Iraq is just dragging on and on and on ... it didn't make sense before we invaded; now, it's utter madness.
The Democrats took a beating for their last Iraq funding bill and rightfully so. Through what gyrations could anyone possibly make sense of spending even another day in Iraq? What did they think could possibly be accomplished by keeping American troops there? It was nothing short of a death sentence for perhaps another 1,000 troops or so as another year of war and occupation received yet more funding.
We're sick and tired of even talking about Iraq at this point. You see very few posts about Iraq on DU anymore. It's obvious what needs to be done and yet the Democrats won't do it. Or, at least they haven't done it yet.
General Odom, in an excellent article (see below), made it painfully clear that the Democrats have only two ways to stop bush and end the nightmare in Iraq: cut-off funding or impeach bush and cheney. My vote? Do both.
The Democrats cannot continue to allow bush to "wrap himself in the troops." He's not "supporting the troops"; he's condemning them to a living hell complicated with PTSD. When a madman stands in a crowd of people waving a gun around and killing innocent people, you send in the swat teams to take him down; you don't send him a blank check to buy more guns.
Enough is enough. We have a responsibility to protect our troops from this madness. We are NOT "helping the Iraqis" by our presence. And we are past the point of calling for "timelines"; the only timeline should be one that gets our troops out of Iraq as quickly as THEIR SAFETY allows. No more funding should be provided for any other purpose.
Here are a few excerpts from General Odom's article on this subject:
source:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/06/2325/Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to “support the troops.” Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what “supporting the troops” means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.
No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.<skip>
If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine “supporting the troops” as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for “not supporting the troops” where it really belongs - on the president.
And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.
Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that “de-authorizes the war in Iraq.” That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years. To force him to begin a withdrawal before then,
the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what “supporting the troops” really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.
The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the “high crime” of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.
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