Traitors, Er, Dems Bend Over For AIPAC And Abandon Iran War Authority Provision
Dems Abandon War Authority Provision
Tuesday March 13, 2007 11:01 AM
By DAVID ESPO
and
MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic leaders are stripping from a military spending bill for the war in Iraq a requirement that President Bush gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other leaders agreed to remove the requirement concerning Iran after conservative Democrats as well as other lawmakers worried about its possible impact on Israel, officials said Monday.
The overall bill - which requires that the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, if not earlier - remained on schedule for an initial test vote Thursday in the House Appropriations Committee.
The measure provides nearly $100 billion to pay for two wars and includes more money than Bush had requested for operations in Afghanistan and what Democrats called training and equipment shortages. Still, House Republicans said they wouldn't support it and the White House threatened a veto.
``Republicans will continue to stand united in this debate, and will oppose efforts by Democrats to undermine the ability of General (David) Petraeus and our troops to achieve victory in the Global War on Terror,'' Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement.
Vice President Dick Cheney criticized supporters of the bill's withdrawal provisions, declaring in a speech Monday that they ``are telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out.''
Pelosi issued a written statement that said the vice president's remarks prove that ``the administration's answer to continuing violence in Iraq is more troops and more treasure from the American people.''
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement that America was less safe today because of the war. The president ``must change course, and it's time for the Senate to demand he do it,'' he added.
The Iran-related proposal stemmed from a desire to make sure Bush did not launch an attack without going to Congress for approval, but drew opposition from numerous members of the rank and file in a series of closed-door sessions last week.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview that there is widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which is believed to be seeking nuclear weapons and has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish state.
``It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran,'' she said of the now-abandoned provision.
``I didn't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize it in a civilized way,'' said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.
Several officials said there was widespread opposition to the proposal at a closed-door meeting last week of conservative and moderate Democrats, who said they feared tying the hands of the administration when dealing with an unpredictable and potentially hostile regime in Tehran.
Public opinion has swung the way of Democrats on the issue of the war. More than six in 10 Americans think the conflict was a mistake - the largest number yet found in AP-Ipsos polling.
But Democrats have struggled to find a compromise that can satisfy both liberals who oppose any funding for the military effort and conservatives who do not want to unduly restrict the commander in chief.
``This supplemental should be about supporting the troops and providing what they need,'' Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., said Monday upon returning from Iraq. Boren said he plans to oppose any legislation setting a clear deadline for troops to leave.
In his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Cheney chided lawmakers who are pressing for tougher action on Iran to oppose the president on the Iraq war.
``It is simply not consistent for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave our worst enemies dramatically emboldened and Israel's best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened,'' Cheney said.
Related
Inside Story: Aipac power in the US
Israel warns US against quick Iraq exit
AIPAC eyes U.S. presidential hopefuls
Tell Your Senator: Don’t Sign the AIPAC Letter
Who Killed the Iran Provision?, Huffington Post, NY, I want names.
See comments below for updates.
Who Killed the Iran Provision?, Huffington Post, NY, I want names.
This story is a big. The Congress is supposed to be the voice of the people.
Do you miss your Constitution?
Watch comments here for updates.
AIPAC Pushes to Eliminate Anti-Iran-War Language from Pelosi Iraq Bill
Why is the Dems abandoning the war provision important?
It means IRAQ II.
Home in San Francisco, Pelosi Gets the Crawford Treatment
SAN FRANCISCO, March 12 — San Francisco, meet Crawford, Tex.
Using a tactic usually trained on the home turf of President Bush, a group of protesters from Code Pink, a women’s antiwar group, have camped in front of the home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi here, bringing their message — and mattresses — to the doorstep of the nation’s highest-ranking Democrat.
The protest, which began Sunday afternoon with dozens of demonstrators, is just Code Pink’s latest effort to engage Ms. Pelosi, who the group feels has not gone far enough or fast enough to get the troops home from Iraq.
