The following Benchmark, and only Benchmark, should be that once the Iraqi Oil Law is enacted into law by the Iraqi legislature, all U.S. troops and all private contract mercenaries will be gone from Iraq within six months.

What would this accomplish?

First, it would coopt the Republican desire (and their major Western oil company backers) to have the Oil Law passed before the Bush administration does anything to draw down our troops in Iraq. Until this Oil Law becomes ?law? in Iraq, the Bush administration won’t consider anything the Democrats have to say about timetables or whatever. Thus, Democrats should combine the two. This will put Bush between a rock and a hard place. If he vetos the next spending bill, he’ll also be saying that the Oil Law being passed really isn’t that important to him and his crony oil pals…when we all know this would be a lie. Thus, he’d be hard pressed to veto this Democratic bill even though it contains a timetable for withdrawal of all of our forces from Iraq, both the official and unofficial.

Second, the Iraqis will know of this law and it’s provisions once passed and signed into law by Bush, so they will immediately pass the Oil Law, no matter how much, in the short term, it represents the theft of Iraqi oil revenue. Why? Because once U.S. forces are gone, then they can fight it out to see who will eventually gain control of Iraq’s oil wealth, and I really doubt that this Bush-backed Iraqi Oil Law will last more than a few years.

Therefore, Democrats should tie any timetable for withdrawal to the Iraqis passing the Oil Law. I figure that once Bush, backed into a corner, signs it, all the Iraqis in the Iraqi legislature will return to Baghdad, cutting short their planned two month vacation, and immediately enact the Oil Law. Thus, our troops would be home by the end of this year.

What have Democrats to lose? Bush and Cheney won’t even think of drawing down our troops until that Oil Law is in effect. Thus, including this Oil Law Benchmark in the next spending bill will force Bush’s and Cheney’s hand. And force the Iraqi legislature as well, to get them to pass the Oil Law, even though they know it stinks. Once our troops are gone, though, they can keep it as it is, make adjustments, or blow it off entirely and work out their own oil contracts with whomever they want.

(Unless, of course, the Bush/Cheney plan is to have our troops, and the private mercs, enforce the provisions of the Iraqi Oil War, thus keeping our troops, and the private mercs, in Iraq, well, forever. If this is the case, then Democrats in combining the two, a withdrawal deadline tied to the passage of the Oil Law, should get Bush and Cheney to fess up finally about the real reason they preemptively invaded Iraq. No more BS.).

Christy quotes an FOB from The Washington Note:

“His inability to harvest experience, and so to think and form successful judgments, is just so inexplicable.”

Some folks have years of experience in doing a job. Others have one year of experience repeated many times

An elementary school teacher once descirbed a “problem” child she had in her class as “every day is like his first day in school.”

Well not yet, but let’s hope…

Portia 186,

It’s not about ganging up on anybody, it’s about what pre-war evidence McGovern says he has and why Durbin’s sudden revelation. You are right about the climate at the time. Think about the climate now and why some of them may have had to keep quiet (Repubs and Dems) who knew going to war was wrong and based on lies, but had to rubberstamp to save their asses….think about it.

See, here’s where we differ. Just because they couldn’t say what they knew, there was nothing stopping anyone from saying that going into Iraq was a stupid idea because of the instability of the country and that Iraq hadn’t attacked us. No one had to rubberstamp this resolution, least of all Hillary Clinton. She was in no danger of losing a seat. I think she approved it because she needed the AIPAC money and she didn’t want to piss off donors. That’s why she keeps repeating that mantra about “if I knew then what I know now”.
Please.
Does anyone really believe it? No, Durbin and Feingold and Graham voted against and the world did not tremble, open up and swallow them. What would have happened if the IWR hadn’t passed? I dunno. The world will never know but coming early in Bush’s presidency, it might have made him think twice about how far his bullying excesses could go.

TiredFed 91,

The Niger forgeries were very outdated. They contained names of people no longer serving in the government. Those documents could have been forged years earlier and then “planted” at the appropriate time to fix the facts when they were ready to make the case for war. The neocons had years to plan this stuff as the PNAC shows. They fixed the election, came into power, and executed the plan. Chance favors the prepared mind.

You may be onto something here! Some of the documents that were used where from 1989…which could mean that they were prepared to justify going into Baghdad during the first Gulf War. But we also have to remember that there were also documents drawn from the Iraqi’s Ambassador to the Vatican who visited in 1999, as well as the names of Nigerien Ministers in 2000-01.

