Senators seek support against Iraq surge

[rodeodance]

Senators seek support against Iraq surge

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Two leading Senate Democrats sought to build support Sunday for a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's war strategy in
Iraq, cautioning that division over whether it goes far enough could spell defeat.


"The worst thing we can do is to vote on something critical of the current policy and lose it," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The public doesn't support his policy, a majority of Congress doesn't support his policy."

"If we lose it, the president will use the defeat of a resolution as support of his public policy," Levin said.

The new Democratic-led Congress heads this week toward its first vote on the war, with the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee beginning debate Wednesday on a resolution condemning Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province. A vote could come as early as that same day........

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070121/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq

[Solly Mack]

1. Politicians that support unpopular wars become unpopular politicians

Just remind the GOP they like the gravy train....they'll listen if they fear not getting re-elected.

[leftchick]

3. that is why McCain's pursuit of the White House

is ludicrous. :eyes:

[Solly Mack]

4. and dangerous...McCain's no better than Bush

[maddezmom]

2. transcript from Fox

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245360,00.html

[AndyTiedye]

5. KicketyKicketyKickety Recomendee Callee Emailee Faxee STOP THE SURGE!

The Capitol switchboard needs to see a "surge".

NO SURGE! GET OUT OF IRAQ!

[Peace Patriot]

6. If they lose, it will show us how unrepresentative the Congress still is, even

with the Democratic victories in November, and how screwed up our voting system is. I mean, what do you expect when you have all our votes being "counted" by rightwing Bushite corporations using "trade secret," proprietary programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls? I think it's reasonable to expect--and there is indeed much evidence for--a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists. I believe that this is the handicap that the American people faced going in to '06 elections. They out-voted the machines in some cases, and did their best to change the country's direction, but, with that kind of control of the results--direct control, in many cases with no auditing, and with the best audits being only 1%, and with electronic voting machines and central tabulators that have been proven to be extremely unreliable and insider hackable--the peoples' will for a Democratic, anti-Iraq war blowout was partially thwarted.

And, yes, of course, Bush and his puppetmaster will use any defeat of such a resolution, in their lying deceitful way, as support for the war--despite 70% opposition to the war in the country--just as he and his puppetmasters used the Diebold/ES& election of 2004 to claim support for war, torture and the looting of Social Security (among other things), which large majorities of the American people oppose. It's bullshit. But they will do it.

Do YOU trust Bushites to count your votes behind a veil of corporate secrecy? I don't.

Just keep in mind that it was corporatist 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd and Terry McAuliffe who helped to engineer the "Help America Vote for War Act" of 2002, in collusion with its architects, the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (now resigned, indicted or in jail), the law by which Bushite-controlled electronic voting was fast-tracked throughout the country with a $3.9 electronic voting boondoggle to entice and bribe election officials and legislators to ignore the utter lack of security in the voting systems that were being purchased.

So, if Carl Levin is having a bit of trouble putting together a Congressional vote against the war, he might want to look to the voting system as a major cause.

Here's who "counted" 80% of the votes in the 2004 election (and more in the 2006 elections):

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; until recently, they were run by two brothers, Bob and Tod Urosevich. (One of them got outa Dodge last year--can't recall which one.)

Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny. And having a semblance--or impression--of democracy (a democracy in which the peoples' will can perhaps be articulated but not enforced) does not change the condition of tyranny, and may make it worse, since there may be less urgency to the essential need to restore transparency to the election system.

I say "may make it worse" and I stress "may." There is also a vital morale component to democracy. The articulation of the peoples' will is important. It heartens people. It helps to empower people. And it certainly moved people during the recent elections to vote in sufficient numbers to partially overcome the Diebold/ES&S handicap. So I think what we have, in this Congress, is MORE than a semblance of democracy, but it is still not fully representative. (One other big factor was that only 1/3 of the Senate was up for re-election this time. And another perennial factor, of course, is money--campaign money, lobbying money, big defense and "fatherland security" money--helping to determine who gets to run and who wins.)

I am personally heartened by some of the actions and statements of the new Democratic Congress, but profoundly frustrated by their inability to act on the "Magna Carta" issue that is before them--in Bush's escalation of the war, in his evident planning for a widened war, in his "signing statements" and defiance of the law and the Constitution, and many other actions including vast secrecy and lack of accountability for funds. If our Constitution is to stand, Congress MUST restore its authority as an equal branch of government. It isn't just the war--although that is a dramatic example of executive tyranny. It's EVERYTHING.

I can't think of a better issue than our stranded soldiers--more dying and getting severely wounded every day--placed in the vise of a civil war by Bush and his puppetmasters, to push this matter to a head. It is an issue of Congressional authority. It can be argued that they gave him the authority to invade Iraq and remove its leader as a potential threat (although that, too, was unconstitutional and a violation of international law to which we are signatories), but he had NO authorization to occupy Iraq indefinitely, build permanent bases there, create a puppet government there, and plan for widened Mideast war. And that is what he and his cabal are doing. It is irrelevant whether or not an individual Congressional member voted for the IWR, or what level of military funding they may support (or what dirty tangle of lobbying they might be involved in). This is a CONSTITUTIONAL issue--an issue of Congress' integrity as an institution. That is how it needs to be framed in order to get consensus in an only partially representative Congress.