War supporters responded yesterday to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) call for an up-or-down vote on Iraq withdrawal legislation by threatening a permanent Iraq filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed “an automatic 60-vote threshold for all key Iraq amendments.”
Meanwhile, as the GOP obstructionists get set for this little overnight filibuster, what is Joe neocon Lieberman doing? He is out here using soldiers as PROPS on the very day he plans to join another GOP effort to stab soldiers in the back:
More soldiers are turning on the occupation of Iraq as a Mother, and a Marine, discusses her and her husbands positions on Iraq:
But she says she stopped believing in the war last month after a telephone conversation with him.
“He started telling me that he doesn’t want me to go and do the things he has been doing,” said Corporal Ponce De Leon, 22, speaking by telephone as she boxed up her belongings in their apartment near Camp Lejeune, N.C.
“He said that ‘we have all decided that it’s time for us to go home.’ I said, ‘You mean go home and rest?’ And he said, ‘I mean go home and not go back.’
“This is from someone who has been training for the past nine years to go to combat and who has spent his whole life wanting to be a marine,” she continued. “That’s when I realized I couldn’t support the war anymore, even though I will follow my orders.”
The other day I posted on a soldier challenging the pResident or any member of Congress to take a tour with him:
A soldier puts up a challenge to Congress and the pResident:Spc. Vassell, 2nd Platoon Apache Company Strykers:Guardian has a new video linked on their front page, that covers events on and after May 19, 2007. It's a Flash 8 and takes a minute or two to load.
I challenge anybody in Congress to do my rotation. They don't have to do anything, just come hang out with me and go home at the times I go home. And come stay here fifteen months with me.Spc. Vassell, 2nd Platoon Apache Company Strykers:The politicians all sit there in their cushy offices or their comfy little places on the floor of the House, The Senate, and in the White House. They do not have a fucking clue what they are doing to the soldiers. They do not have a fucking clue how stressed out the military is. How the policies they are all pushing for are breaking the military.
We're supposed to be on the way home right now. We were supposed to be flying home in six days. Six days. But because we have people up there in Congress with the brain of a two-year old who don't know what they're doing. They don't experience it. I, I challenge the President or whoever has us here for fifteen months to ride along, alongside me. I'll do another fifteen months if he comes out here and rides along with me every day for fifteen months. I'll do fifteen more months. They don't even have to pay me extra. I just want him to come out here and ride with me another fifteen months.
It is pretty plain and simple. You either support the troops by bringing them home... Or you don't support the troops at all. Cut and dry. There are no shades of gray in this.
When soldiers come right out and tell you shit like this it is a serious matter. They must have absolutely no confidence in their leadership or the mission they are being given if they are willing to risk the penalties of speaking out against their orders.Beth Pyritz, an Army wife in Virginia,
has joined an antiwar group.“I backed this war from the beginning, but I don’t think I can look my kids in the eyes anymore, if my husband comes home in a wooden box, and tell them he died for a good reason.”
Military Families Speak Out, one such group, which was started in the fall of 2002, now has about 3,500 member families. About 500 of them have joined since January.
Nancy Lessin, a founder of the group, said it was noteworthy that about a hundred military wives living on bases had joined in the last three months. Wives living on bases, she said, are more reluctant than parents of soldiers to speak out.
For Beth Pyritz, 27, who recently joined the group, the turning point came last month when her husband, an Army specialist, left for Iraq for his third deployment.
So it seems that it is going to be up to Congress to actually support the troops by ending the bushies' authorization to wage endless wars. bush won't do it. He never has supported the troops. It remains to be seen if Congress can finally do the right thing here.
A YouTube Update as ABC News picks up part of the Guardian report:
2 comments:
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement Tuesday in response to the Democrat-sponsored talk-a-thon, which will delay consideration of further amendments to the Defense Authorization Bill:
“While Republicans are focused on the dangers posed by al Qaeda in Iraq, and the warnings that the United Nations and Baker-Hamilton Commission have given in recent days about the consequences of withdrawal, Democrats plan to spend the next 24 hours in what they have described as a 'publicity stunt.' This issue is far too serious to waste the next day on 'publicity stunts.' This is a serious issue, and deserves serious consideration.
“Our enemies aren't threatened by talk-a-thons, and our troops deserve better than publicity stunts.”
"Our enemies aren't threatened by talk-a-thons,"
Well then... Quit talking and enlist.
Republicans are obstructing a simple vote on what the American people want, and what the soldiers want. We aren't buying your regurgitated GOP talking points anymore.
Put your money where your mouth is.
Enlist.
Put up OR shut up. Or are you just all talk?
Post a Comment