More Lame Rhetoric and Jingoism from BushCO

[LoungeMachine]

Gates: Iraq Resolution 'Emboldens' Enemy

Friday January 26, 2007 8:01 PM


By ROBERT BURNS

AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Roberts Gates said Friday that a congressional resolution opposing President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq amounts to undercutting U.S. commanders in a way that ``emboldens the enemy.''

At his first Pentagon news conference since taking office, Gates was asked his reaction to the debate in Congress over the effect of such a nonbinding resolution. ``It's pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn't have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries,'' he said.

[LoungeMachine]

Bush asserts he'll make the decisions about Iraq
By MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ and JONATHAN WEISMAN
Washington Post
1/27/2007

WASHINGTON - Declaring "I'm the decision maker," President Bush Friday dismissed congressional efforts to formally condemn his Iraq plan, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned that a proposed Senate resolution criticizing the deployment of additional troops "emboldens the enemy."
"It's pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena should- n't have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon. ". . . I'm sure that that's not the intent behind the resolutions, but I think it may be the effect."

While Bush met with military leaders in the Oval Office, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and anti-war Rep. Jack Murtha turned up in Baghdad.

The timing of the trip, from the Bush administration's point of view, couldn't have been worse. It came just days after the president asked Congress in his State of the Union address to give his revised Iraq strategy a chance to work.

Bush consulted with Gates and Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who will head American forces in Iraq, at an early morning meeting at the White House. Speaking with reporters afterwards, the president complained that lawmakers "are condemning a plan before it's even had a chance to work. And they have an obligation and a serious responsibility, therefore, to put up their own plan as to what would work."

Bush later met with House Republicans at a retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore and, according to two Republicans present, mocked the Senate in telling the lawmakers that he found it "ironic" that senators would oppose his plan to dispatch 21,500 more troops to Iraq but praise and unanimously confirm the man who helped design it, Petraeus, as the chamber did Friday.

Bush also defended a Pentagon program to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq, saying that U.S. troops would use all necessary measures to protect themselves and Iraqi civilians from harm.

"It makes sense that if somebody's trying to harm our troops, or stop us from achieving our goal, or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, that we will stop them," Bush said in response to a question about the program, the details of which were first reported in Friday's Washington Post.

But Bush and Gates both said U.S. troops would not cross Iraq's border with Iran under the program, and Bush said he is still committed to resolving the dispute over Iran's nuclear program diplomatically.

Democrats responded angrily to Gates' comments on the Senate's troop resolutions, which were similar to what Petraeus said at his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

"The American people will rightly dismiss these accusations as a desperate attempt by the administration to support a failed policy that is not worthy of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., disputed Bush's assertion that the Democrats have not come up with a plan. He said his party was united around the proposition that Americans should shift more responsibility to the Iraqis, begin a "phased redeployment" of troops and initiate more aggressive regional diplomacy to stabilize Iraq.

The Senate Foreign Relations committee on Wednesday approved a resolution opposing the introduction of the additional troops, calling for more diplomacy and a regional peace effort, and demanding that U.S. troops be deployed away from urban sectarian hotbeds to guard Iraq's borders, hunt down terrorists and train Iraqi security forces.

GOP leaders, meanwhile, are coalescing around a resolution drafted by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would establish strict benchmarks for the Iraqi government and the Bush administration to meet, without criticizing the president's plan.

At the private retreat for House Republicans, Bush did not rule out support for that sort of proposal.

Top House Republicans are trying to balance a show of support for Bush with broad skepticism among GOP lawmakers that his troop increase will work.

Meanwhile, Pelosi, D-Calif., and Murtha, D-Pa., both vocal war critics, met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the Green Zone a day after a rocket attack on the heavily fortified complex wounded six people.

"We come out of the meeting with a greater understanding of the others' point of view," Pelosi said, adding that the delegation also made the visit "to convey to our troops the appreciation of the American people for what they're doing, to applaud their patriotism."

"American forces should quickly begin to transition from a combat role to one focused on training, counterterrorism, force protection, and controlling Iraq's borders," the delegation said in a written statement, espousing a policy embraced by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group but not the administration.

It was another violent day in Iraq. A bomb hidden in a box of pigeons exploded Friday as Baghdad shoppers gathered around, tearing through a busy pet and livestock market and littering the blood-soaked pavement with human remains and animal carcasses.

At least 62 people were killed or found dead nationwide, including a U.S. Marine.

As of Friday, at least 3,071 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine



WASHINGTON - Declaring "I'm the decision maker," President Bush Friday dismissed congressional efforts to formally condemn his Iraq plan,.

What a flip-flopper.

Didn't he say for the last 3 years the decisions of troop strengths would be left to the Generals on the ground, and the DoD ??

One year AWOL in the Texas Nat'l Guard 30 years ago and now he's a military expert?



You Neo-Cons sure got snookered when you voted for this piece of shit.

[hideyoursheep]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
.Didn't he say for the last 3 years the decisions of troop strengths would be left to the Generals on the ground, and the DoD ??

Only if they agreed with Field Marshall Von Rumsfeld.All other suggestions were promptly dismissed.
Racing through Iraq hoping to be greeted as liberators while disbanning the remaining Iraqi army rather than using them in conjunction with a new govt for security of their own country.Not taking into consideration the possibility of an insurgency with about 150,000 troops to train new Iraqi soldiers,some of which support the insurgency,
all the while trying to fight it,stabilize civil order,and secure the entire country? You let THAT STUFF slip by you?Eh,Rummy?
Brilliant.

