If he hadn't done that, the situation in Iraq might have devolved into Chaos.

And yet the House failed to muster any where near enough votes to override the veto.

I didn't like the bill because of specific dates; makes it easy for anyone to wait us out.

On the other hand, the Democrats should 'man up' and just cut off funding immediately if they feel that strongly.

Political theater at its most reprehensible with both sets of actors.

...unlike the "Mission Accomplished" speech :}

You'll never find me defending that one either.

That's no fun :(

Let the 'others' wake up.

I'm sure your honey-coated Bush-bait will bring them; liberals can't resist..........................:cool:

They're generally too thick to read through the satire :{

Have I got news for you is great.

Satire rules :ok:

Good man Aaaa.....argh, at least this started as a Bush bashing thread and didn't just get there!

As retired Military, I think the Bi-Partisan Grandstanding by Bush and Pelosi demonstrates just how much value the current politicians place on the death of over 3,000 service personnel. A great tragedy, but it better not get in the way of their own personal Dick-dance.

Sacrifice is noble, votes are even better.

"unlike the "Mission Accomplished" speech"
The banner the USN put of its own doing?
Pssst, the turkey Bush lifted at Thanksgiving a few years back was plastic...keep it to yourself, 'kay..

It's history repeated itself. I've just finished two excellent books about the American War of Independence, ('Rise to Rebellion' and 'The Glorious Cause', both by Jeff Shaara), and they're anything to go by, quite a few of the delegates at the First Continental Congress, (with what any disinterested observer would think could only be a death wish), were playing silly games like this even before they'd officially declared independence.

If anyone's looking for a very good read and an understanding of how incredibly close the US came to not succeeding in their breakaway from England, (thanks almost entirely to people with different agendas within their own ranks), I'd highly recommend thse two books.

The scariest part of the books is that as you read them, you recognise that the US political leadership of today is making virtually every mistake the political leadership of England was making back in the 1770s in mishandling a faraway rebellion. It's all too easy to draw rather dire conclusions about the seemingly inevitable outcome of another very current 'rebellion'.

It's All About Al-Qaeda Again
By Dana Milbank
Thursday, May 3, 2007; A02

President Bush is at odds with the American public and a restive congressional majority over the Iraq war, and even some Republicans talk about imposing new requirements that could trigger a troop withdrawal.

It's time to play the Qaeda card.

In a speech about Iraq yesterday morning at the Willard Hotel, the president mentioned Osama bin Laden's group -- 27 times. "For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it's whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11," Bush told a group of construction contractors.

Never mind all that talk about sectarian strife and civil war in Iraq. "The primary reason for the high level of violence is this: Al-Qaeda has ratcheted up its campaign of high-profile attacks," Bush disclosed.

The man who four years ago admitted "no evidence" of an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks now finds solid evidence of a role in Iraq by the Sept. 11 hijackers.

"I don't need to remind you who al-Qaeda is," Bush reminded. "Al-Qaeda is the group that plot and planned and trained killers to come and kill people on our soil. The same bunch that is causing havoc in Iraq were the ones who came and murdered our citizens."

This new line of argument would seem to present some difficulty for the White House, and not only because, as the Pentagon inspector general reported last month, al-Qaeda had no ties to Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003. More to the point: If the problem in Iraq isn't sectarian strife, then why is the U.S. military building walls to separate Sunni enclaves from Shiite neighborhoods?

The White House's plan to deemphasize sectarian fighting evidently didn't make it to Egypt, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with the Iraqi prime minister. A Rice deputy, briefing reporters yesterday on the condition of anonymity, said the United States wants Arab countries to pressure Sunnis to stop fighting the Shiite-led Iraqi government.

These awkward truths left White House press secretary Tony Snow with hard work at the podium in his first televised briefing since returning from cancer surgery.

Fox News Channel's Bret Baier noted: "This morning the president said that al-Qaeda seems to be a bigger problem than sectarian violence. That seems to fly in the face of what we've heard in recent weeks and months on the ground in Iraq."

"Well," the game press secretary replied, "you've got a shifting series of circumstances."

