Ad campaign slams critics of Iran deal

August 20, 2015 | Filed under: News,Politics | Posted by:

TV Ad Campaign in Support of Iran Nuclear Deal Challenges Credibility of Iran War Hawks:

“They were wrong about Iraq. Now they’re wrong about Iran.”

Watch “They’re Back”

With a vote expected in Congress in the coming weeks over the comprehensive, long-term nuclear deal reached between Iran and the P5+1 nations, led by the U.S., that will verifiably prevent Iran from acquiring the nuclear bomb, Americans United for Change has launched a major TV ad campaign warning that the same war hawks who misled the nation into an unnecessary, costly, and bloody war with Iraq and now beat the war drums against Iran are the last people to be trusted when it comes to America’s national security. See backup documentation below for “They’re Back”, a half a million dollar effort airing over the next two weeks in Los Angeles, CA; Miami and West Palm Beach, FL; Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; New York City; Providence, RI, as well as on local broadcast stations in Washington, DC.

Watch it by clicking here:

AD SCRIPT: They’re back. The same people that rushed us into war in Iraq want to sink the new agreement that would help stop war with Iran. The agreement – between America, five other world powers, and Iran — would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Experts say the deal has the toughest restrictions of any weapons agreement in history… but facts didn’t matter to the war-hawks then, and they don’t matter now. They were wrong about Iraq — now they’re wrong about Iran. They fooled us once. Don’t let them fool us again.

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on Februar...

Dick Cheney speaks at the rightwing rally, CPAC, in Washington D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“In 2002, so-called Neo-Cons like Dick Cheney assured the American people that military action in Iraq was absolutely necessary to stop an active nuclear weapons program, that Saddam colluded with al-Qaeda, that our troops would be welcomed as liberators, that conflict would be over in a matter of weeks and would largely pay for itself – and we know how credible those assurances turned out to be,” said Brad Woodhouse, President, Americans United for Change. “The same voices for sending American troops into harm’s way in Iraq are back to trash what nuclear policy experts call the best option for keeping a nuclear weapon out of Iran’s hands for decades to come. But why should anyone listen to the people who got everything wrong on Iraq and now claim war with Iran would be a cakewalk?”
“Next month, Congress will face another “Iraq War Moment.” While we continue to wait for any viable alternative from the opposition, the options before Congress are clear. Either vote for a deal that verifiably cuts off all pathways for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon – or allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon unchecked with the only alternative to stopping them being another war in the Middle East.”

Iran Deal Enjoys Broad Spectrum of Support Despite Loud Doomsday Prognostications from the Neo-Con Community

§ National Support: A national Public Policy Polling survey conducted July 23-24 found 54% of voters are supportive of the Iran deal, while only 38% are opposed to it. Similarly, it found 54% of voters want their members of Congress to vote to allow the agreement to move forward, compared to just 39% who would like to see it blocked. A national ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted July 16-19 found 56 percent of the public backs the Iran deal, while only 37 percent are opposed.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shares a ...

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shares a laugh with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney during his farewell parade at the Pentagon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

§ Nuclear Experts: According to the New York Times: Twenty-nine of the nation’s top scientists — including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers — wrote to President Obama on Saturday to praise the Iran deal, calling it innovative and stringent. The letter, from some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control, arrives as Mr. Obama is lobbying Congress, the American public and the nation’s allies to support the agreement. … The deal’s plan for resolving disputes, the letter says, greatly mitigates “concerns about clandestine activities.” … The letter notes criticism that the Iran accord, after 10 years, will let Tehran potentially develop nuclear arms without constraint. “In contrast,” it says, “we find that the deal includes important long-term verification procedures that last until 2040, and others that last indefinitely.” [NYT, August 8, 2015]

§ Retired Generals, Admirals: According to CBS News: President Obama’s administration got some backup on the Iran nuclear deal this week when three dozen retired generals and admirals published an open letter in the Washington Post in support of the agreement. “We, the undersigned retired military officers, support the agreement as the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter declared. “Military action would be less effective than the deal, assuming it is fully implemented. If the Iranians cheat, our advanced technology, intelligence and the inspections will reveal it, and U.S. military options remain on the table. And if the deal is rejected by America, the Iranians could have a nuclear weapon within a year. The choice is that stark.” [CBS News, August 12, 2015]

§ New York Voters: A Public Policy Polling survey conducted August 11-12 found 58% of New York City voters support the Iran deal, compared to only 35% who oppose it. Democrats (61/28) and independents (62/34) both give it strong support.

§ Rabbis: According to The Hill: “Over 300 rabbis sent a letter to Congress on Monday declaring their support for the Iran nuclear deal and urging lawmakers to endorse it. “We encourage the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to endorse this agreement,” read the Aug. 17 letter signed by 340 rabbis. The group in a statement described the signatories as rabbis “from all streams of Judaism.” The letter also sought to dispel the idea that all Jewish-American community leaders oppose the deal. “Most especially, we are deeply concerned with the impression that the leadership of the American Jewish community is united in opposition to the agreement. We, along with many other Jewish leaders, fully support this historic nuclear accord,” it said. [The Hill, August 17, 2015]

§ Jewish Americans: J Street, July 28, 2015: “A new national survey of 1,000 American Jews, conducted by GBA Strategies for J Street, finds that a large majority of Jews support the agreement recently reached between the United States, world powers, and Iran. The 20-point margin (60 percent to 40 percent) in favor of the agreement is consistent with the 18-point margin found in the LA Jewish Journal’s survey released last week, as well as the 18-point margin in J Street’s survey conducted prior to the agreement. Multiple surveys have shown with resounding clarity that American Jews firmly back the agreement, and now want Congress to approve it.”

