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12 - 9 against. pro forma only, has no power to stop the Exec
the is hitting the fan.
Nobody think I'm happy about this.
We are in full-blown geo-political crisis fabricated entirely and gratuitously by dubya/ head/rummy/condi/neo- s.
The Senate voted against the troop surge.
Where's the outrage from the forum republicans? It's been over three hours!
12 - 9 against. pro forma only, has no power to stop the Exec
the is hitting the fan.
Nobody think I'm happy about this.
We are in full-blown geo-political crisis fabricated entirely and gratuitously by dubya/ head/rummy/condi/neo- s.
Last edited by boutons_; 01-24-2007 at 04:16 PM.
If the commanders on the ground say they have a plan for winning and need the troops, then by all means send them (And spare me, Boutons, the whole jack-booted, automaton, "dubya" clone rant you're just itching to post).
That's one thing in this whole debate on troop size/tactics I don't understand. Isn't it that the military commanders formulate the plan and send it up the chain of command for approval (and if the operation is big enough, all the way to the CIC)?
Since when does what the Senate (And no, I don't care which side of the aisle they're on), determine tactics based upon polls that they need for reelection?
Well, the forum Libertarian says there's no outrage because, it's a meaningless vote.
So you think this vote should be meaningless?
"Isn't it that the military commanders formulate the plan and send it up the chain of command for approva"
They've been saying for years they had enough troops (although they woudn't dare go Shinsheki on Rummy again).
Lots of generals thinks 21K more isn't enough.
21K just more of the same wondrous dubya war management that ed up Iraq in the first place.
Of course, Petraeus would suck along with dumb -in-chief. Good career move.
300K too little, 4 years too late.
dubya/ head/rummy have ed the military who are now not in any position to un-break Iraq that they broke.
The Iraqi parliament hasn't had quorum show up to do business since November.
There is no Iraq country there to "stand up".
Stick a jackboot up your ass.
I'll post whatever the I want and whenever the I want to. Go yourself.
Semantics. The AUMF accomplishes the same thing and you've yet to hear anyone, on either side of the aisle, say the President started this war without the consent of Congress.
It doesn't matter what I think, it is meaningless.
If they want to force a change, defund the operation.
The vote has TREMENDOUS meaning, just no legal weight.
It means that the Congress is voting along with the SOVEREIGN People of the USA who voted in November against Emperor dubya and against his bull war.
no one wants to de-fund the troops, asshole. NO ONE!
They, "the army we have", were alread under-funded and under-equipped in 2003, insufficient body armor, unarmored vehicules.
Look out 1369 or Croutons is going to beat you with a flurry of cut & paste articles.
Croutons...you are AHF's !
Then they should step up and introduce legislation to defund the operation in Iraq. The President will bring home the troops then.
The vote is political pandering of the worst kind. They should be ashamed.
, forget the Republicans that voted for it, there were more than a few Democrats who, as late as December, proposed just such a surge. In fact, the new Chairman of the Intelligence Committee proposed almost identical numbers.
What changed in the past 30 days?
Well, I'll tell you. Democrats took over Congress and Republicans started running for office in '08.
Additionally, the Democrats started backpedalling because al Qaeda started fleeing Baghdad in anticipation of the surge, and Maliki started cooperating and quit protecting Sadr. Both conditions greatly increased the chance of a surge succeeding and, therefore, was no longer a good idea.
You're right, but if Congress really wants the President to pull out of Iraq, they need to defund the operation. No bullets, no army...they all come home or go to Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Although, they'd probably only go to Kuwait and wait until the genocide started and demands that we go back and stop the killing started spewing out of the U.N.
Well, we are responsible.
Whether US military stays or withdraws to wherever, funed or not funded, Iraq is spiralling into a firestorm, probably for years to come.
We can't lose, but we can't win, either.
I'll take Saddam and Feb 03 anyday rather than Iraq in Jan 07 and years after.
A HUGE ING up by the WH/Repugs.
We weren't responsible for the first round of genocide put forth by Saddam though.
Yeah, who cares about all those people he killed anyway?
Oh, we'll do one or the other.
So would al Qaeda and the insurgents. Not so much the Iraqi people and his neighbors.
Then you have to include everyone who voted for the AUMF as well.
Another bogus attempt to connect Saddam with al-qaeda.
Whatever version you want to believe -- al Qaeda was in the Kurdish North or al Qaeda was in Baghdad unbeknownst to Hussein or al Qaeda was living large at the privilege of Saddam Hussein, you can't argue they weren't there and that they'd be much happier if we weren't.
You're pretty knee-jerk sometimes.
Then why would they flee now? (talk about knee jerk)
Logic would suggest that to rid yourself of Al-Sadr you would need to get Al-Sadr. What's the holdup? Better do something quick before our troops star taking orders from him again.
Al-Qaeda is living in the U.S. unbeknowst to us. So I guess we're equally connected.
