Section: Croton-on-Hudson Don't Confuse Me With The Facts
October 10, 2007
Rep. John Hall Pledges NOT to Fund Iraq War in Letter to Bushie
The full letter and full list of signers follow:
The Honorable George W. Bush
President
United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Seventy House Members wrote in July to inform you that they will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.
Now you are requesting an additional $45 billion to sustain your escalation of U.S. military operations in Iraq through next April, on top of the $145 billion you requested for military operations during FY08 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, even more of us are writing anew to underscore our opposition to appropriating any additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq other than a time-bound, safe redeployment as stipulated above.
More than 3,742 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 27,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.
We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.
Sincerely,
Representative John Hall, New York, 19th Congressional District
Co-signers: Murphy (CT), Jackson, Brown (FL), Thompson (MS), Watt, Meeks, Loebsack, Weiner, Kucinich, DeFazio, Farr, Waxman, Thompson (CA), Lee, Woolsey, Waters, Watson, Frank, Conyers, Filner, Rush, Towns, Clay, Wynn, Delahunt, Holmes-Norton, Butterfield, Solis, Maloney, Nadler, Honda, Cohen, Hare, Napolitano, Hastings, McGovern, Kaptur, Schakowsky, Carson, Linda Sanchez, Grijalva, Olver, Jackson-Lee, McDermott, Markey, Fattah, Pallone, Hinojosa, Stark, Scott (VA), Moran, McCollum, Oberstar, DeGette, Tauscher, Holt, Hinchey, Pastor, Davis (IL), Velazquez, Rangel, Hodes, Blumenauer, Lynch, Artur Davis, Johnson (GA), Payne, Cleaver, Lewis, Clarke, Abercrombie, Moore(WI), Ellison, Baldwin, Christensen, Scott (GA), Paul, Gutierrez, Welch, Capps, Rothman, Cummings, Tierney, Doggett, Eshoo, and Tubbs-Jones.
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September 28, 2007
Larry Craig: Is He Going or Staying? Maybe, Maybe Not
Remember how Sen. Larry Craig was going to resign from the U.S. Senate on Sept. 30th? It now appears he may not be leaving after all, according to his attorney. If the judge in Minneapolis allows him to withdraw his guilty plea, he will go to trial, a headline-grabbing move that will surely cause consternation in Republican ranks just when their presidential candidates are jousting for nomination.
If the judge denies his request, he may stick around Washington and serve out the remaining 15 months of his term—an embarrassment to the Republican brass who roundly condemned him and wanted him gone quickly. This decision would make Larry Craig about as popular in the Senate as an infestation of fire ants at a picnic…
The incident has become another example of political hypocrisy so rampant in Washington. (Craig was loud in his condemnation of Bill Clinton as “a naughty, naughty boy.”) The Minneapolis airport men’s room has become a popular spot for tourists to visit and snap souvenir photos. And a hilarious parody of the song “Knock Three Times” now memorializes the senatorial misadventure.
You can watch and listen to a performance of the song below:
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September 16, 2007
Homer Simpson for President!
Homer Simpson recently appeared on David Letterman’s Late Show to present the “Top 10 Reasons Why I, Homer Simpson, Should be the Next President.”
Mostly because he’s “smarter than the last guy.”
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September 11, 2007
Reminder: Iraq & September 11th Not Connected
Anyhow, Thomas Friedman tells Charlie Rose, “Suck on this… We hit Iraq because we could.”
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September 6, 2007
George W. Bush Visits Iraq, Keith Olbermann Comments
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann offered a special comment Tuesday on President Bush’s visit to Iraq. “He is back from his annual, surprise, gratuitous, photo op in Iraq, and what a sorry spectacle it was,” said Olbermann. “But it was nothing compared to the spectacle of one unfiltered, unguarded, horrifying quotation in the new biography.”
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August 28, 2007
Leave No Attorney General Left Behind
Excuse us, Mr. Gonzales, but you made a grammatical error in your resignation letter to President George W. Bush. Instead of writing, “I believe that this is the right time for my family and I to begin a new chapter in our lives,” you should have written me, as in my family and me, instead of I.
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August 13, 2007
Says Dick Cheney in 1994, 'Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire'
Transcript:
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
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August 2, 2007
CNN's Glenn Beck Hearts Bush with Lavish Praise
September is ‘a coming Bushie… And with it, the report from General Petraeus.
CNN Headline News’s right-wing host Glenn Beck had a personal “off-the-record” meeting with President Bush at the White House. Beck’s insights from this meeting include that Bush “is a man who personally feels the pain of every wounded hero” and has “incredible passion and resolve.”
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July 13, 2007
Presidenting George W. Bush Makin' Progress in Irack
Americans Against Escalation in Iraq asks, “Senator McConnell: Is This Your Idea of Progress in Iraq?” Watch their ad:
Mitch McConnell is a Republican Senator from Kentucky who is also the Minority Leader for the 110th Congress.
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March 31, 2007
Sorry 'bout Your Arm Hero
Supporting the Troops: Bush apologizes for hospital conditions (view the slideshow from President Bush’s visit to Walter Reed Medical Center on March 30, 2007).
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December 28, 2006
Thank You Gerald Ford for Your Silence on the Iraq War
From the Washington Post: On July 28, 2004, former president Gerald R. Ford sat down for an interview with The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward. The interview was conducted at Ford’s Beaver Creek, Colo., house; the former president agreed that his comments could be published any time after his death. Follows is a smattering of former President Ford’s observations:
“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,”
“And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”
“I don’t think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly, I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”
Ford, speaking on the condition that his remarks would not be published while he was still alive, expressed a realpolitik perspective on foreign policy and appeared to question Bush’s priorities in that 2004 interview (see also: “Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq”).
Ah, what? All said two years ago… Did the cat have your tongue Mr. President? Oh, that’s right, you were lending cover to your fellow Republicans. Geez, great way to “Support the Troops!”
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October 25, 2006
Bush Administration Tries to "Cut and Run" from "Stay the Course"
All the while trying to rewrite history… Perhaps he ought to “use the Google” more often?
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