House passes war appropriations bill - Chimpy throws a hissy fit

Agreed.

They aren't opposing the war for political reasons, but this particular bill is purely political. Read the details. It has many ways that the deadline can be completely ignored. Add to that the very real question of whether it has any Constitutional enforceability, and you have nothing more than a signed paper that says that some Congressmen and Congresswomen are against the war. This will be very useful come election time.

D&D. There's no business like show business.

 

Have a bill that just sends the money and W signs it. The devil is in the details.

 

^ I'm not sure how that contradicts that the bill is almost completely political. The legislators who voted for it did so with the knowledge that it isn't going to become law.

 

All the money he asked for (and more) is in the bill. Not signing is playing politics with the troops funding levels as much as creating the bill the way they did in the first place.

 

All the money he asked for (and more) is in the bill. Not signing is playing politics with the troops funding levels as much as creating the bill the way they did in the first place.

i dont think the 2 are equal, however.

 

Why not? Both sides are playing politics with the war.

 

what came first, the bill or the veto? if the bill never contained the deadline, there would be no problem and this wouldnt be talked about. And even if they felt a deadline was necessary, why not create a more reasonble one, because i dont think 1 year is very reasonable.

 

They have had four years already. If progress was going to be made, it would have been made in that time frame, wouldn't it? I personally think that 18 months SHOULD be enough time to see if the "surge" has a positive impact. If Iraq does not make progress towards the benchmarks, we should end our major troop involvement, scale back to advisers and trainers, and let them fight it out.

 

i think some progress has been made but i dont know how long it 'should' take turn around a country thats been beat down as much as it has.

.

well in 18 months i do agree that we would/should/better be able to see improvements however, its my understanding that the troops are pulled out no matter what at the end of that deadline

 

How long should we stay involved in a conflict that we were told we would be involved in for "6 days, 6 weeks, I doubt 6 months."

And if we see significant improvement, but still need to be there, the Congress can modify the law as needed. However, we need to set a date that we can point to when telling the Iraqis "we will not be here forever, get your s*** together." If they choose not to get their s*** together, then they can fight it out themselves.

 

ok thats fai, but i do have a problem with that decision being in the hands of congress. especially when you consider that the timeline would call for that to happen during a presidential race and all the political jockeying that goes on there.

i dont know. but its just one more reason not to try and place timetables on conflicts b/c one never knows how long it will truly take.

 

Of course there will be political jockeying going on, that was the point of the timing. The 2008 election becomes a true referendum on the war and we can truly decide where our priorities are. If the country sees the benefit in continuing the war, Congress will rescind or modify this bill and if we don't see a good reason to continue, the troops get withdrawn automatically.

Best of both worlds.

IMO, we should never commit our military to an action that will take over 1-2 years unless it directly affects the security of the US (like another World War).

We cannot give an open ended commitment to stay "as long as it takes" without benchmarks or timetables. That was one of the major problems in Vietnam, nobody knew what constituted "victory" or how to achieve it. In those instances we need to refrain from putting troops on the battlefield or we need to take them off the battlefield if they are already in harms way.

One of the most frustrating parts of this war is the massive turnaround and blatant hypocracy. When Clinton sent troops into Bosnia, the GOP crowed about how we needed to have a "defined exit strategy," timetables, etc. Now, they are asking the US to commit troops to Iraq for as long as they want to keep them there. That is not how an offshore military operation should be run.

 

well thats where you and i differ. I dont want war, troop funding and a country relying on the US to be decided based on what gets someone elected and what boosts their ' poll numbers'.

and im saying that you never really know how long military action is really going to take. Is this an excessive amount of time? sure. But i just think that its easy to underestimate how difficult it really is to essentially build a nation, especially one as bad off as iraq was.

 

Troop funding is not being decided based on polls. The war's continuation is being decided based on benchmarks that the Iraqis have to meet. It is up to them whether to make real efforts to meet those benchmarks and if they do not, we will step out of the way and allow them to have the bloodbath they apparently want. It is certainly not the ideal endgame, but it is better than spending $100 billion a year on a police action that has no end date, no definition of victory, no exit strategy, and no way for us to tell if we are winning or losing.

Especially one as bad off as we made it. Bush created this situation through an unthinking, unreasoning ideology that has created a police action with no end in sight. I, for one, will be happy to have the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel" with regards to this war. We should not have gone in to start, we should not have fought it the way we did, and now we need to be smart enough to tell the Iraqis that enough is enough and that they need to get their s*** together.

 

well i've talked about the bush hate bandwagon and how unreasonable it is to think that he alone has created all the problems. but its good to see whom you do/dont support. i was trying to stick to the topics, not the person b/c when we start talking about people, especially bush, then the conversation starts to break down.

.

im sorry, but i have hard time buying the idea that a democratic majority house would vote to extend troops staying longer during an election in which the dems so desperately want to win. Especially after so many dems have called to bring out troops back. I think thats being completely unreasonable .

i dont think those are the only 2 options.

It just seems to make the most sense that the house give the money needed, which obviously they are willing to do and they think its a worthwhile venture. Also, there will be a new president and the end of next year anyways and his iraq philosophy will no doubt be a huge part of the election. Well why not just let the natural course to carry out and allow the new president, voted by the people, to determine the best course of action? If he felt the US should leave then the troops could be out of there before spring of 09.

regardless, its a bad bill with poor strategy, poor flexibility and no real point other than to be used as political leverage.

 

Of course this makes the assumption that the Iraqis, whose army we disbanded and infrastructure we destroyed, are capable of fighting an enemy that we created and we invited in.

 

Well, Al Qaeda is only a small part of the insurgency. Once the civil war is complete, the people in charge of Iraq will then hunt them down just like what Saddam did.

I suppose Bush calling all insurgents terrorists makes you think Al Qaeda have a larger presence than what they actually have.

 

Al Queda is not the only external group fighting in Iraq right now. Iraq has internal insurgent groups that are being funded, armed, and otherwise supported by any number of outside nations - Iran, in particular. Likely Syria. Other terrorist groups, etc.

And they are all using weapons that the US failed to secure in the invasion (and prevented Iraq from securing by disbanding their military). Everything that is going on right now in Iraq is a direct result of our actions. Saying "Iraq should just fix it" is both unrealistic and irresponsible.