Truthout: Funding Cuts Could End Iraq Occupation

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091707J.shtml

Funding Cuts Could End Iraq Occupation
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 17 September 2007

snip//

Last week, following two days of testimony by General David Petraeus, the Pentagon's top commander on the ground in Baghdad, who claimed progress is being made in the region due in large part to the so-called "surge" in ground troops, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed a change in strategy.

"It seems to me that Gen. Petraeus is presenting a plan for at least a 10-year, high-level U.S. presence in Iraq," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) during a news conference Monday following a meeting with President Bush. "No matter how successful our troops are, still the Iraqi government refuses to make the political changes necessary. This sounds to me, at least, like a 10-year open-ended presence in Iraq. The president added 30,000 troops, and now he's saying a year and a half later, nearly two years later, we'll be back to where we started. Please, that is an insult to the people."

"This war in Iraq is not the Petraeus war. It is the Bush war," added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who also attended the meeting with Bush. "What we find with what has been stated in recent days is that the surge is not going to last for 30 days, but now the testimony indicates that this surge is going to last for 18, 19 months, ending sometime next August. There is no change in mission - this is more of the same. In two weeks, we're going to get a request for another $200 billion for the war in Iraq - $200 billion," Reid said. "Is there anything logical about this picture, anybody? The answer is no."

But whether Democrats adhere to their own rhetoric will be determined in large part on how they vote in the weeks ahead on the emergency-spending bill to fund the occupation of Iraq.

So far, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has emerged as the only Democrat willing to go on the record to say he may vote against further funding the occupation. But he would not lobby his colleagues to follow his lead.

In a speech to the Center for National Policy a couple of weeks ago, Durbin said Congress now faces a "moral obligation" to stop funding the occupation.

"This Congress can't give President Bush another blank check for his war in Iraq," Durbin said. "The Constitution gives Congress a means to force the President to change course: the power of the purse. For the sake of our long-term national security interests, Congress needs to use that authority now."