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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (22010)	5/12/2004 10:38:05 AM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

>>The republicans are so tied up in their shorts over their support for torturers "support" LOL! Get real... No one supported it! Even someone like you should be able to at least figure that out!

To: TigerPaw who wrote (22010)	5/12/2004 10:48:52 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

I think it's amazing how much tax she paid. Very wealthy people usually pay much less, if not nothing at all.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (22010)	5/12/2004 11:00:06 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

More Republicans Break Ranks And Question Bush's War. May 12, 2004 \| A funny thing happened on Capitol Hill last week. In the days before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, no longer smirking with the certainty he had the only true answers to every question in the world, was hauled before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify on the appalling revelations of torture and humiliation of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the Republican Senate leadership en masse broke ranks with President Bush and said so. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the committee, said on May 5 that Rumsfeld and the controversial deputies he has repeatedly backed to the hilt carry "ultimate responsibility for the actions of the men and women in uniform." This was a lot more than the pabulum and boilerplate feigning outrage that party loyalists always express when they are maneuvering to pump out a squid's ink stream to protect their embarrassed leaders. Warner followed up his words with tough and decisive action. He dragged a reluctant Rumsfeld to testify within two days before his committee. Warner, not usually the most reckless or outspoken member of his party, was not alone in his outrage. "No member of the Senate had any clue" about the Abu Ghraib outrages, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the New York Times. "This is entirely unacceptable. I think it is a total washout." The Abu Ghraib revelations unleashed a pent-up tidal wave of resentment at the cavalier way that Bush and co. have kept congressional leaders in the dark over crucial and highly charged issues, one after another. Lawmakers are appalled that Rumsfeld sat on a detailed report from Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba about the Abu Ghraib situation for weeks and that they had to learn so much from, of all places, the Web site of the one information source that good Republican conservatives despise even more than the New York Times -- National Public Radio. Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was furious that his committee had been kept in the dark too. "That's unacceptable," he told reporters on May 5. Even Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the former Senate Republican leader, told the New York Times, "I don't feel good at all about what I'm finding out about who didn't know what." Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the avatar of Reagan Republicanism over the past quarter century, was the most outraged and plain-spoken of the lot: "It's abysmal; it's criminal," he said. And if, or rather when, the allegations are proved true, "somebody needs to go to jail," he added. The revelations of repeated torture and extraordinary humiliation of Arab prisoners in Iraq have obviously appalled lawmakers, Republican and Democrat alike. But there is a lot more to it than that. For the first time in this administration, Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska no longer look like an incorrigibly romantic idealist (Hagel) or an embittered, jealous presidential wannabe (McCain), both with Vietnam on the brain. Suddenly they look like prescient leaders of their party and the good consciences of the Senate. How badly has this continuing scandal hurt the president's clout on Capitol Hill? Far more than he, his staff or even Republican lawmakers themselves yet realize.