[JimfromPennsylvania]

**** See PART TWO on previous posting/thread. ****

6) American troop presence in Iraq is a major cause of the problems in Iraq. The Sunni insurgents as well as the major Shiite militia, the Mahdi army, publicly annunciate as their major goal driving the U.S. out of Iraq, al Qaeda has as its reason for being the destruction of American culture. Pervasively widespread amongst the Iraqi population is the belief that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a major root of Iraq’s problems. The U.S. presence in Iraq is fueling the extremely problematic interference of Iran and Syria in security matters in Iraq. When the U.S. armed forces leave Iraq, a major spot light will be focused on the al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, the key perpetuators of the shocking violence in Iraq, and the truth will shine bright that they don’t care about the Iraqi people and they are using the Iraqi people to spread their regressive, anti-rights culture and the Iraqi people will be better positioned to expel these terrorists from Iraq.

7) President Bush is a lost cause on Iraq. He is unable to accept the realities in Iraq and his track record indicates he is prepared to pay unconscionable costs in terms of American lives and monetary resources to keep Iraq from collapsing. The American people’s only hope for saving America from this disaster in Iraq is if Congress leads on this issue which means the Republicans in Congress, the Democrats are already there, have to part ways with the president on the Iraq issue. The Republicans need to keep in the forefront not only that the costs here demand they break from the President, but also, sticking with President Bush on the Iraq issue will bring them a profound and resounding defeat in the next national elections.

All these listed factors have to lead responsible Americans to the conclusion that the right course for the American people to be taking at this time is to have the Congress pass the initial supplemental Iraq War funding bill with no benchmarks with negative consequence conditions for failure on the Iraq government. If Democrat leaders can’t get the votes amongst their rank and file to pass such a bill by appealing to these members character in terms of patience (in four months the surge assessment will be in and the case for an Iraq exit strategy overwhelming) and wisdom (pick your battles – the present supplemental bill battle is only a loser for the Democrats but the next one is a winner) then the Republican and Democrat leadership should offer the following carrots: cut the current supplemental of any non-military reconstruction funding for Iraq (it makes it clear that Bush is no longer always getting his own way on Iraq and it holds accountable those political leaders in Iraq that have lacked a good faith effort on the benchmark work and lets them know America’s direction is changing on Iraq) and the Republican congressional leadership should give a public commitment that they will not allow a filibuster to be conducted on the next supplemental bill but rather they are agreeing to allow a debate and vote on a supplemental bill, that has a six month withdrawal timetable, to begin as early as October 1, 2007. When the next supplemental bill comes up for funding the Iraq War after September 2007, the surge strategy assessment will be in and President Bush will be out of chances and there should be a political bi-partisan juggernaut existing that will push through binding veto-proof legislation on the President to bring the troops home from Iraq. To get to the heart of what is immediately important on this supplemental bill is that the Democratic Leadership has a big big decision to make are they going to put the nation through hell fighting about this four month funding, I repeat four month funding, supplemental bill or will they act like prudent citizens and let this bill through and focus on the next “post-September” Supplemental bill where America desperately needs their leadership working at its best to change the foolish course America is on in Iraq? Let’s hope the Democratic Leadership will be inspired by the Memorial Day holiday and the awesome patriotism of citizens that gave their life for America the holiday celebrates and act like good citizens on the current supplemental bill matter!

[MAGI]

**** See PART TWO on previous posting/thread. ****
To get to the heart of what is immediately important on this supplemental bill is that the Democratic Leadership has a big big decision to make are they going to put the nation through hell fighting about this four month funding, I repeat four month funding, supplemental bill or will they act like prudent citizens and let this bill through and focus on the next “post-September” Supplemental bill where America desperately needs their leadership working at its best to change the foolish course America is on in Iraq? Let’s hope the Democratic Leadership will be inspired by the Memorial Day holiday and the awesome patriotism of citizens that gave their life for America the holiday celebrates and act like good citizens on the current supplemental bill matter!

and let's hope no-one dies in the next four months and let's hope that in four months there will be a time table set so Iraq will get itself in order................and let's hope in four more long months of being in the middle of a Civil War............