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell wasn't convinced. "Wasn't the whole point of the surge to quell the capital and really to diminish the sectarian violence? And now he seems to be saying the enemy is more al-Qaeda."

Snow repeated his view that "there has been some change in status on the ground."

Martha Raddatz of ABC News took a turn calling Snow on the Qaeda card. This exchange, too, proved inconclusive. CBS Radio's Peter Maer took a final stab at the "systematic al-Qaeda attack" allegation, with a similar result.

While making no headway on the Qaeda question, reporters weren't eager to torture the convalescing press secretary (at least two of the reporters in the audience wore yellow cancer bracelets with Snow's name inscribed on them). They moved on to other subjects.

Raghubir Goyal of the India Globe held up a basket wrapped in colored cellophane. "Mangoes from India arrived, and here is a basket for President Bush," the reporter offered. "My question is: What message does mangoes bring, as far as India-U.S. relations are concerned?"

For one of the few times during the briefing, Snow smiled. "I don't know. It is my first mango-related inquiry," he admitted. It wasn't long before the briefing deteriorated into questions about Marion Barry's income taxes and an entry in Ronald Reagan's diary calling one senator "a pompous no-good fathead."

The White House is well aware that it has had some trouble getting out a coherent message on Iraq. In his speech to the contractors, Bush delivered a less-than-ringing endorsement of the First Amendment, calling freedom of the press "just something that we've all got to live with."

And he implicitly acknowledged his own credibility gap when he admitted that "the best messenger, by the way, for us is David Petraeus," the top U.S. general in Iraq. Petraeus is such a good messenger, in fact, that Bush invoked his name 12 times in the speech. Snow gave Petraeus four shout-outs.

On the Hill, Republicans took a Qaeda cue from the White House. "I can't understand how my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, knowing that al-Qaeda is in charge over there, knowing that they want to destroy us, knowing that Osama bin Laden wants to destroy America, that you want to pull out," Rep. Dan Burton (Ind.) railed on the House floor.

If Democrats are intimidated by the Qaeda card, they didn't show it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), an hour before visiting the White House to meet with Bush, gave an Iraq speech on the House floor. "This administration," she said, "should get a clue."

It's just the same old bullshit over and over and over again from the Republicans. The Democrats should just impeach as many of these delusional twats as possible, take the occupying troops out, and leave in specialized counter-terrorist teams to manipulate and control things from within without having such a large footprint in the country. Nobody interfered in your civil war, don't interfere in theirs. Terrorism is a police matter, not something to be quelled by an occupying military force, quite to the contrary it has been proven time and time again that it is embolded by the occupation. Republicans are just too pig-ignorant and stubborn to learn from their mistakes. Insanity was once defined as repeating the same action over and over again and expecting different results, I think that says it all about the 29% of people who still support Bush's "war on terror".

That is that one sorted, then! Impeachment, eh? But, wait, isn't impeachment some sort of long, drawn-out process?

You make it sound as though the reprehensible Republicans shall be dragged off the floor of the House or Senate, or perhaps out of the Oval Office by the scruff of their necks to be taken outside and shot or hanged. Problem sorted!

We don't want to fool the non-experts here about how things work or don't in the USA, do we? Last week we had someone ready to take the suicide pill of blindly believing Naomi Wolf, 'just because.' This week it should be the magic pill of impeachment?

Just remember what Abe Lincoln said, about how you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Here, due to this, I think you can see US support for our little Iraq adventure dwindling. People were fooled by allegations of terrorism and WMD, weren't they? Well, that's politics, Sunshine. Is it so that only Republicans do that? What, the Democrats are pure?

This US retreat from fantasy should bring a solution to the problem. Not, perhaps, the ideal solution (peace, brotherhood, tolerance and the compulsory wearing of sandalwood sandals) but a solution nonetheless. Then we move on, leaving the Iraqis to sort out this mess more-or-less on their own. Well, there should be the odd billion dollars contributed as a sort of parting largesse, but that won't count for much; it's just chump change to our legislators.

I suppose this inevitable-seeming retreat will mean the break-up of Iraq into some statelets that should enjoy relative peace and prosperity, such as Kurdistan, but others that will look like downtown Mogadishu where once they were very quiet indeed under the iron rule of the late S. Hussein.

