PATRICK MARTIN—While working people are looking for an alternative to the reactionary policies of the Trump administration, they will not find it in the Democratic Party, a political alliance of Wall Street, the military-intelligence apparatus, and privileged sections of the upper middle class. Congressional Democratic leaders have chosen to focus their efforts first on promoting the Russia investigation, based on bogus claims of massive Russian intervention in the 2016 elections. More recently, they sought to link Republican candidates to the Supreme Court nomination of reactionary jurist Brett Kavanaugh, who is under attack due to allegations of sexual misconduct in high school, invoking the themes of the #MeToo campaign.
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The reason for the indictment and persecution of Assange is that WikiLeaks published secret military documents, supplied by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, revealing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as diplomatic cables embarrassing to the US State Department because they detailed US attempts to manipulate and subvert governments around the world.
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PATRICK MARTIN—The 2018 elections could well see a similar process, but in reverse. Angered by the tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, the gutting of social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, the attacks on immigrants and democratic rights more generally, and Trump’s threats of military violence and even nuclear war, millions of working people, however reluctantly, will go to the polls to cast their ballots for the official “opposition,” the Democratic Party, which does not actually oppose Trump at all.
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PATRICK MARTIN—It is noteworthy in this context that so many of the military-intelligence candidates for Democratic congressional nominations boast of their roles in the war in Iraq and even, in some cases, present it as the high point of their professional and even personal lives.
Thus Elissa Slotkin, already referred to above, met her future husband, the pilot of an Apache helicopter gunship, while working as a CIA agent in Baghdad. Dan McReady, a Marine Corps veteran turned “clean energy” multi-millionaire, backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the Democratic nomination in the 9th District of North Carolina, even claims to have “found Jesus” in Iraq, where he was baptized in the waters of the Euphrates River.
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PATRICK MARTIN—It is notable that those candidates with a record in the military-intelligence apparatus, as well as civilian work for the State Department, Pentagon or National Security Council, do not hide their involvement, particularly in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They clearly regard working as a CIA agent in Baghdad, an Army special ops assassin in Afghanistan, or a planner for drone missile warfare in the White House or Pentagon as a star on their résumé, rather than something to conceal.
