Eerie (and stinky) Connection - Today and Byrd 2002

[Laura PourMeADrink]

Robert Byrd 2002:http://www.counterpunch.org/byrd1004.html

"The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq without pausing to ask why. Why is war being dealt with not as a last resort but as a first resort? Why is Congress being pressured to act now, as of today, 33 days before a general election when a third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives are in the final, highly politicized, weeks of election campaigns?"

"The President is using the Oval Office as a bully pulpit to sound the call to arms, but it is from Capitol Hill that such orders must flow. The people, through their elected representatives, must make that decision. It is here that debate must take place and where the full spectrum of the public's desires, concerns, and misgivings must be heard."

BushCo 2008
http://www.rollcall.com/news/28599-1.html?type=printer_friendly
The White House today is drumming up extraordinary pressure on Congress to approve its plan to enact a $700 billion mortgage bailout fund, suggesting the markets cannot wait much longer and dispatching Vice President Cheney and other top officials up Pennsylvania Avenue to jawbone lawmakers. <snip>Paulson said Congress and the administration must move rapidly.

<snip> Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.