The Real Reason Congressional Democrats are Wimping Out on Iraq

[leftchick]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/12784


Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi has called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history.” While this may be true, there is a deeper explanation for Reid’s timidity.

<snip>

Okay, maybe they might want to tone it down a bit, but the above shows that it would not be that difficult to kick the sand right back into Bush’s face. The reason the Democrats won’t do this has to be more than mere timidity.

Contrary to appearances, the United States Congress is not an elected body; it is a corporation. Its shareholders are the corporate benefactors who fund reelection campaigns. A majority shareholder in this corporation is the Military-Industrial Complex.

To the Military-Industrial Complex, peace is not a profit center. Their survival and health depends upon war, or the threat of war. Iraq is their hen that is laying golden eggs at a prodigious rate. The first rule of the Complex is that you don’t make chicken soup out of the hen. This means the main thrusts of this Congress has been to keep the war going as long as possible. It was an embarrassment when the Democrats took over the Congress with the expectation that they were going to end the war. Fortunately, Reid and Pelosi came to the rescue and have been heroic in their efforts to keep the war in good running order.

[rpannier]

1. A recommend and a heart to you and your article

Thanks for sharing.

[leftchick]

6. thank you!

:)

[chimpymustgo]

2. Same. A rec and a heart for you, leftchick!

Great article.

[leftchick]

5. the end is pretty depressing

:(

<snip>

Tragically, it does not make any difference who wins the 2008 election, nor would it make any difference if the Democrats achieved a veto-proof majority in Congress. As long as their majority shareholder wants this war to continue, it will, and the public be damned.

thank you for the heart.

peace,
lc

[mojowork_n]

3. It's not just what being done in plain sight.

The only successful manufacturers in this country any more are the ones making submarines, tanks and jet planes.

I don't know if we even make our own toasters, any more, or if they all come from China, or South Korea, or Costa Rica.

But worse than that, it's kind of looking like corruption (they used to call it "war profiteering") is being covered up:

August 31, 2007
U.S. Says Company Bribed Officers for Work in Iraq
By ERIC SCHMITT and JAMES GLANZ
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 — An American-owned company operating from Kuwait paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to American contracting officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts, the government says in court documents.

The Army last month suspended the company, Lee Dynamics International, from doing business with the government, and the case now appears to be at the center of a contracting fraud scandal that prompted Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to dispatch the Pentagon inspector general to Iraq to investigate.

Court documents filed in the case say the Army took action because the company was suspected of paying hundreds of thousands in bribes to Army officers to secure contracts to build, operate and maintain warehouses in Iraq that stored weapons, uniforms, vehicles and other matériel for Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005.

...The case is now part of a broader investigation in which the Army has a high-level team reviewing 18,000 contracts valued at more than $3 billion that the Kuwait office has awarded over four years...

...One of the officers, Maj. Gloria D. Davis, a contracting official in Kuwait, shot and killed herself in Baghdad in December 2006. Government officials say the suicide occurred a day after she admitted to an Army investigator that she had accepted at least $225,000 in bribes from the company... ...

Full text here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/washington/31contract.html?ei=5090&en=379525d15e30c78d&ex=1346212800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1188584312-oewPz7sFi4/FHTdMel0fSg&pagewanted=print

Those corruption investigations could lead to General David Petraeus. Col. Ted Westhusing (the Army's top "ethicist" -- who knew they had one -- was investigating fraud in Iraq when he was said to have committed "suicide." His superior officer at the time was Petraeus.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/an-american-death-col-_b_11373.html

[leftchick]

4. no doubt

more than betraus too. Our own democratic Senator Diane Fienstein has steered war profiteering contracts to her husband's company in 2004 and 2005. No wonder she voted for the war.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. It's always about the money

and the military industrial complex.

[bdamomma]

8. and to hell with all the people we are killing, and it's never

their sons or daughters being sent to Iraq. Damn them.

[leftchick]

9. they are just shameless about it too

DiFi/War profiteer comes to mind for blatancy.

[Arugula Latte]

10. Sad but true. On this issue, Eisenhower was dead on.

[leftchick]

11. interesting

lots of recs but not many comments?

:shrug:

[Loftlore]

12. Military Mothers

These are my own thoughts. They are not those of the campaign I am currently involved in.

I recently attended a meeting held by one of my state's Senators. The meeting was held on short notice. As a result, only twenty people attended. The meeting was called for by "Mothers of Solders in Iraq". Three mothers spoke. They were troubled. Their sons were soldiers in the war on Iraq.

The first mother spoke the longest. It was obvious she was in distress. She rambled a bit while describing how difficult life was for her son in Iraq. It was a heart rending story. The story was peppered with complaints about war protesters and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

This woman was obviously hurting. I could condense her thoughts by saying that she was asking all Democrats and all protesters to give up their right to criticize the President about the war. "The troops don't want to hear it," she said with exhaustion.

