Randy Scheunemann Needs to Go Anyway

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


randy-scheunemann.jpg Forget the almost comically obvious conflict-of-interest lobbying ties. Randy Scheunemann needs to get the boot from the McCain campaign for much more serious reasons.

Scheunemann served as president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a neoconservative front group created in 2002. CLI coordinated with the Bush White House to gin up public support for the Iraq war by buttressing and echoing the administration’s various dubious claims about the threat posed by Saddam, and the quickness and ease of a war to remove him.

Part of Scheunemann’s work for the CLI was promoting convicted embezzler and WMD fantasist Ahmad Chalabi as the “new Iraqi Ataturk,” and Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress as a “government in exile.” In a 2003 NewsHour interview, Scheunemann defended Chalabi’s “vision” for Iraq, claiming that Chalabi was opposed for “ideological reasons” by the State Department and the CIA, who, it turns out, were precisely correct about Chalabi’s untrustworthiness.

Scheunemann also managed to convince John McCain that Chalabi was “a patriot with the interest of Iraq at heart.”

That doesn’t sound like the guy you want as the No. 1 foreign policy adviser to a presidential candidate. Not a lot of good judgment being shown…

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate