Same Old Bone and the Dogs that chase it
OK, well … as regards BushWarII, it’s pretty clear that Dubby’s won this round; sad but true — you know in your heart of hearts it would have taken a bigger Democratic presence than we have experienced to expect anything else, so you can’t be surprised.
Go ahead — spit!
I did.
We could end this war tomorrow if we cut off the money — we haven’t and we won’t. We could impeach both Bush and Cheney if Nancy would get out of the way — she won’t. And we wouldn’t be in this fix if Rahm “Clinton Academy” Emanuel of the Dem Congressional Campaign Committee hadn’t weaned out the actual progressive candidates last Fall in favor of the Blue Dog moderates. He took credit for Howard Dean’s “fifty state” campaign that energized the playing field … and he made sure the corporate “one size fits all” shoe fit those who were incoming Blue.
A blogger said today that he wouldn’t call the Dem’s cowards, but … perhaps .. co-defendant’s? Gotta say — they curl my lip, the lot of ‘em; and not just on Iraq. Name me the one’s who have taken a fever over our Constitutional assault — habeas, wiretap, yadda. Conyers, Feingold, Kucinich, Boxer? Pretty meager showing considering how many of these folks sit on the Hill and watch the landscape of liberty downgrade, day by day. Which presidential candidates on the Left seem upset about that? Heard anyone mention it? Seen anyone break a sweat??
The energy that’s driving the grassroots is a growing awareness, a serious understanding, of what’s at stake — the hired hands either don’t see it as we do, or don’t care … you choose; “inside looking out” has a certain bubbled quality to it, obviously … but it’s very hard for me to believe that these people are aware of just how FREAKED we all are, out here. I’m betting they aren’t — and I expect they’re gonna be REALLY SURPRISED when they get a sense of just how serious we think this is!
Here’s a jump-start on your weekend reads — a big collection including Krugman, David Sirota and Arianna; also, information on a “phone swarm” activist/op and a possible transition within MoveOn, both of which we should support. At the bottom, there’s an interesting link for a progressive strategy to replace the Blue Dogs … check it out.
Jude
Olbermann: Surge debate already over, Bush wins ’shell game’
David Edwards and Muriel Kane, Raw Story
Friday September 7, 2007
Since last spring, the White House has been saying the nation should reserve debate about America’s presence in Iraq and the possibility of withdrawal until after General Petraeus delivers his report on the effectiveness of the surge. However, according to Keith Olbermann, “Today we learned that by then it will have been too late. … The president has already made up his mind. We are staying.”
In an interview with USA Today on Wednesday, White House chief of staff John Bolten confirmed that “Bush wants to make ‘it possible for his successor β whichever party that successor is from β to have a sustained presence in the Middle East.’”
“America’s purpose in Iraq now officially, just to be in Iraq,” Olbermann commented.
Olbermann’s larger point, however, concerned the tactics by which the administration regularly avoids any debate of its policies. “Whether it be about disbanding the [Iraqi] army or about the surge, we have seen this congenital aversion to debate before,” he stated. “The shell game is an old and practiced one, the nation debating withdrawal while the administration has only seemed to.”
Olbermann reminded viewers of events last fall, when Bush indicated he was taking the Baker-Hamilton Report seriously and considering all options, including the possibility of a drawdown. White House press secretary Tony Snow promised reporters, “Wait until you see the whole package, and then the debate will begin.” But just days later, the surge was announced, effectively forestalling debate of any kind.
The same thing is happening now with the build-up to the Petraeus Report. “The administration is expected to cite a 75% decrease in sectarian attacks in Iraq,” Olbermann stated. “That sounds great, does it not? But it appears to have been accomplished by severely tightening the definition of a sectarian attack.” For example, mass bombings are no longer counted in the totals, only isolated murders.
Olbermann was joined by Newsweek editor and political analyst Jonathan Alter, who called the claim of a 75% reduction “the big lie” and “a joke” and said “they’re cooking the books yet again.”
“We’re going to be sold a bill of goods in the next couple of weeks,” Alter concluded. “The Democrats have been cowed by this minimal progress. … They’re going to have — and deserve — real problems with the Democratic base for not showing more guts on Iraq this fall. September was supposed to be the moment of truth. It’s not going to work out that way.”
The following video [open link] is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast on September 6. ++
Bush Wins Again
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
Friday, September 7, 2007
[snipped — open link for complete article]
Despite everything, President Bush continues to be able to set the terms of the debate in Washington.
Consider how the talk now is mostly about when to end the “surge” — not when to end the war. How did that happen?
It’s a victory for Bush and his attempts to buy time. In time, there will either be progress in Iraq — or the war will become someone else’s problem.
In December, after a Republican electoral rout and a devastating report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, the debate shifted briefly to how — not when — to withdraw. But then Bush announced his surge of troops — and asked the press and the public to give it time. In May, it seemed like September would be a decisive deadline, with some Republicans agreeing that, barring significant political progress in Iraq, they would join Democrats in demanding withdrawal.
Now, however, the big news is that Bush’s commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, is willing to contemplate a possible drawdown of one brigade early next year — if the circumstances are right. That’s one combat brigade out of the five that make up the surge; one out of 20 such brigades in country in total; or less than 5,000 of the 168,000 troops currently in Iraq.
And this is the plan despite the fact that a majority of the U.S. public, according to the polls, favors an immediate or gradual withdrawal of all troops from Iraq — and has for well over a year.
Nevertheless, Petraeus has apparently emboldened congressional Republicans to stand firm behind the president, and has put Democratic leaders in a tizzy. So unless those quavering Dems suddenly grow some spine, it looks like there won’t even be any serious debate in Washington about a complete withdrawal until next spring or so. And at that point, of course, the race to succeed Bush will so dominate the news that he can stand back and let others talk themselves blue about it while he stalls some more and dreams of Texas.
[open link for] The Coverage… ++
Democratically Controlled Congress Stands on the Brink of Irrelevance on Iraq
Joshua Holland, AlterNet
September 7, 2007
Next week, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and General David Petraeus, the army’s counter-insurgency guru, will brief Congress on the Bush administration’s claims of progress in Iraq. At stake is not only the upper hand in the political debate over the continuing occupation, but an enormous amount of money — $147 billion — that was supposedly conditioned on tangible measures of progress, specifically 18 “benchmarks” attached to the 2007 supplemental spending bill.
According to a report by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), only three of those benchmarks have been met, and those were among the minor ones (The White House has promised to “water down” the GAO’s findings). In addition to rampant insecurity throughout much of the country, Iraq’s political situation is, objectively, a disaster, and most Iraqis agree that U.S. troops cause more violence than they prevent.
But despite the reality on the ground, the administration last week threw a Hail-Mary pass, announcing that it would ask for another $50 billion for war-fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan through next Spring. That’s in addition to $147 billion already requested for the two countries.
There’s no reason to believe the administration won’t get it — consider how many times congressional Democrats have uttered some variant of “It’s time we stopped giving Bush a blank check for Iraq” as they signed a series of blank checks for Iraq. Bush has proved that he can continue moving the goalposts again and again without being called on it by the media, and Congress has shown that it will let him, even eight months after the Democratic take-over of Capitol Hill.
It has become a game. The reality is that there is no $50 billion supplemental, and there won’t be for several weeks (if at all this year). The stories about the new funding request are White House “plants,” announced on the eve of the much-anticipated Iraq progress report in order to show confidence in the face of waning public support for the occupation and, more importantly, to divert the national conversation from the failure of the troop escalation — a failure that should lead to a debate about how to exit Iraq with the minimum of damage — to a new debate about whether higher troop levels should remain until next spring. You don’t have to look too hard to see the goalposts moving.
It’s much like the surge itself, a stop-gap measure that nobody seriously believed had a chance of changing the ugly situation in Iraq. It was, however, spectacularly successful in distracting the country from its post-election discourse about ending the occupation, focusing instead on the now-familiar argument that war opponents should wait until September’s progress report. At that point, the tacit understanding was that Congress would rise up and demand an end to the war if the 18 benchmarks weren’t met. Now that September is here, we’re supposed to focus on the next shiny object.
The Democrats are reacting to this charade by conceding the battle before it begins, with Michigan’s Carl Levin offering to remove a deadline from the amendment he and Jack Reed, D-R.I., co-sponsored (the deadline was already riddled with loopholes) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offering to “compromise” with Senate Republicans by dropping his already watered-down demand for a spring “withdrawal.”
As Dick Durbin, the senate majority whip, told the Chicago Tribune, “When it comes to the budget, I face a dilemma that some of my colleagues do.” He opposes the war, but “felt that I should always provide the resources for the troops in the field.”
That mean throwing good money (and lives) after bad. Here’s the reality of the “surge”:
Iraqi civilian and U.S. and Iraqi military and police deaths are up
The Iraqi government is tottering, and there is credible talk of an impending coup
The Iraqi people, still without regular electricity and water and fearing for their lives whenever they go out to buy groceries, want the United States out
40 percent of the middle class has fled the country
For more details, see “A Preview to General Petraeus’ DC Dog-and-Pony Show” in AlterNet’s War on Iraq special coverage.
