The Iraq War will be run by George W Bush and we will leave when he says so....and not before. I shouldn't gloat....but I just can't help it.
May 22, 2007 Democrats Drop Troop Pullout Dates From Iraq Bill By CARL HULSE WASHINGTON, May 22 — Congressional Democrats relented today on their insistence that a war spending measure sought by President Bush also set a date for withdrawing troops from Iraq. The decision to back down, described by senior lawmakers and aides, was a wrenching reversal for some Democrats, who saw their election triumph as a call to force an end to the war. A Democratic effort to include timelines prompted Mr. Bush’s veto of the original bill last month, producing a political impasse. “We don’t have a veto-proof Congress,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic majority leader, said the new bill was still being assembled, but he acknowledged the political reality facing Democrats. “The president has made it very clear that he is not going to sign timelines,” said Mr. Hoyer. “We can’t pass timelines over his veto.” The concession to the president was proving so difficult for the Democratic leadership that by this afternoon, the lawmakers had not yet publicly acknowledged that the timelines would disappear. House Democrats were preparing to advance two separate measures, to enable antiwar lawmakers to support popular domestic spending but not the money for the war. House Democrats were to review the proposal later this evening, but lawmakers were already predicting that many would not support the war spending. Under the new plan approved by Democratic leaders, Congress would send Mr. Bush the money for the war and include a series of benchmarks that attracted 52 votes in the Senate last week. The Iraqi government could lose some foreign aid if it fails to show sufficient progress but the president would be given the authority to suspend any penalties. The agreement with the White House and Republicans would be tied to approval of as much as $20 billion in domestic spending sought by Democrats, as well as an increase in the minimum wage. Republican leaders said that would be hard for some lawmakers in their party to accept, but that they would probably allow it in exchange for the war spending. The Democratic leaders’ concession infuriated one of their own, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, who failed last week in his attempt to win passage of a measure that would have cut off money for the war next spring. “I cannot support a bill that contains nothing more than toothless benchmarks and that allows the president to continue what may be the greatest foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history,” he said. “There has been a lot of tough talk from members of Congress about wanting to end this war, but it looks like the desire for political comfort won out over real action. Congress should have stood strong, acknowledged the will of the American people, and insisted on a bill requiring a real change of course in Iraq.”
In 2002, Then Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle, of South Dakota, rammed through a ban on clear cutting that hurt the timber companies badly. Well, not all of them. It seems the bill exempted South Dakota.
Earlier this year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of San Fransisco pushed through a minimum wage bill that exempted Starkist Tuna of (you guessed it) San Fransisco.
Later, Democratic Governor John Corzine of New Jersey, proud and vocal sponsor of the click it or ticket campaign, bringing a huge crackdown on drivers who don't wear their seat belts, was nearly killed as his vehicle crashed at 91 miles per hour (26 miles per hour over the limit is considered reckless driving in New Jersey). The Governor was not wearing a seat belt.
A Vallejo woman reportedly suffered minor injuries Friday when her car was rear-ended by an SUV driven by a state senator talking on a cell phone while driving through Solano County.
State Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, was driving her new state-issued 2007 Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV at 10:40 a.m. on eastbound Highway 12 at Beck Avenue when she rear-ended Ellen Butawan, 31, of Vallejo, California Highway Patrol Officer Marvin Williford said.
Butawan's 2005 Honda sedan was slowing behind a 2003 GMCSavana van that had stopped at a red light, Williford said. The impact forced Butawan's car into the rear of the van, driven by Bob Jordan, 57, of Turlock.
Butawan complained of pain after the three-vehicle smashup and went to NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield after the crash as a precautionary measure, Williford said.
Migden, 58, accepted blame Friday for the accident.
The collision remains under investigation, but it appears Migden took the wrong exit, inadvertently going on the eastbound I-80 connector onto eastbound Highway 12, Williford said. She was looking for a way to get back onto the freeway when she crashed into Butawan's vehicle, he said.
Migden's sobriety was verified by officers using a hand-held
breath-testing unit, even though there was nothing to indicate she had been drinking, Williford said.
"It was just a precaution," he said.
Her SUV, which she recently swapped for her taxpayer-funded 2005 Cadillac STS, sustained a dented front grill that kept the hood from closing properly. It was towed to the FairfieldCHP office, where officers used a coat hanger and duct-tape to secure it, before Migden drove it away to a meeting in Marin County.
Migden last year voted for a new law that takes effect in July 2008 that will impose a minimum fine of $20 for anyone caught using a cell phone while driving without a headset, ear bud or other technology that frees both hands.
UPDATE! Just when we thought we had run out of outrageous democrat hypocrite material, comes this!(LINK)
The Left's Iraq Muddle Yes, it is central to the fight against Islamic radicalism. BY BOB KERREY
At this year's graduation celebration at The New School in New York, Iranian lawyer, human-rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi delivered our commencement address. This brave woman, who has been imprisoned for her criticism of the Iranian government, had many good and wise things to say to our graduates, which earned their applause. But one applause line troubled me. Ms. Ebadi said: "Democracy cannot be imposed with military force." What troubled me about this statement--a commonly heard criticism of U.S. involvement in Iraq--is that those who say such things seem to forget the good U.S. arms have done in imposing democracy on countries like Japan and Germany, or Bosnia more recently.
Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were "over there." It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the "head of the snake." But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores. As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program. No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq. Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right. The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart. Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would. American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear. With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy. The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes." This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.
Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn't have lasted a week. Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn't exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism. The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them. Mr. Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and member of the 9/11 Commission, is president of The New School.
May 22, 2007