Congressman Kucinich has opposed the war against Iraq from the very beginning. He was one of the brave democrats who voted against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002 and was the first to advance a concrete plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq:
http://www.kucinich.us/issues/bringourtroopshome.php"If we stay the course it will do damage to American security. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11 and had no weapons of mass destruction. It was wrong to go in and it's wrong to stay in. The demands of an occupation are overstretching our armed forces. And the extended deployment of reserve forces makes us vulnerable at home. The reserve call-ups include large numbers of firemen, policemen and other first responders who are needed for hometown security. Americans are asking, is there a way out? I say there is. This is my plan to get the UN in ... and the U.S. out of Iraq! This plan will bring our troops home within 90 days of UN approval, and strengthen American security.
"The following is my detailed plan to quickly bring all U.S. troops home from Iraq:
1. The United States must ask the United Nations to manage the oil assets of Iraq until the Iraqi people are self-governing.
2. The United Nations must handle all the contracts: No more Halliburton sweetheart deals, No contracts to Bush Administration insiders, No contracts to campaign contributors. All contracts must be awarded under transparent conditions.
3. The United States must renounce any plans to privatize Iraq. It is illegal under both the Geneva and the Hague Conventions for any nation to invade another nation, seize its assets, and sell those assets. The Iraqi people, and the Iraqi people alone must have the right to determine the future of their country's resources.
4. The United States must ask the United Nations to handle the transition to Iraqi self-governance. The UN must be asked to help the Iraqi people develop a Constitution. The UN must assist in developing free and fair elections.
5. The United States must agree to pay for what we blew up.
6. The United States must pay reparations to the families of innocent Iraqi civilian noncombatants killed and injured in the conflict.
7. The United States must contribute financially to the UN peacekeeping mission.
8. The United Nations, through its member nations, will commit 130,000 peacekeepers to Iraq on a temporary basis until the Iraqi people can maintain their own security.
9. UN troops will rotate into Iraq, and all U.S. troops will come home.
10. The United States will abandon policies of "preemption" and unilateralism and commit to strengthening the UN.
"I am working tirelessly to take America in a new direction, to gain approval of this plan at the United Nations, and to put it into action, bring all U.S. troops home in 90 days. Only if the United States takes a new direction will we be able to persuade the UN community to participate. Such a new direction is reflected in this 10-point plan.
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Congressman Kucinich is not afraid to play hardball with the White House. He has shown the same courage that it took to vote NO on the IWR by calling for Congress to shut off the funding for the illegal war against Iraq:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-dennis-kucinich/there-is-only-one-way-to-_b_35299.htmlThere is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds.
History and the law give a clear guide on how to end the war in Iraq.
In Campbell v. Clinton, a case in US District Court in 1999, twenty six members of Congress, including myself, sued President Clinton for continuing to prosecute the war against Serbia without a declaration of war. The Court ruled in favor of the Administration because it could find no constitutional impasse existed between the Legislative and the Executive branch requiring judicial intervention. Congress had appropriated funds for the war and therefore chose not to remove US forces. The 'Implied Consent' Theory of Presidential War Power Is Again Validated. Military Law Review, Vol. 161, No. 202, September 1999 Geoffrey S. Corn. South Texas College.
Congress can debate and pass legislation for redeployment, phased redeployment, or an over the horizon presence. Congress can vote for a resolution to end the war and a resolution to bring the troops home. However, none of this will have any legal effect. Each appropriations approval was a vote to continue the Iraq war.
The Administration does not have to pay any attention to Congress' attempt to guide the administrative conduct of the war. Once Congress gave its consent for military action, it literally did not have the authority to guide the conduct of the war. At this point, the only option Congress has to guide the conduct of the war is to withdraw approval for the war through a cut off. Even a substantial reduction of funds could leave open the door for a legal claim that Congress still intends to keep troops in Iraq. The Administration can rummage through the DOD budget and find money to keep its desired troop levels. Unless the Congress totally cuts off funds, it leaves itself open to an imposition of Presidential will through the Food and Forage Act of 1861 which gives the President the authority to directly spend money for troops in the field absent a congressional appropriation.
The Campbell case makes it clear that as long as Congress continues to fund the war, it cannot simultaneously argue that its will is being usurped with respect to the war powers. Each appropriations vote gives the President "implied consent" to continue the war. So it is clear that this war is not only the President's. This war belongs to Congress as well, to Democrats and Republicans alike, in the House and in the Senate. And, unless and until Congress decides to force a new direction by cutting off funds, the United States will continue to occupy Iraq and have a destabilizing presence in the Middle East region.
