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They seem to follow you around.
Posted on 01/17/2007 11:12:58 AM PST by Enchante
WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats working with a well-known Republican war critic are developing a resolution declaring that President Bush's troop build up in Iraq "is not in the national interest," said people familiar with the document.
The resolution also would put the Senate on record as saying the U.S. commitment in Iraq "can only be sustained" with popular support among the American public and in Congress, according to officials who are knowledgeable about the draft.
These officials would speak only on grounds of anonymity because the drafting is still under way. Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record), a Nebraska Republican and potential 2008 presidential candidate, is helping Democrats with the wording of the anti-war resolution.
"It is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating U.S. troop presence in Iraq," it says.
The resolution will be cosponsored by Sens. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) and Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), as well as Hagel. Levin, D-Mich., chairs the Armed Services Committee, and Biden, D-Del., heads the Foreign Relations Committee.
The Senate leadership is expected by Thursday to propose the resolution, with debate planned around the same time that Bush delivers his State of the Union speech next Tuesday.
Hagel's agreement to help Democrats champion the resolution amounts to a setback to the administration and to Bush, who has argued vehemently that some 21,500 additional U.S. troops are needed to help the Iraqi government calm sectarian violence in Baghdad and Anbar province.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The Senate is faithless. They wish to abandon the Iraqi people to al-Qaeda and Shiite strongmen. As if these terrorists would never consider attacking us again. Unbelievable.
Bagel was always useless ... how can we dispose of him in the next election?
Regarding Chuck Hagel not yet facing the voter subsequent to "betraying the President," the Republicans have faced the voter, and we have lost our majorities in the Senate, in the House, in Governorships, and in control of state legislatures.
Chuck Hagel, Bilderberger. Yeah, I know - there are gonna be a gazillion "tinfoil hat" comments, but the fact IS that Hagel has attended the secretive Bilderberg meetings almost every year for the past decade.
Chuck Hagel is a globalist - one-world government kind of guy. He keeps giving indications that he'll sell out this country in a heartbeat. I will do everything I can to stop any effort, locally, at a primary run for the nomination.
First, Ron Paul did not self-limit himself to X number of terms in office (although he does support establishing a rule for term limits).
I didn't think to bring up Ron's loss in the primary for the U.S. Senate in 1984, to Phil Gramm. Not many people have beaten Phil Gramm at anything.
With regard to running for President as the candidate of the L.P. in 1988, the Libertarians have not done half as well as he did, since then.
But, I suppose you think the deficit spending of President George H.W. Bush was a good thing, and that we should all support whoever is the President as long as he's a Republican.
In history, there has only been one other person who has run for President as a candidate of a minor party and was subsequently elected to the U.S. Congress as a candidate of a major party. That other person was Strom Thurmond.
I appreciate your civil comments in defense of your candidate.
Is there any part of the War on Terror that Ron Paul has been in favor of? It is a serious question.
Senator Hagel also loves open borders. A perfect RINO, he is loved by Joe Biden, CNN, MSDNC...
You're right that Bush is more popular in Nebraska than in the country as a whole ... according to SurveyUSA, George W. Bush has a 52 percent job approval rating in Nebraska.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollTrack.aspx?g=5008e5be-069f-4250-ac20-3d7a7619d935
But ... Chuck Hagel has a 59 percent job approval rating.
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollTrack.aspx?g=0c9c08bb-f403-486a-9a60-4dbef1189a04
Senator Hagel will probably survive 2008 if we're still in Iraq. But, I see a quite a few Republican Senators who look like they'll be vulnerable.
Why do I have to live under Democrats because the Iraqis cannot stand up and defend their country?
We're not fighting Iraqi laziness. We're fighting a make-believe civil war manufactured by Iranian Hezbollah and al Qaeda terrorists designed to create mayhem, break our will, send us running and deliver the oil-rich country to radical islamists. The Iraqis are bearing the brunt of the casualties in this fight, let's not forget that.
The "civil war" is a fake. The Mahdi Army is not engaging Sunni fighters out in the streets or vice versa. The Mahdi Army sets off bombs in Sunni neighborhoods, killing Sunni civilians. Then al Qaeda sets off its bombs in Shia neighborhoods, killing Shia civilians. And around and around it goes. Neither side has any interest in killing the fighters on the other side. They're their to kill civilians. To manufacture mayhem. To prevent the new government from establishing itself among the Iraqi people. It's a simple divide and conquer strategy. And if the radical islamists drive us out, guess who takes over. We got 250,000 Iraqis promptly murdered when we bailed in 1991. This time around, the toll will be incalculable. That's what Chuck Hagel and Democrats' "phased redeployment" will get us: Mass genocide and an Iranian-allied terrorist state in Iraq.
As far as why you have to live under Democrats... that's easy. Because enough Americans don't understand what's going on. They simply don't pay attention.
I was very happy when Ron Paul jumped into the race, especially with Hagel still not sure of his intentions for 2008. Because I don't want a socialist or a neocon in the White House, I've decided that an anti-war conservative Republican is the ONLY type candidate I will support for President. I will work hard for one in the primaries, and if they fail to win, I'll vote Libertarian in the general. I compromsed on this issue the last few elections - not again.
So, you're telling me that (A) because some people somewhere in the world are fighting each other, we have to be involved, and (B) since the American people will not understand this, I have to live under a Democratic government and be subject to high taxes, regulations, and so forth. This is an attractive proposition. I hope our party will find a champion who has a plan "to win" in the United States.
