They just can't bring themselves to the point where they close the door on Bush's failure. They just keep up this game of dress up the pig, both sides talking past each other, clearly dissatisfied with whatever they thought we would get out of occupying this Muslim dominated country. It's like they can't let go of the lies they told us and themselves over the years. They're desperate for some sort of redemptive miracle to occur in Iraq, and that will never come.
They've got Rumsfeld there in the
committee hearing, these legislative warriors, and he's soaking up their blood tears. They use our troops as their political sword, present themselves as military experts by virtue of their positions on the committee, and the tax money they've shoveled into the vaults of their military industry benefactors. They've got the manager of Bush's imperialism right in front of them and they talk to him like he actually gives a shit about anything they say.
Rumsfeld knows he's going to get the billions more he's asking for. Along with the fleecing, the senators get another dose of fear mongering and more than a sly suggestion, that, if they fail to go along with the program - pony up and clam up - the hell to pay will be on their heads. There's nothing more terrifying to an elected official than the prospect that they might have to take responsibility for something that's going bad.
Rumsfeld's honcho, Sen. Warner(R), chimes in with the fix, telling all who would hear him that unless the Iraqi government develops
"strong backbones, not subject to secular pulls"(a distinct impossibility), he didn't know how or when we would be able to bring our troops home.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace sat down before the same committee and unemotionally reported that there is still, since he reported to them in Sept., only
ONE Iraqi army battalion capable of standing on their own to do whatever the U.S. intends for them to do.
"Ultimately", Rumsfeld said, "The Iraqi people are going to have to rebuild that country." On their own, without our further 'help'. He then complained that
"corruption and criminality continue to pose challenges in Iraq" and are "so corrosive of democracy," Not his own corruption, or Bush's of course. In his slick spin the Iraqis are the corrupt ones. They have the audacity to try and take their country's resources, that we claim to control, and use them how they please.
"Our awareness of corruption is increasing." he told the senators. It evidently began the day the audit came out. He took the $18.4 billion that Congress gave him for reconstruction, and pissed away (
WaPo reports) roughly half of the money fighting the Iraqi resistance to our occupation, packing Iraq's new authority and legal system with compliant lackeys, and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein. Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction money is still sitting in some Pentagon bank account.
Congress is set to
tap our Treasury for more than $536 billion for 'military operations' and 'defense purchases' in fiscal 2006. The Pentagon's discretionary budget will total $410 billion, and Bush and Rumsfeld want another $120 billion of 'emergency' money from Congress for his mess in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Snooper General Gonzales
announced that he had tweaked Bush's FY 2007 budget proposal to the tune of $20.8 billion for his Department of 'Justice'. That would include $330.8 million in new 'enhancements' for counter-terrorism and
intelligence.
There is no greater evidence of the dangers of corruption of the power and influence of our nations military than in the prosecution of the 'war on terror' by Bush. Congress seems to bend to any and all requests for money for Bush to do whatever he wants, overtly or covertly, with our military, its agents, and its weaponry as well. He's saturated with a new national security bureaucracy, and he's content to use the strength of our nation, our soldiers and our citizens in their vulnerability to attack, as a battering ram to force his rhetorical version of democracy wherever his ambition for greed and conquest motivate him.
Congress can come together, if they had the will, and pull the plug on Bush's military meddling. One vote to modify Public Law 107-40 , Authorization for Use of Military Force, would put an end to Bush's prattling that the authorization to use our military against the group of thugs who orchestrated the 9-11 attacks is a license for him to evade the law and launch a jingoistic campaign of suspicion and snooping against anyone he deems related to his paranoid war. One vote to slash the slush fund that Bush and Rumsfeld enjoy for their nation-building, and for their war on Americans and our democracy. One vote to bring the orchestrator of this madness to heel.
Bush has admitted to the world that he's deliberately broken the law and kicked aside that sacred covenant which holds that the Executive cannot, and should not, declare war on his country's own people. This 'war on terror' is just that. A war on America and Americans. Bush should be brought to account before the Congress he so openly scorns and threatens. But they continue to speak to Bush and his lackeys as if these crooks care at all about what they think. The president should be made to account to Congress for his power grab that he justifies with their own resolution. Articles of impeachment would effectively begin the process of restoring our democracy and the balance of power Congress has so willingly relinquished.
We disagree with Bush's wars, in increasing numbers. We are the only force that threatens to upend Bush's fascist throne that he's feathered and embellished for himself by fanning the flames of fear, and with jingoistic appeals to patriotism and nationalism. We are the only force with enough resolve to stand him down. That energy has to be mainlined to our legislators. They are the enablers of this pretender's petty reign. They're hooked on the war junk as well, strung out by the pusher.
The time has come when the people, we, the people, have to insist that nothing in the halls of our democracy moves forward until we reassert the power invested in us effective with the signings of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution and the passage of its many important amendments. Nothing, from the budgeting of our hard earned contributions to the Treasury, to the funneling of more cash into the Pentagon's bloated plutocracy should be allowed to proceed until we can pry these traitor's hands off of the throat of our democracy.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
