Reckless?

Today John McCain deemed "reckless" - all Democrats who want the US to eventually (preferably soon) pull out of the Iraq civil war.

Here's a few points to ponder:

• Democrats are in the majority in both houses of Congress because the American people put them there. The biggest issue of the 2006 election was that 70% of Americans want the US to get our troops out of Iraq. The Democrats are doing the will of the people. That is what representative government is supposed to do, and the principle of democracy is not reckless.


• There are Republicans who do not want us to occupy Iraq indefinitely. How come McCain doesn't deem them reckless?


• McCain put US soldiers directly into harm's way so he could have a political photo opportunity in a Baghdad market. McCain, who had to travel in the most heavily armed humvee in the world due to the civil war, deemed it perfectly safe to visit the market.


• The Bush Administration lied to the public in order to drum up public support for attacking and occupying Iraq.


• The war against Iraq is about oil and extreme war profiteering, we all know that. Placing the US military in crosshairs in Iraq prevents the US from fighting against the real enemy that attacked us. The war on terror is on hold so we can be in the Iraqi civil war.


• Placing the National Guard, who by definition guards the US, into the middle of the Iraqi civil war leaves them woefully unprepared for their duties in the US. We saw the consequence of this during hurricane Katrina.


• By the law of the United States of America, only the US Congress can declare war. The Congress has not declared war against Iraq. Yet dubya ordered the war to take place.


• McCain also calls the war against Iraq as "just". Yet, Iraq did not attack us on 9/11, and it has been proved that Iraq was not about to attack us, nor help al Qaeda. The bodycount as of last year was minimally 250,000 and maximally 900,000 Iraqi citizens dead. Millions have fled their own country. How is this "just"? Sure, dubya hated Saddam, and Saddam was an extremely bad person. But that does not justify the suffering inflicted upon the citizens of Iraq.

Now, where exactly is the recklessness?

Perspective on support

There's a lot of rhetoric being thrown around by the right, which includes the mainstream media, that Democrats want the US to be defeated, hate the troops, and all that typical drivel that we've come to expect from them.

Here are a few inconvenient facts.

• The Bush Administration said that the war against Iraq would take much less than six months, and we're now in the fifth year


• Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was embarrassed years ago during a photo op with the troops, because a soldier's truthful statement was leaked into the media. He pointed out that soldiers are forced to scavenge trash dumps in Iraq to try to find armor because they are sent into the line of fire without adequate body armor or vehicles. Years later, this problem has still not been addressed by the Bush Administration.


• Dubya's 2007 budget did not allocate any funds for the war against Iraq or the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. There is NO reason for this, other than to make a political spectacle of necessitating an emergency budget, currently being debated. I don't know about you, but I'm not surprised that there are still wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - but apparently Bush completely forgot when he created his budget.


• Congress's proposed emergency spending budget includes funding for 100% of dubya's war plans.


• Congress's proposed emergency spending budget includes matters of national defense, such as implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendations for fighting terrorism. Bush has declared that such issues are pork and it's disgraceful for Congress to want such items to protect the US.


• Dubya has ridiculed Congress for breaking to meet with their constituents. The truth is that he holds the all-time record for number of vacation days for a US President.


• There's more, but that'll do...

How to deal with political hitmen

During the 2004 presidential elections, some dubya hitmen ran a very well financed smear campaign against John Kerry. This process, now known as "swiftboating", spread blatant lies about Kerry, and called him a traitor to the United States, despite the truth that he put his life on the line for this country as a loyal soldier.

As a reward for financing a successful lie campaign, dubya wanted to appoint Sam Fox, the smear financier, as ambassador to Belgium. Since Fox's only credential for being a US Ambassador was the fact that he was so loyal to Bush that he's willing to spend his own money to shout that true patriots are traitors, Congress did not confirm Fox. It is Constitutional law that the US Congress must confirm US Ambassadors. Since Fox could not be approved Constitutionally, Bush simply declared that, despite a failed confirmation attempt, Fox should just be assigned to the ambassadorship.

Recall, that Bush has referred to the US Constitution, a document that he swore to uphold, as "that goddamned piece of paper". Once again, rule of law be damned, there's a crony that must be rewarded at the expense of the people of the United States.

www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/04/bush.ambassador.ap/index.html

Screw the seniors of the blue states

Long before dubya's disasterous "part D" degradation of Medicare, Wisconsin had a working plan to help seniors pay for necessary medications. WI's SeniorCare saved seniors money, and come wrapped in the intentional confusion of the "part D" debacle. Drug companies still made money, the state provided a valuable service for less cost of dubya's plan, and seniors actually benefited from the plan.

In better times, you might think that the federal government might want to look at how a state succeeded in better serving their citizens and learn from the experience. But this is the age of the neo-con, and the GOP is not about to learn from the successes of a blue state. Instead, the dubya administration has decided to force Wisconsin to terminate this highly successful and helpful program, and force the state government to subject their citizens to the "part D" program which is designed to maximize profits for the major drug companies.

www.channel3000.com/news/11519004/detail.html