There should be plenty for you Jet Blasters to chew over. First you blamed us for invading, now you blame us for staying and finally you can blame us for leaving. Have I left anything out?

Not too many years ago, an extraordinary effort by the US to hold together a region plagued by insurgency and civil war was abandoned at the behest of congress and a war-weary US public. After the Americans left a few million Cambodians and untold numbers of Vietnamese and Laotians were murdered, displaced, and dispossessed, and the region fell under the aegis of a rigid, inhumane ideology.

Does your insanity definition apply, PanPan?

Just remember what Abe Lincoln said, about how you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Here I think you can see US support for our little Iraq adventure dwindling. People were fooled by allegations of terrorism and WMD, weren't they? Well, that's politics, Sunshine.Thank you for that admission that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeldt, Perle and Wolfowitz were lying all along...This US retreat from fantasy should bring a solution to the problem.... and that the American public have been living in a fantasy in supporting BushWell, there should be the odd billion dollars contributed as a sort of parting largess, but that won't count for much; it's just chump change to our legislators.Yep, we realised that when we saw the amount being handed out to Halliburton. Perhaps the sums referred to in your post could actually go to Iraq and the Iraqi people instead of corrupt American corporations?First you blame us for invading, then you blame us for staying and finally you can blame us for leaving. Have I left anything out?Yes - we blame your President for being stupid, not listening to anyone except his own neocons, who have all been lining their pockets (and those of their girlfriends) at the expense of the suffering of the people of Iraq. And all for what? The only benefit of the whole sorry mess is that Saddam has gone. All this to depose and kill one man. And how many other deaths along the way - how many Iraqi civilians, how many American soldiers, how many British soldiers? Hundreds and hundreds of thousands. And the expense? Billions.

I think it's more than just politics, Sunshine. Lots of people have died and lots of money has been wasted. The effects of politics on Capitol Hill extend far beyond the beltway.

Sorry Benthere, your grasp on South East Asian History is a tad bit tainted there.

Untold numbers of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Lao were killed by the US, as they fought against utterly corrupt and unsupported puppet regimes. It was US carpet bombing of Lao and Cambodian countryside that drove even more of these countries citizens to support the Pathet Lao or the Khmer Rouge, who at the time were a better option than that offered in Vientiane or by the Lon Nol regime.

Millions of Cambodians did suffer, but when the Vietnamese did finally liberate Cambodia from the KR it was at the most hostile opposition of the US. Likewise, Laos, a country not even at war with the US became, courtesy of the US, the most bombed country in the history of warfare.

As for Vietnam, after "cutting and running", there was no bloodbath. That simply did not occur.

May I take it then, Sunray, that if the Democrat congress has its way and the US disappears from Iraq, the aftermath will be pleasant, as you seem to be saying it was in SEA when the US left?

A guy I used to fly with, who was a child in 1975 in Saigon, lost his parents and two brothers after the US left to political murder. It was a bloodbath for him, even though to you it did not occur. He made his way to the US with his surviving brother and became a USAF pilot. There are many, many stories like his.

Given the previous 10 years, what occurred in Vietnam after the departure of the US forces, was absolute calm in comparison - the death rates bear this out. To expect a war to end over night and be bloodless is asking a little too much, not mention that political murder was rife under the US supported Diem regime and it would be fair to say if the US had never involved itself in SEA (Iraq) the inhabitants of these countries would be much better off. I don't believe the US is necessarily a force for evil, but in the case of South East Asia and Iraq it has been exactly that.

If the US vacates Iraq tomorrow the bloodshed won't stop, but the death rate at present is so huge (approaching the average casualty rate found in WWII) I struggle to see how it can get much worse. That aside, if the occupation forces were actually intent on improving the situation they wouldn't have closed the taps on funding, would have sought a negotiable situation with all players in power in Iraq and would not be using it as a political grandstand.

The continued occupation of Iraq is nothing to do with saving Iraqi lives and has everything to do with trying to save face.

