Will the disaster in Iraq eventually be blamed on the Democrats?

Today, the Democrats offered $50 billion more for the war in Iraq if they could get a withdrawal plan. The plan failed. In the same debate, the Republicans requested $70 billion with no withdrawal plan. That failed also. So tonight, the two Parties sit in a gridlock.

Majority Leader Reid says he is going to keep the Senate open every fourth day so that Bush cannot make any more recess appointments. Furthermore, Reid says that the Pentagon budget is already $471 billion dollars and the troops in Iraq have enough funds to last until February or March, even according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. So when do the Democrats fold on this one?

If they do fold, they are going to inherit the mess in Iraq anyway. If their plan is to withdraw troops once a Democrat is in office, they may as well start now. Withhold the funds and request the Presidente start bringing the troops home immediately. The people are with the Democrats at this time. They want the troops home.

After next January, when the Republicans start talking about how the Democrats have squandered a victory in Iraq, that was so close under George W Bush and the Republicans, the Democrats will be in a much more precarious position than at the moment. IF they plan on bringing the troops home, they need to start doing it now - not after they are in power.

"running out of MRE's" because of the funding battle. I'd put money on it.

Smoke us and we cause cancer.

the shooting escalates again. We'll leave our base, though, which sets us up for another generation of struggle.

out of Baghdad hanging off the helicopter just like when we left Saigon.

I know I dropped a lot of acid back then, but this flashback is just TOO surreal. nt

The right has a knack of rewriting history. Unless these guys are tried in a court for thier crimes, you can bet on it

but the democrats aren't with the people.

They'll fold.

And they will get blamed, not because of when the withdrawal is timed, but because they have been voting for the war, and then for the war funding. They should get blamed. They were complicit.

As for strategies about when to withdraw for best political advantage, I don't find that relevant when it comes to funding human rights abuses. It's like the church deciding whether it's better PR to shift the priests who have been molesting children to other churches - if the decision is being made based on what's best for the church, it's already an immoral decision-making process, regardless of the outcome.

When they can say "we will stop funding the war because it's immoral" without any qualifiers about how it will look for them or what's the best time-frame politically, then they'll be with the people.

I fear the Democrats are looking at this mostly from a political positioning. If they were doing the right and moral thing, they would have cut the funds off already. They are afraid of being portrayed as "weak on defense" and they have no response for the Republican charges. It is not enough that we were lied into this war. It is not enough that we have bridges falling down in this country as we spend $12 billion per month in Iraq. It is not enough that we spend all this money over there and we have no money for our own people - not even for our children's healthcare. All they need is a little courage and backbone and that seems to be in very short supply, unfortunately.

I was talking to some students about veterans day earlier this week, and one of the things that came up was the notion of why we go along with everyone else and do things that we know are wrong. There was one thing in particular from basic training, a thing that didn't even directly hurt anyone else, but I shouldn't have done it, and I knew it. They were asking me why I did that, why didn't I just refuse to participate, and I was left saying just that everyone did it, nobody ever just says no, we just don't.

That's how I feel about congress, that there's a tipping point that comes with morality, just like there's a tipping point that comes with white flight out of a city or a neighborhood. If they'd all done what was right from the start, we would have been fine, and there would never have been an issue of blame, but everyone was waving the flag and they maybe figured the republicans were going to vote for the war anyway, so there wasn't much point in opposing it, better to go along with everyone else since in a way their vote didn't matter at that point in time.

There's a small thing that Teresa Heinz Kerry said in one of her speeches, I think the one at the convention, and I think she was talking about marching against apartheid, that there's value in taking a stand, even if nobody hears it. That line stuck with me, for some reason. I wish I would have understood that a little earlier in life, and I wish our congress understood it now.

So of course.

plans for a recess appointment.

Will a republican ever take responsibility?

:rofl: of course the rethugs will blame the democrats. the republicans never take responsibility for their actions