With Bush, The Damned Lies Keep Coming After HE Refused to Give Troops a Pay Raise

The words Bush and lies go together as surely as hot fudge sauce and vanilla ice cream, Halliburton and stealing/overbilling, Cheney and nasty secrets, government and crime, not to mention Republican "Christian moralists and kinky prostitutes. So why should this surprise us? Well, except that Bush and his GOP loyalists have refused for 4+ years to properly equip our troops and that just a few weeks ago, they insisted soldiers did NOT need a pay raise and would block any measure to give them one:

President Bush, ratcheting up a fight with Congress over Iraq, accused Democrats on Friday of conducting a political debate on the war while delaying action on money to upgrade equipment and give troops a pay raise.

"It is time to rise above partisanship, stand behind our troops in the field, and give them everything they need to succeed," Bush said in the Rose Garden after meeting with veterans and military families.

Bush spoke two days after Senate Republicans thwarted a Democratic proposal to pull out troops from Iraq. Bush said that instead of approving money for the war, "the Democratic leaders chose to have a political debate on a precipitous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq."

Despite Bush's suggestion that the bill is a must-pass measure that would pay for critical war programs, the legislation is not an appropriations bill that feeds military spending accounts. Called the defense authorization bill, the legislation is a policy measure used by Congress to influence the management of major defense programs, set goals and guide the 2008 military spending bill.

On Bush's Iraq War Second Blank Check; How They Voted

David Sirota updates us on the House Dem vote and proposed filibuster on the latest Bush demand for a blank check in Iraq (see here for the earlier post and keep reading to hear how opinion polls - notably the latest New York Times/CBS News poll - tell us this war is now more unpopular with Americans than at ANY time in its four-plus year combat history).

To update my post earlier today, House Democrats passed the key rule vote by a vote of 218-201. This is the most important vote on Iraq since the authorization in 2002, because it deliberately sets the stage to give president Bush a blank check for the Iraq War. The Roll Call vote can be found [here].

Those Democrats with the courage to vote no were: Waters Harman, Clay, Moore (WI),McNerney, Kucinich and Stark. Democrats not voting were Cardoza, DeGette, Engel, Gutierrez, Jones (OH), Lewis (GA), Oberstar and Shea-Porter. House Democrats are expected to be delivering speeches later tonight claiming they actually oppose giving Bush a blank check because they are expected to vote against a Republican amendment. But as noted earlier today, this is an obvious effort to confuse the public. The rule vote that most Democrats voted for was the key vote in that it deliberately set up the situation whereby Republicans could pass their blank check amendment.

In other news, Sens. Kerry and Leahy are the latest Senate Democrats to issue statements saying they will vote against the blank check in the Senate, but to date not a single senator has indicated they will filibuster. This all happened just as the New York Times put a story on its website announcing that "Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the war began, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll."

More Dirty Tricks on Iraq?

David Sirota writes that Dick Cheney may have been onhand to help "hide" who really voted today to give Bush's latest dark fantasy a blank check re: Iraq War funding.

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.

Keith Olbermann Rates Home Run Status For His Special Comment on Government Failure with Iraq

Keith Olbermann in a special comment tonight on Countdown on MSNBC took no prisoners, extremely critical of the president's lies to take us to war in Iraq, of the Republicans who always prop up the puppetmaster in chief (we know this isn't Bush, but whether it's Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or Dr. James Dobson is anyone's guess), and of the Democrats whom, Keith said, "had their Neville Chamberlain moment" yesterday in falling (again) under the wheels of the Energy Corps and Defense Contractor's Biggest Ever Wet Dream of Iraq Funding called the Bush Administration policy of Iraq War Surge.

No American should miss reading or viewing this special comment here. Snippets:

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.
Story continues below ↓
Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this...

And this President!

How shameful it would be to watch an adult... hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.

You lead this country, sir?

You claim to defend it? And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.

How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.

Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer. A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there.

Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.

You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Perverted Justice: Bush Promises Veto of Troop/Combat Widow Pay Raise

Is this sick, or what?

This story would sound like big drama if describing a rapid-fire sere tennis championship or hysterically funny if it were a Firesign Theater bit. But this situation is anything but light-hearted when it involves men and women forced to sacrifice their lives everyday for yet another lied-us-into war.

The way the Bush Administration and top GOP lawmakers and candidates rush for any chance of a photo op with troops (especially when it doesn't put them in the same dangerous situations our soldiers endure) while they hand billions to defense contractors seems pretty sick. But pair it with the grave reality that the Bushies and GOPees simultaneously race to cut services (pay, medical, support) for American service men and women is well past perverted.