What all this means is that unless the Democratic majority makes a dramatic turnaround and stops playing along with the White House — a risky move, but one that’s within their Constitutional authority — they, along with the entire institution, will no longer be relevant voices in the debate over Iraq.
Consider, after all, that the “Petraeus” report is being prepared by the White House; that Petraeus is a reliable partisan who’s inspired talk of a GOP presidential run and who wrote an op-ed on the eve of the 2004 elections in which he promised that the momentum was shifting in Iraq and said that local security forces were improving every day; that Petraeus has said that he “softened” the intelligence community’s assessment of the security situation in Baghdad, while he’s told people privately that he needs ten years to put down the insurgency.
That Congress is treating the report as a serious and impartial analysis of the situation in Iraq is essentially an acknowledgment that the Republicans have a working majority on issues of war and peace, regardless of the fact that the Democrats control the agenda. Significant majorities of Democrats have voted to end the occupation (to one degree or another) on different occasions so far, and each time one or two dozen “Bush Dog” Democrats crossed the aisle to kill the efforts to get out of Dodge.
We’re seeing a caucus that is controlled by fear — fear that the hawks who were responsible for the disaster in Iraq will shift the blame their way; fear that arguing against U.S. militarism will make them look like wimps, or traitors, in the eyes of voters; fear that they’ll be proven disastrously wrong and be held responsible for the often fancifully exaggerated consequences of ending the occupation that the hawks whisper about in excited tones; terror that the wrong move could cost them the electoral advantage that everyone agrees they’ll have in 2008 or, worse, prompt a right-wing backlash like that which ushered in the Reagan/Bush era after Vietnam.
But calling out the Democrats for their feckless support of the occupation isn’t enough. Opponents of the war face a perfect political storm in DC that transcends party politics.
The backdrop is a presidential race in which the leading Democrats appear to be intent on proving that they can match their opponents’ mindless belligerence, and the leading Republicans feel that they have no choice but to embrace Bush’s war or face the wrath of GOP primary voters.
The debate has also been influenced by a massive propaganda campaign that’s allowed the White House and its backers to claim success in Iraq out of thin air. As Greg Sargeant pointed out in a must-read item, if one looks at “the totality of media’s performance this summer on the Iraq debate, it becomes a good deal clearer just how awful it’s all been — and just how complicit these failings were in helping to shift the debate” on the Iraq “surge.”
CBS Evening News’ anchor Katie Couric said this week of Iraq: “We hear so much about things going bad, but real progress has been made there in terms of security and stability.” The contrast between Couric’s bubbly credulity and Walter Cronkite’s famous 1968 broadcast in which he concluded of the Vietnam war that the US was “mired in stalemate” couldn’t be more pronounced.
At the end of the day, Washington’s strategic class is frozen, unable to concede defeat because to admit that the U.S. project in Iraq has failed is to admit that in the 21st century, the most powerful country in the history of humanity can be humbled by a small dysfunctional state whose armed forces it destroyed more than a decade earlier, a country that it spent 12 years slowly and leisurely strangling under some of the harshest sanctions in history before shocking and awing it a second time, dismantling its government and hanging its erstwhile dictator in the process.
To admit that is to beg the question of whether maintaining all that costly hard power is really worth it in the first place. Leaving Iraq means begging the question of whether America is comfortable with its neocolonial policies, and that’s a debate that Bush — like every imperial-minded U.S. president since Thomas Jefferson — wants desperately to avoid.
Ultimately, while Congress is sidelining itself on the most important issue of our time, it will be the Iraqis — Iraqis from across the country’s political spectrum — who will eventually force a U.S. withdrawal, either by negotiation or by violence, just as they kicked out the Brits before us and the Turkmen, Ottomans and Safavids before them. The tragedy is that a little bit of courage on the part of our own law-makers could go a long way towards making that inevitable withdrawal a lot less painful than it is likely to be. ++
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
Are Petraeus and Westmoreland Birds of a Feather?
Ray McGovern, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 07 September 2007
Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives
Matt Renner, t r u t h o u t | Report
9/07/07
[snipped — open link for complete article]
…How Emanuel came to his decisions about which candidates to support against Democratic opponents is known only to Emanuel and his staff. Emanuel declined direct comment on this story. But an examination of individual races reveals a pattern of financial and political support for wealthy conservative candidates and an assault on their grassroots-supported opponents who were running on platforms that included a full withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
[…]
The New Democratic Majority
While Emanuel is given credit for turning power over to the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, the majority is fractured.