I've heard very, very different stories from other servicemen who have returned from Iraq. They applaud, loudly, civil discourse about the war.

This may not be politically correct, but I think that the mother may be suffering from a very bad case of buyer's remorse. She bought the Bush lies about the war and she will not admit her mistake. Somewhere, buried very, very deep, she knows that having her son fight in this awful war was a mistake. She dare not admit it. She dare not. To do so would be to admit that she might be complicit, or even formative, in the making of that mistake.

I tend to see things in terms of analogies. Perhaps it's my former training in the church. I see a perfect analogy here. People who have chosen to stand behind George W. Bush dare not take a political shot at him. Should they choose to take a political shot at Bush, because they are standing behind him, the shot would pass through Bush and hit them. They protect themselves by protecting Bush. Pretty simple.

Frankly, the poor mother and her silent husband both looked spent, exhausted. I imagine they are. Their politics may have put their child at risk, and for what? For George W. Bush! What is the worth in that? No wonder they cannot stand to hear the slightest dissension. These poor, wretched people are fighting the truth just as hard as their hero-son is fighting the Iraqis.

I wasn't angry with this mother. I was sad for her. Sometimes I'm sad for this whole nation.

loftlore.com

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

13. Welcome to DU. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to step in their shoes,...

,...and try to understand why they are so desperate to shut the discourse about this war down.

I feel sad for them, too. I really do. I do believe they are in pain.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

14. I share your sentiments.

Thank you for expressing them here, and welcome to DU.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[leftchick]

16. I am sad for them as well

and for those that have lost children "for our freedoms". I suppose that is the only way they can rationalize their sacrifice. It is very depressing.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

17. K&R

[raccoon]

18. K&R nt

[countryjake]

19. Sadly, I think this is quite evident by the focus of both the candidates, too...

How odd is it that the occupation seems to have fallen by the wayside, in the stumping that has been headline news for weeks, now? Suddenly, the economy (which mysteriously reared its ugly head just in time for campaigning to go full-throttle, via the long-anticipated "burst" of the housing bubble, rate cuts, and reduced "shopping") is a number one topic of both parties, when in the very near past, people who were badly hurting financially were told to "buck up" or accused of being lazy or whiny, as tho it were a non-issue. Now, it is the "in thing" to discuss and worry about, like out of the blue the country's incredible poverty might affect us all. Economy has become a comfortable distraction for all the politicos and pundits, until, of course, some witless peace-lover demands explanation of that blaring relationship between taxpayer monies and our funding of wars and our failing social programs and safety-nets and national debt.

I spoke with a couple at our caucus last weekend, two worried parents who have children serving in the military, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan and one at home, thinking of joining. They were so hopelessly gung-ho for Sen. Clinton and convinced that the promises she's made will get their kids home soon, that I hadn't the heart to mention that stance of hers on Iran and the possibility of where their youngest may end up. They were sad folk. Their attempt at bringing up the occupations as a topic of concern at that caucus was immediately talked down by the very vocal Sen. Obama supporters, throwing Clinton's IRW vote into the faces of those two who have a very real vested interest in peace. The gullibility on both sides was truly disheartening. Misguided faith is a vicious disease that's not easily healed, as is so apparent in that "other forum" right here on this board.

[leftchick]

21. Misguided indeed

all one has to do is actually read their positions, especially clinton's, in regard to "our vital national security interests in the middle east" (justifying the eternal bases). Whatever could she mean?

[countryjake]

23. Oh yeah, I pointed out those code words both candidates use...

to the military mother, privately, after our meeting was over and I'd helped her to get chosen to be one of our delegates (for Hillary, of all things). Since I'd found out earlier that she and her husband had both been backing Kucinich til he withdrew, as he was clearly anti-war, I asked her what she thought of both the candidates now slipping "security threats" and "national interests" in the Middle East into so many of their responses, after they are questioned about war. She answered that she can't help but have faith that, after all of these years, somebody will wake up to the fact that it is our children's interest that have been hurt the most by the prez's policies.

It is blind faith.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

20. Their profession is to get re-elected, term after term

and eventually leave their seats for a lucrative lobbying position, having lunch with their former colleagues and closing a deal. I would prefer qualified short-term citizen-amateurs in the Congress, who only seek one or two terms and then go back to their normal lives back in their districts, but who promise to be absolutely faithful to every single reason their constituents put them into office.

[Disturbed]

22. The MIC is one reason that the US Occupations continue

in Iraq & Afghanistan. Another reason is that
the Repug & Dem Leaders to keep the Fiascos going to finalize the Oil & Natural Gas Pipe Line Deals. The Repugs & Dems are afraid that they will be blamed if they force the end of the US Occupations and Iraq & Afghanistan go down the tubes, the Oil & Natural Gas goes to other countries,Iran gains major control in the ME.