Thursday, June 15, 2006

HR 861: War Without End, Amen

I spent the morning watching the House debate on Resolution 861, introduced by Henry Hyde (R Illinois). You may remember Hyde as the guy who led the charge to impeach President Clinton for lying about not keeping his pants on. Now, he says we all owe young Mister Bush our thanks for acting in Iraq.

HR 861 is a sham. The Republicans put up a bill full of platitudes, allowing no proposed amendments.

And hidden in the middle of the platitudes is this tidbit:
…it is not in the national security interest of the United States to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq…


In other words, this bill is a yes/no vote on whether to allow Mister Bush--and his succesor--to keep our troops in Iraq forever.

The whole morning, watching on C-SPAN, I kept wondering how to describe what I was feeling. It came to me. It was like watching my country being assimilated by the Borg.

This isn't a debate on Iraq. It's an orchestrated GOP election campaign circus.

#

Back from the grocery store just in time to see Murtha speak.

At last. Somebody actually using hard data to measure the ineffectiveness of the effort in Iraq. Hopefully, his speech will be up on his web site. "Rhetoric does not answer the problem," he says. Amen Brother Murtha.

Henry Hyde (R Illinois) follows Murtha. It takes him less than 30 seconds to conjure visions of mushroom clouds, and drones on for roughly ten minutes in praise of Mister Bush.

There's something about Murtha being followed by Hyde that pretty much says for me what America's upcoming election is about--the bluff and honest versus the serpentine.

Hyde finishes his spiel and Murtha comes back to the floor. Iraq has gone on longer than World War I, longer than the Korean Conflict, he says, and reiterates that the metrics belie administration claims of "progress" in Iraq.

Ike Skelton (D Missouri) makes a great point about eating our "military seed corn" in Iraq. I haven't heard it put that way before, but I've long said that one of the greatest tragedies regarding Iraq is that we're grinding our force into hourglass fill in a contest that has little if anything to do with our national security. What happens in two or three years if we really need the military power that we squandered in Iraq?

As Jack Murtha says, China, Russia, Iran, and most of the rest of the world are perfectly happy to see us stay in Iraq until we're powerless to meaningfully engage militarily anywhere else in the world.

Duncan Hunter's at the plate, giving a lecture on how it was okay to have disbanded the Iraqi Army, and lending his expertise on military command, control and discipline. He's also giving a "support the troops" pitch, comparing Iraq to World War II.

Murtha gets up, God bless him, and slaps Hunter down for confusing the difference between supporting the troops and supporting the policy.

Henry Waxman (D California) give a good account of contractor fraud in Iraq. Bravo, he brought up David Brooks, the contractor who sold faulty body armor to the Army and Marines. "We're squandering money on Halliburton at the same time we don't have enough money to protect our troop."

#

Ah, me.

Peter Hoekstra (R Michigan) makes flatulent noise about "the first war of the information age." Yeah. Like information didn't exist, or wasn't an essential part of war, before the World Wide Web existed.

These rubber stamp Republicans are blithering idiots.

How much longer are we going to let them lead us over the cliff?

12 comments:

  1. Successor, not predecessor

    Other than that, right on

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  2. Oops! Better change that. Thanks for the catch.

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  3. Anonymous4:17 PM

    Just started reading your blog. I like the writing.

    The thing that gets me is that these Republicans are, as you say, blithering idiots. But very few in the news/opinion shows is willing to say, hey, this is total BS.

    So it is left to the "blogosphere" and grassroots to highlight these issues, which takes a whole lot longer than if this was being piped into the living rooms of Joe & Jane Q Public on CBS/NBC/ABC.

    I swear every week I have a moment of hate for this administration and their utter stupidity.

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  4. Thanks for stopping by and posting. Yeah, I'm pretty upset with the stupidity too.

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  5. When you think of Hoekstra's comment about this being the first war during the information age than you must think it's funny..the supposed information that there were WMD's ended up being fraudulently wrong..
    Murtha's catching a lot of flack from people. I caught a few seconds on O'Reilly who was interviewing this guy, a former Iraqi military (sorry, it was late for me and didn't pay too close attention) peddling his book..both him and O'Reilly were tearing into Murtha, one of the comments being that he did not return either their phone calls. But..I should pay closer attention ... just getting aggrevated seeing O'Reilly is not a good excuse!
    Ingrid
    and yes, there are times when I feel moments of sheer disdain for the people in the B-administration. Sorry to say guys, as a green card holder, there are times I have disdain for most Americans for just being asleep at the wheel and too stupid to think for themselves...but..that's being a leftwing (because what else could I be) European for you.

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  6. Anonymous4:48 PM

    stupidity and knee=jerk emotionalism, ad homoneim attacks and mud slinging are the new black.

    This is what substitues for "opinion" and "discourse"

    89% of graduating high school seniors think the government should be entitled to censor the press.

    Slaves and military grunts don't need no educashun...they just need their primal buttons pushed so they remain in a constant lather about "them" versus "us".

    Divide and conquer. This is the state's credo. This is its purpose...to protect itself from the people.

    What do you expect when you put fascist in power and let them dazzle the sheeple with marketing and advertising?

    Nice chocolatey outside, hollow inside.

    The New Weimar.

    Wonder how many Good Germans there will be this time?

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  7. I was actually quite impressed with the job the Dems did this afternoon (I took a break around 4pm and napped).


    The GOP types pretty much just polly-crackered Karl Rove talking points.

    But I fear this buttwilly bill's going to pass anyway.

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  8. Anonymous11:58 PM

    Winston Churchill said it: "Americans will try everything, but eventually they will do the right thing."

    Dan, I think there was a bit more snark in his comment - something like "you can always rely on Americans to do the right thing, after they've exhausted all the alternatives."

    Jeff - I've come over from FireDogLake and appreciate your insights. One question - given the current state of the military, how is it the Officer Corps seems to still overwhelmingly support this administration?

    I ask as the son of a retired LTC with the 101st Abn Div and a Navy vet myself - discharged as an HM2. I can understand the past support, I just don't get the support in the face of the arrogant incompetence in today's chickenhawk leaders. Any thoughts?

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  9. Anonymous9:24 AM

    There are more people in the officer sector that disagree with whats going on than there seems. It is just so weird. You are forced to basically have closet conversation in codes to communicate with each other, and that is after you have sized up the other person for a very long time to make sure that they aren't going to run to someone and rat you out for disagreeing with the CIC. And, all that is just what the wives of the officers have to do, much less the officers themselves. But none of this is my opinion, just an observation. I know noone that does any of the above things. ;)

    The republican rhetoric and rediculous side show are sickening. Can we not have an adult debate in this country? Why is it not obvious to more people that these clowns care only about winning elections and accumulating power and care nothing about the nation?

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  10. Jim,

    As Navywife said, the only folks in the officer corps you're likely to hear from are the Bush backers. The rest don't really have the option of speaking up.

    About 10 years ago, Tom Ricks of the WaPo did a survey and figured that something like 62 percent of military officers identified themselves as staunch conservatives. That type seldom looks too deeeply at the issues. (Sorry if that sounds dismissive, but it's true.)

    My strong impression is that the officers in the Army are the most unhappy with the administration, much of that has to do with Rummy.

    Thanks for stopping by and posting.

    Best,

    Jeff

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  11. Anonymous11:12 AM

    Didn't the OPFOR from California where tank tactics are practiced get sent to Iraq. Damn, I can't believe I've forgotten the name. I think that's what he meant by 'seed corn'.

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  12. Exactly. This is becoming reminiscent of what Japan and Germany would up doing--keeping their top line forces in battle until they were all used up.

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