[Hardrock69]

Funny, Sean Penn addressed the anti-war rally in Dee See on Saturday....he said something like "Bush has to understand WE are the deciders...."

I thought it grate that such a statement was actually shown on CNN.....

But then, themonkey is NOT intelligent that he even reads books or watches TV....

[Hardrock69]

themonkey probably spends all his spare time sucking his thumb, masturbating furiously all over the White House, or throwing shit at White House staffers....what else is a monkey supposed to do?

[Guitar Shark]

Look at the bright side... apparently, Bush now understands that "decider" is not a word.

[hideyoursheep]

Originally posted by Hardrock69
themonkey probably spends all his spare time sucking his thumb, masturbating furiously all over the White House, or throwing shit at White House staffers....what else is a monkey supposed to do?

[Hardrock69]

'The Enemy' is in the White House.

So what he is saying is that Anti-War rhetoric emboldens themonkey?

The reality is, the more troops we send, the more Al-Queda will recruit people to fight the 'infidels'.

themonkey does not understand (hey...he is a monkey...and a quite retarded one at that) that an escalation of war is just that. An escalation.

He somehow thinks that by sending more soldiers over there, it is going to somehow scare the 'terrists' away, and will result in 'peace'. He does not comprehend that those fucking raghead idiots over there have been fighting each other over stupid bullshit for...oh...about at least 5,000 years.

He must somehow think we 'won' the Vietnam conflict, and believes we can 'win' in Iraq.

The only way to 'win' in Iraq is by using a 'nuke-yoo-lurr' device to turn Iraq into a parking lot.

Since themonkey does not understand the above, it can reasonably be concluded he is murdering our soldiers.

What else could one call it when sending soldiers to fight an unwinnable war?

Oh...my bad.....'murder' is not the correct word.

themonkey is committing GENOCIDE against our own troops.

What does one call a soldier who intentionally kills our own troops?

A TRAITOR!.

themonkey needs to be arrested and convicted of treason.

End of story.

Fucking treasonous bastard!

[ODShowtime]

Specter: Bush not sole 'decision-maker'

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 16 minutes ago

A Senate Republican on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush's declaration that "I am the decision-maker" on issues of war.

"I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider," Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said during a hearing on Congress' war powers amid an increasingly harsh debate over Iraq war policy. "The decider is a shared and joint responsibility," Specter said.

The question of whether to use its power over the government's purse strings to force an end to the war in Iraq, and under what conditions, is among the issues faced by the newly empowered Democratic majority in Congress, and even some of the president's political allies as well.

No one challenges the notion that Congress can stop a war by canceling its funding. In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney challenged Congress to back up its objections to Bush's plan to put 21,500 more troops in Iraq by zeroing out the war budget.

Underlying Cheney's gambit is the consensus understanding that such a drastic move is doubtful because it would be fraught with political peril.

But there are other legislative options to force the war's end, say majority Democrats and some of Bush's traditional Republican allies.

The alternatives range from capping the number of troops permitted in Iraq to cutting off funding for troop deployments beyond a certain date or setting an end date for the war.

"The Constitution makes Congress a coequal branch of government. It's time we start acting like it," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who presided over a hearing Tuesday on Congress' war powers. He also is pushing legislation to end the war by eventually prohibiting funding for the deployment of troops to Iraq.

His proposal, like many others designed to force an end to U.S. involvement in the bloody conflict, is far from having enough support even to come up for a vote on the Senate floor.

Closer to that threshold is a nonbinding resolution declaring that Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province is "not in the national interest." The Senate could take up that measure early next month.

But some senators, complaining that the resolution is symbolic, are forwarding tougher bills.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record) of California, for example, is a sponsor of a bill that would call for troops to come home in 180 days and allow for a minimum number of forces to be left behind to hunt down terrorists and train Iraqi security forces.

"Read the Constitution," Boxer told her colleagues last week. "The Congress has the power to declare war. And on multiple occasions, we used our power to end conflicts."

Congress used its war powers to cut off or put conditions on funding for the Vietnam war and conflicts in Cambodia, Somalia and Bosnia.

Under the Constitution, lawmakers have the ability to declare war and fund military operations, while the president has control of military forces.

But presidents also can veto legislation and Bush likely has enough support in Congress on Iraq to withstand any veto override attempts.

Seeking input, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., and Specter, asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the White House's views on Congress' war powers.

Boxer and Feingold are in effect proposing putting conditions on troop funding and deployment in an effort to end the war in some way other than zeroing out the budget. But some lawmakers and scholars insist war management is the president's job.

"In an ongoing operation, you've got to defer to the commander in chief," said Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. But the veteran senator and former Navy secretary said he understands the debate over Congress' ability to check the executive branch.

"Once Congress raises an army, it's his to command," said Robert Turner, a law professor at the University of Virginia who was to testify Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In recent decades, presidents have routinely bypassed Congress when deploying troops to fight. Not since World War II has Congress issued an official declaration of war, despite lengthy wars fought in Vietnam and Korea.

Congress does not have to approve military maneuvers.

John Yoo, who as a Justice Department lawyer helped write the 2002 resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion, called that document a political one designed only to bring Democrats on board and spread accountability for the conflict.

The resolution passed by a 296-133 vote in the then-GOP-run House and 77-23 in the Democratic-led Senate, but it was not considered a declaration of war.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070130/ap_on_go_co/congress_war_powers;_ylt=Aio9ilk2t8bDLfeDEEW.OhOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

[ODShowtime]

Man, Spector has given me more great quotes than ANYONE.