Washington Hardball

04/23/2007

Paul Munnis


Bush and Chaney are attempting to stare down Congress over Iraq War Funding. There is much posturing and a great deal of propaganda and lots of dire claims of disaster should the U.S. throw up our hands in disgust at the Iraqi governments’ lack of civil-war containment and just pull out of Iraq..

General Petraeus was sent to Iraq to implement his expertise on counter-insurgency tactics. He has begun by erecting a wall to separate Sunni’s and Shiites so that they will stop attacking one another. It seems pretty effective and yet Al Maliki, the Iraqi premier, opposes it and he demands that it be stopped. This is not the first time that he has opposed U.S. attempts to stop the killing.

This is stiffing the backs of Congress even further. They are coming to see al Maliki as the problem and not the solution. Many ask why we should be supporting the Shiite side in a Civil War? That is what it means these days to support the al Maliki government, to take sides as it were with the Shiites and allow them to kill Sunni’s.

Jack Murtha has a plan to bring this to a halt and it’s based on the use of time elements. It goes like this:

First, send Bush a Military Spending Bill that has everything and more that Bush asked for. Imbed into it a timetable and a set of milestones for progress. Bush has vowed to veto it and send it back to Congress. He calls it “micro-managing the war.”

Murtha says the next thing that gets done after the Bush veto is that the time-tables get stripped out and the time-frame of funding duration is set to provide release of funds each 90 days, incrementally, based upon satisfactory reviews with Congress using the timetables that Bush rejected as their checklist for review. In other words, money only gets released each 90 days based on satisfactory progress.

When Mr. Bush vetoes that Bill then Congress sends yet another one up that releases the funds at six month intervals but with a review held at the end of August as was the deal when Congress appointed General Petraeus to serve as the head of the coalition forces in Iraq. If that review is unsatisfactory and shows that the surge is a failure then no funds will be released.

In the meantime, the clock is ticking, the military funds are not released, and Mr. Bush is forced to start winding down the war and it’s caused by his own vetoes.

Jack Murtha plays hardball as you can see.

This war that Bush is running with Congress is pretty typical of a guy who puts his own ego ahead of the nation, ahead of our troops, ahead of the war effort, and ahead of the Iraqi people. So much public posturing is going on in the face of citizen votes and polls over this war that Mr. Bush knows he is out of phase with the people and their will. He is at war with the people of the United States and their Representatives in Congress. Jack Murtha has decided to take him on.

If Jack Murtha gets his way he’ll make mince-meat out of Mr. Bush if Congress lets him.

In the meantime Dennis Kucinich wants to introduce a House Bill to impeach Dick Chaney. Most Democrats are cool to the idea but there is lots of public support for it. We’ll see what happens in that department pretty soon. Bush has opened up a hornets nest by flipping off Congress.