Bush Won't Accept Iraq War Timetable

[Superlative]

WASHINGTON - President Bush, standing firmly against a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, said Tuesday that he will veto the latest war spending bill taking shape in Congress.

"I'm disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen this course," Bush said.

"They chose to make a political statement," he said. "That's their right but it is wrong for our troops and it's wrong for our country. To accept the bill proposed by the Democratic leadership would be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgment of our military commanders."

House and Senate Democratic appropriators agreed Monday on a $124 billion bill that would fund the Iraq war but order troops to begin leaving by Oct. 1 with the goal of completing the pullout six months later. Democrats would need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto.

Democrats said they won't back down and pointed to past remarks by Gen. David Petraeus, the new Iraq commander, that security in Iraq requires a political solution.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who says the war in Iraq is "lost," likened Bush to President Lyndon Johnson, saying Johnson ordered troop escalations in Vietnam in an attempt "to save his political legacy" only to watch U.S. casualties climb steadily.

Bush said U.S. troops should not be caught in the middle of a showdown between the White House and Congress.

"Yesterday, Democratic leaders announced that they planned to send me a bill that will fund our troops only if we agree to handcuff our generals, add billions of dollars of unrelated spending and begin to pull out of Iraq by an arbitrary date," Bush said on the South Lawn.

He said the bill would mandate the withdrawal of U.S. troops beginning as early as July 1 and no later than Oct. 1, despite the fact that Petraeus has not yet received all the reinforcements he has said he needs in the latest military buildup to help secure Baghdad and the troubled Anbar Province.

Democrats have argued that the election that left Democrats in control of Congress was a referendum for a change of strategy in Iraq. Bush used the same election results to argue his point.

"The American people did not vote for failure," he said. "That is precisely what the Democratic leadership's bill would guarantee.

"It's not too late for Congress to do the right thing."

Petraeus will try to persuade lawmakers in a private briefing this week to pursue a difference course. As part of the president's push, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was expected to meet Tuesday with key senators, including members of the Senate Finance Committee, to discuss the funding bill. The topic also likely will be discussed at a policy lunch that Vice President Dick Cheney is having on Capitol Hill.

Radio ads expected to air Tuesday will attack Reid as treating troops like a "political football," GOP officials said.

According to a transcript, an Iraq veteran identified as Capt. Trip Bellard says, "Senator Reid's remarks undercut the morale of our soldiers and undermine our troops on the ground."

As outlined by Democratic officials, the emerging legislation would require the withdrawal of U.S. forces to begin by Oct. 1, even earlier if Bush cannot certify that the Iraqi government is making progress in disarming militias, reducing sectarian violence and forging political compromises.

Another provision in the measure would withhold about $850 million in foreign aid from the Iraqis if the government does not meet those standards.

The Pentagon would be required to adhere to certain standards for the training and equipping of units sent to Iraq, and for their rest at home between deployments. Bush could waive the guidelines if necessary. Democrats assume he would, but they want him on record as doing so.

Under the nonbinding timeline, all combat troops would be withdrawn by April 1, 2008.

After that date, U.S. forces would have a redefined and restricted mission of protecting U.S. personnel and facilities, engaging in counterterrorism activities against al-Qaida and other similar organizations, and training and equipping Iraqi forces.

Democrats jettisoned some of the domestic spending that Bush has held up to ridicule, including funds for spinach growers and peanut farmers. Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others decided to include money to help farmers hit by natural disasters as well as the victims of Hurricane Katrina.


http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/...070424_ap_bushwontacceptiraqwartimetable.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F677AA94-F67B-46BD-A0DC-A4F4F08DD965.htm



Now its congress thats not listening to the generals, who was it before?

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he believes at least "several hundred thousand troops" are necessary to remove Hussein and secure Iraq....

After that we didnt hear much from him. I guess he wasnt seeing eye to eye with the right people. (Hawks)

But when its the Democrats, its horrible, I think that if the Hawks listened to the generals in 2003, things might be different.

Maybe not.

