The Guild 10-10-2002 House votes Thursday to give Bush war authority against Iraq

Yahoo ^ | Thu Oct 10,10:26 AM ET | JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

[BigWaveBetty]

WASHINGTON - The House headed for a strong vote Thursday to open the way for President Bush to wage war against Iraq if he decides force alone can subdue Saddam Hussein. The Senate brushed off more efforts to weaken the measure.

By a 66-31 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. [ha-ha!] — the most outspoken Senate opponent of the war resolution — that would have ended the authorization for him to use force against Iraq after two years.

Bipartisan support for Bush's request for war authority was growing steadily, and chances seemed good he'd have the measure on his desk by week's end to put the nation on combat-ready footing.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the administration believed the House will give the measure "a large bipartisan vote" approving it.

"The president hopes this will send a strong message to the world, and to Iraq, that if Iraq does not obey the U.N. resolutions, that the United States is prepared to enforce the peace," Fleischer said.

A bipartisan vote for the president appeared likely in the House, and the Senate could follow by the end of the week, putting the nation on a combat-ready footing.

Bush, who has stressed that he has made no decision on launching a military strike against Baghdad, has urged Congress to stand with him as he presses the U.N. Security Council to approve a new resolution demanding that Iraq abide by comprehensive inspections and disarmament or face the consequences.

The Senate was likely to clear a hurdle Thursday with a vote to deter a possible filibuster by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., a tenacious opponent of ceding congressional warmaking powers to the president.

"Congress is being stampeded, pressured, adjured, importuned into acting on this blank check," said Byrd, the Senate's 84-year-old president pro tempore. [boo-hoo!]

Progress was slower on the diplomatic front, where three members of the U.N. Security Council — France, Russia and China — continued to hold out against a U.S.-British proposal sanctioning military action if Iraq does not comply with coercive inspections.

A 25-minute telephone call between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday failed to yield a breakthrough over wording of a new Security Council resolution to disarm Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "This is intricate diplomacy and we are continuing our consultations," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.[will this frog ever learn?]

In Paris, Chirac spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said the French president was open to strengthening the powers of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, but still could not accept making military recourse an automatic response should they be hampered. In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov relayed a similar stance.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, interviewed on CNN's "Larry King Live" program, said world leaders were coming together on Iraq. "There is a new determination, a new understanding within the international community that we cannot turn away from it this time, we cannot look away and trust Saddam Hussein to do the right thing," he said.

Debate in the House went deep into the night both Tuesday and Wednesday, with nearly every member intent on expressing the necessity, and gravity, of granting authority to send Americans into war. [Yea!]

"I know the heartache and pain of the families that are left behind," said a tearful Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-Calif., who was a pilot in the Vietnam War.

But Cunningham and almost every Republican backed the president. "It's time we go straight to the eye and dismantle the elements from which the storm of brutal, repressive tyranny and terrorism radiate," said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., He said that as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "I can attest to the evilness of Saddam Hussein." [Go Porter Go!]

About half the Democrats were ready to vote for an alternative proposal, sponsored by Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., that would authorize the use of U.S. force in conjunction with U.N. punishment of Iraq, but require the president to come back for a second vote if he wants to act unilaterally against Saddam. The White House-backed resolution encourages cooperation with U.N. efforts, but gives the go-ahead for unilateral action.

Many Democrats said unilateral action could come at a terrible cost in lives and resources, set a bad precedent for other countries seeking to depose the leaders of other countries and create a backlash in the Muslim world. [yadda, yadda, yadda]

"It is not a victory to strike down one tyrant and breed 10,000 terrorists," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., a supporter of the Spratt proposal.

A similar proposal offered by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and debated Wednesday night in the Senate also seemed headed for defeat. An amendment by Sen. Bob Graham , D-Fla., to expand Bush's authority for pre-emptive military action to include five terror organizations, went down, 88-10.

At the same time, several senior Democrats said they would support the White House-backed resolution, with reservations, including Sen. Harry Reid [Reid is a nut. He calls Art Bell in the middle of the night to talk about aliens.] of Nevada, the Senate's second-ranked Democrat, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del.

Reid urged Bush to use his war-making powers carefully, saying: "As president of the United States, you are the leader of the free world, not its ruler." Biden, who had favored more checks on presidential authority, came along as well, saying the measure would help give the administration more leverage before the Security Council.