The Senate and anybody who's actually following what's going on in Iraq, probably had several stories like this one in mind, as to why they are against dubya wasting more US military lives with more of the same old failed approach:
The New York Times
January 24, 2007
Iraq Parliament Finds a Quorum Hard to Come By
By DAMIEN CAVE
BAGHDAD, Jan. 23 — Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, read a roll call of the 275 elected members with a goal of shaming the no-shows.
Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister? Absent, living in Amman and London. Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian statesman? Also gone, in Abu Dhabi.
Others who failed to appear Monday included Saleh Mutlak, a senior Sunni legislator; several Shiites and Kurds; and Ayad al-Samaraei, chairman of the finance committee, whose absence led Mr. Mashhadani to ask: “When will he be back? After we approve the budget?”
It was a joke barbed with outrage. Parliament in recent months has been at a standstill. Nearly every session since November has been adjourned because as few as 65 members made it to work, even as they and the absentees earned salaries and benefits worth about $120,000.
Part of the problem is security, but Iraqi officials also said they feared that members were losing confidence in the ins ution and in the country’s fragile democracy. As chaos has deepened, Parliament’s relevance has gradually receded.
Deals on important legislation, most recently the oil law, now take place largely out of public view, with Parliament — when it meets — rubber-stamping the final decisions. As a result, officials said, vital legislation involving the budget, provincial elections and amendments to the Cons ution remain trapped in a legislative process that processes nearly nothing. American officials long hoped that Parliament could help foster dialogue between Iraq’s increasingly fractured ethnic and religious groups, but that has not happened, either.
Goaded by American leaders, frustrated and desperate to prove that Iraq can govern itself, senior Iraqi officials have clearly had enough. Mr. Mashhadani said Parliament would soon start fining members $400 for every missed session and replace the absentees if they fail to attend a minimum amount of the time.
Some of Iraq’s more seasoned leaders say attendance has been undermined by a widening sense of disillusionment about Parliament’s ability to improve Iraqis’ daily life. The country’s dominant issue, security, is almost exclusively the policy realm of the American military and the office of the prime minister.
Every bombing like the one on Monday, which killed 88 people at a downtown market, suggests to some that Parliament’s laws are irrelevant in the face of sprawling chaos and the government’s inability to stop it.
“People are totally disenchanted,” Mr. Pachachi said in a telephone interview from Abu Dhabi. “There has been no improvement in the security situation. The government seems to be incapable of doing anything despite all the promises.”
Though the Cons ution grants Iraq’s only elected body wide powers to pass laws and investigate, sectarian divisions and the need for a twothirds majority in some cases have often led to deadlock. Sunni and Shiite power brokers have blocked efforts to scrutinize violence connected to their own sects.
“Parliament is the heart of the political process,” Mr. Mashhadani said in an interview at his office, offering more hope than reality. “It is the center of everything. If the heart is not working, it all fails.”
Monday’s attendance actually surpassed the 50 percent plus one needed to pass laws. It was the first quorum in months, caused in part by the return of 30 members loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose end to a two-month boycott created a public relations blitz that helped attract 189 members.
But the scene in the convention center auditorium where Parliament meets only underscored the rarity of the gathering. It seemed at times like a reunion. At one point Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a Shiite rival of Mr. Sadr, arrived late — after being marked absent. He spent the first five minutes waving and nodding at colleagues, some of whom he apparently had not seen in months.
Parliamentary officials refused to provide attendance lists for every session, fearing retribution. They said all sects and regions had members who often did not come.
Each representative earns about $10,000 a month in salary and benefits, including money for guards. Yet on Monday, members from Baghdad neighborhoods to small towns in the hinterland — Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians and Turkmen — were all on the list of no-shows that Mr. Mashhadani read aloud.
The largest group of absentees consisted of unknown figures elected as part of the party lists that governed how most people voted in the December 2005 election. Party leaders in Baghdad said they had urged their members to attend but emphasized that for many, Parliament had become a hardship post.
Representatives who travel from afar stay at the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone, across a road, two checkpoints and several pat-downs from the 1970s-era convention center. It is not luxurious. It is barely safe. The food is mediocre.
In short, many said, the job is not what members thought they had signed up for.
“Most of them were here for the game, for prestige, for the money,” said Muhammad al-Ahmedawi, a Shiite member of the Fadhila Party. “It’s upsetting and disappointing. We want the members to come, to pursue the interests of their cons uents, especially in this sensitive time.”
Mr. Ahmedawi said politicians who had larger shares of power before the elections seemed to view Parliament as a demotion best ignored. Mr. Allawi, for example, who did not return calls to his London aides requesting an interview, has been rallying support in Amman and London among exiles who have fled Iraq’s violence.
Of the 25 members of his bloc, only six attended the session on Monday.
Mr. Pachachi, who is in his mid-80s, said he left Iraq a few months ago because his wife needed open-heart surgery and he did not trust that she would be well cared for in one of Baghdad’s decrepit hospitals. He said he hoped to return in a few weeks, admitting that “one has to be there — you can’t be a member of the Parliament and live abroad.”
