raven @ 123

And the example of that general was who? Don’t tell me it’s the one who said we needed more troops. I want to know what general officer said “they were not going to do it”?

here ya go

6 generals involved in Iraq who retired and then raised the alarm

What happened to the one who didn’t show up for the congressional hearing? Has he ever surfaced?

Frank33 @ 86

Withdrawal from Iraq has been blocked by almost unanimous Republican warmongering. A majority in the Senate has been blocked because 60 votes are needed. …

…
Sixty votes are needed to shut off debate, i.e. to stop a filibuster. I say, put a motion on the table, (especially just before adjournment) and let the Republicans filibuster. And talk, and talk, and talk as much as they want. When they run out of breath a 51 vote majority will carry the motion. In the mean time the American people will see who is on their side.

I may be a dope, but for the life of me, I can’t see the downside of this.

The downside is Republicans are perfectly happy to distract Democrats from legislating and governing. It’s one of their primary goals in life.

That’s why Nancy Pelosi says she wants to get certain legislation through and not waste time on impeachment.

One might suggest that a primary goal of the war in Iraq is to waste money and focus our attention away from domestic problems. In this way they distract Dems from governing and they put us into severe debt, so there’s not so much money Dems might want to use on domestic programs. It stinks, but I think it’s a valid argument.

You might ask why they are so adamant about not letting Dems legislate and govern, but they aren’t so keen on applying their own ideology to the tasks. Well, if you’ve been listening you know they think “government is the problem, not the answer”. They don’t want much government, except to get plum contracts and handouts and tax cuts.

Democrats — governing and leading

Republicans — subverting government

…
There is so much criminality and war profiteering that we cannot keep track. Another example of hundreds of thousands of missing weapons makes this only more dreadful.
____________________
According to a report by Amnesty International, which investigated the sales, the US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient.

Hmmm.
To whom might Bushies want to give Kalashnikovs?
Hmmm.

Well, it would have to be someone we could claim is being supplied by the ‘normal’ Kalashnikov supplier — Russia.

It would probably have to be someone who isn’t presently well supplied.

It might well be someone we would need to oppose, else why would Bush supply them. After all, to have war you have to ensure both sides have arms (remember the Iran-Iraq war where we supplied both sides).

Perhaps in Sudan or Pakistan or even civilian groups in Iran…it’s hard to say without more information.

eCAHNomics @ 18

[Mod Note; Comment edited by Mod. Please, no references to violence, snark or otherwise, directed towards anyone. Thank you.]

Thanks. Just being sarcastic. Didn’t even think about it that way.

I took it as a term of law used in mockery . . . what violence?

Speaking of progress, the 5,000 Brits left in Iraq are holed up in Basra, where they are taking unprecedented amounts of fire. The city is in the hands of locals not particularly supportive of the U.S. effort to ‘pacify’ their country.

This venture is going to end up a military disaster of the first order. Up to now, it only reaches the second order.

On the other topic. I still can’t get my mind around the Reid and Pelosi’s craven surrender to Bush on FISA. Are they just holding their breath until 2008 and hoping against hope that Rove won’t pull another rabbit out of the hat? Or were they shown some information that forced them to take out an insurance policy? Some people get angry. At this point, I am only at the sick-to-my-stomach stage of grieving, you know — the one that comes right before Denial.

Steve Gilliard-Basra is in the way of the evacuation route troops of ours and the Brits and anyone else’s will need to take for ship boarding.

As Basra falls, so does our evac route . . . Gilley, all OVER this one, as usual . . . kahplah Gilly!

CHOCOLATE RATIONS ARE UP!!!

QuakerGirl @ 125

That is also true of Rabbi Michael Lerner. He is a wonderful man willing to go to jail for his stand on peace. One hears very little of him in the media, and that does include the liberal media.

Rabbi Lerner is a controversial figure, but it can hardly be said of him that he is ignored by the liberal media. He publishes a lefty magazine called Tikkun. In my view, his anti-Israel propaganda needs to be repaired.

But Big Mitch, Rabbi Lerner is right about Israel, as was Rabbi Wine, so what “needs to be repaired”?

BigMitch @ 24

Since the Gettysburg Address the three words “died in vain” has been an especially evocative expression. Woe unto any politician would say that in public about the troops who suffered needless deaths in Iraq. (Obama has a nice finesse: “I wouldn’t want to use words that add to the pain of their families.”)

Still, when it comes to Viet Nam it is hard to answer Phil Ochs’ memorable question: “Look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun, and tell me was it worth it all.”

We did learn one thing in Viet Nam. We learned that a dedicated corps of anti-war activists can garner enough public support to turn the tide of history.

When we work to end the war in Iraq, we are honoring the memory of 50,000 Americans who didn’t have to die in Viet Nam.

Unfortunately, we failed to learn the underlying lessons inherent to Vietnam! We allowed the same characters to blindly lead us into another ‘Died in Vain’ travesty! Will we ever learn…???

I think that PNAC (The Lobby) were not the instigators of Viet Nam, though they most certainly were of Iraq.

Jeralyn at Talk Left has an interesting point RE: wiretaps. She points to a 1996 article and how it was Democrats (Conyers, Schumer) who wanted to expand wiretapping. Interestingly, it was the conservative Republicans who fought it.

LINK

well sure. just wait until there is a democratic president and they’ll be falling all over themselves again.

Last week law-abiding Americans were once again forced to surrender their rights and freedoms. The event was eerily similar to the unwise passage of the PATRIOT Act some six years ago. We once again had a power hungry executive and a Senate controlled by Democrats. The only difference was that the House of Representatives is now under the control of Democrats – which makes what happened all the more troubling.

The Democratic-led Congress voted to allow the President and his administration to intercept the phone calls and emails of American citizens, without a warrant, with virtually zero judicial oversight, and no reporting whatsoever to Congress. The government is now allowed to grab any communication believed to be from outside the U.S. That includes American citizens who live overseas, service members such as those in Iraq, journalists reporting from overseas, or even Members of Congress who are abroad and call home to the United States – all without any sort of court oversight. This goes far beyond the identified problem of foreign-to-foreign communications that we all agree needed to be fixed.