"If Saddam Hussein is around five years from now, we are in deep trouble as a country," Biden said.[I knew there was a tiny bit of brain in that Biden head somewhere!]

[SuziQ]

Could the 'Toon' show up on Hollywood Squares in the near future? Seems like the perfect place for that washed up character!

http://www.pagesix.com/lizsmith/23201.htm

[pubmom]

Darn it, he's gone!

[lodwick]

...soccer? I know the world watches it - but America doesn't, do we? ;-)

It's great that Teacup's flowers were delivered today - thanks for ramrodding that project for us.

[lodwick]

LOL - I told you he would go away when you refreshed. StrangeCosmosGuys will probably snatch it soon enough though.

[BigWaveBetty]

I hope they brightened your day! :-) It was our pleasure!

[BigWaveBetty]

How low will the toon go?

[BigWaveBetty]

Hope this will make you feel better after the Jimmah travesty.

NYDaily News

GEN John M. Keane, Vice Chief of the Army

General declaration

Gen. John M. Keane knows how America should deal with terrorists.

"I'll just tell you straight out that we're going to kill them," the Army's vice chief of staff declared at Wednesday's USO Gold Medal Awards dinner in the Plaza. "The only way we can protect you is to kill those who kill us. And that is what we have to do."

The crowd, which included honoree Donald Trump, roared its approval.

**********************************************

Glad to know all our General are pantywaists.

[lodwick]

grannie9's NH - stunning

[BigWaveBetty]

WOW!!!! REally beautiful.

Here's an interesting but very long article by Ron Rosenbaum from The New York Observer

Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee

I brought over the best part (imo), it's toward the end.

[snip]
But now, a year later, it seems that despite Mr. Hitchens and a few other voices, such as Todd Gitlin’s, the blind-spot types have won out on the Left—the blind spot to Marxist genocide obscuring any evil but America’s. You could see it at the Sheeps Meadow. You can see it in the hysterical seizure on Enron and other corporate scandals: See, we were right all along—corporations and businessmen are (surprise!) greedheads. This excuses averting their eyes from anti-American terrorism—from people and regimes preparing to kill Americans rather than merely diminish their 401(k)’s. Enron was the fig leaf many on the American Left needed to return to their customary hatred of America. Because America isn’t perfect, it must be evil. Because Marxist regimes make claims of perfection, they must be good.

So, for my part, goodbye to all that. Goodbye to a culture of blindness that tolerates, as part of "peace marches," women wearing suicide-bomber belts as bikinis. (See the accompanying photo of the "peace" march in Madrid. "Peace" somehow doesn’t exclude blowing up Jewish children.)

Goodbye to the brilliant thinkers of the Left who believe it’s the very height of wit to make fun of George W. Bush’s intelligence—thereby establishing, of course, how very, very smart they are. Mr. Bush may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer (I think he’s more ill-informed and lazy than dumb).[don't worry Ron, soon the scales will fall from your eyes. Don't fight it, it's a good thing.] But they are guilty of a historical stupidity on a far greater scale, in their blind spot about Marxist genocides. It’s a failure of self-knowledge and intellectual responsibility that far outweighs Bush’s, because they’re supposed to be so very smart.

Goodbye to paralysis by moral equivalence: Remind me again, was it John Ashcroft or Fidel Castro who put H.I.V. sufferers in concentration camps?

Goodbye to the deluded and pathetic sophistry of postmodernists of the Left, who believe their unreadable, jargon-clotted theory-sophistry somehow helps liberate the wretched of the earth. If they really believe in serving the cause of liberation, why don’t they quit their evil-capitalist-subsidized jobs and go teach literacy in a Third World starved for the insights of Foucault?

Goodbye to people who have demonstrated that what terror means to them is the terror of ever having to admit they were wrong, the terror of allowing the hideous facts of history to impinge upon their insulated ideology.

Goodbye to all those who have evidently adopted as their own, a version of the simpering motto of the movie Love Story. Remember "Love means never having to say you’re sorry"?

I guess today, Left means never having to say you’re sorry.

[lodwick]

An excellent article - I read the ENTIRE thing yesterday while taking a fundraising break. At least there's one lib who is saying, "Wait, we have to have SOME intelectual honesty in our discourse."

More than anything else, I hate the constant blatant lying by the dim/libs - hate it.

[texasbluebell]

Don't forget if you're interested, tonight Baba Wawa is running her interview with Fidel. Here she is in '77 admiring his driving ability.

