<p>What’s sad to me is the loss of life–for what? I think everyone who voted to go to war has some responsibility.</p>
<p>Forget “past responsibility”. Pelosi has the single capacity, by herself, to stop funding the hostile, aggressive occupation, and, because of her own political calculations, has so far chosen not to.</p>
<p>It’s about time she was called on it.</p>
<p>Opie, I was agin term limits before it was voted in here in California and now I’m even more agin it. We had a form of term limits: voting “No.” Cf., the “off” switch on the TV instead of complaining about the terrible stuff that’s on it.</p>
<p>Term limits increases the relative power of the lobbyists and the career bureaucracy. The former is a malignant force and the latter may or may not be benign…and it’s a dangerous bet. </p>
<p>Of course, we’ve managed to magnify the negative effect by having a bi-partisan consensus on sweetheart save-the-incumbent redistricting plans, where most districts are designed to preserve the status quo for both parties…and the Democrats have been as gutless about this as the Republicans have been sleazy and overreaching. The result is that the politicians choose their voters instead of the other way around.</p>
<p>And then we’ve put the icing on the cake by making all tax and budget bill subject to a 2/3 affirmative vote, which means an ideological minority from either side can hold the state hostage for months. You might be able to talk me into a 55 percent supermajority requirement, but not more than that and frankly 50 percent plus 1 seems to work most places just fine.</p>
<p>But all three of these legs of the pyramid of political ineffectiveness are worshipped as holy artifacts for the common good and woe be unto any politician who tries to wade in and change them.</p>
<p>
Agreed. However, Ms. Pelosi voted against the Iraq War Resolution. She was right on the war. But how could she seek impeachment against President Bush after she had said this:</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp[/url]”>http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp</a></p>
<p>Sorry bethievt, but believing shoddy intel and acting on it is not a crime as far as I know. The administration fell to a common error in logic. It believed evidence that supported its ideas and rejected contradictory intel as unconfirmed.</p>
<p>I’m all for impeachment. I’m tired of Bush’s whiney little middle of the road half measures. Give me Dick Chaney with his finger of the button.</p>
<p>““As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.”</p>
<p>This was the very day that Bill Clinton unleashed the largest bombing of a sovereign nation by any country since the Viet Nam War.</p>
<p>Where did she, as a member of the House “Intelligence” Committee get this information? From the Clinton/Tenet lies of course. </p>
<p>Clinton should have been impeached, not for the blue dress, but for “high crimes and misdemeanors”. And the fact that he has a pretty face doesn’t take away from the reality that we likely wouldn’t be in Iraq today if it wasn’t for the deliberate deceptions he undertook to cover up his crimes.</p>
<p>They were all dead wrong. I felt I could smell failure a hundred miles away. Even Bush senior knew this was a road to oblivion and civil war. I’m not being partisan on this, though I think younger Bush wanted this war and asked for “intelligence” to support going to war. Why anyone, D or R, believed that mess is another issue. They all bear some responsibility. Who thought warring tribes would all come together in happy democracy?</p>
<p>
Actually, they were not warring before the war nor in the immediate aftermath of the war. They only started to fight each other after they were instigated to do so by al Qaeda. There is no question that al Qaeda is a major instigating presence in Iraq. </p>
<p>Why is it that we should not fight al Qaeda and at the same time protect the women and children who are their targets? Mini sheds crocodile tears about the alleged deaths of children “caused” by Clinton but is then more than eager to let the same kids be slaughtered by al Qaeda.</p>
<p>
I have some mosquito-infested land in Michigan for anyone who seriously believes this. Iraq after Saddam was in many ways predictably like Yugoslavia after Tito and the US and the grand intellect in the White House didn’t have an effing clue. The model of government that we rammed down their throats exacerbated the problem and the secular moderate “center” took baths in consecutive elections. Not only does the center not hold, there is no center <em>to hold</em>. </p>
<p>As an exercise, describe “victory” in terms of the chess pieces on the Iraqi political board. It’s a more fruitless exercise than listing the top colleges for numbers 43-81.</p>
<p>We’re currently arming Sunni forces to fight the AQ elements. Any bets on those fighters and arms being turned against the US and the dominant Shiite government forces? Remember, we armed the Taliban to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan…gee, that sure worked out well.</p>
<p>What a bunch of dipwads.</p>
<p>It looks like the gullibility that was exhibited when the mosquito-infested land in Michigan was first acquired has re-surfaced in buying into the notion that the Shia and Sunnis are blood enemies. The surprising thing is that he seems to have succumbed to the powerful pull of leftist mythology and has gone against the beliefs of his mentor, Juan Cole, who said:
</p>
<p>And then there is this from Noah Feldman, at the Council on Foreign Relations:
<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1167736-1,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1167736-1,00.html</a></p>
