Funding Cuts Could End Iraq Occupation

Jason Leopold, Senior Editor and Reporter for Truthout, sends me most of his articles for republishing on my own blog. This particular article, along with others he has written about funding of the Iraq Invasion and Occupation and other subjects such as the outing of former CIA Agent Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity, and his series of video interviews of former U.S. Attorneys in the Attorneygate Scandal, as with all of Jason's articles, is in my opinion very good and worth a close read.

[Cross-posted at Edgeing]

Funding Cuts Could End Iraq Occupation
By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report, Monday 17 September 2007

Next week, Congress is expected to take up a $50 billion emergency supplemental bill to continue funding the so-called "surge" in Iraq and military operations in Afghanistan.

The bill, which is expected to soar through both Houses, would bring the cost of both wars to more than $600 billion. It would also mark at least the sixth time President Bush and the Pentagon have called on Congress to finance the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan through its emergency supplemental request. Emergency supplemental requests allow the Pentagon to use accounting sleight-of-hand to spend money on military operations that normally require Congressional oversight, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Since 2001, the Pentagon has grossly mismanaged the $510 billion spent thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan, has used money earmarked for equipment upgrades to finance fighting on the battlefield, and has refused to provide Congress with a transparent accounting of the money it has spent and intends to spend, according to a report issued in March by the CRS, the investigative arm of Congress.

Democrats in Congress are expected to introduce several competing pieces of legislation this week - they say - aimed at changing the direction of the occupation and at reducing the number of ground troops, bills Bush has already indicated he would swiftly veto if any of them crosses his desk.

In a separate CRS report also released earlier this year, the agency recommended Democrats use "the power of the purse," a politically unpopular route that would no doubt lead to a constitutional showdown with the White House, if they are serious about bringing an end to the occupation or forcing a change in military strategy.

Two months after Democrats defeated Republicans to sweep both Houses of Congress last November, due in large part to a public outcry over the direction of the US occupation of Iraq, the investigative arm of Congress highlighted instances in which Congress has used "funding cutoffs or significant restrictions," most notably during Vietnam, to either end a war or force a president to make significant changes to military operations.

"In cases of significant differences with the President over foreign policy, especially deployments of U.S. military forces abroad, Congress has generally found that use of its Constitutionally-based "power of the purse" to be the most effective way to compel a President to take actions regarding use of U.S. military force overseas that he otherwise might not agree to," says the January 2007 CRS report, "Congressional Use of Funding Cutoffs Since 970 Involving U.S. Military Forces and Overseas Deployments."

Earlier this year, Democrats hammered out legislation tied to a $94 billion emergency-spending bill for Iraq that placed specific benchmarks on withdrawing and redeploying troops. Bush vetoed the legislation. In July, Democrats surrendered to White House demands and criticism by Republicans who mocked Democrats for their "cut-and-run" strategy and issued the administration another blank check to fund the occupation without any restrictions resulting in a widespread backlash against Democrats.

The March CRS report, "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11," said during previous wars Congress used the "power of the purse" to rein in the administration's out-of-control spending on military operations. The report said such lawmakers could implement such legislative maneuvers to change the dialogue surrounding the occupation of Iraq.

"Two well-known proposals - the McGovern-Hatfield amendment and the Cooper-Church amendments - were also part of this jockeying between the administration and Congress. The first prohibited expenditure of previously appropriated funds after a specified date "in or over Indochina," except for the purpose of withdrawing troops or for protection of US troops during the withdrawal, while the second prohibited the expenditure of any funds after July 1, 1970 to retain troops in Cambodia "unless specifically authorized by law hereafter. Overall, funding restrictions have generally proven more effective than the War Powers Act, which has been challenged by the executive branch on constitutional grounds," the report says.

Last week, following two days of testimony by General David Petraeus, the Pentagon's top commander on the ground in Baghdad, who claimed progress is being made in the region due in large part to the so-called "surge" in ground troops, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed a change in strategy.

"It seems to me that Gen. Petraeus is presenting a plan for at least a 10-year, high-level U.S. presence in Iraq," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) during a news conference Monday following a meeting with President Bush. "No matter how successful our troops are, still the Iraqi government refuses to make the political changes necessary. This sounds to me, at least, like a 10-year open-ended presence in Iraq. The president added 30,000 troops, and now he's saying a year and a half later, nearly two years later, we'll be back to where we started. Please, that is an insult to the people."

"This war in Iraq is not the Petraeus war. It is the Bush war," added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who also attended the meeting with Bush. "What we find with what has been stated in recent days is that the surge is not going to last for 30 days, but now the testimony indicates that this surge is going to last for 18, 19 months, ending sometime next August. There is no change in mission - this is more of the same. In two weeks, we're going to get a request for another $200 billion for the war in Iraq - $200 billion," Reid said. "Is there anything logical about this picture, anybody? The answer is no."