 

[Superlative]

Reid and Cheney Trade Attacks Over Iraq Bill


WASHINGTON, April 24 — The battle of words over an Iraq war-spending bill intensified this afternoon as Vice President Dick Cheney suggested that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, was indulging in cynical political calculation.

Mr. Reid dismissed the vice president’s words as the utterances of President Bush’s “attack dog,” and said the administration remained in thrall to a failed policy, one that Democrats would continue trying to change.

The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders are at odds over a supplemental spending bill of $124 billion, most of it for the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. Democrats want to include in the bill a timetable for American troops to withdraw from Iraq, and the president has vowed to veto the bill if it does so.

Mr. Cheney, who was at the Capitol, took the unusual step of seeking out reporters to rebut Mr. Reid, who on Monday accused Mr. Bush of being in “a state of denial” about Iraq.

“I thought his speech yesterday was unfortunate, that his comments were uninformed and misleading,” Mr. Cheney said of the senator’s address to a research organization here.

The vice president went on to assert that Mr. Reid has distorted the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which called for a change of course in Iraq; that he has not kept up with developments about Iraq, and that he has shifted his positions “on the most important foreign policy question facing the nation and our troops.”

Mr. Cheney said the senator’s complaint on Monday that the White House did not engage in “substantive” discussions about Iraq was at odds with his description of a meeting last week as “a good exchange.”

“What’s most troubling about Senator Reid’s comments yesterday is his defeatism,” Mr. Cheney said. “It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party.”

Only minutes later, Mr. Reid spoke, after the Democrats’ policy luncheon. “The president sends out his attack dog often,” Mr. Reid said. “That’s also known as Dick Cheney.”

“The president is in a state of denial,” Mr. Reid repeated. Contrary to Republican assertions, he said, the bill would not hamstring the American military. Nor would it go against recommendations of military leaders, Mr. Reid continued, noting that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, has described the American mission as “20 percent military, 80 percent political, economic and diplomatic.”

The bill favored by Democrats would embody General Petraeus’s vision by holding the Iraqi government increasingly accountable for the future of the country and easing America’s way out, the senator said. “The president should look at this piece of legislation and sign it,” Mr. Reid said.

That is precisely what the president said he would not do. Mr. Bush said earlier today that he was disappointed in Congressional Democrats for using the spending bill to make “a political statement,” and said that their version of the legislation would harm the United States and its fighting men and women.

Noting that the Democrats’ bill called for American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by Oct. 1, as well as other limits on the conduct of military operations, he said: “They know I’m going to veto a bill containing these provisions, and they know that my veto will be sustained. But instead of fashioning a bill I could sign, the Democratic leaders chose to further delay funding our troops, and they chose to make a political statement.”

The president spoke on the White House lawn before boarding a helicopter to travel to New York City.

Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and a leader of the Congressional negotiators who reached an agreement on Monday to ignore Mr. Bush’s veto threat and press ahead with the bill, said that Congress was heeding the will of voters, as expressed in the Congressional elections last November. “On Iraq, the American people want a new direction, and we are providing it,” she said.

Mr. Bush responded today that “the American people did not vote for failure — and that is precisely what the Democratic leadership’s bill would guarantee.”

Monday’s agreement reconciled the House and Senate versions of the legislation into a single bill, and the two houses are to vote on it and send it to the White House by the end of the week. Democrats expressed confidence that they could secure approval for the bill. But they also know that their majorities in the House and Senate are not large enough to muster the two-thirds vote needed to override a veto.

Before traveling to New York, where he was scheduled to visit a school in Harlem in the afternoon and attend a Republican National Committee dinner, Mr. Bush repeated his objections to any kind of withdrawal timetable: “It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing. If we were to do so, the enemy would simply mark their calendars and begin plotting how to take over the country when we leave.”

Mr. Bush also complained that spending provisions unrelated to fighting the war were included in the bill, a common practice in Congresses under either party’s control. But Mr. Reid and other Democrats have said that many of the items that President Bush and his Republican allies have singled out are necessary, and that others that were once included have been trimmed out of the current version of the bill.

