Pelosi to America: We Aren’t Losing Fast Enough
According to this article in Politico.com, Democrats don’t think we’re unilaterally surrendering fast enough. Here’s how they spin their policy:
The House Democratic plan for funding the war in Iraq could force a pullout of U.S. combat troops starting on July 1, with all American units out of the country by the end of 2007, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters Thursday. Even under the least aggressive timetable laid out by Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, U.S. forces will have withdrawn from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008.
When the pullout begins depends on the progress that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki makes in meeting political and military benchmarks. President Bush would have to certify by July 1 that the Maliki government is “making progress” toward those goals, or a U.S. withdrawal would start immediately and be finished in six months.
The House legislation is DOA in the Senate. This legislation is pure posturing. First, Senate Republicans will filibuster a restriction-laden bill. Secondly, the conference report will strip out the defeatist House/Murtha/Pelosi language. I won’t even throw in the throwaway line that “If it makes it to President Bush’s desk, he’ll veto it” because it won’t get nearly that far.
The speaker also dismissed a potential veto by Bush, or the likelihood that the bill would get bogged down in the Senate, as immaterial to what she and House Democrats were trying to do. Pelosi said worrying about whether Bush would sign a bill was “too limiting” for House Democrats. Pelosi told reporters that the goal of the Democratic proposal, included within a $95 billion wartime spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan, is to bring about an end to the war, “safely, reasonably and soon.”
Pelosi is so out of touch with flyover country voters that it’s scary. She doesn’t blink an eyelash at admitting that they don’t care about winning, that their biggest priority is in appeasing their Nutroots base.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI) said Democrats are seeking to bring the Iraq conflict to “an orderly and responsible close” so that the United States could refocus attention on the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan.
Rep. Obey’s stated goal is to put a higher priority on killing terrorists in Afghanistan than on killing terrorists in Iraq. I wonder If Rep. Obey could explain why Democrats are putting a higher priority on killing Afghan-based terrorists than on killing Iraq-based terrorists and insurgents. Does Rep. Obey know something we don’t? Does Rep. Obey know that Afghan-based terrorists are more likely to attack the United States than are the Iranian-supplied terrorists in Iraq?
I doubt that Rep. Obey thinks any of those things. I suspect that it’s the best spin he can put on rationalizing unilateral surrender without calling it unilateral surrender.
Democrats also want to prohibit the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, ban torture and limit the time of deployment to Iraq for combat troops while ensuring that no units deployed there lack proper equipment, training or rest.
Why do Democrats want to “prohibit the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq”? You’d think that having a couple bases in western Iraq would be a positive thing because so much of our foreign threats are based in the region. Having a base, especially an Air Force base, could be used to keep the pressure on the Iranians.
Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), chairman on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, had earlier talked about inserting language in the Iraq bill to close the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but that language is not in the bill.
Most of the things that Murtha bragged about have been shot down by the DFL caucus because they know that passing legislation with his restrictions would be political suicide in 2008.
Technorati Tags: Iraq War, John Murtha,Nancy Pelosi, Defeatocrats, Afghanistan, Terrorists, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
March 8th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
[…] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: Military, Iraq, Iran, Terrorism, President Bush, Pelosi, John Murtha, Radical Islam, Appeasement, Election 2008, Defeatocrats | […]
March 8th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
[…] Original post by Gary Gross and software by Elliott Back […]
March 9th, 2007 at 10:18 am
The American people can no longer give either Bush or the debacle in Iraq their support.
March 9th, 2007 at 10:55 am
What Rep Obey knows is that the terrorists in Afganistan have already attacked the Uited States with the support of their Saudi backers. The insurents in Iraq have not.
He probably also knows that our presence in Iraq is doing bupkiss to prevent terrorists attacks elsewhere in the world. So do the Btits, the Japanese, Indians, et. al. They don’t have to “follow us home” if we pull out. They are already here.
Our invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terrorism before we went in, and it has vanishingly little to do with it now.