“The point is to keep showing our dissatisfaction,” said Toby Blome, 51, a protest organizer who sported a frilly pink apron and pink skirt. “It’s hard to do on our own, but I know I speak for millions of people.”
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For Israel’s Sake
Related
Saving Feith: A new report gives the Pentagon intelligence peddler a pass
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March 13, 2007
By Salim Muwakkil
The more we examine the disaster that is the Bush administration’s Middle East policy, the more apparent becomes the corrosive influence of Israel, or more accurately, of those U.S. officials acting on what they construe as Israel’s best interests. Yet Congress is oddly unwilling to bring any investigative focus on the role of Israel’s fervent supporters in instigating this deepening debacle.
What makes this issue especially crucial is the well-established link between the Bush administration’s neoconservative brain trust and Israel’s right-wing government. Two members of Bush’s neocon corps are now in the news for their attempts to warp intelligence to justify a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. In the past, both men (like many neocons) publicly advanced attacking Iraq to benefit Israel. The same group also has put Iran in their bomb-sights.
The two are Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy between 2001 and 2005, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff....
The Goy Who Cried Wolf: AIPAC Warmly Welcomes the Prophet of Doom
Related AIPAC conference speech (video): Pastor John Hagee, Founder and Senior Pastor, Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, Texas
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The Israel lobby gives America's leading Christian right warmonger a warm welcome.
Web Exclusive: 03.12.07
Delegates at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference were treated to an air-brushed John Hagee last night, primed with his most innocuous talking points and stripped of his most outlandish Armageddon rhetoric. Hagee, the founder of the America's leading Christian Zionist lobby, Christians United for Israel, left his clumsy exegeses of Biblical prophecy back home in San Antonio. He is well-versed in bringing an audience of several thousand people to its feet, and he knew he didn't need his slide show of mushroom clouds and world-ending wars to work this crowd....
Cheney's Murder-Death-Kill Talk
Jeffrey Feldman
03.12.2007
Despite the timid coverage of Dick Cheney's recent speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2007 Policy Conference, America's violent-tongued Vice President gave a speech that all but accused the Democratic party of plotting to commit treason and kill American soldiers. Somehow, the thinly-veiled threats and violent vocabulary of Cheney's horror-soaked speech was missed by CNN when it described the Vice President as "chiding" Democrats....
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
How frighteningly well AIPAC is doing its job
Bwog correspondent Armin Rosen decided to spend part of his spring break hobnobbing with the stars at the America Israel Public Affairs Committee's conference in Washington DC. His second dispatch follows.
After hearing Dick Cheney drone through a half-hour long exposition on the danger that a premature American pullout from Iraq poses to Israel, I realized that my disgust from the previous night was probably misdirected. A conference with 6,000 attendees and Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney on its schedule obviously isn't that concerned with pleasing everyone, so a bombastic John Hagee can be understood as a means to a greater end: if he can share the stage with the top Democrats in Congress then there's no reason for anybody in Congress not to show up....
March 12, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
by Scott McConnell
Despite the failure in Iraq, the repudiation of the president’s foreign policy in opinion polls and the 2006 elections, and the collapse of respect for the U.S. in most other countries, support for the Bush Doctrine of preventive war remains surprisingly intact among one important slice of Americans: the presidential candidates of both major parties. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently lamented that Democratic contenders were sounding soft, crafting their foreign-policy positions to generate “applause lines in Iowa.” He needn’t have worried. The parade of White House aspirants to appear before a hawkish Israeli audience in Herzliya, and an equally hawkish AIPAC crowd in New York, is a truer gauge of where leading candidates stand....
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
The AIPAC Caucus
The Nation 58 minutes ago
The Nation -- The night before Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual conference, House Democrats removed language from an Iraq supplemental bill that would have prevented President Bush from attacking Iran without Congressional approval.
"Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy," the Associated Press reported. "Opposition to the Iran language from conservative Blue Dogs had threatened to sink the spending plan," added National Journal's Congress Daily....