<p>Then I guess that we can just leave Iraq right now since the Sunnis and Shi’ites will be able to get along nicely without us.</p>
<p>FF is absolutely right. Shias and Sunnis have been living mostly peacefully together for centuries (most of it under the domination of Ottoman Turks, their common enemy.) Paul Bremer engineered the current civil war when he decided that instead of finding the best people to run the provisional administration and put them in charge of recovery efforts, he divided places in the government strictly according to religious/ethnic lines. Same thing the Belgians did in the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, the British in India and Sri Lanka, the French in the Sudan. All with predictably disasterous consequences. </p>
<p>“Mini sheds crocodile tears about the alleged deaths of children “caused” by Clinton but is then more than eager to let the same kids be slaughtered by al Qaeda.”</p>
<p>No alleged. UNICEF has the data, and Madeline Albright admits to it. (The only debate is how many were under 5.) There is something about scale, or is that something you don’t understand? Bill Clinton killed roughly 8 times as many children as Idi Amin, and at current rates, it would take Al-Qaeda a thousand years to match his genocidal record. </p>
<p>It is the coverup of his crimes against humanity, the Clinton/Tenets lies of 1998, that paved the way for the mess in Iraq we have today.</p>
<p>I still would like to know why we cannot leave since historically these groups have gotten along nicely.</p>
<p>“Will all the Democrats who thought Sheehan was wonderful when she was bashing President Bush now help her overthrow Pelosi?” </p>
<p>Of course, she does not expect to overthrow Pelosi. She just wants to keep opposition to this horrendous war in our minds, and to embarrass Democrats in Congress for not doing what they said they would- bring our soldiers home before another single one dies in this unjust war.</p>
<p>“I still would like to know why we cannot leave since historically these groups have gotten along nicely.”</p>
<p>Because, as Hillary Clinton has said in explaining why she doesn’t favor a complete pull-out, we have (unspecified) strategic interests (read: oil) in the region.</p>
<p>(You don’t really think that the Administration gives two farts for the pro-Iranian Shia or the pro-Al Qaead/pro-Baathist Sunnis, do you? And we’ve already turned all the pro-Western secularists and professionals into refugees.)</p>
<p>“Then I guess that we can just leave Iraq right now since the Sunnis and Shi’ites will be able to get along nicely without us.”</p>
<p>The answer to that is the last sentence of the Feldman quote. Once security can be achieved - primarily through the defeat of al Qaeda, there is a reasonable possibility that the second to last sentence of the Cole quote can be achieved.</p>
<p>N.B., Sheehan is threatening to run against Pelosi if impeachment proceedings aren’t started against Bush. Given that it takes a 2/3 vote in the Senate to convict, and given the number of Republican senators willing to follow Bush over a cliff, impeachment proceedings are a priori an exercise in futility and a misplaced use of political capital. Not to mention, that if you were to hypothetically “win,” the Dark Lord himself, Dick Cheney, becomes president. Urrr…no. Impeach both and the reviled on the fringes Pelosi becomes president, LOL.</p>
<p>B960, there are limits to power when you have 49 voting Democrats [not counting Tim Johnson, recovering from brain surgery, and Joe Lieberman, no explanation necessary] in the Senate (given its rules) and a presidential veto.
At best, the Democrats can block some of the Republican excesses but given the stonewalling and hyperbolic claims of executive power, even that is a slow grind. I expect Bush to lose in the courts on a number of executive power issues but by then he will have safely (for him) run out the clock.</p>
<p>Tha sad thing is that even when we know what the al Qaeda strategy is, some people still ignore it and look for different reasons for the sectarian strife. Here is what al-Zarqawi wrote to bin Laden in 2004:
</p>
<p>After the first WTC bombing they told us that they would try again and we ignored them. We find their strategy in Iraq and some still ignore it and claim that the reason for the strife is “centuries of hatred” and “we shouldn’t be involved in a civil war”. They now say that they will continue to attack us and will some day acquire nuclear or biological weapons to increase their effectiveness and the repsonse of the left is to ignore this as well, thinking: “if we just be nice to them and give them what they want by getting out of the Middle East they will leave us alone.”</p>
<p>When will we ever learn.</p>
<p>The sadder and stupider thing is that our policy has played right into AQ’s hands: occupying a Muslim country and repeatedly burning down haystacks to to find the AQ needle. We couldn’t have done a better job recruiting for AQ and creating a population that would turn a blind eye to AQ if we tried. </p>
<p>Here’s a multiple-choice test question: which of the following factions approve of and execute attacks on US forces in Iraq?</p>
<p>A. Al Qaeda in Iraq and associated AQ franchises
B. Sunni former Baathists
C. Sunni militia units upset with the dominant Shiite government
D. Shiite followers of Muktada al Sadr</p>
<p>N.B., all the handwaving in the world about historical Sunni/Shiite relationships can’t erase the fact that the Sunnis under Saddam victimized the Shiites ruthlessly, that the Shiites now are looking to turn the tables at virtually opportunity, and that the Sunnis, understandably are taking violent exception to this.</p>