More Bushian Drumbeats Toward War With Iran

Now another American general is claiming - at the behest of the Bushies who would very much love to "control" Iran's oil as well - that Iranian security forces are training both Hezbollah and Iraqi militants. Uh huh.

If you want to blame someone for the terrible state of affairs in Iraq, you need to look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to two treasonous tyrants named Bush and Cheney with a hell of an assist from the Pentagon.

The New Big Damned Bush Lie: "The Troops Will Have to Walk Home If We Don't Fund This War!"

Excuse me, but this is a total lie. One of so damned many. It's another Bush-Rove-Cheney spin to keep the weak-minded going "America's #1 So Let's Rustle Up Some Muslims and Their Oil." The media then repeats the damned lies until most of America knows the story by heart.

If the war stopped tomorrow, there would be plenty of money to bring all these troops home. What will hurt our troops is one more day on the job, and May's looking to be the deadliest this year for our soldiers, not to mention Iraqi civilians.

What the president - none of the Bush Administration in fact - will NOT tell you is that they want this funding bill signed not to pay for what we've done, but to:

• secure the Iraq oil we're stealing through a forced mandate to the Iraqi government in which we demand oil/energy companies get record-high takes on Iraqi crude that we've already been stealing for four plus years now
• help Republican politicians who are happy to use U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians as expendable photo ops
• shore up Bush's delusional base
• (quite probably) help fund Bush's next mecca: an (extremely ill-advised and not just bordering ON the lunatic) attack on Iran

Bush and the loyal GOP have proven everyday, in every way (cuts in services, filthy or ill-equipped medical services, opposition to combat pay and pay raises, educating troops' children - I could list these all night) that an American soldier or an Iraqi citizen does not begin to rate the value of billions and billions of dollars of crude oil.

This isn't about our soldiers at all, folks. It's about An Empire of Diminishing Crude Oil" and those lovely coming $4-5-6? dollar per gallon fuel prices we're paying while the Bushies tell us we need to write big corporate welfare checks to mega-profitting energy companies to build their refineries for free. This, while they de-fund fuel alternatives.

And Quite The Challenge It Is, Too

The New York Times on the Iraq vote this week, in an Op/Ed entitled, "Congress' Challenge on Iraq":

The House of Representatives now has a chance to lead the nation toward a wiser, more responsible Iraq policy. It is scheduled to vote this week on whether to impose benchmarks for much-needed political progress on the Iraqi government — and link them to the continued presence of American combat forces. The bill also seeks to lessen the intolerable strains on American forces, requiring President Bush to certify that units are fit for battle before sending any troops to Iraq. Both of these requirements are long overdue. The House should vote yes, by an overwhelming, bipartisan margin.

It is normally the president who provides the leadership for American foreign policy and decides when there needs to be a change of course. But Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to do either, and the country cannot afford to wait out the rest of his term. Given Mr. Bush’s failure, Congress has a responsibility to do all it can to use Washington’s remaining leverage to try to lessen the chaos that will likely follow an American withdrawal — no matter when it happens — and to ensure that the credibility and readiness of the United States military is preserved.

House Democrats have wisely moved beyond their earlier infatuation with mere deadlines. The benchmarks spelled out in this legislation, which also provides the next round of money for the war, require that the Iraqi government stop shielding and encouraging the Shiite militias that are helping drive the killing. United States and Iraqi security forces must be allowed to pursue all extremists, Shiite and Sunni, disarm sectarian militias and provide “evenhanded security for all Iraqis.”

The benchmarks also require the Iraqi government to take measurable steps toward national reconciliation: equitably distributing oil revenues, opening up more political and economic opportunities to the Sunni minority and amending the constitution to discourage further fragmentation.

The legislation does not settle for more empty promises — from Mr. Bush and the Iraqis. It would require the president to provide Congress, by July, with an initial detailed report on Iraq’s efforts to meet these benchmarks. By October, the Iraqi government would have to complete a specific set of legislative and constitutional steps. Failure to meet these deadlines would trigger the withdrawal of all American combat forces — but not those training Iraqis or fighting Al Qaeda — to be concluded in April 2008. If the benchmarks were met, American combat forces would remain until the fall of 2008.

The measure would also bar sending any unit to Iraq that cannot be certified as fully ready. It sets a reasonable 365-day limit on combat tours for the Army and a shorter 210-day combat tour limit for the Marines. As for how many troops can remain in Iraq — until the House’s deadlines for withdrawal — the legislation imposes no reduction on the level of roughly 132,000 in place at the start of this year.

Critics will complain that the House is doing the Pentagon’s planning. But the Pentagon and Mr. Bush have clearly failed to protect America’s ground forces from the ever more costly effects of extended, accelerated and repeated deployments.

If Iraq’s leaders were truly committed to national reconciliation and reining in their civil war, there would be no need for benchmarks or deadlines. But they are not. If Mr. Bush were willing to grasp Iraq’s horrifying reality, he would be the one imposing benchmarks, timetables and readiness rules. He will not, so Congress must. American troops should not be trapped in the middle of a blood bath that neither Mr. Bush nor Iraq’s leaders have the vision or the will to halt.

Too fricking bad if the White House and Pentagon complains. They've had four-plus years now to get something, anything right yet have failed each and every time to do so. They couldn't be trusted in 2003 and can hardly be trusted now.

Couched In The Iraq "Surge" Vote Is Very Sweet Deal for American Fuel/Energy Companies

I am massively pissed that the Senate voted today to approve an additional - and whopping! - $122 Billion (we've already spent well more than half a trillion on the war that would pay for itself) for Bush's Iraq "surge" regardless of provisions for a time line for an exit strategy.

But getting too little attention is a part of this bill which HANDS mostly American energy/fuel companies a deal for Iraq oil which will give them an unheard of percentage of profits. I would think that Iraq oil belongs to Iraq and that the Bushies should NOT be able to give it away to Exxon, etc.

From Think Progress on the Iraq "redeployment":

The Senate Appropriations Committee “approved a $122 billion measure Thursday financing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but also calling on President Bush to pull combat troops out of Iraq by next spring. The bill, approved by a voice vote, is similar to one the House began debating Thursday. The White House has threatened to veto the House measure and issued a veto threat against an earlier, similar version of the Senate withdrawal language.”

And once again, the bully monarch Bush demands things go HIS way, or the low way.