Democrats who rode Americans' anger about the war into control of the House of Representatives and the Senate showed they were eager to flex their newfound muscle.
Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who will become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in January, said Democrats would seek a bipartisan agreement to persuade Bush to start pulling troops out of Iraq in four to six months.
"We've got to put greater responsibility on the Iraqis and the way to do that -- probably the only way to do that -- is to let the Iraqis know that within four to six months of the president notifying them, that we're going to begin a phased redeployment of our troops out of Iraq," Levin said.
This is an option Bush adamantly opposed during the congressional campaign season and there was no early indication he would agree to such a plan now.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Democrats Troop Pull Out Plan
From al-Reuters:
Demcrats Economic Plan Revealed
From the Opinion Journal:
Mr. Rubin's "fiscal problems" riff is really a rhetorical sleight-of-hand, using future entitlement problems to justify a tax increase today. He knows all too well that not a dime of new revenue raised today would be "saved" or otherwise devoted to paying for future Social Security or Medicare benefits. They would be spent on other things by the current Congress, just as today's surplus payroll tax revenues are spent, and just as they were spent when Mr. Rubin was at Treasury in the 1990s.
If Mr. Rubin wants to help reduce the future entitlement benefits he frets so much about, he could always support reforming those programs. Yet when President Bush invited him to participate in a bipartisan entitlement commission last year, Mr. Rubin refused.
Which is why we suspect that Mr. Rubin's real game here is politics. The Citigroup Inc. executive is part of Hillary Rodham Clinton's braintrust, and he and she would like nothing better than to coax Mr. Bush into raising taxes in the next two years. That would take the tax issue off the table in 2008, while splintering Republicans the way President George H.W. Bush's tax-hike deal with George Mitchell did going into 1992.
And if a tax increase did contribute to a severe slowdown or recession, Republicans as the incumbent party in the White House would get the political blame. Recall how Bill Clinton pinned the recession of 1990-1991 on Mr. Bush and Reaganomics, even though the Gipper had left office long before and the economy was growing at a 4% annual rate by late 1992. Readers may recall who won that election.
By the way, how does Mr. Rubin continue to dodge any historical accountability for the dot-com bust of 2000 and the recession that followed? In the liberal economic narrative, we are supposed to believe that the Clinton Administration somehow ended in 1999, and that Mr. Bush is to blame for everything that followed. Yet the Nasdaq peak came in the spring of 2000 and the third quarter of that year recorded negative growth. The shallow recession began in March 2001, with slower-than-average growth continuing until the tax cuts on dividends and the top marginal income rate passed in 2003 and the expansion moved into high gear.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
What an end to the Iraq War will look like from Chaotic Synaptic Acitivty:
Recently, the discussion was about the Tet Offensive and how the events of February, 1968 related to current day situations was posted on this blog here and here.Possibly now, it is the moment to get ahead of the power curve and discuss the big picture that happened 30 years ago, and see if it may relate to what happens next….
So, Richard Nixon was President. The Democrats had control of the Congress. The President, as he promised in his election campaign was pulling our troops out of ground combat positions, yet left the promise of support for the South Vietnamese Army, using the strategy of “Vietnamization,” a process of turning the war over to the ARVNs, as they were able to handle it.
Effectively, in 1972, our ground combat forces were out, safe advisers left the ARVNs. While the president is the Commander-in-Chief, Congress controls the money (you’d think people would quit accusing the presidents, of any time, of what goes on with the budget, but, once more, I digress). So Congress cut off the funding for the supporting arms and the supplies from America going to South Vietnam. Now, the study of history over the ages shows the winner of wars is the country who has the best logistics and can out-produce the adversary in the fight. When “we” (the Democratic Congress) pulled appropriations from the war support effort for our allies, they sentenced them to loss of the war, and, in many cases, death in a very literal sense.
So in 1975, the NVA rolled into Saigon and raised the North Vietnamese flag in that city. It was over. What next? The Communist rebels in Cambodia, led by Pol Pot now had nothing to fear and a totalitarian government came into power and the killing fields became a part of life, as about 1/2 of the population of Cambodia was killed it’s own.