But whether Democrats adhere to their own rhetoric will be determined in large part on how they vote in the weeks ahead on the emergency-spending bill to fund the occupation of Iraq.

So far, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has emerged as the only Democrat willing to go on the record to say he may vote against further funding the occupation. But he would not lobby his colleagues to follow his lead.

In a speech to the Center for National Policy a couple of weeks ago, Durbin said Congress now faces a "moral obligation" to stop funding the occupation.

"This Congress can't give President Bush another blank check for his war in Iraq," Durbin said. "The Constitution gives Congress a means to force the President to change course: the power of the purse. For the sake of our long-term national security interests, Congress needs to use that authority now."


Jason Leopold is senior editor and reporter for Truthout. He received a Project Censored award in 2007 for his story on Halliburton's work in Iran.


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For more detail on funding/defunding the Iraq Occupation also see:

A Message For Congressional Democrats

The Washington Consensus Of Iraq Reality Is Delusion

Defunding Iraq: Misperceptions, Disinformation And Lies

Iraq Occupation Funding - Bush And Pentagon Cooking The Books?

War And Occupation Funding: More Cooking The Books By Bush And Pentagon?
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Who Will Be The Last?

Last to Die for that Man in the White House and His Lies
Meteor Blades at Daily Kos today:

Four thousand dead Americans and other Coalition soldiers will soon be in the count. Dead, in many cases, as we have seen, because of the incompetent know-it-allness of an Administration still swarming with chickenhawks.
...
They are dead for lies. Futilely dead. Dead because war criminals sent them abroad fraudulently in the name of liberation, security and prevention.

Dead because of people who waved the bloody shirt of 9/11 in one hand, Old Glory in the other, simultaneously managing to shred our Constitution and decades of international law. People whose closest brush with battle was reading the Cliff's Notes version of Sun Tzu, which they promptly forgot. People who, if this were a just world, would soon be making journeys in shackles to The Hague.
...
Not to mention the dead Iraqis.

We know how little those who lied us into this war try not to mention those dead Iraqis. To downplay their numbers. Nobody really knows how many have died. Estimates diverge wildly. Let me just say I think any count below hundreds of thousands is off the mark. Hundreds of thousands dead, still larger numbers injured or maimed, more than two million in exile, two million internally displaced. All for a pack of lies.
...
If Russ Feingold's August 2005 proposal for withdrawal had been adopted, American troops would have been home since Christmas. We might already know who was the last one to die for the lies of that man in the White House and those of his pals. But for two years, the withdrawal plans of Feingold, John Kerry, Jack Murtha, Wes Clark, George McGovern, the Center for American Progress, and, and, and have been ignored. So, the skulls are stacked, American, Iraqi and others. The bloodbath goes on, and the dithering ceases not.

With no end in sight.

It is time for everyone who believed or still believes the lies to face it squarely and, however painful it may be to say, admit what they know in their hearts is true. The Iraq invasion and occupation has turned into the worst Foreign Policy debacle in American history.

All for a pack of lies.

Who will be the last... to believe or deny the lies?

It is time to face reality.

It is time to bring this debacle to an end.

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Rationalizing Grievous Mistakes

Big Tent Democrat at Talkleft, Tue May 22, 2007

In March of this year, I had many a battle with Netroots leaders on the Iraq Supplemental. Today, I think any fair person would say that I was right and they were wrong.

But the Netroots leaders won't admit their mistakes or even try to learn from their mistakes. Here is an example of the disingenuous rationalizing we are sure to see from them:

For some progressives, there seems to be a desire to pounce on anything negative, compromising, or seemingly right-wing the Democratic Party might do as a means of justifying their wish to keep a distance from the Democratic Party, or even from contemporary electoral politics altogether. This perspective seems to me to be based on having higher expectations for the Democratic Party in the short term than I do, and a general unwillingness to associate with the Democratic Party until it reaches those expectations, rather than working within the party to help it reach those expectations.

What a crock. No one wants to distance themselves from the Democratic Party. But we understand that politicians understand PRESSURE, and very little else. Indeed, the writer and his web site was pressuring the Out of Iraq caucus members in the House to vote for the horrible Iraq supplemental bill. His expectations were not the problem, rather his poor judgment on the matter. One could read this type of sophistry from the DLC. I repeat, what a crock.

But there is more:

By way of contrast, from my perspective, the negative, right-wing compromises people point out in the Democratic Party are simply a given, as they are reflective of long-standing power imbalances that have gone unchecked by those who wish to withdrawal from the Democratic Party and electoral politics.