Many of the candidates that Emanuel helped elect have joined with a group of self-styled conservative Blue Dog Democrats and have cast key votes with Republicans and stymied Democratic efforts to end the occupation of Iraq and the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
Thirteen of the Democratic members of the House elected in 2006 joined The Blue Dog Coalition; a group that, according to its spokesperson, has no official stance on withdrawal from Iraq or the president’s warrantless wiretapping program. However, 30 out of 47 of the Blue Dog members broke with the majority of Democrats and cast votes in favor of the recent Protect America Act, a bill that greatly expanded the power of the executive branch to spy on Americans. The caucus also broke with the majority of Democrats when 40 of the Blue Dog members voted to continue funding the occupation of Iraq without a timetable for withdrawal.
In an interview shortly after his election, freshman Blue Dog member Tim Mahoney told the Charlotte Sun, a local paper from his district, that he attended a meeting with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and told her “The president should be free to maintain troops in Iraq, if the purpose is to thwart terrorism.” ++
Time to Take a Stand
Paul Krugman, NYT via WelcomeToPottersville
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq β as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.
Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.
There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.
First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.
So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.
Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.
Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.
I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”
But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”
Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.
Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.
In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate β but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters β political cover.
And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.
One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds. ++
On Iraq, What’s More Disgusting: Being Lied To, Or Hearing the Truth?
David Sirota, HuffPo
September 6, 2007
If you read the news very carefully, you can see exactly what is going on inside the Washington debate over the Iraq War. One party is lying, and one party is telling the truth - but which ones are doing what may surprise you (or, perhaps, not).
First, the lie, otherwise known as the Innocent Bystander Fable.
In a story headlined “Democrats Retreat on War End,” The Politico notes that congressional Democrats are - once again - moving towards endorsing a legislative effort to cut the most unpopular president in contemporary American history a blank check to continue the most unpopular war in contemporary American history. Within this story, comes the lie to justify it all:
- “The strategic shift is certain to anger some war critics, but it reflects the reality that Democrats lack the votes to force President Bush’s hand. ‘We are trying to manage expectations that we can’t end the war today or next week or next month,’ said one Democrat involved in the discussions. ‘We have to make sure everyone understands that.’” (emphasis added)
Anyone who has read the U.S. Constitution knows this is a fabrication. Congress has the power of the purse, meaning it has the ultimate veto over the war. Democrats control both chambers of Congress, meaning they have the ultimate veto over the war. If they chose not to schedule a vote to give Bush a blank check, the war would end. The whole idea that they “can’t end the war” is the highest form of dishonesty. It is the Innocent Bystander Fable - the oft-repeated lie where Democrats claim they are powerless even though they control an entire branch of the government, and their public efforts to try “to make sure everyone understands” the lie as truth is just another insult in a long string of insults (the latest of which is the one where Democrats have the audacity to suddenly portray a non-binding bill by Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar that Democrats themselves had previously called “toothless” as now - without any change at all - supposedly a heroic bill that ends the war).
How about the honesty? That comes from the Republicans. Here’s what a top Senate GOP leadership aide told Roll Call about the Iraq War:
- “Our strategy in Iraq, in the short term, causes a lot of pain, but in the long term, prevents a lot of problems for the party.” (emphasis added)
Wow. I mean…wow. The Republican Party is now on record admitting that even though the war is “caus[ing] a lot of pain” (ie. American casualties, Iraqi casualties will refuse to support ending, weakened American national security, etc.), it will nonetheless stonewall efforts to end the war specifically because continuing the war indefinitely “prevents a lot of problems for the party.” GOP operatives may try to spin their way out of that one post facto - but no amount of spin can change such a crystal clear direct quote like that.
I can’t tell what’s more disgusting: Being lied to by Democrats about their supposed powerlessness, or having the GOP tell the American people the war must continue and American troops must continue getting killed, all because it is supposedly good for the Republican Party’s political fortunes. What I can say is this: It is clear that less than a year after a national election that saw the American people demand an end to the war, both parties are going out of their way to continue it - because to folks in Washington, D.C., no matter how many people die, the whole tragic affair is all just a big game. ++
Dems Hold All the Card on Iraq, So Why Are They Folding?
Arianna Huffington, HuffPo
September 6, 2007
Remember earlier this summer when Harry Reid and the Democrats vowed they were “going to hold the president’s feet to the fire” on Iraq? Well, now it appears they’ve decided to play footsie with the White House instead and take what one Democratic strategist calls “a more nuanced approach” that includes backing off demands to set a firm withdrawal date.
In anticipation of next weeks’ inevitably sunny side up — and statistically cherry-picked — report from Gen. Petraeus, the White House has cranked up its spin machine, and the Democrats are falling into their default duck-and-cover mode.
