Congress moves toward confronting Bush on the war
So it seems that the Democratic Party leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives have finally "gotten" at least a portion of the antiwar message the voters sent last November?
Yesterday, that renowned control freak (but also, very savvy pol) Nancy Pelosi announced that she has abandoned the plans she'd earlier laid to focus the much-touted "first 100 hours" of the new House's legislative work completely on some long overdue pieces of domestic legislation. Now, as Jonathan Weisman reports in today's WaPo, the congress's new leaders,
- have concluded that Iraq will share top billing, and they plan on aggressively confronting administration officials this week in a series of hearings.
Pushed by House members who want a quick, tough response to the Iraq strategy President Bush is expected to announce this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has backed off from her initial assertion that nothing should detract attention from the legislation she hopes to pass in the first 100 hours of House debate.
Late last week, she summoned the chairmen of the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, intelligence, Homeland Security, and Oversight and Government Reform committees to plot a series of hearings. On Thursday, Democrats will call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to defend the war-strategy shift Bush will outline in a nationally televised speech [on Wednesday].
A House Armed Services Committee hearing with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, planned for Jan. 19 was abruptly moved to this Thursday after consultations with Pelosi. And leadership aides went to work on a response to Bush's speech that they hope will be delivered on national television after the president's appearance...
"Iraq is the elephant in the room," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a close ally of Pelosi's.
The Senate is also planning Iraq-related hearings this week. The Foreign Relations Committee under new chair Joe Biden will start its hearings Wednesday and will call Rice to testify Thursday. The Armed Services Committee will call Robert Gates in to testify Friday...
Earlier, Democratic leaders had said they would not use the powers they have under the Constitution to cut the funding for the war. But in an interview with CBS talkshow 'Face the Nation' yesterday Pelosi made a clear distinction between the funding for the troops that are there now, and those whom Bush is reportedly planning to add to their number in the surge/escalation he is expected to announce on Wednesday.
Pelosi made clear to CBS that she's not saying a complete 'No' to the deployment of the additional troops. But, she said, the President "is going to have to justify [the new deployment] and this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions."
Indeed, any degree of real congressional oversight of his war plans is very new for Bush.
There is more caution, however, from Sen. Biden. Over in this WaPo article, Ann Scott Tyson notes that Biden told an NBC talkshow yesterday,
- that it would be unconstitutional for Congress to authorize the war but then cap troop levels or cut funding for specific items. Biden said any troop increase would be "a tragic mistake . . . but as a practical matter, there is no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop.' "
In general, the Democratic leaders of the senate are (a) in a tighter position from the votes viewpoint, and (b) less energized by the antiwar "Spririt of November 2006" than their House colleagues. (Especially since only one-third of the Senators have to go to their home districts and engage fully with the voters in election races in any given election year; though all the members of the House have to do that every time.)
But still, this looks like an epoch-making week ahead in Washington.
The American military and political establishment doesn't even know why we lost in Vietnam, let alone why we have lost again in Iraq -- because we began. You cannot do a wrong thing the right way.
Once again we find the unqualified "leading" the unwilling to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful till the unaccounable can leave office hanging their stinking, dead albatross around some other unqualified person's neck. After all, "we're there because we're there because we're there because we're there," and in only one more "Friedman" (i.e., next six critical months) the tipping point will turn the corner connecting the dots on the ink-stained flypaper dominoes in the tunnel at the end of the light.
(1) Cut the funding for the occupation of Iraq, (2) revoke the "authorization" for the occupation of Iraq, and (3) punish the perpetrators of the occupation of Iraq -- now. Mid-nineteen-seventies political technology will do nicely.
Iraq has nothing to do with America's problem: i.e., Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism. Vain and desultory conversations by Americans about Iraq's problems only mask an atavistic dread of confronting America's own problem. Hence, the unconscious projection of America's own self-inflicted conundrum upon another nation of hapless foreigners who do not now nor ever did threaten America. We don't even have Lord of the Flies running America right now. We've got Lord of the Larvae.
As for Senator "'Bloviatin' Joe" Biden, he doesn't have any more chance of securing the Democratic Party's nomination for President than Holy Joe Lieberman does. In fact, anyone who stupidly voted to authorize Deputy Dubya's discretionary vendetta war against the now-defunct regime (and person) of Saddam Hussein -- and this includes chickenhawk Senator You-Know-Her from New York -- can forget about the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2008. It won't happen.
Finally, granting the busted deadbeat gambler Deputy Dubya Bush yet another "just one more last" blank rubber check to roll the dice again in Iraq won't do anything to dissuade him from demanding another "just one more last" blank rubber check for yet another roll of the dice in Iraq next year. It doesn't matter whether the Democratic Congress affixes its worthless signature alongside the worthless signature of the President of the United States: any rubber check drawn on an empty bank account will bounce just as high. The Democratic Congress will get nothing for its worthless counter-signature on another "just one more last" blank rubber check for all-things-Iraq but a share of the indictment for waste, fraud and abuse.
Helena
Ted Kennedy's motion is going to put the cat among the pigeons
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/kennedy-george-bushs-vietnam/
i agree