Does your insanity definition apply, PanPan?
BenThere, your reference to Vietnam only strengthens my point. Yes my insanity definition does apply, the fact that they learned nothing from the fiasco that was Vietnam, and then went on to make the same mistake in Iraq, is nothing short of completely insane. An occuyping force will never defeat a determined domestic insurgency, it's as simple as that. How many different ways do I have to say it? It's just not logically feasible.

Republicans not too happy with Mess-o-potamia either:

Some Republicans split with Bush on the war
They say a new spending bill should include benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet.
By Noam N. Levey and Janet Hook, Times Staff Writers
May 3, 2007

WASHINGTON — Distressed by the violence in Iraq and worried about tying their political fate to an unpopular president, some Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to move away from the White House to stake out a more critical position on the U.S. role in the war.

These lawmakers are advocating proposals that would tie the U.S. commitment in the war to the Iraqi government's ability to demonstrate that it is working to quell the sectarian conflict.

As Democrats start work on a new war spending bill to replace the one President Bush vetoed, at least three Republican senators who opposed the Democratic withdrawal plan said Wednesday that the new bill should include so-called benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet.

"Obviously, the president would prefer a straight funding bill with no benchmarks, no conditions, no reports," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). "Many of us, on both sides of the aisle, don't see that as viable."

Collins, who opposed Bush's troop buildup but balked at the Democratic withdrawal plan, is working on legislation that would require Iraqis to meet certain goals to receive U.S. reconstruction aid.

Most Republicans are expected to stick with the White House until September, when the U.S. military commander in Iraq plans to deliver a major assessment of the president's war strategy. Bush in January ordered the deployment of an additional 21,500 troops to try to stabilize Iraq.

But the call for establishing benchmarks with concrete consequences challenges the position of the president and GOP leaders, much as the Democrats did when they tried to link the same measurements with a troop withdrawal.

And it comes as some Republicans are calling on colleagues to take a more independent position on the war after years of deferring to the White House.

"We have to be engaged developing our own proposals and not just going along with what the executive branch is doing," said Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., a Louisiana Republican who voted against the Democratic plan to force Bush to start withdrawing troops.

Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican who has supported Bush's war strategy even as the public has turned against it, said, "The marketplace has become ripe for a new idea."

GOP leaders in the House and Senate continue to criticize the Democratic drive to force an end to the 4-year-old war. Senior Republicans have not embraced any proposals that would put them at odds with the White House, which has consistently declined to articulate any consequences for the Iraqis if they failed to meet the benchmarks.

On Wednesday, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) refused to discuss what a tougher benchmark plan would look like, shifting the focus instead to Democrats.

"They have a responsibility to bring forward a clean bill that supports our troops and supports our effort in Iraq," Boehner said, flanked by his senior legislative lieutenants.

Democratic leaders are trying to decide how they will respond to Bush's veto of their $124-billion war spending bill.

The bill mandated that the president begin to withdraw U.S. troops by July 1, unless the Iraqi government made substantial progress on a number of benchmarks, such as disarming sectarian militias. Even if Iraq met them, the bill ordered a withdrawal to start Oct. 1.

The measure officially died Wednesday when Democrats in the House voted 222 to 203 to override the president's veto, failing to muster the necessary two-thirds majority.

Democratic leaders have said they plan to drop the withdrawal timelines from the next spending bill, which they hope to send to Bush by the end of the month.

They have indicated, however, that they want to include benchmarks for the Iraqi government to keep pressure on its leaders to take political steps to match the U.S. military effort.


Entire article here at the LA Times. (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-warfunds3may03,0,7640493.story?coll=la-home-headlines)

Aaa.....rrgh,

If I recall correctly, you spend time in Texas. Now even as much as I admire Texas and its manly approach to most things like hunting, I think even Texas has a limit when bagging liberals.


I'd say you've reached your limit.

The man is hunting a baited field! That is unsporting and illegal. Still, it is nice to see these fluffy little critters coming out from cover to be mowed down in the welter of their steaming illogic, yes?

I seem to have been shot down in flames here by having refuted a position I never took. Odd thing, that. GSX1000R obviously has me mixed up with some sort of Right-wing Republican. I guess he never met a real one so that he should try and make friends with West Coast, perhaps. Then he might be able to tell the difference.