So we get Bush hopping off a plane in Australia after his eight-hour photo-op layover in Iraq and telling the Deputy Prime Minister: “We’re kicking ass” — while Democratic leaders let it be known they are hoping “to manage expectations” by lowering their sights on Iraq.
Bush is certainly not kicking ass in Iraq but next week he may be kicking ass in Washington.
Just last week, Reid was promising “I will not let these Republicans hide. When the Senate returns to Washington, I will force them to take vote, after vote, after vote on bringing an end to the war in Iraq.”
Now the air on Capitol Hill is full of talk of “bipartisan compromise” and even Ken Salazar’s insipid proposal, which Reid himself had previously rejected as a “toothless tiger,” is getting renewed interest.
“I can’t believe how Democrats are playing this game,” a Republican strategist told me the other night. “They hold all the cards — and they are folding.”
This spineless approach is the last thing Democrats need. Do they have no memory of 2002 and 2004, when caution and timidity led to defeat? If 2008 doesn’t turn out to be a landslide for Democrats, it will be because of the seeds of caution being planted now.
Perhaps the weight of Katie Couric’s take on Iraq — “real progress has been made there in terms of security and stability” — was too much to bear. In the same way that once Cronkite turned against Vietnam Johnson knew the war was lost, it appears the Democrats believe that once Couric embraced the surge, it could no longer be resisted.
So next week, the collective wisdom of 16 intelligence agencies and the Government Accounting Office may be eclipsed by the cherry-picked stats of Petraeus and the administration. As the Washington Post reports, apparently certain kinds of violence in Iraq just don’t count in the eyes of the administration. Literally — they aren’t being counted. Shot in the head from the front? Doesn’t count. Shiite on Shiite bloodshed? Doesn’t count (this despite escalating warfare between rival Shi’a groups in Basra). Sunni on Sunni violence? Doesn’t count. As those radicals in the Iraq Study Group put it in their report: “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.”
And good political strategy is difficult to make when you are constantly wondering how your decisions will look in a future attack ad. “This administration’s capabilities of having Rose Garden press conferences and the kind of punitive rhetoric they’re using is concerning to Members,” explained Rep. Ellen Tauscher. “I don’t think we have a vehicle [for withdrawal] that will get 60 votes in the Senate. In the absence of that, we’re naked.”
Well, better naked than castrated.
The Democrats’ thinking on this is unfathomable — it makes no sense logically, morally or politically. They have the majority of the American people wanting to bring this war to an end; a constant stream of tragic news from Iraq; and a president committed to “stay the course” despite all evidence that the course we are on is taking us over the cliff.
It’s time for Democrats to stop sounding the retreat on ending the war and actually pay attention to John McCain, who said that if they “are serious that we ought to stop the war” they should “bring up a bill to cut off the funding and end it.”
McCain is right. Exercising their Constitutional power of the purse is exactly what Democrats need to do if they are serious about ending the war. And if they are serious about winning in 2008. ++
Will Democratic Leadership use Petraeus to Betray Us?
xxdr_zombiexx via Smirking Chimp
Sep 6 2007
As a child I would ask for things that I wanted. If I asked for something my parents weren’t comfortable with - or just didn’t want to be bothered with - they’d say “We’ll see”. It didn’t take long for me to grasp that as “no”. Which is ok for a parent to tell their child.
But every time I hear “September” and then “Spring” when our “leaders” talk about ending the Iraq Occupation, I think of my parents saying “We’ll see”. And that’s NOT ok.
Team Bush - the Bush Administration and their enables in BOTH parties - have ABSOLUTELY NO intention of ever leaving Iraq if we do not force them….somehow.
We should not be having to worry about our Democratic leaders repeatedly giving Team Bush everything they want…but, clearly, we do and that’s not acceptable.
- Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq
After short-circuiting consideration of votes on some bipartisan proposals on Iraq before the August break, senior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, “If we have to make the spring part a goal, rather than something that is binding, and if that is able to produce some additional votes to get us over the filibuster, my own inclination would be to consider that.”
Democrats would need to lure the 60 senators in order to cut off a likely Republican filibuster.
Spring, eh?
Isn’t April the new September? April is in the Spring.
- The emerging proposal by Mr. Levin and Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, would still order the administration to begin pulling at least some combat troops out of Iraq, probably by the end of the year. It is not clear what other provisions the measure may include.
“We’ll see”, the game my parents played with me as a child, is the game being played by Bush, the GOP, and the Democratic Leadership. And it looks to me that, despite all the “we’re working hard against the GOP” rhetoric, they plan to go right along with whatever words spill out of Petraeus’s pie hole.
Petraeus is the new Tenet, apparently, so his words will be used to make the decisions, which will doubtlessly turn out wrong, because the ENTIRE goal - for the GOP, at least - is to STAY IN IRAQ. They have no intention of leaving.
