Pelosi: No caucus stand on Iraq funding request

http://www.thehill.com/news/052004/pelosi.aspx

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) yesterday gently chided two progressive members of Congress for demanding that the Democratic leadership impose a caucus-wide position on the $25 billion in additional spending for the Iraq war.

At the end of Wednesday’s weekly caucus meeting, Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pressed Pelosi on what the Democrats’ official position would be on a vote that could be perceived as an endorsement of the war.

The two liberal lawmakers requested an additional caucus-wide meeting for a full airing of the political pros and cons of continued Democratic support for the war in general and, specifically, the White House’s latest funding requests.

In a back-and-forth exchange that lasted roughly five minutes, Pelosi insisted that the vote on the Department of Defense authorization bill, which includes the $25 billion and will likely hit the floor either today or tomorrow, will be a vote of conscience, said aides and lawmakers in the room.

Someone has to stop this madness!

like fly to Iraq for a photo op!

This is madness. Another blank check and I bet the troops STILL don't get what they need!

And another request for money will be forthcoming.

Saddam Hussein.

He got about 3 billion a year from illegal half-market-price oil exports to Syria. Syria was allowed to do this in exchange for intelligence to be used in the War Of On Terrorism.

Rumsfeld and Hussein have more in common every day!

...cuz I want that in the file.

Who else has a file? Growing piles of webpage printouts? Get it now, because a webwide disruption/extreme virus attack could be one real good "surprise".

It was on MSNBC.com, September 2002. The original link looks to be dead - doesn't come up no matter how I search for it on MSNBC.

However, it was posted here at DU...

The CIA connection to Syria

The United States is quietly allowing Syria, which it has declared a state sponsor of terrorism, to illegally import 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude oil a day in exchange for information about al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, U.S. and Syrian officials have told NBC News.

“And this does not mean we agree with the United States on what she considers to be terrorism and terrorists,” said Jabbour, who often speaks unofficially for Syria.

U.S. officials said the oil flows through an old, long-unused pipeline from the Kirkuk oil field in the north, which the Energy Department has estimated has more than 10 billion barrels of proven reserves. Syria denies importing the oil, but U.S. officials said it was lying.

Even though Iraq charges Syria only $14 a barrel — half the market price — the arrangement has yielded a $3 billion-a-year bonanza for Iraq, which a senior U.S. official said was used as a slush fund for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“He certainly needs money to support his elite troops and to keep them happy,” said Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington policy institute.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/804153.asp

...and can be found at various sites by Googling the exact article title:

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=%22The+CIA+connection+to+Syria%22&btnG=Search

"illegally import 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude oil a day" (note quotation marks which keeps it a phrase instead of just a bunch of random words)

...which via Yahoo leads to several online copies including...


http://www.drumbeat.mlaterz.net/Sept%202002/CIA%20Syria%20connection%20090602a.htm

...and then leads me to say thank you very much!

Yes, I like the exact phrase search capability of Google. Too bad Google is becoming anti-anti-b*sh biased.

:)

Timid concupiscent Dems. . .rampaging violent Repugs: a recipe for more war.

This is what happens in a One Party monoculture.

Who needs over sight...all the Dems trust Bush to do what is right.

in the face of the most egregious war profiteering that we have ever witnessed. This'll be costing my kid and your kids and their kids for many, many years to come. . . but never mind.

This Iraqi endeavor is costing us $100,000 dollars a minute. By next year it'll be up to $300 billion. We could have taken that dough and given every Iraqi citizen $10,000 a piece and bribed Saddam with $40 billion to step down and never killed or abused a soul. But no, Chalabi and Halliburton needed the money more. Oh well. Never mind.

:eyes:

Catchy isn't it?

and, yes, he would have gotten retirement somewhere, but he would be gone, our military would be looking for Mr. bin Laden and his Saudi compatriots (well, at least OBL), Iraqi's would be better off, many Iraqis now dead would still be alive and....

many American regulars and reservists, now dead, would be alive.

Worth the bribery? Yes!

