Consistency in logic is not a strength of politicians in general. But it's rare to see, in the written page (or email, in this case,) two sentences in the same paragraph that logically negate each other completely. I read it three times, trying to understand how these two sentences (in the bolded paragraph below) could co-exist in an email from Sen. Lieberman:
Thank you for contacting me to express your support for longer leave for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I appreciate your views on this issue, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.
As you may know, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) introduced an amendment (S.Amdt. 2909) to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008 (H.R. 1585) that would specify minimum periods between deployment of units and members of the Armed Forces deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. This amendment failed by a vote of 56 to 44, with 60 votes needed for further consideration of the amendment, on September 19, 2007.
I support the U.S. Department of Defense's goal of providing active duty soldiers an equal amount of time at home for the time they are deployed and providing Guard and Reserve members as much as three times the amount of time at home for time spent deployed. I would like to see that happen and as soon as possible. However, serving as a de facto troop withdrawal, S.Amdt. 2909 would have constrained the flexibility of our armed services and limited the ability of our commanders on the ground to conduct operations. We should not limit the authorities of our generals with such statutes. Those on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan know best the number of troops they need to get the job done.
How can someone claim to support one idea (equal time home) when this consideration is trumped by the second (whatever Petraeus/etc. says goes)? This is the exact same type of mental gymnastics that we saw in 2006 - Lieberman emoting "Nobody wants the troops home more than I do" and a second later pulling out "get the job done". Two positions, one logically negates the other, but somehow Lieberman gets points for both positions. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!
If we want real solutions and progress abroad and at home, we can no longer give politicians like Lieberman the benefit of the doubt when they say they support palatable position A but are willing to discard that position at a moment's notice. If a politician wants to be associated with an issue, if they really want that aura of principled gravitas, they have to follow through with actions, not speech. If they don't (and this applies to many of the spineless Democrats as well, e.g. FISA and Habeas restoration), I say they don't get credit for what they claim is their "position". Sorry, Joe, you don't get a cookie.
Washington -- Free speech took a beating with another round of arrests September 18 in the nation's capital. It was administered by the police at a rally sponsored by the most unlikely-sounding group to be involved in such a thing: Veterans for Freedom.
U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Lindsey Graham were among the featured speakers at the rally held in Upper Senate Park on Capitol Hill. About 150 people attended the rally to support the group's pro-war position, as did about 30 people who were not in support. Before the rally concluded, Leah Bolger, David Barrows, Christine Rainwater, Anne Kitridge, and Anne Katz were arrested by Capitol Police.
Barrows said he had gone to the park because he heard Lieberman was going to speak. When the Senator was talking, Barrows spoke out, "I don't want your 'bomb and run genocide' in Iran."
As soon as I did, a plainclothes policeman came up to me and said, "You're under arrest," the 60 year-old D.C. resident continued. But, Barrows said, instead of going with the officer immediately he moved another six feet closer to the stage, whereupon he was placed under arrest.
Later tonight President Bush will address the nation on the subject of Iraq. It will be the eighth time he's done so since the Iraq war started in 2003.
Senator Dodd issued the following statement on Bush's anticipated announcement that the 30,000+ troops deployed to Iraq during the "surge" will be brought home early next summer (as has always been the plan).
"Moving us in 10 months to where we were 10 months ago is not progress. It is the very definition of status quo.
"Not only is the President not offering us anything new; he's insulting our intelligence.
"Despite the fact that his top General is unable to say that the war is making us safer, all the President offers today is quite literally more of the same. More loss of life, more strain on our military readiness, and more degradation of our national security and our standing in the world. It is time for Congress to say 'no more.'
"What was clear to me before, and what should be abundantly clear to my colleagues after today, is that this President is not going to change course unless we force him to. There is only one way to do that - we must set a clear, hard and fast deadline for redeployment and, in order to enforce it, that deadline must be tied to funding."
(This seems like a good opportunity for some distributed research/brainstorming. For help, and for more on Shays and Iraq, check out the DCCC's excellent new microsite on Shays which documents his absurd rhetoric vs. his even more absurd record for the past four and a half years. - promoted by tparty)
I just got an e-mail from Chris Shays. It must have been in reponse to one of the many e-mails and phone calls I have made to his office.