And for whatever reason, the Democratic Leadership appears to be committed to investing the effort to aid them while appearing to “keep pressure on them” the whole time.
- Mr. Reid and other Democrats said they would continue to press their preferred approach of setting a date to have most combat troops out of Iraq even while pursuing a compromise with Republicans. Party strategists say that withdrawal is a top priority of the party’s anti-war base and that polls continue to show that much of the public favors a withdrawal from Iraq.
It’s clear they know what we want.It’s less clear that they genuinely intend to do anything other than placate us while they leave things just as they are.
More and more it has the appearance of a charade. Posturing and rhetoric and footdragging and stalling and goalpost moving, and distractions and new requests for more time and more money.
They have NO intention of bringing troops home, no intention of stopping the illegal occupation that is ruining America.
Maybe Harry IS trying to bring troops home - I cannot really tell anymore, such is the disconnect between words and actions.
Either we have a voice or we don’t.
So far, our demands are ignored. We have heard whining from Democratic leadership about our anger towards their FISA cave-in but I do not believe for a moment that this is a “motivational level of pain”.
I think it’s lip service at best. Possibly lip service uttered in hopes of us backing off, leaving them alone and continuing to send them money (which should stop, really).
So..no. Our demands have yet to be addressed, let alone met.
The message should be “Screw Petraeus” and whatever he has to say. We’ve known for months he’s just going to regurgitate what he’s been told to regurgitate and the White House has written what he is to say. Its a fucking farce and pretty much YOU ALL KNOW THAT.
* We demand the troops be extracted and brought home and we aren’t getting it.
* We demand an end to the illegal occupation, and we aren’t getting it.
* We demand impeachment proceedings against Dick Cheney and George Bush for forcing us into this debacle, but - you guessed it! - we ain’t getting it.
Protest, dammit!
So, honestly, this whole writing exercise was about today’s Phone Protest. I am very displeased that a simple and direct protest action gets far less attention than some fucked-up gay repub. Who cares?
The Democratic Leadership needs a giant fire lit under their asses TODAY.
They have reported feeling the pain of our bitter feedback about their FISA capitulation, so you KNOW they are getting our feedback. I am unsure how much it motivates them to make the decisions we elected (read “hired”) to make.
It’s called “Representation”, I think. We elect people to go to our Capitol and place votes that reflect what WE want. Not what the President wants or what the Republicans want, or even what Harry or Nancy themselves want.
They are to do what we want. That’s they whole point of America: No taxation without representation, remember?
Phones, Faxes and E-mails.
Harry Reid
Phone: 202-224-3542
Fax: 202-224-7327
NO conventional e-mail. Use his contact page
John Conyers
Phone: (202) 225-5126
Fax: (202) 225-0072
e-mail:
john.conyers@mail.house.gov
Nancy Pelosi
Phone: (202) 225-4965
Fax: (202) 225-8259
e-mail:
AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
Call them repeatedly.
I have wanted to get a bit more support for this here at the “Activist” site but people seem too preoccupied with poll numbers of presidential wannabes and gay republicans. It’s not really addressing the crises at hand, but what do I know? Perhaps Obama would bring the troops home before 2010. The problem is they never should have been there to begin with, and the occupation is illegal and killing innocent people.
Plus Bush HAS to be damaged. Impeached, tarred - something. He cannot be allowed to complete his “term”. If he complets his term it’s as good as saying everything he did is OK with you and me and thats BULLSHIT.
Perhaps Chris Floyd is right:
- The Republic you wanted — and at one time might have had the power to take back — is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it’s not there. It was kidnapped in December 2000, raped by the primed and ready exploiters of 9/11, whored by the war pimps of the 2003 aggression, gut-knifed by the corrupters of the 2004 vote, and raped again by its “rescuers” after the 2006 election. Beaten, abused, diseased and abandoned, it finally died. We are living in its grave.
The annus horribilis of 2007 has turned out to be a year of triumph for the Bush Faction — the hit men who delivered the coup de grΓ’ce to the long-moribund Republic. Bush was written off as a lame duck after the Democrat’s November 2006 election “triumph” (in fact, the narrowest of victories eked out despite an orgy of cheating and fixing by the losers), and the subsequent salvo of Establishment consensus from the Iraq Study Group, advocating a de-escalation of the war in Iraq. Then came a series of scandals, investigations, high-profile resignations, even the criminal conviction of a top White House official. But despite all this — and abysmal poll ratings as well — over the past eight months Bush and his coupsters have seen every single element of their violent tyranny confirmed, countenanced and extended.
Are we dead yet?
