oyuki

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Doubling Down

First the House and Senate narrowly pass emergency funding bills for the War on Terror that lard on $20 billion in pork to buy votes. Then they fail to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate bills before jetting off to Spring Break even after affirming to the public this bill was a pressing concern. Nancy Pelosi and others went off to Syria to kowtow to Assad while the bill to keep the troops in food and bullets languished. Jack Murtha meanwhile has stolen a page from Charlie Rangel's playbook and is calling for a military draft. And Senator Barack Obama says those time lines in the funding bills are negotiable now if the President vetoes it.

Now we get to the real draw-dropper. Something that pundits on the left and right have been demanding of the Democrats to do, to show their seriousness. To show they have some stones. Something no one expected to actually happen. Senator Harry Reid [D-NV] has apparently been emboldened by the funding bill's passage and is feeling his oats. In something to make the ANSWER and Code Pink crowd [ remember the folks who harassed their own allies in the House - Obey and Pelosi for a pullout. ] swoon in happiness.

Senator Harry Reid, who snuck in $3.5 million in the Senate version of the emergency funding bill for insect control in Nevada, has declared he will cut off almost all funding to the troops by March 2008. His partner in this? Senator Russ Feingold who offers this observation of the event.

Congress has a responsibility to end a war that is opposed by the American people and is undermining our national security," Feingold said yesterday. "By ending funding for the president's failed Iraq policy, our bill requires the president to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq."


"Safely redeploy." A euphemism for retreat. An idea based in fantasy land. Such breathtaking idiocy. As if the terrorists will just quit attacking Americans and their Coalition allies as 20 brigades worth of equipment along with the 150,000 troops are redeployed. Many lambaste the ineffectual attempt after Saddam's fall to secure Baghdad from anarchy with reason. They ain't seen anarchy until all those Iraqis who decided to ally with the United States see the US starts to pull out. These Iraqis will bug out to save their lives and the lives of their families before the terrorists like the Mahdi Army start revenge killings that will probably rival the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Kurdistan up north will declare themselves independent from the rest of Iraq and Turkey will go nuts due to their restive Kurdish population. And of course if the anarchy really gets out of control, Iran and Syria can send in 'peacekeepers' to restore order while using Iraq's oil reserves to fund their own dreams.

That is the future Reid and Feingold are offering. A world far more dangerous and unstable than it is now. A world that is once again reminded of how fickle support from the United States is. Saigon and Mogadishu all over again.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Anna-

After searching for posts relating to the Mahdi Army in Iraq, I came across your blog. I thought you might be interested in receiving some US Central Command news products.

I am with CENTCOM Public Affairs on a team that looks for bloggers to share information about the Global War on Terror with. One way we do this is by offering our CENTCOM Weekly Newsletter in a .pdf format. The newsletter contains stories about the humanitarian, reconstruction and security efforts being made in our area of responsibility. All of the content is available for you to post on your site if you choose to. Would you be interested in receiving our newsletter?

I also encourage you to take a look at our Web site at www.centcom.mil. You'll find many interesting features including archived press releases and audio and video clips from Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. You can also link to our site if you feel it would make a nice fit for your blog. Thanks for your time.

V/R

Sgt. Eric Jensen
CENTCOM Public Affairs
Electronic Media Engagement Team
jensenew@centcom.mil
www.centcom.mil

Anna said...

Okay Sgt. Jensen, I am game for some news feeds. Though what is the ROE for this Media Engagement Team? Are they restrictive or permissive? Should I await a knock on my front door saying I have been selected to embed?

Hope to hear from you.

Mike's America said...

Someone needs to tell Centcom that their web site is NOT user friendly to providing information in a rational, intuitive manner.

I spend more time trying to find stuff on all the DOD sites than most of those efforts are worth.

Now, to the point: As I stated above regarding Pelousy, You'd like to think that Dems would be held accountable if we did pullout and Iraq turned into a haven for terrorists (which it undoubtedly would).

But did the Dems ever face any accountability for their abadonment of Vietnam just as Vietnamization was working?

NOOOOOO!!!!

They always just blame the consequences on whatever Republican happens to be in office. I even had one lamebrain try and tell me that Nixon started the Vietnam War.

I'd agree to their little timetable game if they inserted into the legislation a promise that if Iraq sank into chaos that every member who voted for the bill would agree to resign and never run for office again.

But we all know that won't happen either.

Anna said...

So far no answer from CentCom.

I would much prefer if those who inserted those timetables signed a contract on C-SPAN saying if Iraq starts to suffer the fate South VietNam did when Democrats renounced Nixon's pledge that they, the timetable supporters, would take arms to protect Iraq. It is the old men&women of the Left who bring much misery into the world, not that 'tired old man we elected king' on the Right. But they do not have the guts to do that so all the Left can do is complain and snipe from the sidelines while people are dying.