He wrote about bills he has introduced that would make it look like he is serious about getting out of Iraq.
I just don't believe he is telling me the whole story. I have tried to find links to provide some better insight into what he did here, but I can't seem to find anything but the pure text of the bills. I don't see any analysis or context.
Specifically he mentions
H.R. 1837 (Introduced by Shays)- regarding withdrawl.
H.R. 3178 (Introduced by Shays) - limiting service time in Iraq for members of the military
H.R. 3159 (voted for by Shays) - Ensuring rest and recuperation for troops.
Amendments to 3159 (proposed by shays)1. to begin withdrawl within 120 days. 2. Requiring vote by Iraqi government to demonstrate full consent to having our forces there. He says dems wouldn't allow it.
Amendment to 2764 (Proposed by Shays) to reconstitute Iraq study group.
Obviously this is going to be a big part of his next reelection campaign. I hope we can start finding the holes in it now.
The "surge" is not a strategy, it is a tactic. And the strategy has failed because we are not safer. The overriding reason we are in Iraq is because President Bush believes the war makes America safer. There's no reason to believe it is....
The debate we should be having is not on how we change tactics, but how we change policy. It is clear to me, and as today's testimony reinforces, that half-measures will not change the policy of this White House. We need to send a clear message to the President and the Iraqis that it is time for a change of course. That is why I have stated that I will not support any measure that does not include a firm, enforceable deadline for redeployment. I urge other leaders in the party to join me.
"And yet you come here again this morning, four and a half years later, even after the surge, you can argue about statistics, but no real indication that we're getting any closer to that."
So, Dodd asked, "What makes you possibly believe that anything further like this is going to produce the results that everyone else has failed to produce over the previous four and a half years?"
Meanwhile, at the same hearing, Ambassador Crocker actually admitted that he thinks the Iraqi government is "dysfunctional".
I wonder if Chris Shays is still "not losing any sleep" over American troops sacrificing their lives to prop up a government even Bush's ambassador to Iraq now calls "dysfunctional."
UPDATE CTblogger: Video footage of Dodd questioning Petraeus added.
For those of you who don't get the Greenwich Time, here's today's column, above which was printed this lovely hatepistle from perpetual Saramerica critic, Raymond P. Justus. I swear, this guy must make a real effort to miss the point of my columns. He just latches on to details that aren't relevant and uses them to vent his Bush-loving spleen.
But anyway...back to Shays. The guy has more flip flops than I saw on the beach yesterday. Hopefully this captures some of them, although I could have easily written another 1,000 words on the subject...and props to Thomas Hooker, our resident Shaysologist, for the Hamlet imagery.
Last Sunday evening at the end of a long, hot, winding road through the state the Edwards family wrapped up their bus tour of NH. They were greeted by well over a thousand people at a Town Hall event on the banks of the river at lovely Prescott Park in downtown Portsmouth NH.
His remarks were sharp, clear and passionately delivered to an enthusiastic crowd.
He threw down the gauntlet on universal health care in the field and challenged the entire Democratic party on financing campaigns through lobbyist money. He presented the voters in attendance not only with his vision for change in this country, but he gave us a very clear picture of the kind of America that he wants us to create together. The grassroots are not only central to the campaign in this vision, but they need to be central going forward from January 20, 2009.
The full Q and A is now posted also: click here to see all of that tape.
Bush is going to give a speech comparing Iraq to Vietnam. This diary is a reference for the press, to highlight the past mentions of this analogy by the Bush Administration, all mocking the same comparison. The examples below from a Google search of 'Iraq + Vietnam' on whitehouse.gov:
1) Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?
THE PRESIDENT: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation's interest.
I came across this NY Times article http://www.nytimes.c... via the Huffington Post. The title is "The War as We Saw It", and it was written by some NCO's (non-commisioned officers) of the 82nd Airborne Division. Along with the Special Forces, US Army Rangers, and the 101st Airborne Division, the 82nd is as good as it gets, and instead of taking yet another trip to Iraq without opening his eyes, jackass Congressman Chris Shays should invest a little time reading what these men have to say.