Despite their opposition to the bill, Congressional Republicans chose not to challenge the timeline in the legislation, saying they preferred to get the veto showdown over with so that Congress can quickly focus on drafting a replacement measure that would deliver the money sought for the Pentagon and be acceptable to the White House.

“We all know this bill is going nowhere fast,” Representative Jerry Lewis of California, the senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said on Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/washington/24cnd-prexy.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

 

[actsnoblemartin]

Would a timetable enable our enemies?

Why is the war not going well?

anything left we can do?

Your thoughts?

 

[Superlative]

Would a timetable enable our enemies?

Why is the war not going well?

anything left we can do?

Your thoughts?

You cant have a timetable without some kind of an idea or plan.

Stop calling it a war.

If it was a War it would be over, Any place the US has ever been at war with is a crater.

The US is baby sitting.

lets call it occupying for lack of a better label.

For imagery's sake lets say were at the apex of a hill, this could move forward just as easily as it could move backward.

Putting up walls is 1 solution and its more avoiding death than a strategy for democracy.

All we can really do is wait and hope what little the US is doing, is making a difference and moving things forward.

So patience is needed. the question is how much? and for how long?

That is what the Democrats want, answers, and Bush is saying, Im not ready to give any.

 

[Annie]

You cant have a timetable without some kind of an idea or plan.

Stop calling it a war.

If it was a War it would be over, Any place the US has ever been at war with is a crater.

The US is baby sitting.

lets call it occupying for lack of a better label.

For imagery's sake lets say were at the apex of a hill, this could move forward just as easily as it could move backward.

Putting up walls is 1 solution and its more avoiding death than a strategy for democracy.

All we can really do is wait and hope what little the US is doing, is making a difference and moving things forward.

So patience is needed. the question is how much? and for how long?

That is what the Democrats want, answers, and Bush is saying, Im not ready to give any.

Agreed. The American people want this won. Bush and politicians are keeping our troops from winning and when the marines do what marines are taught to do: Kill when attacked, they are brought up on charges.

If the administration wants this won, let the generals run it, then listen when they say how to keep the peace. There will be fewer 'atrocities' though the numbers of dead 'insurgents' will go up, causing lots of screaming from SA, Iran, Syria, probably even Jordan.

 

[onedomino]

Bush will not accept the Democrat timetable for defeat, but we can be sure that Al Qaeda and the forces of darkness that want to rip up the Iraqi constitution are delighted with it. It is pathetic that we not only must fight Iraqi insurgents and Al Qaeda, but also those in America that are determined to see America run away and lose the struggle in Iraq. It was the same in Viet Nam and the real losers were the millions of SE Asians that died in waves of North on South retribution and in genocide in Cambodia. Tell me, Democrats, what is going to happen to the Iraqis that supported America and the Iraqi constitution when we abandon the battlefield to the murder squads and suicide bombers roaming Iraq? I suppose we could just leave the Iraqis to the good graces of the Iranians and Syrians, right? If we lose this war, we will have only ourselves to blame. Never mind...we’ll still be able to go to the mall and, in time, pretend that we are not responsible...just like the Viet Nam generation pretended that Cambodia was not their fault. We will have been beaten by a bunch of barbarous killers. If we allow ourselves to lose this struggle, we will be reviled in history and justly so.

 

[red states rule]

It seems the troops are starting to speak up against the surrender plan of the Dems


Senator Reid,
It is difficult to write this letter with any civility, but I think enough people will scream so much, with enough cursing and invective, that I will not need to add any more for you to get the point, that you infuriate those Americans who serve in the military with your careless, ignorant, mean-spirited, and frankly, dangerous remarks.

You, sir, are not any average, private citizen. You are a Senator of the United States of America, and whatever your political views or allegiances may be, you must first show loyalty to and serve with honor your country. Yet, you do not do so, and you have disgraced whatever nobility or honor you might have earned serving your constituency.