But he said the dangers involved with being a public figure in Iraq had made it much more difficult to participate in government. He has 40 guards to protect him when he comes to Iraq, he said, and the salary from Parliament pays for only 20.
“I have protection, and unfortunately the protection is not sufficient for anyone anymore,” he said. “The level of violence has become unmanageable.”
Other Iraqi politicians take a harder line. Adnan Dulaimi, a member of the largest Sunni bloc in Parliament, put it simply, “If there are some members who think there is no benefit to attending, then they should resign.”
Mr. Mashhadani seems to be shaping a slightly softer approach that mixes persuasion with punishment. Like Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, he has met repeatedly with party leaders, pushing them to ensure the attendance of their members.
During an interview in his office, lined with baroque cushioned chairs with gold trim, he also acknowledged that more money should be set aside for members’ security, but only if members show up to pass a budget.
He said the shaming of the absentees at the public session, a first, was the first step. He said the fines and threat of replacement would also help.
There is, of course, only one problem. For the proposals to be put in place, a majority of members in Parliament have to be present to pass them.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
=====================
"Iraq" is lost, there is no Iraq there, certainly nothing worth dying for.
The ed-over US military is completely impotent to stop violence.
you're doing a heckuva job, dubya
Yep the SURGE s/b Change in Tactics is working
Three interesting things have happened since President Bush announced plans to "surge" U.S. troops.
First, al Qaida appears to be retreating from Baghdad. A military intelligence officer has confirmed to Richard Miniter, editor of Pajamas Media, a report in the Iraqi newspaper al Sabah that Abu Ayyub al Masri, the head of al Qaida in Iraq, has ordered a withdrawal to Diyala province, north and east of Baghdad.
Mr. al Masri's evacuation order said that remaining in Baghdad is a no-win situation for al Qaida, because the Fallujah campaign demonstrating the Americans have learned how to prevail in house to house fighting, Mr. Miniter said.
"In more than 10 years of reading al Qaida intercepts, I've never seen (pessimistic) language like this," he quoted his intelligence officer source as saying.
Second, the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr, whose Iranian-subsidized militia, the Mahdi army, is responsible for most of the assaults on Sunni civilians in Iraq, is cooling his rhetoric and lowering his profile.
"Mahdi army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements," wrote Leila Fadel and Zaineb Obeid of the McClatchy Newspapers Jan. 13.
Third, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is putting more distance between himself and al Sadr, upon whose bloc of votes in parliament he had relied for political support.
Last Friday al Sadr ordered the 30 lawmakers and six cabinet ministers he controls to end the boycott of the government he ordered two months ago. AP writer Steven Hurst described this Monday as "a desperate bid to fend off an all out American offensive."
Despite this, Mr. Maliki consented to the arrest that same day of Abdul Hadi al Durraji, al Sadr's media director in Baghdad. Mr. Sadr said Saturday some 400 of his supporters have been arrested in recent days.
The first development is more of a problem relocated than a problem solved, because Baghdad's gain from al Qaida's departure will be Diyala's loss.
A strategic withdrawal makes good sense from al Qaida's point of view. It's better to live to fight another day. The intelligence officer who was Mr. Miniter's source thinks Mr. al Masri is a more formidable opponent than was his predecessor, Abu Musab al Zarqawi who (ironically) met his end after an encounter with an F-16 in Diyala province.
But leaving Baghdad gives the government and the Americans the opportunity to assert control in the contested neighborhoods, which will make it difficult for al Qaida to return. And because the media play up events in Baghdad more than events anywhere else in the country, it means al Qaida will be leaving center stage.
The lowered profile of the Mahdi army will only be a problem postponed if decisive action isn't taken against al Sadr and his militia.
"Mookie," as the troops call him, can only be relied upon to behave when he is terrified.
So success hinges on the at ude of the Iraqi government.
Mr. Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi army "was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia," Mr. Hurst wrote.
Two Iraqi government officials told him Mr. Maliki had dropped his protection of the Mahdi army because U.S. intelligence had persuaded him it was infiltrated by death squads, the AP reporter wrote.
"Al Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," Mr. Hurst quoted one of those officials as saying.
But Mr. Maliki would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to have recognized from the get go that the Mahdi army is one gigantic death squad. I suspect Mr. Maliki is only seeing the light now because President Bush finally is applying some heat.
Mr. Maliki has tried to walk a line between the Scylla of the Americans and the Charybdis of the Iranians, but the steps he's taking now will be difficult to retrace.
"He knows that his personal risk increases with each Shiite militia commander he arrests, and eventually he will pass through a door through which he cannot return," said the Web logger Tigerhawk.
Though they may turn out to be fleeting, the troop surge, though barely begun, already is producing beneficial results. Efforts to write it off in advance as a "failure" are, at best, premature.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...arly_resu.html
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