Lt. Colonel Gian P. Gentile (retired), who commanded American troops in West Baghdad through last year, penned an oped in the Washington Post today titled "In the Middle of a Civil War." Pulling no punches and clearly not one of George Bush's many Pentagon "yes-men" who've said what Bush wanted them to say, Gentile outlined the futile situation in Iraq this way:
The war that I faced was an insurgency within a civil war. I wish it had been the other way around. Had it been a civil war within an insurgency, the extremes could have been targeted and controlled and the large center of the people moved toward local compromise.
The war is pointless. The troops know it; their commanders know it; the folks back home know it. But how much do you wanna bet that Chris Shays comes back from his current trip to the Middle East spewing another pile of mindless drivel about how "we're making progress" and that "we need to give the surge a chance" and other typically vacuous Shaysian double-talk?
On Saturday, I went to vlog an Edwards Town Hall in Dover, NH. It was a day marked by torrential thunderstorms yet about 300 NHer-ites turned out to see the candidate speak and take hard questions from Granite State voters. They, my neighbors to the north, know they're king makers and they take their job seriously. Thank God that at least "some people" still have respect for the process.
Overflow crowds and running behind schedule were the order of the day. Edwards only had time to take a few questions at the end of his remarks. They are presented here in Part Two. If you're going to an event in NH, for a Democrat, then you'd better plan to get there early. All the passion and attention seems to be on our side this time. Thank God that at least "some people" know what the GOP is doing to our country these days.
Part One of this vlog covers the remarks and makes the case that the Edwards message is a populist message that we, as a party, can be proud of and one that is long overdue. I don't think that any other candidate in this race deserves the mantle of progressive populist the way the Edwards does. That's why I support his candidacy for President.
I went to vlog an Edwards Town Hall in Dover, NH on Saturday. It was a day marked by torrential thunderstorms yet about 300 NHer-ites turned out to see the candidate speak and take hard questions from Granite State voters. They, my neighbors to the north, know they're king makers and they take their job seriously. Thank God that at least "some people" still have respect for the process. The media is certainly not capable of any meaningful discussion of the issues in this campaign and they will not be reformed in time for the primaries. Nary a patriot in the DC press corps.
Before the event started I heard some of the Edwards advance people talking about the overflow crowds they had seen at the stops all day long. He had done a bunch of house parties that were packed with 200 to 300 people. The Epping event left about 100 people standing out on the lawn under threatening skies. In this clip posted by the campaign at YouTube he's talking to an overflow crowd - in a garage in Nashua.
If you're going to an event in NH, for a Democrat, then you'd better plan to get there early. All the passion and attention seems to be on our side this time. Thank God that at least "some people" know what the GOP is doing to our country these days.
This is very ho-hum to most conservatives and Neocons like Chris Shays and Joe Lieberman who are keeping their own military-aged children far away from service in the U.S. military and combat in Iraq. But for Americans who care, July is already the deadliest of the five Julys since the Iraq War began. 66 more young Americans have been killed this month with five days remaining. In the previous four Julys, 54 killed was the highest monthly total.
Again, for those who care about Americans killed and wounded in that pointless conflict, 147 more were wounded last week. 30,598 Americans have now been killed and wounded "over there."
In the midst of the Iraq War debate in the Senate, a friend sent a long email that included this point:
...we now have a responsibility to the Iraqi people and to the world to clean up our mess one way or another. Yes, it's a civil war and sectarianism is the biggest problem in Iraq, but WE CAUSED IT!
So, that's why I get so fired up when people say, let's just leave and let them sort out their own problems. We broke it - we own it. And we can't just abandon these people to be terrorized by the extremists that we've created.
The Reed/Levin Amendment, which my friend had never read, calls for important changes in policy to help Iraqis fix their country. But listening to the debates, or reading news accounts of it, you might never get that impression. Ironically, if Democrats want to "get our troops out of Iraq," which the Reed/Levin Amendment does NOT do, Democrats may have to stop using those misleading words and start selling the amendment as an Iraq Peace Plan, which is what it is, rather than a "withdrawal plan."