Hell, they tried to bribe a Congressman for the Medicare vote, why not bribe a foreign country?

(purposely ignoring the daddy thing and the neo con crusade...)

most ineffectively into this very much exagerated "coalition of the wondering."

What a disgusting expenditure of time, treasure, lives, and credibility. . .not necessarily in that order.

willing" (read bribed) thing...but went for it anyway.

What an ethical mess we are in, let alone human, life and death hell........

"Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), one of the House’s most outspoken critics of the war, and one who is not shy about second-guessing his party’s leadership, said: “It’s the most important issue in the nation today, and the presidential candidate isn’t saying anything on it, nor is our caucus.”

“People are sick of this war and they need a strategy of how to get out of it, and we’re not, as Democrats, giving it to them.” Filner told The Hill."



Tell me again why it is we vote for Dems rather than Repubs?

We need to sweep most of BOTH sides from power. Most of them - Republican AND Democrat - are crooked.

Fuck them. They'll have to pay, one day.

Pelosi's conscience is right next to Sharon's. If Sharon wants it, Pelosi will vote for it.

Published on Sunday, November 10, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
Pelosi Win Not A Progressive Victory
by Stephen Zunes


<snip>

These observations were confirmed by Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights groups, including Israeli groups like B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Yesh G’vul.

In response, Assistant House Majority Leader Tom DeLay introduced a resolution which claimed that “Israel’s military operations are an effort to defend itself ... and are aimed only at dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.”

Most House members, who rarely get around to reading human rights reports, look to their leadership as to how they should vote on such resolutions. As assistant minority leader and a member of the so-called Human Rights Caucus, scores of Democrats looked to Pelosi to determine whom to believe: the right-wing fundamentalist Republican Congressman from Texas or the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization?

Pelosi chose to believe Tom DeLay, leading her fellow Democrats in voting in favor of his resolution, a vote widely interpreted as an attack on the credibility of Amnesty International and the human rights community as a whole.

During this same period, as peace and human rights activists spoke out in condemnation of the Bush Administration’s support for Sharon’s offensive – including a declaration by President George W. Bush that the rightist prime minister was a “man of peace” – Pelosi rushed to the administration’s defense, supporting a Republican-sponsored resolution praising President Bush’s “leadership” in the crisis. In throwing her support to Bush, she openly defied the growing discontent within the Democratic Party rank-and-file over the party leadership’s insistence on kowtowing to the Republican administration’s militaristic foreign policy agenda.

<snip>

If Nancy Pelosi is the best the Democrats can do for leadership, there is little hope of stopping George W. Bush.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1110-02.htm

Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project and author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism

Opposition? Who needs an opposition?

There are days I physically crave a revolution, just to force these people out of power.

I mean, Jesus - they don't even take the time to READ the reports on human rights?

Yeah, God Fucking Bless America. Our leaders are so good at talking the talk on human rights and democracy - and walking in the other direction when push comes to shove.

I'm so disgusted I don't know whether to cry or scream.

These idiots supporting bush from OUR SIDE of the aisle need to know somebody is watching what they do.

I'm SICK OF THIS SHIT!!!!

:kick::kick::kick::kick:

...what it spent the money on for the last three quarters. It's a giveaway of sovereignty. Why bother electing anyone?

What's a few Billion here or there?

an indepth discussion. I guess that means the writing is on the wall, yet ANOTHER blank check for the chimp's agenda with NO accountability. We really need an opposition party to save this Country!

Look at how John Kerry got hammered for voting against the $87 Billion dollar war appropriation last year. True, he was trying to cast a "make up vote" to counter the insurgent antiwar campaign of Howard Dean, but--whatever the reason--Bush and the lapdog media will use it against the Dems no matter how they vote.

Sometimes, it just seems to me that there are too many democrats acting like doormats at a time when it is very appropriate to get tough and turn up the heat.

Oh, well. At least the Republican in-fighting (asshole Hastert and Delay and Frist) is showing the American people the true colors of the extremists. McCain is a very admired figure and Republicans who are attacking the man's character will be rejected for their bulldog aggression.