establishment -- "and nobody from outside it."
"So, in the short term, we're going to be disappointed," he said. "They may turn out to be all pro-war, or at least people who were pro-war in the beginning."
So, all that Hope and Change stuff is out the window. So Code Pink and IVAW get tossed under the bus - not that it's a bad thing. I also get word that ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice applied six months ago for protest permits in DC for March 21st and the protest is still on. From a blogging standpoint, an Obama presidency is looking like a lucrative business.
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Reading the latest Obama Press Release from Arianna Huffington who calims to be a political commentator or something, it seems that Americans will have all sorts of ways to serve. She gives no specifics and never dares mentions military service, but maybe these Code Pink people will ahve a job for the first time in their life.
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