Even if our efforts in Iraq were an absolute failure, which they are surely not, you abuse your position and the Nation’s trust by declaring that the war is lost. Can you not comprehend how wrong it is for you to make such a statement?! Regardless of your partisan views, which seem to me awfully petty indeed when compared to the national security of our country or the lives of our soldiers, you must have enough sense of decency or patriotism that, at the least, to know that you don’t damage or hurt your nation and the public servants with the most on the line?!

You embolden our enemies, you discourage our allies, you demoralize the troops who serve, and you denigrate those Iraqis who have turned to the US as their hope for freedom, after decades of living under the tyranny and violence of a war criminal and a brutal oppression.

You are a disgrace. Made worse by the fact that you’re wrong.

There are many ways to view our efforts in Iraq. While a private citizen may well believe, and interpret events to indicate, that we have somehow “lost the war in Iraq,” that’s based more on ignorance and media hype than on actual, ground truth. Citizens will only be as informed, well or ill, by the sources of news to which they choose to listen. We live in a free society. But thanks to dishonest and in my view, disloyal Americans such as you, and the media who abet you, a majority of Americans have been misled about what we do in Iraq and what is really going on.

I am an Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) III Vet, mobilized with the National Guard, and deployed to Iraq from January to November 2005. I served as a First Sergeant for 160 guard soldiers. We served in Tikrit, and every one of our soldiers came back without injury. Sure, we didn’t see a lot, just our own slice of Iraq, but we were regularly exposed to mortars and rockets on base, and the threat of IEDs on supply convoys several times a week.

I think you could make a good case that we won the war in a few weeks in 2003: the war against Saddam Hussein’s Army, which collapsed in a spectacular liberation of Iraq. I am shamed to think you probably viewed this event with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

I think you could make another excellent case that we won the war to establish democracy in Iraq, helping the Iraqis hold three hugely successful elections with huge Iraqi participation (greatly in excess of any modern US elections). I am shamed to think you probably viewed these elections with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

I think you could make a plausible case that we have defeated the Sunni Baathist based “insurgency,” with the destruction and de facto surrender of so many holdouts among the former regime. I likewise think you could make the same case about Al Qaeda in Iraq, the presence of which you and your supporters adamantly denied for a very long time. They are on the run, they are defeated at every turn, their own intercepted communications say admit that very fact. I am shamed to think you probably viewed these events with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

Now, as we help the Iraqis grow in strength in defending their own democracy, you say the “war” is lost. Which one? I can’t but help to think that what you really mean, is the defensive war this Administration has been fighting against you and your party colleagues since we invaded Iraq.

If the current surge can be successful at fully securing, once and for all, the security of the Iraqi democracy, this will prove you and your allies wrong. As an American, I recognize what a truly magnificent accomplishment that would represent, for Iraq, and for the Coalition who made that possible.

I am shamed, appalled, and heartsick to think, you would certainly view these events with dismay, for purely partisan reasons.

1SG Jeff Nuding
642 MI BN
42nd ID “Rainbow”
“Rainbow….Never Forget!”

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/007349.htm

 

[Diuretic]

Agreed. The American people want this won. Bush and politicians are keeping our troops from winning and when the marines do what marines are taught to do: Kill when attacked, they are brought up on charges.

I can't speak for the American people and I want that noted as I continue.

Bush and his administration have set the military an impossible task. That's no disgrace to the military, they did their best. Bush may as well have asked them to occupy Mars. Of course someone would have cottoned on to the madness and intercepted them on their way to Cape Canaveral.

Marines and soldiers do indeed kill. It's their job. It's not their job to kill civilians who are not a threat, that's murder and I know the military doesn't countenance murder (hence the courts martial).

If the administration wants this won, let the generals run it, then listen when they say how to keep the peace. There will be fewer 'atrocities' though the numbers of dead 'insurgents' will go up, causing lots of screaming from SA, Iran, Syria, probably even Jordan.

The generals are running it. But as I said before, the task they have been given is impossible to achieve. As I said, Bush could say, "invade Mars" and they'd start work on the logistics immediately.