[pubmom]

Gee whiz, why didn't she just crawl onto his lap?
I can't see how anyone would trust him to drive them anywhere.

[Utah Girl]

I think someone from the Guild needs to email Dick Morris about the list of stuff the Clintons heisted from the White House when they left. Maybe he can get another column out of it.

[texasbluebell]

Yes, she and Fidel looked pretty cozy in that jeep, even with 2 other people in tow.

[Endeavor]

I wouldn't trust the "Old Toe Sucker" any further than I could throw him. He's a snake. He voted for Gore in the last election. He admitted it the other night on H&C.

The Old Toe Sucker is out for one person and one person only - himself. He's as dirty as his "former" cronies.

[lodwick]

Yep - Babs reminded me of bent checking out rackage as she was gazing at Fidel's package.

[Utah Girl]

Some gossip for a Friday evening. (From netscape.com)

Just How Unhappy IS Katie Couric?
Katie Couric has basically orchestrated the ouster of "Today" show executive producer Jonathan Wald, the man she practically handpicked to replace longtime executive producer Jeff Zucker--and close Couric friend--when Zucker left "Today" to fix problems with the network's entertainment division, reports "The TV Column" in The Washington Post. Katie is not a happy camper even though she has a $65 million contract.

At the Olympics in February she confessed, "I'm tired, the hours are brutal, it's hard to make yourself go to bed at 7:30 or 8 to get up" the next morning to do the show. Then in July she blasted Wald when she lost an interview with one of the nine men rescued from the Pennsylvania coal mine. At the last minute, the interview went to "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer. "Katie had every right to ask what happened; it was her interview," Wald told USA Today on Thursday. Meanwhile, after just 17 months on the job Wald is out, and the Washington Post says Tom Touchet, a former line producer at rival "GMA" has the inside track on the job. Couric and Zucker were longtime friends personally and professionally. Wald was almost doomed to fail since he had to follow Zucker. "There was always friction," a news industry exec who asked not to be identified told The Post. Wald "was not cutting it, but following [Zucker] is a tough act." An NBC source also told The Post, "It was an impossible situation from the start. It was impossible that there not be tension for anyone trying to follow Jeff."

Courteney Cox Arquette: Name Change?
Courteney Cox Arquette wants to be known as Courteney Cox. At least that's what a source told MSNBC's gossip columnist Jeanette Wells. Courteney, who stars as Monica on the hit NBC sitcom "Friends," is reportedly telling friends she is dropping "Arquette." And that has fueled rumors that her three-year marriage to David Arquette may be in trouble. Mind you, the same source that told MSNBC this story is also saying that Courteney denies any marriage woes. "She just wants to be known as Courteney Cox again," says the source. "She insists it's just out of respect to her family that she wants to use the name she grew up with." What happened to respect for her husband?

Courtney's spokeswoman told MSNBC that she just "vacillates between Courteney Cox and Courteney Cox Arquette" and that it is "completely untrue" that she is officially dropping Arquette. When she married David Arquette in 1999, Courteney made a huge deal about taking her husband's last name. Even the "Friends" producers must have been amused by her actions. The first episode of the show that aired after her wedding to Mr. Arquette, not only listed her name as Courteney Cox Arquette, but also listed the five other cast members as Jennifer Aniston Arquette, Lisa Kudrow Arquette, Matt LeBlanc Arquette, Matthew Perry Arquette, and David Schwimmer Arquette.

[Iowa Granny]

Good Morning! A hard freeze is predicted for tonite. Time to put the perennials to bed. I wish I could hybernate, too.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Thanks for the Gossip, with Mountaineer gone I have been missing the daily updates.

[lodwick]

Cindy Adams on the UN-security Page 6

I HAVE a stunning story about the United Nations. Almost too startling to believe. It's guaranteed true. I experienced it with 20 others who participated in the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders inside the august Palais des Nations, Geneva, last Tuesday. I know all by name. I have their phone numbers. They can be reached if U.N. personnel challenge this column. Another dozen also witnessed the scene I'm about to draw for you. If needed, they, too, may substantiate what I now write.

Security measures commenced before we left the United States. Lengthy documents had to be completed with our names, addresses, phone numbers, professions, IDs, height, weight, serial number, dog tags, passport information, favorite bedtime snack food, whatever.

the rest of the story

I miss the MountainGal also - I hope they're having a ball over there.