If that's what you read, there's no much I can do for you.
Isn't this the real problem? I and a majority of the American people don't understand.
Let's step back.
A duty of the President is to communicate to the American people the urgency of our involvement in Iraq. The President has obviously failed, witness the 2006 election. There are two tiny, little problems that the President has, at this point, in trying to communicate with the American people about Iraq.
#1, We went into Iraq on the basis of a laundry list of concerns that made Iraq look like an immediate threat to us. Nobody really thinks that assessment of the situation was correct (although I'm not going to say the President lied to the American people and to our representatives in Congress, as I can understand why, at the time, those concerns were legitimate).
#2, The President then told the American people we will stand down as the Iraqis stand up. O.K., given our interests in the region, it was worth a certain amount of effort on our part to try to give the people of Iraq a chance to organize themselves into a democratic government. But, we didn't start to stand down as the Iraqi army and police force stood up.
The plain and obvious fact, at this point, is if the surge doesn't work, we will be withdrawing from Iraq by reason of the Congress restricting funding.
If the President had followed my advise (and I'm not even sure he read my comments on the matter), we would have started withdrawing our ground troops early last year, won the 2006 elections, and be in a position, at this juncture, to support the fledging government of Iraq with intelligence, special operations, and air and naval power, for as long as it takes.
A President who doesn't understand how important it is to maintain a viable political majority is a danger to the cause of Liberty.
And if the 2006 elections were such a referendum on the war, what exactly was it the American people voted for? A party without a single suggestion on what to do? They voted for defeatist groaning? Oh, that's right... they voted for "change". Nothing specific. Nothing meaningful. Just a concept. That's terrific. We now have a "Visualize World Peace" bumper sticker for a wartime foreign policy.
Elections often have next to nothing to do with reality. In the most recent election, the economy rated as the third most important issue concerning voters. And an overwhelming majority of those voters strongly disapproved of the job the President and the Republican congress were doing. With robust job and wage growth, low unemployment, a record breaking stock market, falling gas prices, surging revenues and shrinking deficits, the American people believed their economy was struggling. Why? Because they're not paying attention. Or maybe it's who they're paying attention to that's the problem ("more Americans their news from ABC News than any other source", the horrifying refrain goes).
If the President's to do a better job communicating to the American people, he's going to have to start buying an hour of prime time every night on every major network to rebut the daily lashings he's getting from the elite news media.
As for your points about the Iraq war, the laundry list of concerns stands. Saddam Hussein was a terrorist. His country was home to two of the largest terrorist training camps in the middle east (Ansar al-Islam and Salman Pak). There is indisputable evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Abu Nidal Organization (Nidal lived in Baghdad), the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, Mujahedin-e-Khalq and the Palestinian Liberation Front (Abu Abbas also lived in Baghdad). Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda linked group, operated with impunity in the north while receiving financial and material support from Baghdad. Saddam Hussein gave safe haven (and, as we later found out, a monthly salary for ten years) to convicted 1993 World Trade Center bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin (who entered the US on an Iraq passport and struck the WTC on the second anniversary of the end of the Gulf War, February 26 1993). Saddam Hussein, using Islamic terrorists, plotted the truck- bombing mass murder of the entire Bush family in Kuwait City. He personally issued $25,000 "bonus" checks to the surviving families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He offered Osama bin Laden asylum in his country in 1999. He provided medical services, material support and safe haven to al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2003.
I repeat: the man was a terrorist. And in light of the 9/11 attacks, he was an immediate threat to the United States.
He was also a genocidal dictator who had used chemical weapons on thousands of Kurds, and continued producing such weapons according to three administrations, UNSCOM and every intelligence agency on the face of the planet (he was also given an 18 month head start during the "rush to war" to remove the weapons the world knew he had, as I stated above. Any guesses as to what was in those trucks crossing into Syria yet?)
And he was in violation of pretty much every condition of the 1991 cease-fire agreement.
And we'd just suffered the worst-ever attack on American soil.
And, just for fun, here's what Czech U.N. Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek said about the ringleader of those attacks:
Again, I repeat: Saddam Hussein was a terrorist. Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat.
As to your second point, we didn't stand down because the Iraqis got blown up when they stood up. That's the bad guys doing that. They're doing it because they want us to split. Were you hoping to skip the war and go straight to the reconstruction? Me too. Didn't happen. The only difference between us is, I never expected it to. I always kind of figured the fanatical serial killers hell bent on the complete eradication of western civilization were going to start fighting back. I guess the other difference is, I don't expect, nor think it reasonable to the expect the Iraqis to stand and finish this. After all, if they're fighting fanatics hell bent on the destruction of western civilization, they are, in reality, fighting for western civilization. They didn't choose the battleground. Saddam and the Islamists did. But instead of bitching and moaning about their lack of progress from the comfort of our couches, maybe we should just say "thank you".
And, finally:
A President who doesn't understand how important it is to maintain a viable political majority is a danger to the cause of Liberty.
And I think a man who manages a war on the basis of popular opinion is the most dangerous threat to Liberty imaginable. Perhaps if the Republicans had fought harder for the war they supported and authorized, they'd have countered the media's disgraceful coverage enough to maintain their majority.
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They seem to follow you around.
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