The whole thing has failed because of the politicians, not the military.

 

[Diuretic]

Bush will not accept the Democrat timetable for defeat, but we can be sure that Al Qaeda and the forces of darkness that want to rip up the Iraqi constitution are delighted with it. It is pathetic that we not only must fight Iraqi insurgents and Al Qaeda, but also those in America that are determined to see America run away and lose the struggle in Iraq. It was the same in Viet Nam and the real losers were the millions of SE Asians that died in waves of North on South retribution and in genocide in Cambodia. Tell me, Democrats, what is going to happen to the Iraqis that supported America and the Iraqi constitution when we abandon the battlefield to the murder squads and suicide bombers roaming Iraq? I suppose we could just leave the Iraqis to the good graces of the Iranians and Syrians, right? If we lose this war, we will have only ourselves to blame. Never mind...we’ll still be able to go to the mall and, in time, pretend that we are not responsible...just like the Viet Nam generation pretended that Cambodia was not their fault. We will have been beaten by a bunch of barbarous killers. If we allow ourselves to lose this struggle, we will be reviled in history and justly so.

You've lost. Get over it.

 

[red states rule]

You've lost. Get over it.

Not according to the troops libs claim they support

The voters are watching the Dems in action -and they do not like it

 

[Diuretic]

Not according to the troops libs claim they support

The voters are watching the Dems in action -and they do not like it

Sure, all the troops say that all the time, you only have to ask them all.

The voters want the meat grinder turned off. The voters aren't stupid, they know when it's time to unplug that infernal machine.

 

[Rosotar]

Not according to the troops libs claim they support

The voters are watching the Dems in action -and they do not like it

Before I start posting comments and letters from the troops who have lost faith in their mission and want to come home let me ask you this RSR.....

Will you be willing to consider the opinions of those troops valid also or do you just pick and choose which troops you actually "support?"

 

[red states rule]

Before I start posting comments and letters from the troops who have lost faith in their mission and want to come home let me ask you this RSR.....

Will you be willing to consider the opinions of those troops valid also or do you just pick and choose which troops you actually "support?"

There are alot more

One even made it in the NY Post

Unlike Paul's this letter is for real

 

[onedomino]

You've lost. Get over it.

Amazingly dense. Do you not understand that if we lose in Iraq that all of us lose, even rabid ideologues like you? What about the 12 million Iraqis that voted? What about the Iraqi constitution? What will happen to the Iraqis that tried to bring liberty to their country? When we leave, do you not understand that the maniacs running Syria and Iran will rush to fill the void? You are sanguine that America and Iraqis might lose to murder squads and suicide bombers? You and Harry Reid should pool your resources and buy a backbone. This is what America and 12 million Iraqis voters are fighting for:

We the people of Iraq who have just risen from our stumble, and who are looking with confidence to the future through a republican, federal, democratic, pluralistic system, have resolved with the determination of our men, women, the elderly and youth, to respect the rules of law, to establish justice and equality to cast aside the politics of aggression, and to tend to the concerns of women and their rights, and to the elderly and their concerns, and to children and their affairs and to spread a culture of diversity and defusing terrorism. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9719734/

You want to give up the Iraqi constitution to murder squads, suicide bombers, and Al Qaeda? Thank God people like you are not running the show. At least not yet.

 

[Diuretic]

Amazingly dense. Do you not understand that if we lose in Iraq that all of us lose, even rabid ideologues like you? What about the 12 million Iraqis that voted? What about the Iraqi constitution? What will happen to the Iraqis that tried to bring liberty to their country? When we leave, do you not understand that the maniacs running Syria and Iran will rush to fill the void? You are sanguine that America and Iraqis might lose to murder squads and suicide bombers? You and Harry Reid should pool your resources and buy a backbone. This is what America and 12 million Iraqis voters are fighting for:


You want to give up the Iraqi constitution to murder squads, suicide bombers, and Al Qaeda? Thank God people like you are not running the show. At least not yet.

