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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (25390)	2/8/2007 8:04:31 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35834

Democrats Foiled, Slink Away Power Line (0) That's what I think has happened, anyway. I'm in Washington today, mostly doing serious business. But I've also tried to pick up on the latest scuttlebutt. It appears that the Republican leadership, in particular Mitch McConnell, has successfully outmaneuvered the Democrats on the issue of the anti-surge resolutions which the Dems had hoped to use to further delegitimize the administration's efforts in Iraq. As I reconstruct the story, the first stage of the Dems' retreat was when the party's leadership decided to push the Warner/Levin resolution rather than the more radical Biden/Hagel resolution that cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Democrats shifted to Warner/Levin in hopes of landing more Republican votes. But the amended version of Warner/Levin includes language opposing a funding cutoff in paragraph 4: <<< (4) the Congress should not take any action that will endanger United States military forces in the field, including the elimination or reduction of funds for troops in the field, as such an action with respect to funding would undermine their safety or harm their effectiveness in pursuing their assigned missions; >>> So Warner/Levin, as amended, would probably have split the Democrats, as the more radical elements (Feingold, et al.) likely would not have voted for it. The Democrats' problems were compounded when the Republicans held firm (with only two exceptions) behind Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's insistence that full debate be allowed, not just on the Warner/Levin resolution, but also on New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg's resolution, a straightforward rejection of funding cuts for the war effort. Harry Reid knew that the Gregg resolution would get more votes than Warner/Levin, and decided to pull the plug on his effort to embarrass the administration, at least for now. The Senate has moved on to other business. This narrative is consistent with Robert Novak's analysis: <<< As little as Republicans wanted to vote on the Warner resolution, Democrats were even more scared of voting on Gregg's amendment -- it would have defeated the Democrats' entire purpose for voting on Iraq. Moreover, Warner's resolution would not get the 60 votes needed to pass, and Gregg's would have won. This would embarrass and divide the Democratic majority. More proof: When Gregg asked Reid on the floor whether Reid would vote for a resolution against cutting funding, Reid stammered, said he could not answer, and changed the subject. Democrats preferred no vote to a vote that included Gregg's resolution, and thus they were forced to give up altogether on the idea of a resolution. After losing a round, their next move is to consider a resolution in the House in hopes of increasing pressure for the Senate to act later. >>> So the Republicans have won for now, much to the relief of several Republican Senators who much prefer not to have to vote on any of the Iraq resolutions. UPDATE: The Washington Post reports, however, that some Republican Senators are intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. To comment on this post, go here. plnewsforum.com powerlineblog.com washingtonpost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (25390)	2/13/2007 4:56:02 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Truly 'inappropriate' behavior By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. Townhall.com Columnist Tuesday, February 13, 2007 “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” President Abraham Lincoln It is, of course, unimaginable that the penalties proposed by one of our most admired presidents for the crime of dividing America in the face of the enemy would be contemplated – let alone applied – today. Still, as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate engage in interminable debate about resolutions whose effects can only be to “damage morale and undermine the military” while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what constitutes inappropriate behavior in time of war. Scarcely anyone seems to consider the conduct of the Congress at the moment inappropriate, to say nothing of a hanging offense. As various sitting Members, whose day jobs increasingly are those of presidential candidates, jockey to outbid one another in their defeatism, the talk is not about whether such behavior is appropriate in time of war – or consistent with the national interest. Instead, official Washington is obsessing about a peculiar finding last week by the Defense Department’s Inspector General (IG). It concludes that an effort by the Pentagon’s policy organization to critique intelligence assessments prior to the liberation of Iraq involved “inappropriate” behavior. Specifically, the IG found fault with an effort undertaken after 9/11 by several employees then-working for the Defense Department’s policy bureau. This effort infuriated the Central Intelligence Agency as it questioned whether the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community were being blinded in their assessment of ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda due to a working assumption that secular Baathists and Islamofascist terrorists would not cooperate against their common foe: Us. In fact, a wealth of evidence was available to the CIA that indicated a relationship existed between Iraqi agents and al Qaeda operatives, spanning more than a decade. It was this evidence that was compiled by the Defense Department staff members and presented, first to their own leadership and then, as directed, to other senior policy-makers, intelligence officials and legislators. Much of this material was documented in a Pentagon memo supplied to the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Fall of 2003. The data was leaked to Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, who published lengthy excerpts the next year in his book, The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. What makes the report signed out by Acting DoD Inspector General Thomas Gimble so bizarre is that it determined the Pentagon policy organization’s activity in this area to be both legal and authorized. Neither, according to Mr. Gimble, did that activity mislead Congress. As it happens, these findings were consistent with two earlier, independent reviews that concerned this matter. One was unanimously approved by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in July 2004. It found that the Defense Department team “played by intelligence community rules” and that “policymakers’ probing questions...actually improved” the CIA’s products. The other was the unanimous, bipartisan report about intelligence concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction issued in March 2005 by the Silberman-Robb Commission. In its cover letter to the President, the Commissioners wrote: “Sharp questioning” of an intelligence assessment is not “‘politicization’; it is a necessary part of the intelligence process.” It is an indication of the sorry state of our polity that some legislators are so intent on justifying their opposition to the conflict in Iraq that they persist in claiming that then-Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and his organization engaged in intelligence skullduggery, misleading them and the nation in the run-up to the invasion in 2003. The most prominent of these are the newly installed chairmen of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller, respectively. The Wall Street Journal has dubbed the former “Senator Ahab” for his “obsessive” pursuit of this white whale of a story about “politicized” intelligence. I guess we should call the latter Ishmael. Consistent with his past, outlandish practice, Sen. Levin declared the IG report a “devastating condemnation” of senior DoD officials, one that confirmed “intelligence relating to the Iraq/al Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high ranking officials in the Defense Department. Rubbish. Doug Feith is an old friend of mine. He is among the most thoughtful, careful and conscientious public servants I have ever known. The only truly “inappropriate” behavior evident at the moment is the ongoing effort led by Senators Levin and Rockefeller to impugn the integrity, quality and, yes, the appropriateness of policy-makers’ efforts to ensure that far-reaching national security decisions are made on the basis of the best information available. The Journal has properly warned that Senator Ahab’s misbehavior is likely to have implications far beyond the immediate disservice it does to Mr. Feith and those who labored so ably under him. It will likely also have a severely chilling effect on the willingness of policy-makers rigorously to challenge, and thereby to improve, the quality of the intelligence they are getting about tomorrow’s threats. If there’s one thing that really should be a hanging offense, it is behavior that results in our being even less equipped to deal with such threats than we were before this phase of the War for the Free World began on 9/11. Frank Gaffney Jr. is the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy and author of War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World . townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (25390)	2/14/2007 11:43:10 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Soldiers in Iraq on Anti-Surge Resolution: 'Sick' & 'Treason' Media Research Center Of the broadcast network evening newscast stories Tuesday night on the House debate over the non-binding resolution that "disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush...to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq," only ABC's Jake Tapper included the views of soldiers in Iraq. Tapper's report on World News featured soundbites from two Army Sergeants in Ramadi, and both condemned the resolution. First Sergeant Louis Barnum declared: "It makes me sick. I was born and raised a Democrat, but when I see that it just kind of makes me sad." Sergeant Brian Orzechoski went even further: "I don't want to bad-mouth the President at all. I mean, to me it's treason." mrc.org