[MAGI]

From The Nation:

Defining "Progress" in Iraq

Three months into the job, General David Petraeus says it is difficult to predict, before the full number of troops arrive, if the surge in Baghdad will succeed. And he now says he will not have a definitive answer about prospects for progress by September, when he is to report back to Congress.

But how to define "progress"in Iraq? (And why should the US have the right to decide what progress in Iraq means? Shouldn't we, instead, be given the task of measuring the destruction we have caused and held to account for repairing the human and physical damage we have helped inflict?)

But if one does engage in this defining-progress project, here are some early measurements to consider:

*Iraqis have already defined progress with their feet -- consider that some two million have left or fled their country. And the outflow continues. In Syria, there are estimated to be 1.2 million Iraqi refugees; another 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon and 10,000 in Turkey. The number of displaced Iraqis still inside that country's borders was given as 1.9 million. This would mean approximately 15 percent of Iraqis have left their homes.

*The Iraqi Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT) with the support of UNDP released statistics this week showing a key indicator of progress trending in the wrong direction. Insurgent death squads dumped 234 bodies around Baghdad in the first 11 days of May, a 70.8 percent increase from the 137 bodies dumped around the capital during the first 11 days of April.

*Some 88 violent deaths were reported across Iraq on Wednesday, including 32 people who died the night before when a car bomb exploded near a market in the Shiite area of Abu Saydah northeast of Baghdad.

*A leading British think-tank, Chatham House, reported on Thursday that the surge has failed to reduce overall violence across the country, as insurgent groups have shifted their acts outside Baghdad.

*UN agencies working in Iraq warned that a chronic shortage of drinking water may increase diarrhea rates, particularly among children. Diarrhea is already the second highest single cause of child illness and death in Iraq.

*The survey by the Central Statistical Bureau reports that 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from "absolute poverty" and another 11 percent of them live in "abject poverty."

*The Iraqi parliament has proposed a bill, signed by a majority of members, demanding American troop withdrawal and an end to the occupation. (For those in our Congress who have placed so much stock in the idea of democracy, isn't it time to drop the neo-colonial paternalism and listen to your Iraqi counterparts. As Senator John Kerry ☼ put it today, "There are some people who would send our troops to fight and die for democracy and then not honor it.")

But the reality is that for many legislators who refuse to support a timeline for withdrawal, especially Republicans who continue to support their bunkered-in President, the question of how to measure progress in Iraq will not be answered by how many Iraqi children are dying or refugees fleeing. The answer will be the polls in their districts.

[MAGI]

Betrayal of We The People

#2

“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”

That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?

Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War.
All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening?
See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?

Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now.

The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided... tomorrow.
The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.
Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us.

Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats... have failed us.
They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.
Mr. Bush and his government... have failed us.
They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course.
That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.
We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.
With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.

They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come.

Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone.
The electorate figured this out, six months ago.
The President and the Republicans have not—doubtless will not.
The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there—and permanently.
Because, on the subject of Iraq...
The people have been ahead of the media....
Ahead of the government...
Ahead of the politicians...
For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.

Our politics... is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.




http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/05/what_the_democratic_blank_chec.html
:mad:

[MAGI]

Betrayal of We The People

#1

MSNBC Kieth Olbermann:

The entire government has failed us on Iraq
For the president, and the majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal


MSNBC video


Olbermann: We have been betrayed
May 23: In a special comment about the Democrats' deal with President Bush to continue financing the war, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann says that the entire government has failed the country on Iraq.
MSNBC


This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.
Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;
The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;
The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.
You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning... is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult... hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.
You lead this country, sir?
You claim to defend it?
And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.
How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.
Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer.

A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.
Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.
You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.

see #2.