You've not thought this through have you?

1. Oh fuck what about the Iraqis - well look at that, the occupiers leave and things settle down to what passes for normal. And that spinning meat grinder finally stops.

2. The Shi'ite -dominated Iraqi government will have to reach a settlement with the Sunnis and Kurds on their own terms, not the terms dictated to them by the US. Without the US spoiling they will be able to sort things out.

3. Your delusions about Syria and Iran have unbalanced you. They aren't maniacs, far from it. They're quite capable of running their countries (I mightn't like the way they do it but so what, I don't like the way Bush is running the US either, but why should I care?) and they too will come to an accommodation with Iraq. The Iranians are Shi'ites so they'll get on well with al-Maliki and the Syrians have a secular Baathist administration so creating a theocracy anywhere is not on their agenda.

4. Me and Harry will get a backbone if you promise to get a brain.

 

[red states rule]

Before I start posting comments and letters from the troops who have lost faith in their mission and want to come home let me ask you this RSR.....

Will you be willing to consider the opinions of those troops valid also or do you just pick and choose which troops you actually "support?"

Still no comment?

 

[onedomino]

You've not thought this through have you?

1. Oh fuck what about the Iraqis - well look at that, the occupiers leave and things settle down to what passes for normal. And that spinning meat grinder finally stops.

2. The Shi'ite -dominated Iraqi government will have to reach a settlement with the Sunnis and Kurds on their own terms, not the terms dictated to them by the US. Without the US spoiling they will be able to sort things out.

3. Your delusions about Syria and Iran have unbalanced you. They aren't maniacs, far from it. They're quite capable of running their countries (I mightn't like the way they do it but so what, I don't like the way Bush is running the US either, but why should I care?) and they too will come to an accommodation with Iraq. The Iranians are Shi'ites so they'll get on well with al-Maliki and the Syrians have a secular Baathist administration so creating a theocracy anywhere is not on their agenda.

4. Me and Harry will get a backbone if you promise to get a brain.

Nice language. Apparently, civility is an alien concept to you. But then that is not surprising given your demented viewpoints. For example, "Oh fuck what about the Iraqis." How thoughtful and compassionate. Clearly, you could care less about liberty. How does it feel to be on the side of the murder squads and suicide bombers? From your stilted syntax, I guess that you are not American. What country is cursed with your presence? When you identify your location, then we can warn your fellow citizens to be on guard.

 

[red states rule]

Nice language. Apparently, civility is an alien concept to you. But then that is not surprising given your demented viewpoints. For example, "Oh fuck what about the Iraqis." How thoughtful and compassionate. Clearly, you could care less about liberty. How does it feel to be on the side of the murder squads and suicide bombers? From your stilted syntax, I guess that you are not American. What country is cursed with your presence? When you identify your location, then we can warn your fellow citizens to be on guard.

Dems have put their political future in the US failing in Iraq

The more people that die in Iraq the better for Dems. In thier view, for every 100 US troops that die in Iraq, the Dems think they will pick up one extra seat in Congress

 

[Diuretic]

Nice language. Apparently, civility is an alien concept to you. But then that is not surprising given your demented viewpoints. For example, "Oh fuck what about the Iraqis." How thoughtful and compassionate. Clearly, you could care less about liberty. How does it feel to be on the side of the murder squads and suicide bombers? From your stilted syntax, I guess that you are not American. What country is cursed with your presence? When you identify your location, then we can warn your fellow citizens to be on guard.

Don't be a hypocritical twat. Shorn of its pointed insults your post is:

"We're there to give the Iraqi people freedom"

No you're not, it's about oil.

 

[Diuretic]

Dems have put their political future in the US failing in Iraq

The more people that die in Iraq the better for Dems. In thier view, for every 100 US troops that die in Iraq, the Dems think they will pick up one extra seat in Congress

That they want to turn off the meat-grinder upsets you? The interests of the party above your nation and the interests of the Iraqi people? There can be no disgrace to the party? The party and the leader must prevail?