We do appear to be just coasting along on momentum for now but from the social services safety net to the bridges and levees and other infrastructure, I see America crumbling before my eyes.
So.. are you going to call or not?
If nothing else, would you keep me company? ++
Do Democrats Need an Intervention?
Scarecrow, FireDogLake
Fri Sep 7, 2007
I was always told that it was both wise and good manners not to intervene with parents who seem to be making every mistake in the book with their spoiled children. The Democrats have been observing that rule on the theory that the badly behaved children occupying the White House are not their kids; Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove, Gonzales and etc. were, from a political standpoint, the Republicans’ problem. With only a few exceptions, Democrats have never been willing to argue that the White House belonged to all of us and not to the most dangerous segment of the Republican party.
Using the 2006 elections as a guide in which the public thumped the White House and Republicans for their conceit, childish arrogance and all around bad behavior, the Democrats have been acting as though letting the wayward children do whatever they want will work for them again in 2008. The implicit assumption is that somehow, the country will survive having the most irresponsible, reckless, lawless and dishonest Administration any of us has ever seen, and the Democrats can clean up the mess when they get in. But the costs of this strategy to the country, and to our Constitution, have been heavy.
It has not yet dawned on many Democrats that responsibility for everything the immature and reckless frat-boy and his dangerously reckless friends are doing may actually pass to them in January 2009. It won’t be seen as the Republicans’ problem; it will be theirs, and the American people will expect them to deal with it. If the 2008 elections go as the pundits are predicting, the Republicans will cease to be the irresponsible parents and the Democrats will have to deal with the unprecedented catastrophe this President has made of everything he and his dangerous friends have touched.
It is the corollary to Powell’s Pottery Barn rule: The Bush/Cheney regime broke it, but the Democrats will own it. And if that is the rule, one would think that the most important strategy for the Democrats now is to do everything they can to prevent the White House occupants from doing any further damage to the country.
Their votes on Iraq funding and the gutting of FISA, and their caving again on Iraq tell us the Democrats do not yet understand this rule. They don’t seem to think it’s their job to defend the Constitution from the Bush/Cheney assaults. They’ve essentially given Iraq to Bush and Cheney to play with, and they’ve given them the US Army to destroy as though we’re dealing with toy soldiers and not real human beings.
There is nothing more clear about the White House Iraq strategy than their plan to pass on the Iraq fiasco to the next President. The President himself has told us that’s exactly what he intends to do, and he repeated it to his biographer β “I’m playing for October/November,” he said, explaining that he wants to lock in the next President to an indefinite and substantial presence in Iraq. The Republicans seem to think he’s succeeded. Remember, we’re dealing with a President who thinks “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq, matching his Vice President’s view that the “insurgency is in its last throes” and Rumfeld’s belief that we’re just dealing with a few “dead enders.” They are a delusional lot.
But even if the Democrats assume there probably isn’t much they can do now to fix the Iraq calamity, they might at least consider preventing the Administration from making it much worse. And for heaven’s sake, they shouldn’t do anything that would encourage or authorize the White House to start another war and lead us into another calamity, another quagmire, and in the process endanger US troops stuck in Iraq and further undermine the security of the United States. This doesn’t seem to be rocket science, it’s just common sense.
When it comes to the Middle East, the Democrats are still being polite guests instead of responsible parents. Their Iraq funding efforts in the Senate appear confined solely to finding 60 votes for something, anything, without articulating a single principle or goal that would actually keep things from getting worse, let alone make them better.
If Democrats have essentially conceded they will inherit the full catastrophe of Iraq, then they should have the good sense not to allow the Administration to start yet another war to pass on to them. The first priority of any defense funding bill should be to include language disavowing any authorization, either in that bill or in prior authorizations, for starting an aggressive war against another country. Congress should remove any legal argument that the Administration has authority to engage in military actions against Iran (or Pakistan or . . .) without coming back to Congress, making the case, and getting explicit authorization.
That seems the minimum the Democrats should demand for accepting responsibility for what is becoming their war. And if they can’t insist on that minimal degree of accountability, then then don’t deserve our support. ++
Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq
CARL HULSE, The New York Times
September 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 β With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.
After short-circuiting consideration of votes on some bipartisan proposals on Iraq before the August break, senior Democrats now say they are willing to rethink their push to establish a withdrawal deadline of next spring if doing so will attract the 60 Senate votes needed to prevail.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, “If we have to make the spring part a goal, rather than something that is binding, and if that is able to produce some additional votes to get us over the filibuster, my own inclination would be to consider that.”
Democrats would need to lure the 60 senators in order to cut off a likely Republican filibuster.