Democrats Risk War with Iran to Serve Israel's Agenda
AIPAC’s Gabfest: Israel Lobby Shows Off Its Power
13 Mar 2007
William Hughes
“[Israel’s Ariel] Sharon has him [President George W. Bush Jr.] wrapped around his little finger.” - Brent Scowcroft...
Israeli army attacks a school and injures three children
Israeli army attacks a school and injures three children near Hebron
Monday March 12, 2007 14:05 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies ghassanb at imemc dot org
Israeli forces invaded a Palestinian elementary school in the village of Ithnah, west of Hebron in the southern West Bank on Monday midday.
Soldiers shot sound and tear gas bombs at the children,...
Anyone that keeps an ear open to IMEMC reports will surely know why i refer to them as The IDF baby killers.
These reports are a gut Wrenching chronicle of israeli crimes. Go ahead get a few heck get a lot they all make me sick. IDF baby killers i think is too nice.
First you take D.C. Then you take New York.
Once Again, the Dems have Betrayed the Safety of the U.S. to Protect their Political Careers
Published on Thursday, March 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
What's It All About, Nancy?
by Linda O'Brien
“Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.”
- Associated Press
Once again members of Congress, this time led by the Dems, have betrayed the safety of the United States to protect their political hides....
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Masher1, Baby-killing is the unofficial Ziostan sport.
Once Again, the Dems have Betrayed the Safety of the U.S. to Protect their Political Careers
Published on Thursday, March 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
What's It All About, Nancy?
by Linda O'Brien
“Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.”
- Associated Press
Once again members of Congress, this time led by the Dems, have betrayed the safety of the United States to protect their political hides....
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Masher1, Baby-killing is the unofficial Ziostan national sport.
I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs - Are Americans Brain Dead?!!
Our government is being commandeered by fascist zionists!
Can it get any clearer than this???
I don't think so.
But, apparently it must for people to start demanding change.
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"Money" has no value - people do.
A Clash Looms on Secrecy in Aipac Spy Case
The Israeli spies
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This from a pro-AIPAC paper. Last time I checked spying was not freedom of speech.
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FYI
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March 14, 2007 Edition > Section: National > Printer-Friendly Version
A Clash Looms on Secrecy in Aipac Spy Case
BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 14, 2007...
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Appalling for sure, qrswave.
What part of Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution Does Congress Not Understand?
by David Isenberg | March 14th, 2007
Monday night, Rep. Pelosi and the Democratic leadership, because of opposition from members of their own party, decided to pull language from the Supplemental Appropriations bill which stated that no funds may be authorized for military operations in or related to Iran unless specifically authorized by the Congress.
According to the Congressional Quarterly daily report, some Democrats are fighting Speaker Pelosi’s language, which would prevent the President from going to war on Iran without the approval of Congress.
One might think this is an easy call; perhaps for you or I; but evidently not for some Democratic members of Congress. According to the CQ some of the same Democrats most vehement about ending the Iraq debacle are resisting denying the President unilateral authority to go to war on Iran.
So much for the idea that in the aftermath of the mid-terms elections the Democrats would recover their backbone and start acting like, well, members of Congress, who have a Constitutional obligation to decide whether the country should go to war.
What is puzzling is why members of Congress would balk at the idea of being the ones to decide whether or not to go to war. After all, it is part of their job description....
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I miss our Constitution. How about you?
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Liberal Zionists denounce AIPAC
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, NY -1 hour ago
A liberal Zionist group denounced the America Israel Public Affairs Committee for adopting "radical hawkish positions" at the powerful lobby’s annual policy conference this week.
A liberal Zionist group denounced the America Israel Public Affairs Committee for adopting "radical hawkish positions" at the powerful lobby’s annual policy conference. In a statement Wednesday, Ameinu National President Kenneth Bob said AIPAC’s 2007 Action Agenda represents a major policy shift that runs counter to the security interests of Israel and the United States. Ameinu is a member of AIPAC’s executive committee and voted against the measure....