I recall that our expert on the Niger docs, eRiposte has substantiated that these docs were being hawked to the French and British by late 2001. That suggests that it’s likely that there was even a pre-9/11 genesis to the plans to develop these documents.

Whoever did this had to know that a) Niger had yellowcake (something that your average yahoo wouldn’t); b) that the Iraqi Ambassador had travelled to Niger in 1979 (so that his travel docs and references to his trip could be swiped); c) had to know that the Bush Administration would by wanting (or was to be supplied with) ammunition to attack Iraq rather than Iran or some other nation. ALL before 9/11 (which actually threw the focus OFF Iraq/Iran/Syria/NK).

Holy shamole…..even George Will is smelling the coffee:

Blake Dvorak of Real Clear Politics flags a comment from George Will on this past weekend’s edition of “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”:
[I]t took 30, 40 years for the Republican Party to get out from under Herbert Hoover. People would say, “Are you going to vote for Nixon in ‘60?” “No, I don’t like Hoover.” The Depression haunted the Republican Party. This could be a foreign policy equivalent of the Depression, forfeiting the Republican advantage they’ve had since the ‘68 convention of the Democratic Party and the nomination of [George] McGovern. The advantage Republicans have had on national security matters may be forfeited.
You can watch the clip on YouTube. Will’s remark comes near the end. William F. Buckley signaled agreement with Will in his most recent column…

It’s telling that Will doesn’t seem to think that Eisenhower was a “real Republican”. In fact, few of the Regan?bush ilk types seem to refer to him as one of their “great Presidents” whereas historians almost always have a more favorable opinion. In fact, Republicans are almost more likely to talk about Truman. But maybe that’sd because they always hope that Bush will make a great turn-around in his ratings and win the next Presidential campaign the same way he won his first two… ;-)

Graham (Chairman)(Nay)
Levin (Nay)
Rockefeller(Yea)
Feinstien (Yea)
Wyden (Nay)
Durbin (Nay)
Bayh (Yea)
Edwards (Yea)
Mikulski (Nay)

conniptionfit @ 152

do-si-do @ 147
LS at 137

Yes, but as GSD just reminded us, Durbin DID vote against the war. Perhaps Durbin is getting ready to face the terrible, desparate attacks from the cornered Bushies…?

And who were the other Dems on the committee with Durbin, who also were too afraid to tell Americans that the Intell was different than what we were being fed by the admin/media?

to see the final Senate vote on the authorization to use force in Iraq, see:

http://www.senate.gov/legislat…..vote=00237

poor ole’ bill. I like the quote about the romans and christians! a pathetic old man that is going back to fiction to compare to reality.
there is no roman record of the jesus character. but bill thinks that is what killed the beast?
funny, civilizations like rome fall because the weight distribution. useless public officials that do nothing are not a part of the food chain. Doug Adams figured out how to take care of that. Sad that we don’t see it daily on a grand scale?

good that he sees what everyone else saw so many years ago. great moments in hindsight

Buckley clearly shows that he missed the advanced Chapters that relate to Roman History.

The Roman Empire was “co-opted” by Christianity (or perhaps Christianity was co-opted by Rome. But in any case the EMPIRE actually continued on for quite some time after the Christians took over. In fact, Christianity thrived in such a church-state relationship.

What caused Rome to fall was the same issue all empires must confront…it was subservient to expansionism to maintain the system. Rome was incapable of the internal productivity that would preserve the system. Consequently it had to allow Christianized satraps (usually of the Arian branch of the faith) to manage things along the borders. These satraps later rebelled and attacked Rome. By then Rome was already the lesser aspect of the Roman Empire, though. Power had shifted to Byzantium?Constantinople.

But Romes collapse was one where one branch of Christianity turned against another (or at least the institutional trappings of the other). Some 700 years later it was Constantinople and Byzantium that was to face this same situation. During the Crusades they were besewt with Crusaders who attacked their cities, and even entered looted and burned sections of Constantinople in riots.

This weakened the Byzantine state so much that it was later to fall under the “protection” of the Ottomans. Indeed this was a voluntary alignment where Christian and Jewish communities were given protection. That certainly didn’t please the Western Popes, but it did keep the looting Crusaders away from the city!