Why did the conquest of South Vietnam and the mass murders happen across the border? There was no nation with the power to let them know this wasn’t acceptable.
What does this mean today?
We already know there is simmering hate in Iraq between the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds. We have not yet been able to help them understand there’s a better way to solve issues than to murder 75 people a day, using very brutal means.
Add to this, there is at least one neighboring country, Iran, already stirring the pot, for for us to have an ally, let alone a foothold in the region, keeps them in check, unable to carry out their desires to control much of the region. Syria is a player, too, but seem to at least be keeping their head down and themselves out of the media coverage.
So, the time may come, if the Democrats can strong arm their agenda to withdraw, whether by getting the President to acquiesce to this via the “bi-partisan” Iraq Working Committee, or by the pulling of appropriations for any support of our troops. The Department of Defense will end up with no choice to bring the troops hone, or at least out of the battle zone of Iraq.
My prediction: The Sunnis, having been in power for so many years, used to being able to, even as a minority, rape the other cultural groups of the country, literally and figuratively, feeling they have some right to murder and torture as they feel. So, the Sunnis will come back with a vengance at the Kurds and Shiites. Bloodshed…and much of it.
Add to this the military power to the East, the Iranians. They, with their affinity for the Shiites, the majority culture, will now roll across the border and become directly engaged with the Sunnis. Bloodshed.
The Kurds, who have rebuilt much of the infrastructure to the north, and are already prospering from the oil flowing, will most likely get attacked by the Sunnis and Shiites, and the Iranians, as they have valuable resources and are using them.
If we thought we stepped into a hornet’s nest in 2003, we haven’t seen anything that will be like this. The locals of the area will feel empowered to kill and plunder in even more horrific manners and scales than they have, for they now see “we” (and I substantially contribute this to the Democrats and the Liberals) don’t have the stomach for it. Much like asking someone to be an EMT and all they can do at any car accident is to stand by, while people bleed to death, throwing up. Those people, politically, are the Democrats and they, in this scenario, would decide it’s better to legislate against people having car accidents, rather than finding those who can take care of such messy conditions, and wait until things are safe to toss their cookies.
More and more, I am coming to see the Democrats in modern times are the party of death and destruction, with pools of blood running from their hands. They do this, not because it’s the best course of action for the rest of the world, or the country, but so they can ascend to positions of power, where they can rent the Lincoln bedroom out to friends to raise money, so they can buy their way back into power.
I can only figure their deep dissatisfaction with the War on Terror, is they see the revenues of President Bush’s tax cuts flowing towards Iraq, and not into their hands, to bribe the voters of the next election with their largess.
The Democrats and Liberals have never acknowledged they had a part in approximately 3M deaths in SE Asia after 1972. They cannot, for they would have to face their part in mass murder.
They stand on the edge of history and are prepared, with a complete disregard for history, their own, and that of world events, ready to loose the executioners in the Middle East, first, and later in Africa and Europe. They will then turn their face from the horror and go back to their fund raisers, not even consciously aware of their shameful part in the deaths.
My gallows humor would be to think maybe they are thinking of this outcome as a help for the environment, for after all, it’s people and the demands they place on industry, that cause greenhouse gasses and causes desertification and the now, the acidification of the oceans. If we have a few less million of us to cause pollution, let alone perpetuate the species, then we’ll not have to worry about running the air conditioners quite so long at the homes and offices of liberals.
The price they paid
This from The Orange County Register by way of Chaotic Synaptic Acitivty:
This month will mark the 30th anniversary of a shameful chapter in our nation's history. Thirty years ago we abandoned a longtime ally, the Republic of (South) Vietnam.
And with it, along with millions of others, we abandoned Quang X. Pham's dad.