There is nothing I wrote in my last post that seems to me to be terribly controversial. I guess it is just that I don't really believe that Bush & Co are planning some sort of fascist dictatorship or that they are depraved and evil people. They do seem a bit foolish and greedy, yes, but who among us has not at one time or another fit that description? Some of the posters here on Jet Blast seem to consider themselves candidates for secular sainthood, taken that way.

I spent some time in Viet Nam, when I thought it was a case of bad guys and worse guys, with us on the side of the bad guys. We finally had to give up and leave, yes, but 'cut and run'? What, after only 12 years or so? It only took the French 9, and they thought they owned the place!

It is so nice to meet a young person with such a firm grasp on history as this little ray of sunshine, that he knows what went on there. Me, I was there watching some of it, and I still find it confusing! We bombed their carpets, did we? All I ever saw was grass mats but never mind that now.

I was once trapped in a New York City café with a JAP (Jewish-American Princess). I was actually hoping to fast-forward the film to the part where we landed back in bed again, but there we were listening to a long and droning discourse on China, of all things. (She had read 13 (thirteen) books about the place and wanted me to know all about it.)

I finally despaired of getting any further with this opinionated little minx so that I asked her, in mid-flow, 'Would you suppose that I have ever been to China?'

'You? No. Why?'

'Well, I have been....'

'Where?'

'Hong Kong, for a week. And I read a guide book about it, too.'

'That isn't China!' Now Chairman Mao might not have agreed with that, but who was I to argue? I had been there, seen it with my own eyes, and obviously knew far, far less than this big-city person who read books. Durn!

I especially like the idea that something that turns out to be a bloody mess cannot also be politics. Just how do you suppose we get into these things anyway? Okay, we Americans are raving loons and all but you think we just open fire without any preamble, any attempt at all to build a consensus for knocking the crap out of some deserving foreign entity?

No, no, Sunshine, it is politics that gets us into these things and it is usually politics that gets us back out again. Well, there are some affairs, such as Braddock's Retreat, that have an apolitical resolution. That would be where things are such a bloody shambles that we do cut and run. (Personally I blame that one on you lot, the Brits, who were providing the leadership.) Usually we kill a lot of them, they kill a lot of us, after a while we get tired of the blood, trouble and expense and then we finally come up with a way back out of whatever mess we got ourselves into.

The Second World War was one of those rare occasions when we could bring things to a military conclusion; since then pretty much everything we have been involved in has had political dimensions that went far beyond the field of battle. To take the Tet Offensive for an example, it was an American military victory but a political victory for the North Vietnamese. The political defeat we suffered far outweighed whatever we had achieved in killing lots and lots of Commies. There were lots and lots more where they came from and meanwhile the American people, fed a certain judicious mixture of truth and bare-faced lies, decided they had had enough. There was no way they wanted little middle-class Johnny to get caught up in a mess with no obvious clean end in sight and that was that!

Here again with Iraq, people choose which side to take. There are enough 'facts' to go around and bolster whatever argument you choose. Lots of you argue without much real grasp of the complicated realities, I think. You make up a story that fits your feelings, a sort of fairy tale for adults with George W. Bush as the Big, Bad Wolf, and then you tell it to each other, building up your argument as you go. You wont let me spoil your party, I am sure. I am obviously some sort of raving Right-winger, a paid-up admirer of George W. Bush. Otherwise, I should have to agree with the most of you. Q.E.D.

Chuks,

If that was aimed at me, then yeah, I've been to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, worked in two of them indirectly helping to deal with the remnants of what US (and Aussies, Koreans, Kiwis and Thais) did there.

Maybe I don't know jack sh1t about the place other than holding a degree focussed on the region, an attitude to the locals that extends further than them being "bad guys and worse guys", and a history learnt from analytical hindsight rather than the limited scope of one side in an environment full of smoke, mirrors and restrictions on the full story that existed from '65 to '75.

There's not much point rehashing what was and wasn't Tet as though it provides some great insight in the Vietnam War, and I'm the last person to say these battles aren't political. It is the politicians such as the ones running the Republican leadership who are trying to stretch out the savagry of this current conflict to preserve their own reputations. That puts them on an even par with the rest of the Iraqi power players.