110 and rolling

Ok 110th Congress, are you ready for the big time?
Semper Conruptus

I am encouraged on a couple of levels, and discouraged on others. The House of Representatives is clearly moving and doing quite a bit of work, early. I am glad that two things have already passed quickly:

House Resolution 35 - Oversight at last
This should enable the congress to pursue oversight of the administration, which is in my view one of their primary jobs.

House Resolution 6 - Bye Bye K Street (and a summary)
This brings long overdue transparency and disclosure to the lobbyist issue, and imposes sharp limitations on gifts and travel. Interestingly there is an exemption for travel to colleges and universities. We'll see how long it takes the lobbyists to start providing monetary incentives to colleges and universities so that members of congress traveling there will have perks to take advantage of.

There are several objectives including the two above which the Democrats have pledged to address in the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress: Lobbyist reform, 9/11 Commission recommendations, the minimum wage, allowing negotiated lower prices for drugs, stem cell research, college loan interest cut, oil industry subsidy cuts, social security.

These are all good things, but something seems to be missing. Hmm... Somehow there seems to have been a large issue that has been overlooked, or at least it's not in this 100 hour list.

Iraq.

There is no proposal to cut funding for the war in Iraq. There is no proposal to mandate troop withdrawal from Iraq. There are no hearings scheduled to get on record the things that happened that got us stuck in Iraq.

Fuck!! (sorry - I get worked up)

At least Pelosi and Reid had the spine to send this letter objecting to the increase of troop levels that Monkey-boy is planning:


January 5, 2007

President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The start of the new Congress brings us opportunities to work together on the critical issues confronting our country. No issue is more important than finding an end to the war in Iraq. December was the deadliest month of the war in over two years, pushing U.S. fatality figures over the 3,000 mark.

The American people demonstrated in the November elections that they don’t believe your current Iraq policy will lead to success and that we need a change in direction for the sake of our troops and the Iraqi people. We understand that you are completing your post-election consultations on Iraq and are preparing to make a major address on your Iraq strategy to the American people next week.

Clearly this address presents you with another opportunity to make a long overdue course correction. Despite the fact that our troops have been pushed to the breaking point and, in many cases, have already served multiple tours in Iraq, news reports suggest that you believe the solution to the civil war in Iraq is to require additional sacrifices from our troops and are therefore prepared to proceed with a substantial U.S. troop increase.

Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.

In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq:

“I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It's easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement . . In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.

Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper into Iraq. We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success.

We appreciate you taking these views into consideration.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Speaker Nancy Pelosi


It just infuriates me that none of these... people have any real guts. Financial reform and ethical reform and oversight are all important. These undoubtedly contributed to the Democratic victory in November. The congressional leadership, however, does not seem to understand that the overriding concern of the American people at this point is getting the hell out of Iraq.

Now, I admit I am biased. I'm a peace activist. So let's look at some poll numbers.

A recent CBS poll shows that of those polled, 72% of adult Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the war. The same poll shows that 76% believe that Bush has no clear plan to deal with Iraq, and that 82% believe that the Democrats don't either.

71% of Iraqis want us to leave, based on a poll in September 2006.

Finally, The Military Times did a poll of active duty military last month, and published the numbers on December 29th. 35% (a little over 1/3) approves of Bush's handling of the war. 42% disapprove. In 2004, 83% of active duty personnel thought that success in Iraq is likely. That figure has dropped to 50%.

That's a pretty wide selection. The first and third of those, clearly shows what the will of the people is.

Georgie's skating on some thin ice. He's shuffling his personnel again, trying to show that he's doing something, and getting rid of the folks that disagree with him and putting in yes-men, like he always does.

Representative Maxine Waters said that "The proposed changes in personnel are, in effect, like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic."

I think that for the most part I agree with her, but I wonder what else he's hiding.

In closing, here the entire speech that Pelosi gave when she was formally elected Speaker the other day. It is historic, as she is the first woman Speaker in U.S. History, and the speech is a positive one. I myself am less hopeful, but am very willing to be proved wrong.

Peace


Part the first



Part the second



Part the third



Part the last