It's about time someone told the warmongers on the Washington Post editorial board to go fuck themselves. In the words of Democratic congressman David Obey:
Speaker, yesterday a number of members on the Republican side of the aisle sought to belittle the legislation before us because in addition to funding the needs of the troops in Iraq it contains money to address a number of domestic priorities. To ridicule that legislation, they suggested -- they tried to belittle items such as funding for levees in New Orleans and agriculture disaster payments . And in that they have been joined by editorial writers at papers such as The Washington Post.Like The Post, the Republican speakers of yesterday indicated that their main objection to this legislation is the way it tries to create pressure to end our military involvement in an Iraqi civil war. Those speakers and the Washington Post editorial writers make no effort to understand why these additional items are there. They simply ridicule them for their own purposes...Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn't listen enough to people like the Washington Post. It's that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost two thirds of the people in this chamber to vote for that misguided, ill-advised war. So I make no apology.
If the moral sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers of The Washington Post are offended because they don't like the specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines. What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this Administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the Iraqi politicians that we're going to end the permanent long-term dead end babysitting service. That's what we're trying to do. And if The Washington Post is offended about the way we do it, that's just too bad. But we're in the arena. They're not. And this is the best we can do given the tools that we have. And I make absolutely no apology for it. And I would say one thing, those of us who voted against the war in the first place wouldn't have nearly as hard a time getting us out of the war if people like The Washington Post and those who criticized us on the floor yesterday hadn't supported going into that stupid war in the first place. And I reserve the balance of my time.
That Fred Hiatt and the rest of the Washington Post editorial board are more concerned about funding procedure* than ending the Iraqi Occupation speaks volumes about their moral decrepitude. It's about time someone call them out on this. Don't take them seriously until they begin to behave like serious people.
*Two of the items funded in the bill would be making sure New Orleans won't be flooded again and helping ranchers who have been hit hard this winter--many of the latter couldn't receive needed blizzard-related aid from the National Guard because it was stationed in Iraq, which are good things. This is what government is supposed to do. How they do it is far less important.
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Don't you believe it. That is just cover for their actual objection: They don't like the withdrawal bill itself with its hard deadlines that doesn't allow the adminstration the option of continuing to stretch this unpopular war out into the indefinite future.
But it is impolitic for them to directly acknowledge that, given that the majority of Americans are in favor of forcing an end to this mess, and so they attack anything that acts to enable it instead on 'procedural' grounds: How dare the Democrats engage in 'log rolling' to get the bill passed? Ignoring, of course, the fact that there is scarcely a significant bill on the Hill in the last two centuries that passed without log rolling.
The Republicans will probably manage to either defeat the bill in the Senate via procedural manipulation (want to take a bet the WP will, ah, 'forget' about procedural issues when the Republicans register a filibuster allowing them to prevent the bill from even being voted on?) or by Bush vetoing it.
But that is probably OK with the Democratic leadership. Because they win pretty much no matter how it goes: If the bill passes and is signed into law we get out of Iraq and the Democrats get the credit for it. If the bill fails because of Republican opposition and an alternative is passed that doesn't impose limitations, the Republicans have tied their political fortunes in 2008 to Iraq. And that will probably cost them dearly in the elections. And lastly if the bill fails and no replacement passes (a kind of 'nuclear option'), we are out of Iraq and the Democrats can blame the Republicans for voting against money for the war and the troops.
There was a great quote that I don't remember the source for:
The democrats have just tried to set up a cut off date for Aug. 2008, just in time for the Presidential elections.
Cowards.
If they want to end it, end it NOW!
Or else they are as guilty as the Republican.s
Riok, most of them are trying to end it sooner. But you've got assholes like Former-DINO Joe "War Is Awesome! Lieberman and Queen-of-the-DINOs Hillary "Principles? What Are Those?" Clinton fucking everything up. Aug 2008 was literally the best we can do.
And I would note that, if we left it up to the Republicans, we wouldn't even have that.
More on the subject of Mike's post, I wrote about the House vote on H.R. 1227 here. Short version: disaster relief is now a partisan issue, and the Republicans are against it. So they can take their whining about "pork" and cram it up their asses, because at least the Democrats are doing something other than dismantling the constitution while passing kickbacks to their corporate buddies.
This is good news. More Dems are finally admitting how dangerously
vulnerable to Republican propaganda they are, and how skillfully they
were manipulated. Next is to do something about it.