When it comes to messing up elections, there’s really nothing like the Democratic Party. And now it turns out that the Democratic National Committee is taking its smarmy ineptness on the road.
Not content with helping to destabilize Ukraine and undermine its admittedly corrupt electoral process, the Democratic Party, through its international CIA-linked arm, the Democratic National Institute, has offered its “skills,” and its willing availability as a conduit of secret State Department cash, to certain favored parties seeking to contest the coming election in Iraq.
Making this gross interference in Iraq’s first allegedly “free” election doubly outrageous is the fact that the DNI is headed by Madelein Albright, who as Secretary of State under President Clinton, oversaw the embargo of Iraq-a program which was widely credited with having caused the untimely and avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Albright’s comment on being confronted with these deaths, mostly from lack of chlorination of water, was that they were “worth it,” in the effort to undermine Saddam Hussein.
The idea that the Democratic Party would be secretly helping the Bush Administration in its Iraq War and reconstruction plans, even as its presidential candidate, John Kerry, was lambasting the Bush White House, Pentagon and State Department for inept handling of the whole Iraq debacle (and being scathingly attacked by the Bush campaign and its surrogates), is beyond appalling
The idea that the State Department would allow an organization headed by Albright, who is reviled across Iraq for her role in the long-running embargo of that country, to provide training and funds to some contenders in the planned January elections is almost equally appalling, and is likely to have the paradoxical effect of making any group getting DNI assistance toxic to voters.
Finally, the very idea that the Democratic Party, which has demonstrated over the last several election cycles that it has no principles, no candidates, no campaign savvy and only the most grudging of support from the electorate, would be offering itself as an instructor to fledgling democrats in states like Iraq or Ukraine is simply laughable.
DAVE LINDORFF is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled “This Can’t be Happening!” to be published this fall by Common Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com