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
New zionist lie: exchanging Arab and Jewish refugees
The past 2-3 years have witnessed a change in pace of the global pro-Palestinian activist movement. After a decade of following the nitty-gritty details of the “peace” process and then a couple of years in emergency-mode trying to absorb the brutality of the second intifada, strides are now being taken in the right direction: getting back to the basics of the conflict and working towards a final, just resolution to the tragic situation (rather than half-way temporary amelioration of the suffering).
With movements like the BDS campaign, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is truly being transformed to a global struggle for justice.
Ironically, Israel made the job easier. By continuing full-force with its oppressive occupation (building the apartheid wall, setting up more checkpoints, confiscating land, demolishing homes) it proves the pro-Palestinian camp’s point that the situation will not improve anytime soon unless a true change in the Zionist mentality occurs. The two-state solution seems less and less credible by the day.
Zionist organizations are realizing the change in pace. Their fictional story portraying Israelis as underdogs and Arabs as beasts is no longer believable (except to themselves and their blind followers). What scares them the most is the call for the right of return. That spells out the end of their dream Jewish state.
New lies are being made up by Zionist propaganda machines to counter the internationally-recognized demand for the right of return. The latest has been AIPAC’s demand to take the rights of “Jewish refugees from Arab countries” into consideration. This issue of “Jewish refugees” has come up more frequently in the last few years because the myth of Palestinians willingly leaving their land has been completely shot down, even by Israeli historians....
Report: Iran army loses touch with senior officer based in Iraq
Last update - 08:23 14/03/2007
By Haaretz Service
The London-based Arabic language newspaper A-Sharq al-Awsat reported Wednesday that the Iranian army has lost contact with one of its high-ranking officers based in Iraq.
The report states that the officer, Mohammed Muhsayin Shiradi, from a unit in the Jerusalem Brigade, has not been in touch with his commanders for three weeks....
How One Senator Could End the War: Instead Democrats Peddle Bogus Antiwar Resolution
March 14, 2007
By JOHN V. WALSH
The peace movement is now in a tizzy about the various "antiwar" resolutions proffered by the Democrats. Earnest and heated discussion of the minutest details of these various bills is clogging up the UFPJ (United For Peace and Justice) discussion groups and other channels of the official peace movement. But unfortunately all this frenzy is destined to come to naught. None of these bills will survive a Republican filibuster in the Senate or a Presidential veto. And the bills are all subject to challenge in the courts on the basis of which powers the Congress and Executive have over the conduct of war. These measures are designed to do no more than save face for the Dems and allow them to continue to bash Bush. But the bills will not and cannot end the war.
There is but one way for the Democratically controlled Congress to end the war and that is to stop the funding. So far the "antiwar" Democrats refuse to do that. So they now own the war every bit as much as Bush does. They cannot reasonably say that they refuse to defund the war now, but they will end the war later if one of their number becomes President in 2008. The simple fact is that they have the power now but they refuse to exercise it. They allow the death and destruction in Iraq to continue in order to satisfy their donors, AIPAC and their own ambitions to descend to the presidency.
The Democrats will claim that they only have a "razor thin majority," so that their hands are tied. But this is not so. It takes only one Senator to filibuster against funding the war. Then it takes only 41 abstentions to sustain the filibuster. 60 votes are needed to stop a filibuster; so 41 abstentions mean that a filibuster is sustained and Bush's supplemental funding bill for the Iraq war is dead (1). Such a filibuster is of course veto-proof since the filibustered bill simply dies and there is nothing for Bush to veto. There are 51 Senate Democrats, most of whom claim to be against the war, and at least one antiwar Republican Senator so the votes are there unless our solons of the Senate are deceiving us. If such a filibuster takes hold, the administration must then come back to the Congress with a bill acceptable to the 41, presumably a bill with funding to bring the U.S. soldiers home safely and quickly. (Sign the petition calling on Senators to take this action at www.FilibusterForPeace.org and circulate the petition widely.)...