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Congressman Kucinich has called for the United States to join the community of nations and cooperate with the International Criminal Court, and to protect our Constitutional guarantees of judicial protections at home:
http://www.kucinich.us/floor_speeches/intl_milit_commission29sep.phpSpeaking during debate on S. 3930, Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congressman Kucinich said:
"Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri
for his defense of basic constitutional principles. I would say that the basic premise of military commissions, that the US military should try unlawful enemy combatants using draconian rules, that basic premise is false.
"The jury of commissioned military officers are not peers of these detainees. The detainees are accused of crimes against humanity and should be tried like all other such persons. The US should hand over these detainees to the International Criminal Court. The US should offer evidence that would be legal under our Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. This model of justice would set a precedent for other nations where the rule of law remains unfair, unjust, and inhumane.
"The wrong approach is to create a court system that has more in common with the nations that torture, jail, and hold indefinitely anyone without legitimate evidence.
more@link Congressman Kucinich has spoken out in favor of election reform and paper ballots:
http://www.kucinich.us/floor_speeches/elec_paper_ballots20sep.php"Mr. Speaker, today's Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 has nothing to do with protecting the right to vote and everything to do with restricting it. The real threat to our electoral system is not a contrived conspiracy of noncitizens illegally voting in Federal elections. The true threat is vulnerable electronic voting machines.
"It is machines with no paper trail. It is poll workers with inadequate training and resources. It is voter alienation because people have lost faith in the political process. Congress has the ability and the duty to act on real voting reform that addresses the real issues that mar our electoral system, issues researched and documented by countless activists and academics.
"There is a reason the article in the Washington Post, 'Major problems at Polls Feared,' does not once mention concerns about noncitizens voting. It is not a real issue of voting reform. If we want to strengthen democracy, we want to protect the right to vote. We want to reengage Americans in our government.
"We need real voting reform now. Throw out electronic voting machines, that Diebold technology election hacker's dream. Go to paper ballots, a paper trail. Make our election process honest again. Enough of stolen elections. Make every vote count, and let every vote be honestly counted."
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Congressman Kucinich has worked to realize a national health care plan offering affordable, top quality health care for all Americans:
http://www.kucinich.us/floor_speeches/hlth_break_free12jul.php"Mr. Speaker, at least 30% of the $3.2 trillion spent annually for health care in the United States goes to the for-profit system, while 50 million Americans, many of them working, are without health insurance. About $660 billion goes for corporate profits, executive salaries, stock options, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork.
"If we took all that money and we put it into a public health system, a national health care plan, we would have enough money to cover everything for everyone, all medically necessary care, including dental care, vision care, mental health care, prescription drugs, and long-term care.
"Health care is a big money-maker for corporate America, however, and people we know can't afford necessary health care, because premiums, co-pays, and deductibles keep going up. About half of the bankruptcies in America are health-care related.
"It is time for this country to break free of the shackles of the insurance companies, and we can do that by Members of Congress supporting H.R. 676, the Conyers-Kucinich-McDermott bill, which calls for a universal health care plan where all people are covered and, finally, we meet the moral challenge that this country has of providing health care for all."
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Congressman Kucinich has called for the closure of the notorious School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, one of the blackest marks on American foreign policy history in this hemisphere during the latter half of the twientieth century:
http://www.kucinich.us/floor_speeches/intl_close_sota9jun.php"This combat-training facility for security personnel in Latin America is notorious for graduating human rights offenders. In its 59 years of existence, the School of the Americas has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently targeted educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been victims of School of the Americas graduates.
"For example, on February 21-22, 2005, eight members of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in Uraba, Colombia, were brutally massacred. Witnesses identified the killers as members of the Colombian military's 17th Brigade, commanded by a School of the Americas graduate.
"In April of 2002, two School of the Americas graduates helped lead a failed coup in Venezuela against democratically elected President Hugo Chavez.
"In 1980, two of the three killers of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador were graduates of the School of the Americas. Also in 1980, 10 of the 12 officers responsible for the murder of 900 civilians in the Salvadoran village, El Mozote, were School of the Americas graduates.
"The abuses by School of the Americas graduates have local resonance with me, as well. In Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980, Clevelanders Sister Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan, along with two other churchwomen from the United States, Sister Maura Clarke and Sister Ita Forde, were raped and murdered by members of the armed forces of El Salvador. Three of the five officers involved were graduates of the School of the Americas.
"In the words of former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca, the School of the Americas is the 'biggest base for destabilization in Latin Americas.' It is time to close it."
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There is much more information regarding these and other issues on Congressman Kucinich's web page. Dennis Kucinich is a true progressive-- a man who walks the walk without flinching from the label "liberal." I am very proud to support his candidacy for President of the United States in 2008!
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