Yet right now, President Bush is threatening to veto a bill to provide a troop and combat widow salary increase that passed by an extremely high majority in the House of Representatives. Mind you, it's not even a significant payroll raise being discussed here. But any amount is too much for Bush who would prefer to give the money to Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, and other Republican f(r)iends.

The only irony here is that just in what Donald Rumsfeld - who left the Pentagon as Secretary of the Defense Department but now gets a HUGE paycheck while still there as a "consultant" - makes a year for his services, we could pay for a LOT of soldiers AND proper protection for them.

Bush To Congress And American People: "Just In Case You Forgot I'm Dictator, Fuck You"

Sadly, this sentiment on Bush's part applies to almost every issue that has come up in Washington, D.C. since even before his dad's pals on the U.S. Supreme Court selected him president in December 2000. Just as sad (and downright mad, in the sense of complete separation from reality), far too many Americans have been willing to accept his dangerous and completely undemocratic (not to mention insane) self-portrait.

However, here, this refers to Bush's swaggering, cocky promise to veto yet another Congressional bill on Iraq funding in answer to Bush's veto of last week's bill that provided all the funding Bush wanted WHILE it also set a timeline to begin to withdraw troops starting in the fall of this year.

From AP:

The White House threatened on Wednesday to veto a proposed House bill that would pay for the war only through July — a limit Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned would be disastrous.

The warnings came as Democratic leaders wrestled with how to support the troops but still challenge President Bush on the war. Bush has requested more than $90 billion to sustain the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September.

Democrats were unbowed.

"With this latest veto threat, the president has once again chosen confrontation over cooperation," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In a flash of defiance, House Democratic leaders this week promoted legislation that would provide the military $42.8 billion to keep operations going through July, buy new equipment and train Iraqi and Afghan security forces. Congress would decide shortly before its August recess whether to release an additional $52.8 billion to fund the war through September.

"In essence, the bill asks me to run the Department of Defense like a skiff, and I'm trying to drive the biggest supertanker in the world," Gates told senators Wednesday. "And we just don't have the agility to be able to manage a two-month appropriation very well."

The veto threat came from White House spokesman Tony Snow, traveling aboard Air Force One with Bush to tour tornado damage in Kansas.

"There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill," Snow said.

House members planned a vote Thursday, just two days after David Obey (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, briefed White House chief of staff Josh Bolten on the plan.

The stern White House response also reflected the high stakes involved for Bush, who is struggling to beat back congressional skepticism about his Iraq strategy. In recent days, Bush has tried to shore up support by personally reaching out to moderate Republican and Democratic rank-and-file.

Paul Krugman: "A Hostage Situation"

For my view, calling this a "hostage situation" is a bit like what happens when you smear tubes and tubes of lipstick on a pig, but... here's the lastest (April 23rd) from Dr. Krugman:

There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met.

If this were a normal political dispute, Democrats in Congress would clearly hold the upper hand: by a huge margin, Americans say they want a timetable for withdrawal, and by a large margin they also say they trust Congress, not Mr. Bush, to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq.

But this isn’t a normal political dispute. Mr. Bush isn’t really trying to win the argument on the merits. He’s just betting that the people outside the barricade care more than he does about the fate of those innocent bystanders.

What’s at stake right now is the latest Iraq “supplemental.” Since the beginning, the administration has refused to put funding for the war in its regular budgets. Instead, it keeps saying, in effect: “Whoops! Whaddya know, we’re running out of money. Give us another $87 billion.”

At one level, this is like the behavior of an irresponsible adolescent who repeatedly runs through his allowance, each time calling his parents to tell them he’s broke and needs extra cash.

What I haven’t seen sufficiently emphasized, however, is the disdain this practice shows for the welfare of the troops, whom the administration puts in harm’s way without first ensuring that they’ll have the necessary resources.

As long as a G.O.P.-controlled Congress could be counted on to rubber-stamp the administration’s requests, you could say that this wasn’t a real problem, that the administration’s refusal to put Iraq funding in the regular budget was just part of its usual reliance on fiscal smoke and mirrors. But this time Mr. Bush decided to surge additional troops into Iraq after an election in which the public overwhelmingly rejected his war — and then dared Congress to deny him the necessary funds. As I said, it’s an act of hostage-taking.

Actually, it’s even worse than that. According to reports, the final version of the funding bill Congress will send won’t even set a hard deadline for withdrawal. It will include only an “advisory,” nonbinding date. Yet Mr. Bush plans to veto the bill all the same — and will then accuse Congress of failing to support the troops.

The whole situation brings to mind what Abraham Lincoln said, in his great Cooper Union speech in 1860, about secessionists who blamed the critics of slavery for the looming civil war: “A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’ ”

So how should Congress respond to Mr. Bush’s threats?

[A massive and painful enema comes to mind, but visit Rozius to learn what Mr. Rich recommends.]