[quote]The yearly “supplemental” battle is really just the latest administration blackmail demand for more taxpayer money for their contributors, with Bush holding a gun to the troops’ heads and saying “don’t make me do it.” We are arguing about a solution for a problem that wouldn’t exist if the president didn’t create it each and every year…
…The only thing I know for sure is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are not going to withdraw from Iraq. They are playing a rough game and would rather see the troops die without bullets and body armor than admit in any way that their occupation is a failure. The Democrats remain somewhat paralyzed in the face of such sociopathic intransigence (who believes Cheney won’t pull the trigger?) and the media remain unwilling to report this in any but schoolyard terms. So, the country must debate this under water — and that makes us feel helpless and panicked as we watch more people dying in this useless ridiculous face saving exercise.[/quote]
The above was what I was going to wrap up this post with. That’s because I was originally going to entitle this thread “the crisis in the American political discourse”. Then I laughed at myself. That’s the kind of non-sensationalist title - in the current atmosphere - that’s going to get exactly NO ONE to look at it. Hence, it’s now as it is. This is the ACTUAL POINT of the article:
[quote]We are in the midst of an intellectual crisis in this country where certain dogmatic and incoherent beliefs are allowed to dominate the discourse in spite of the fact that they are demonstrably false. It’s one of the most difficult problems we face.
The Iraq funding debate is a perfect example of hundreds we could choose from. The bill provided for the troops in every way. But it demanded that the president begin to plan for the withdrawal of those troops from Iraq by certain dates. Both of those things were supported by the people, in large numbers. The president vetoed the bill and this action was explained to the American people — by Democrats as well as Republicans and the media — as being done because Democrats were refusing to fund the troops. It was, of course, precisely the opposite.
So, we are stuck trying to work out reality based solutions in a political world that operates as if it is underwater. You can sort of see the vague outlines of what’s in front of you, but it’s distorted and wierd and everything moves in slow motion. For instance, one of the big questions that rarely gets asked by anyone is [b]why in the hell we are “funding the troops” with emergency supplemental spending bills like this year after year in the first place? Why would a vastly powerful and wealthy country such as ours be unable to plan for the troops’ basic necessities in a defense budget in the trillions? It’s absurd, ridiculous, and yet everyone accepts the fact that the troops could be left foraging for food and bullets in the middle of Baghdad, and the only question is whether the Democrats and the President are to blame because they failed to pass a bill before Memorial Day.
It’s a blackmail scam that the Bush administration has been pulling successfully since the beginning of the war.[/b][/quote]
(The article then goes on to give a list of Bush quotes, year after year, where he uses this political noose to strangle more tax payer-provided pork for the military.)
AAAAAAAmen brother. God, when Ron Paul talked about “blowback” when grilled by the Fox News mediator at the Republican candidates’ debate, and then Giuliani SOUND-BIT him with that patent, Hollywood one-liner redneckism, and the audience ERUPTED in cheers, I sighed and sunk in my chair. They should have roared like that to actually hear a politician respect their intelligence by speaking frank and objective TRUTH for a change instead of sloganering . But no - as usual, they looked upon that as being “talked down to” by some Ivory Tower Elitist.