The emerging proposal by Mr. Levin and Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, would still order the administration to begin pulling at least some combat troops out of Iraq, probably by the end of the year. It is not clear what other provisions the measure may include.
But Mr. Levin, who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee and who met Wednesday with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said a compromise may be worth making. It would allow Congress to assert its own voice on Iraq policy, after falling short of that goal in most such votes throughout the year, he said.
The willingness to consider alternatives represents a shift by Democrats and is a recognition of changing political and practical realities they face in grappling with Iraq and its future.
Democrats had been counting on more Republicans to make a clean break from the president after the summer recess, but the White House has managed, at least temporarily, to hold on to much of its support.
Some Democrats have concluded that their decision earlier this summer to thwart votes on alternatives left them open to criticism that they were being intransigent. Democrats had wanted to keep pressure on Republicans over the summer by denying them votes on Iraq. Now, with the recess over, Democratic leaders are more willing to allow alternatives to a hard withdrawal date to reach the floor to keep pressure on President Bush.
Mr. Levin and other Democrats said this week that they were reaching out to Republicans who had expressed reservations about Mr. Bush’s policy to generate momentum for a proposal by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, to begin to remove at least a limited number of troops from Iraq by the end of the year.
Republicans and Democrats are also discussing ways to tweak a bipartisan plan by Senators Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, and Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, to address Democratic concerns that it did not have enough teeth. That plan, which would enact the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, is drawing new backing in the House from Republicans looking for an alternative to the status quo.
“I think there is a general feeling that people would like to pull something together that would have bipartisan support,” Mr. Salazar said.
In addition, Democrats want to try again on a proposal by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, to prohibit troops from being returned to Iraq unless they have spent at least an identical amount of time back in the United States. The plan attracted 56 votes in July.
Mr. Reid, who has had preliminary discussions with Mr. Warner, acknowledged that there was new interest in trying to coalesce around a middle-ground proposal, but he said there was no agreement on a plan. “That’s not there yet,” he said.
Mr. Reid and other Democrats said they would continue to press their preferred approach of setting a date to have most combat troops out of Iraq even while pursuing a compromise with Republicans. Party strategists say that withdrawal is a top priority of the party’s anti-war base and that polls continue to show that much of the public favors a withdrawal from Iraq.
The timing of future Iraq votes remains uncertain. Leaders in both the House and the Senate appear inclined to allow Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, the top two Americans in Iraq, to present their findings next week on conditions there and give lawmakers time to digest them before moving forward.
Democratic officials say Mr. Warner’s approach could provide their best opening, allowing Congress to approve a start date for withdrawal without setting a deadline for completing the job. Most Republicans and several Democrats have said they are uncomfortable with such a deadline.
“Warner is where the play is,” said one Democratic official familiar with the party’s thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to discuss internal deliberations publicly.
Both Republicans and Democrats said that talks of any compromise remained in the early stages but that they believed there would be new potential for finding a consensus once the administration’s reports were aired. “I will do the best I can to work with other members of the Senate to come up with a bipartisan resolution,” said Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, one Republican in the sights of Democrats.
Mr. Levin, the Armed Services Committee chairman, said he detected substantial desire among his Republican colleagues to force a change in Iraq. “We just have to talk to more people to see what it is that can get us over the filibuster,” he said. “That is key. If we can get up to 60, that would be a major step.” ++
MoveOn ponders taking on Democratic incumbents
Klaus Marre, The Hill
September 06, 2007
MoveOn.org is asking its members whether it should support primary challengers of anti-war Democrats whom the group says have not been sufficiently forceful in their opposition to current Iraq policy.
In an e-mail sent Thursday, the MoveOn.org political action team asks members to provide input on this “really big decision.”
“Deciding to support primary challenges is a big step β some folks have argued that we should keep our focus on Republicans, the primary architects and supporters of the war,” the e-mail read.
The powerful liberal interest group said the Democratic majority has failed MoveOn on some issues, “usually because too many of them were afraid to fight.”
In a survey attached to the e-mail, the group asks its supporters whether they want to begin backing Democratic primary challengers and, if so, how much money they would put toward that effort.
“There are a few key things to keep in mind,” the e-mail said. “We would only get involved in a primary race if MoveOn members in the district or state wanted to β and a majority supported that primary challenger. And we’d focus on races where a progressive had a good chance of beating the sitting Democrat and also winning the general election.”
Last month, the group began airing ads in Rep. Brian Baird’s (D-Wash.) district. Following a trip to Iraq, Baird had announced that he would withdraw his support for a withdrawal deadline and wanted to give the troop surge more time, saying that it is showing positive results. ++
Visit this link for a very interesting strategy to replace the Blue Dogs:
http://www.electrealdemocrats.com/
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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