More rationalizing nonsense. Instead of just admitting his and his web site's mistakes, this writer chooses to be a mindreader, and a bad one at that. Those who wish to withdrawal from Iraq DO NOT want to withdraw from the Democratic Party. They want to shape it up. The writer screwed up in his approach and now those who got it right are subject to false smears from him. How low will he go? Lower:

From this vantage point, anything the Democratic Party accomplishes beyond negative, right-wing compromises is a positive sign of the improving situation within the Democratic Party caused by increasing and more effective progressive involvement within the party.

Nonsense. The writer and his web site were part of the sit down and shut up shouting that the progressive elements got from him, and Meyerson and Move On and many, many others. He and his web site said their way was the best way to end the war. Well, it wasn't. And now he writes this? What a crock.

And listen to the self congratulation for prior successes:

I never thought we would, for example, manage to kick Joe Lieberman out of the party, force Democrats to run against the Iraq war, and then send a bill with a withdrawal timeline to Bush's desk. Just eighteen months before Bush vetoed the Iraq Accountability Act, Rahm Emanuel refused to even mention Iraq in televised interviews, Joe Lieberman was penning Iraq op-eds in the Wall Street Journal on behalf of Democrats, and fewer than a dozen Senators supported a timeline for withdrawal. When placed in the broad context of the American political struggle over war in Iraq, starting in early 2002 with the drumbeat and continuing straight through to the fight over the Iraq supplemental, progressives clearly have the momentum, and the Democratic Party is moving in a progressive direction.

And how did that happen? By not letting hometeamism overcome our judgment. The writer and his web site failed miserably in March of this year precisely because they FORGOT how all those things were accomplished. I have made that point many times and precisely what I feared about Netroots cooptation happened on the most important issue of the day.

Finally, the congitive dissonance takes over:

It is important to have regular discussion between progressives whose first inclination is to defend the Democratic Party on the grounds of pragmatic, long-term progress, and those progressive whose first inclination is to attack it for failure to reach lofty expectations in the short-term. Without perspective both on what lefty progressives are aiming for, and on how that can be achieved, both the Realpolitk and Sturm und Dang groups can quickly lose their way.

There are no such groupings. See, this writer simply will not take accountability for HIS and his web site's mistakes. He tries to make it some broader question. It is not a broader question. He and many others screwed up. Those of us who opposed his approach did so because we thought the situation through, not because of kneejerk anti-Dem Partyism. This outrageous apologia show us what is wrong with the Netroots - selfish, self absorbed, unthinking and unwilling to admit mistakes.

If things end up going badly in the Iraq supplemental fight this week . . I hope this is something everyone in the progressive movement remembers.

If? Will the writer remember what he and his web site did in March to help lead to this failure? Will he admit their mistakes and remember not to repeat them?

And the final self-congratulation:

While a watered down bill that funds the war through September . . . we have still made tremendous progress by working within the party these past few years. At the same time, it would be wrong to declare total victory and reserve any criticism of our performance to date.

Don't worry, I'll remember to criticize. And I'll do it in earnest, not this little disingenuous piece that this writer delivered.

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Chicago Sun-Times Op Ed: Dems Letting The Country Down On Iraq

Hat tip to Big Tent Democrat at Talkleft today for this.

Bring troops home now
Monroe Anderson, Chicago Sun-Times, May 20, 2007

We're waist-deep in George W. Bush's nightmarish Middle East misadventure as the new, theoretically empowered Democrats are difficult to distinguish from the old, hamstrung Dems of a year ago. They're still too timid.

Rather than deftly acting to bring the troops home, the Democrats continue their eye-shifting and throat-clearing while the killing and dying go on and on. Last week, the new majority party yielded to the oxymoron argument that we have to support the troops by keeping them in the line of fire. The Feingold-Reid Iraq Bill that would have cut the funding and thereby forced the president to bring the troops home was defeated Wednesday in the Senate. On a procedural vote, the proposal that would have cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31 of next year fell 31 votes short of the number needed to advance, losing 29-67.

The bill was defeated even as three U.S. soldiers remain missing and the death toll in Iraq is rising. The bill was defeated even as our puppet Iraqi government continues with its plans for a two-month vacation while the American men and women serving in their country are getting three months added to their yearlong tours of duty. The bill was defeated even as reports of poor care at Walter Reed Hospital for the mounting number of wounded troops is barely yesterday's news.

The Americans who voted the Democrats into power have been let down. Instead of counting on the Democrats to deliver on their implicit promise to end the occupation, we continue to count the costs of not correcting Bush's calamitous course.

Read the whole thing...

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