Hold Them Accountable

The BushCo Iraqi disaster finally has returned to its proper place as a central issue of the 2004 election. For anyone looking for a concise, but extremely well-sourced, indictment of Clueless Leader's exercise in Imperial Hubris, the Fight Back Campaign, a group of "volunteer Democratic activists across the country who are tired of the distractions and diversions used by the Bush Administration to hide the mistakes it has made during the past three years," has produced a website Hold Them Accountable that provides it.

The site lays out a compelling Case Against the Bush Administration:

Our premise is that the seven individuals pictured at the top of this page (from left: President George W. Bush; Vice President Dick Cheney; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Attorney General John Ashcroft; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Secretary of State Colin Powell; and senior Presidential advisor Karl Rove), along with senior colleagues such as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable by the electorate and by the press for the disastrous situation facing the United States in Iraq, which has already led to the tragic deaths of over a thousand U.S. soldiers, civilian contractors, and support staff.

By politicizing their decision-making, selectively presenting evidence for the war, ignoring the counsel of experts, attacking their critics as unpatriotic, making claims about the success of the war that do not appear to coincide with the facts on the ground, and -- most shamefully -- by exploiting the memory of the September 11th attacks for political gain, the President and the Bush Administration have done a grave disservice to America.

And -- the Administration's claims to the contrary notwithstanding -- there is broad and growing consensus among professional foreign policy experts that the choices President Bush and his advisors made about how to respond to Saddam Hussein, and the disastrous consequences, have left the United States more vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, not safer.

The charges are then separated into four chronological segments:

1. President Bush and his advisors mishandled the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, and their delays and military misjudgments lost an opportunity to bring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to justice in Afghanistan.

2. Through a systematic information management campaign, President Bush and his advisors misled Congress and the American people into going to war, by selectively presenting evidence based on its political usefulness and by aggressively criticizing prominent military and civilian leaders who spoke out publicly against their assumptions.

3. President Bush and his advisors sent U.S. soldiers into battle undersupported and underprepared for the war and its aftermath, with unrealistic expectations and unclear instructions.

4. President Bush's unwillingness to admit his errors, and his continuing attempt to invoke the memory of 9/11 as a justification for Iraq, virtually guarantee that more Americans will die in a war that has already made future terror attacks more likely.

Each of these points is supported with a separate web page detailing the charges and providing source references. All in all, it's a very neat package.

Hold Them Accountable operates as a 527 project dedicated to building public awareness of the lamentable BushCo record in Iraq. They have produced a very effective 30 second ad spot, entitled Terrible Mistakes, which was slated to begin airing in Wisconsin and West Virginia yesterday. You can see it here, and contribute to help expand its airings.

The site also provides an opportunity to sign and send a petition with suggested questions to the moderators for the upcoming Presidential Debates:

Dear Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill, and Bob Shieffer The American public deserves to know each candidate's full record. We ask that you make sure the following questions are addressed at this year's presidential debates:

What is the exit strategy for Iraq?
Why has the war been far costlier in terms of lives and dollars than was predicted?
Who has been held accountable for the disastrous decisions that have brought us to the situation today?
What does true accountability mean in an Administration?
Given that a significant number of our troops will have to be stationed in Iraq for the foreseeable future, what is the plan to handle the growing nuclear threat in North Korea? in Iran?
Why do so many experts believe the war in Iraq has distracted us from the true culprits behind 9/11 and made us less safe?

The site is well worth a visit.