Quang is an old friend of mine, a 40-year-old Mission Viejo businessman who came to the U.S. as a boy refugee from Vietnam and later served as a U.S. Marine helicopter pilot in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His father, Pham Van Hoa, now deceased, was a U.S.-trained South
Vietnamese Air Force pilot who spent 12 years in a communist "re-education" camp because he refused to leave his country when the North Vietnamese army swept through South Vietnam in April 1975 - this while America, after investing 58,000 of its own sons' lives, stood by and washed its hands of the entire bloody and tragic affair.
And even though he became an American who loved his country and served it courageously in uniform, for many years that abandonment rankled Quang's heart. It rankled mine, too.
Quang has written a new book about his father, and about his own experiences as a refugee who became an American Marine. It's called "A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey," published by Ballantine Books (you can get more information at www.asenseofduty.com), and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand what the Vietnam War meant to some of the people who suffered the most because of it - that is, the people of South Vietnam.
It's powerful, and moving, and in it Quang tries to dispel a myth about Vietnam that still persists.
The myth is that guys like his dad didn't fight for their country.
"I just want to see South Vietnamese (military men) like my father acknowledged," Quang told me. "Not made into heroes or anything, but just acknowledged for what they did. I wanted to set the record straight."
Certainly the casualty numbers tell a story that's far different from the myth. The South Vietnamese armed forces lost a total of about 250,000 men killed in the war - a number that, as a percentage of national population, was about 50 times greater than American deaths.
And the numbers of the maimed were even greater. Ten years ago, as a reporter for the Register, I went back to Vietnam to cover the 20th anniversary of the end of the war, and everywhere I went I would meet aging former ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) soldiers who were missing arms or legs or eyes, many of them reduced to beggary because the communist government offered no pensions or even menial jobs for former ARVNs. When they found out I'd been an American soldier in the war they would often break out yellowed, crumbling, long-hidden South Vietnamese military ID cards and tell me, "I was with you, I was with you."
And they were.
Now, I know some of my fellow American Vietnam veterans will disagree with me on this subject. They'll call me up and tell me bitter tales about "Marvin the ARVN," about South Vietnamese M-16s that were in perfect condition because "they'd never been fired, and were only dropped once," about South Vietnamese corruption and incompetence and cowardice.
Certainly there was no shortage of such things, particularly in the ARVN's politicized upper ranks.
But don't tell me - or Quang X. Pham - that 250,000 guys died with no brave men among them. Don't try to tell guys who got their arms or legs blown off that they didn't fight hard enough. Don't think that a lot of guys like Quang's father didn't have a sense of duty and honor, even as they lost their war, and their country, and languished in brutal communist prison camps for years and years and years.
This month will mark the 30th anniversary of a shameful chapter in our nation's history. Thirty years ago we abandoned a longtime ally, the Republic of (South) Vietnam.
And with it, along with millions of others, we abandoned Quang X. Pham's dad.
Quang is an old friend of mine, a 40-year-old Mission Viejo businessman who came to the U.S. as a boy refugee from Vietnam and later served as a U.S. Marine helicopter pilot in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His father, Pham Van Hoa, now deceased, was a U.S.-trained South
Vietnamese Air Force pilot who spent 12 years in a communist "re-education" camp because he refused to leave his country when the North Vietnamese army swept through South Vietnam in April 1975 - this while America, after investing 58,000 of its own sons' lives, stood by and washed its hands of the entire bloody and tragic affair.
And even though he became an American who loved his country and served it courageously in uniform, for many years that abandonment rankled Quang's heart. It rankled mine, too.
Quang has written a new book about his father, and about his own experiences as a refugee who became an American Marine. It's called "A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey," published by Ballantine Books (you can get more information at www.asenseofduty.com), and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand what the Vietnam War meant to some of the people who suffered the most because of it - that is, the people of South Vietnam.
It's powerful, and moving, and in it Quang tries to dispel a myth about Vietnam that still persists.
The myth is that guys like his dad didn't fight for their country.
"I just want to see South Vietnamese (military men) like my father acknowledged," Quang told me. "Not made into heroes or anything, but just acknowledged for what they did. I wanted to set the record straight."