"Congress is not the commander in chief, and it shouldn't be," Shays said in an interview on Capitol Hill with The Associated Press.
Shays, who has urged the White House to craft an Iraq exit strategy, said he would prefer President Bush to set troop withdrawal deadlines, not Congress.
SHAYS: I`m a strong no. I`m a strong no because I think the timeline is simply too quick. I think it is micromanaging the war. I think we do need timelines. I think the president should come to Congress with timelines and state when we remove first our combat troops and then when we remove our support troops. But I don`t think we should be the ones setting that timeline. Based on what?
"We need to bring our troops home, and we need a deadline to do that. But this deadline begins in 120 days and concludes by April of next year, guaranteeing absolute failure, laying waste to all the investment we have talked about," Shays said. "Give me a deadline I can support, and I will vote for it."
"I can't wait any longer for the administration to come and say, `These are the deadlines,"' the congressman said Friday. "I've waited longer than I'm even comfortable with."...
"My preference would be 2009," he said. "But I felt there was merit in getting the troops out before a new president takes office, so they can start fresh."
So, Congress shouldn't have the power to mandate a timeline for withdrawal. Except it should.
Here's the text of Jim Himes' press release telling the truth about Shays' latest flip-flop on Iraq:
Jim Himes Statement on Chris Shays' Vote Today Against the Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act
Stamford, CT -- Democratic Congressional candidate Jim Himes issued the following statement today in response to Chris Shays' vote against HR 2956, the Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act, which requires the Secretary of Defense to begin the redeployment of troops from Iraq within 120 days, limiting our presence in Iraq by April 1, 2008.
"Chris Shays' vote today is a betrayal of the trust of the people of the 4th Congressional District. Rep. Shays promised voters last year that he would support a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq, but since the election, not only has he failed to support timelines for ending the war, he has enthusiastically supported President Bush's escalation of the war.
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), once an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq, said yesterday that the Bush administration should set a time frame for withdrawing U.S. troops. He added that most of the withdrawal could take place next year.
...by voting for a Defense Authorization bill that would mandate just that.
Instead, he resorted to whining about not being involved in negotiations over a bill he denies is bipartisan (despite the other Republicans voting for it), claiming that the very same timeline he advocated for last year would be "foolish" this year, and asserting that "our troops will be coming home... in a more thoughtful way" regardless of how he votes (because Bush wouldn't dare extend the tours of our broken armed forces from 15 to 18 months):
By asserting, in the passive voice, that "our troops will be coming home," without doing a thing to actually make that happen, Shays is not only abdicating any last remaining connection to reality (most of which disappeared long ago), he's also disgracefully abdicating his responsibility as a member of Congress.
(H/T ctblogger for the Youtube.)
Update: In the comments, Maura quotes Jim Himes' press release response:
"Today, Rep. Shays called again for a new Iraq Study Group report, while disregarding the most important recommendation of the Iraq Study Group: ending major combat operations in Iraq by spring 2008. Rep. Shays' vote today not only goes against ISG recommendations, it is in direct violation of his campaign promise to the people of the 4th District...."
Last Sunday evening at the end of a long, hot, winding road through the state the Edwards family wrapped up their bus tour of NH. They were greeted by well over a thousand people at a Town Hall event on the banks of the river at lovely Prescott Park in downtown Portsmouth NH.
On Saturday, I went to vlog an Edwards Town Hall in Dover, NH. It was a day marked by torrential thunderstorms yet about 300 NHer-ites turned out to see the candidate speak and take hard questions from Granite State voters. They, my neighbors to the north, know they're king makers and they take their job seriously. Thank God that at least "some people" still have respect for the process.
I went to vlog an Edwards Town Hall in Dover, NH on Saturday. It was a day marked by torrential thunderstorms yet about 300 NHer-ites turned out to see the candidate speak and take hard questions from Granite State voters. They, my neighbors to the north, know they're king makers and they take their job seriously. Thank God that at least "some people" still have respect for the process. The media is certainly not capable of any meaningful discussion of the issues in this campaign and they will not be reformed in time for the primaries. Nary a patriot in the DC press corps.
MLN is powered by