In 2007, Americans United for Change helped lead the national Americans Against Escalation in Iraq coalition to bring a safe, responsible end to the Iraq War.

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“They’re Back”
Ad Back-Up
Americans United For Change
TV (:30)

FACTS

They’re back.

The same people that rushed us into war in Iraq want to sink the new agreement that would help stop war with Iran.

No Link to al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein

CLAIM: Former Vice President Dick Cheney: “We know that [Saddam Hussein] has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization.” [Meet the Press, March 14, 2003]

CLAIM: Washington Post, June 18, 2004: Referring to a New York Times front-page headline, “Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie,” [Cheney] said: “The fact of the matter is, the evidence is overwhelming.”

REALITY: CNN, March 13, 2008: ‘Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda not linked, Pentagon says’

No WMD

CLAIM: Cheney: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, against us.” [Speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002]

The Guardian, June 9, 2015: In a July 2001 memo to then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, [former Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld wrote: “Within a few years the US will undoubtedly have to confront a Saddam armed with nuclear weapons. Iran will almost certainly have a nuclear weapon sometime within the next five years, and that will change the balance in the region notably.”

CLAIM: Bolton: “The existence of Iraq’s [biological weapons] program is beyond dispute.” According to a November 20, 2001, Washington Post article, John Bolton — then the Bush administration’s undersecretary for arms control and international security — said at a biological weapons conference: “The United States strongly suspects that Iraq has taken advantage of three years of no U.N. inspections to improve all phases of its offensive biological weapons program. … The existence of Iraq’s program is beyond dispute.” [Media Matters, September 2, 2010]

CLAIM: Bolton: “We have very convincing evidence that Iraq maintains an extensive program for the production … of weapons of mass destruction.” The Chicago Tribune reported on January 25, 2003, that Bolton said “that the United States has evidence of Iraq’s maintenance of weapons of mass destruction that will be disclosed at an ‘appropriate time.’ The Tribune further reported that Bolton said, “We have very convincing evidence that Iraq maintains an extensive program for the production … of weapons of mass destruction.” [Media Matters, September 2, 2010]

CLAIM: President Bush, October 8, 2002: “We cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” [CNN, 10/8/2002]

REALITY: Associated Press, May 25, 2005: ‘CIA’s final report: No WMD found in Iraq’

REALITY: MSNBC, October 15, 2014: ‘Conservatives continue to get Iraqi WMD story wrong’

Iraq War Lasted More Than ‘Six Days’, U.S. Troops Were Not ‘Greeted as Liberators’

CLAIM: March 16, Vice President Cheney, on NBC’s Meet the Press: “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . (in) weeks rather than months.” [USA Today, April 1, 2003]

CLAIM: Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 2/7/2003: “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” [USA Today, April 1, 2003]

REALITY: Operation Iraqi Freedom was America’s third longest foreign war, officially spanning March 19, 2003 to December 2011, and resulted in 4492 U.S. casualties as of August 18, 2015.

Iraq War and Reconstruction Did Not Pay for Itself With Oil Revenues

CLAIM: Think Progress, MAR 14, 2010: Days after the U.S. invasion, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a congressional panel that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for reconstructing the country, i.e. a cost of the war. “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” he said.

REALITY: Reuters, March 14, 2013: The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, [according to a] study released by the [Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University].

Same Neo-Cons That Got Everything Wrong on Iraq Today Trying to Undermine Iran Nuclear Deal

Politico, 7/15/2015: Cheney: Iran deal makes ‘actual use of nuclear weapons’ more likely

Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 17, 2015: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the Iranian nuclear deal would increase funding for global terrorism … Rumsfeld, speaking to the Economic Club of Las Vegas on Friday at Caesars Palace … acknowledged he hadn‘t reviewed the nuclear deal worked out with Iran, he said he‘d reviewed some of the media coverage of it. Based on that review, he said the lifting of sanctions would free up billions of dollars for terrorism around the world, given Iran‘s role as a leading state sponsor of terrorism.”

John Bolton, L.A. Times op-ed, July 26, 2015: “[T]he real choice we are faced with is dealing with the consequences of military action or the consequences of a nuclear Iran. Neither is palatable, but the latter is far worse. If the real objective is stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons, preemptive military action is now inescapable.”

The agreement – between America, five other world powers, and Iran — would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Experts say the deal has the toughest restrictions of any weapons agreement in history… but facts didn’t matter to the war-hawks then, and they don’t matter now.

Vox, July 20, 2015: Asked ‘Is this a good deal?’ during an interview with Vox, Aaron Stein, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Royal United Services Institute said: “[The P5+1 Iran deal] makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote. It would require a Herculean effort of subterfuge and clandestine activity.”

New York Times, AUG. 8, 2015: ‘29 U.S. Scientists Praise Iran Nuclear Deal in Letter to Obama’ : Twenty-nine of the nation’s top scientists — including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers — wrote to President Obama on Saturday to praise the Iran deal, calling it innovative and stringent. The letter, from some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control, arrives as Mr. Obama is lobbying Congress, the American public and the nation’s allies to support the agreement. … The deal’s plan for resolving disputes, the letter says, greatly mitigates “concerns about clandestine activities.” … The letter notes criticism that the Iran accord, after 10 years, will let Tehran potentially develop nuclear arms without constraint. “In contrast,” it says, “we find that the deal includes important long-term verification procedures that last until 2040, and others that last indefinitely.”

They were wrong about Iraq — now they’re wrong about Iran.

They fooled us once. Don’t let them fool us again.

 

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