Certainly the casualty numbers tell a story that's far different from the myth. The South Vietnamese armed forces lost a total of about 250,000 men killed in the war - a number that, as a percentage of national population, was about 50 times greater than American deaths.
And the numbers of the maimed were even greater. Ten years ago, as a reporter for the Register, I went back to Vietnam to cover the 20th anniversary of the end of the war, and everywhere I went I would meet aging former ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) soldiers who were missing arms or legs or eyes, many of them reduced to beggary because the communist government offered no pensions or even menial jobs for former ARVNs. When they found out I'd been an American soldier in the war they would often break out yellowed, crumbling, long-hidden South Vietnamese military ID cards and tell me, "I was with you, I was with you."
And they were.
Now, I know some of my fellow American Vietnam veterans will disagree with me on this subject. They'll call me up and tell me bitter tales about "Marvin the ARVN," about South Vietnamese M-16s that were in perfect condition because "they'd never been fired, and were only dropped once," about South Vietnamese corruption and incompetence and cowardice.
Certainly there was no shortage of such things, particularly in the ARVN's politicized upper ranks.
But don't tell me - or Quang X. Pham - that 250,000 guys died with no brave men among them. Don't try to tell guys who got their arms or legs blown off that they didn't fight hard enough. Don't think that a lot of guys like Quang's father didn't have a sense of duty and honor, even as they lost their war, and their country, and languished in brutal communist prison camps for years and years and years.
Liberal sends a love letter to Little Green Footballs
They love us not.
From the Little Green Footballs Mailbag:
From the Little Green Footballs Mailbag:
Little Green F-ckballs,
America has woken up. They have pulled back the curtain and turned a spotlight on the wretched creatures who are engineering the hate. They see the real provocateurs who are intentionally inciting more Middle Easterners and Muslims to hate America. They know Israel is not a blameless victim and see what the neocon journalist F-ckballs and politicians are doing.
They know that the invasion of Iraq was not for altruistic reasons, and they see the billions being extracted from their Treasury and lining the pockets of corrupt Halliburton and Bechtel profiteers. They see how the “war on terror” has been corrupted by the Executive branch to seize unconstitutional powers and to justify torture. Torture? Are you kidding me? Did you really believe good, Christian Americans would agree to use their tax money to torture people—some of whom were innocent of any crime? They’re finding out their tax dollars paid for the extradition and torture of an innocent Canadian citizen for several months, and very likely others. How twisted and vile do you think this country is, that they would allow this horrific act to be justified in the name of their national security?
They also see they need to repair the damage their government and the Little Green F-ckball cheerleaders have wrought. They have booted the Party of Fearmongers from both houses of Congress and elected the first Muslim-American in history. Your obsessed F-ckball rants and baseless accusations about Ellison are backfiring, just as they backfired for his opponent Fine.
They know this small gesture is a step in the right direction to repair the shattered relations with the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. They know these relations are critical to fighting the REAL war on terror.
A good percentage of Republicans see these things as well. They see how their party of small government and conservative values has been twisted into an ideological ghoul. A possessed specter of fear more terrifying than the terrorists they claim to be fighting given the immense power they wield. They want their party back. The one hijacked by the Little Green F-ckball deviants who have defiled it with their depraved, ideological schemes.
God bless this great Republic,
J. Bailey
Hostage Grab In Iraq
Mass kidnap at Baghdad ministry
By Aseel Kami and Alastair Macdonald
2 hours, 29 minutes ago
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms snatched up to 100 staff and visitors from a ministry building in Baghdad on Tuesday, sparking a huge manhunt by a government struggling to control increasingly audacious sectarian militias.
Amid new suspicions of police complicity in the latest and biggest mass kidnapping, the interior minister hauled in police chiefs to explain how dozens of gunmen swept into the Higher Education Ministry annex, rounded up those inside, and drove them off in broad daylight toward a Shi'ite militia stronghold.
Women were left behind after having their mobile phones confiscated. One witness said police guards stood by as the gunmen separated minority Sunnis from Shi'ites by checking names on identity documents, although officials and other witnesses said it appeared men from both sects were taken away.
"Some of the men put up a struggle and begged the militants to leave them alone but one of them said 'Don't worry, if you've done nothing wrong we'll let you go'," a local shopkeeper said after the men were put into 40 vehicles in under half an hour.
Some were later freed but up to 50 hostages were still unaccounted for, the government said, renewing assurances that its new, U.S.-trained security forces can bring order.
By Aseel Kami and Alastair Macdonald
2 hours, 29 minutes ago
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms snatched up to 100 staff and visitors from a ministry building in Baghdad on Tuesday, sparking a huge manhunt by a government struggling to control increasingly audacious sectarian militias.
Amid new suspicions of police complicity in the latest and biggest mass kidnapping, the interior minister hauled in police chiefs to explain how dozens of gunmen swept into the Higher Education Ministry annex, rounded up those inside, and drove them off in broad daylight toward a Shi'ite militia stronghold.
Women were left behind after having their mobile phones confiscated. One witness said police guards stood by as the gunmen separated minority Sunnis from Shi'ites by checking names on identity documents, although officials and other witnesses said it appeared men from both sects were taken away.
"Some of the men put up a struggle and begged the militants to leave them alone but one of them said 'Don't worry, if you've done nothing wrong we'll let you go'," a local shopkeeper said after the men were put into 40 vehicles in under half an hour.
Some were later freed but up to 50 hostages were still unaccounted for, the government said, renewing assurances that its new, U.S.-trained security forces can bring order.
Harry Reid elected Senate Majority Leader
Reid elected leader of Senate Democratic majority
By Thomas Ferraro
Tue Nov 14, 1:45 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats elected Sen. Harry Reid as Senate majority leader on Tuesday and renewed their call for change in Iraq as they prepared to take control of Congress from President George W. Bush's Republicans.
"From Iraq to the economy, Americans want change, and the Senate majority ... is going to fight for change," Reid of Nevada declared after his colleagues elected him by acclamation for the new 110th Congress set to convene in January.
Democrats campaigned on an agenda that includes raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, reducing the cost of college and expanding health care.
The party favors a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, a major issue in last week's elections that saw the American voters give Democrats control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 12 years.
While Democrats cannot force Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq, they intend to beat the drums on Capitol Hill for a new strategy.
"This is not a time for threatening the president with anything. We're going to see how we can work with him to change course in Iraq," said Reid, Senate Democratic minority leader the past two years.
Democrats also elected Dick Durbin of Illinois as assistant Senate majority leader. He has been Senate assistant minority leader since January 2005.
Senate Republicans are to elect their leaders for the new Congress on Wednesday; Democrats and Republicans elect their House of Representatives leaders on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
By Thomas Ferraro
Tue Nov 14, 1:45 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats elected Sen. Harry Reid as Senate majority leader on Tuesday and renewed their call for change in Iraq as they prepared to take control of Congress from President George W. Bush's Republicans.
"From Iraq to the economy, Americans want change, and the Senate majority ... is going to fight for change," Reid of Nevada declared after his colleagues elected him by acclamation for the new 110th Congress set to convene in January.
Democrats campaigned on an agenda that includes raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, reducing the cost of college and expanding health care.
The party favors a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, a major issue in last week's elections that saw the American voters give Democrats control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 12 years.
While Democrats cannot force Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq, they intend to beat the drums on Capitol Hill for a new strategy.
"This is not a time for threatening the president with anything. We're going to see how we can work with him to change course in Iraq," said Reid, Senate Democratic minority leader the past two years.
Democrats also elected Dick Durbin of Illinois as assistant Senate majority leader. He has been Senate assistant minority leader since January 2005.
Senate Republicans are to elect their leaders for the new Congress on Wednesday; Democrats and Republicans elect their House of Representatives leaders on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
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