If the Dem's vote war funding, they are giving clear and unambiguous permission to fight the war. The Republicans will, properly, hang this around their neck in 08: pusillanimous, no vision and flatly inconsistent. Basically, this is true.

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Did you expect a change after the 2006 elections? It's politics as usual in 2007 and the Bush war machine rages on, with the implicit support of these new Democrats. Joe Biden? In 2008? You must be joking. Nancy Pelosi as an opposition voice? Make me laugh...I need it. We are on the slippery slope of American disgrace and our fearless leaders are all on the same page while we see our future generations of American youth slam into the wall at the bottom of the hill. It's a sick feeling knowing that your vote has no meaning and that the power fiends in Washington are not subject to any controls by the people at all. It's a done deal folks...You mean shit and that's a generous appraisal. When history is written of this era, it will be the story of cowards and criminals riding roughshod across the landscape of our beloved country and raping and desecrating the very fabric of our society. I won't be there to read the book, but I know the story's end.

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Many commentators believe that the failure of the neoconservatives’ "cakewalk war" has destroyed their influence. This is a mistaken conclusion. The neoconservatives are long time allies of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and are part of the Israel Lobby in the US. The Israel Lobby represents the views of only a minority of American Jews but nevertheless essentially owns both political parties and most of the US media. As the neoconservatives are an important part of this powerful lobby, they remain extremely influential.

The Lobby works to increase the neoconservatives’ influence. To appreciate the Lobby’s influence, try to find columnists in the major print media and TV commentators who are not apologists for Israel, who do not favor attacking Iran, and who support withdrawing from Iraq. Recently, Bill Kristol, a propagandist for war against Muslims, was given a column in Time magazine. Why would Time think its readers want to read a war propagandist? Could the reason be that the Israel Lobby arranged for Time to receive lucrative advertising contracts in exchange for a column for Kristol?

Neoconservatives have called for World War IV against Islam. In Commentary magazine Norman Podhoretz called for the cultural genocide of Islamic peoples. The war is already opened on four fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iran...

For at least a year the Bush administration has been fomenting and financing terrorist groups within Iran. Seymour Hersh and former CIA officials have exposed the Bush administration’s support of groups within Iran that are on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. Last April Dennis Kucinich wrote a detailed letter to President Bush about US interference in Iran’s internal affairs. He received no reply.

The Israeli/neocon plan, of which Bush may simply be a manipulated element, is to provoke a crisis with Iran in which the US Congress will have to support Israel. Both the Israeli government and the American neoconservatives are fanatical. It is a mistake to believe that either will be guided by reason or any appreciation of the potentially catastrophic consequences of an attack on Iran.

US aircraft carriers sitting off Iran’s coast are sitting ducks for Iran’s missiles. The neoconservatives would welcome another "new Pearl Harbor."

The US media is totally unreliable. It cannot go against Israel, and it will wrap itself in the flag just as it did for the invasion of Iraq. The American public has been deceived (again) and believes that Iran is on the verge of possessing nuclear armaments to be used to wipe Israel off the map. The fact that Americans are such saps for propaganda makes effective opposition to the neoconservatives’ plan for WWIV practically impossible.

Even the London Times is in the grip of Israeli propaganda. In its report of Israel’s plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, the Times says that Iranian president "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that ‘Israel must be wiped off the map.’" It has been shown by a number of credible experts that this quote is a made-up concoction taken completely out of context. Ahmadinejad said no such thing.

In a world ruled by propaganda, lies become truths. The power of the Israel Lobby is so great that it has turned former President Jimmy Carter, probably the most decent man ever to occupy the Oval Office and certainly the president who did the most in behalf of peace in the Middle East, into an anti-semite.

As I previously reported, the neoconservatives believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran would force Muslims to realize that they have no recourse but to submit to the Israeli/US will. The use of nuclear weapons is being rationalized as necessary to destroy Iran’s underground facilities, but the real purpose is to terrorize Islam and to bring it to heel.

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I don't recall hearing any excuses during the election campaign. Now, nothing but why they can't do all those things for which they were elected. No more of this ! I'm voting Independet next election!

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At least Sen Biden articulated what had prevously been unmentionable or passed over with an almost deafening silence in the media - calling this administration for the fraudulent bunch of backward thinking incompetent liars they have proven themselves to be. These effin smug arrogant gasbags have been blaming the liberal media of neglecting to report on our 'successes' and all the 'good' news accomplished by our occupying forces in Iraq. Biden points out the obvious, we are losing the 'war', bush's new initiative is his old 'stay-the-course crapola, having already been previously implemented and flagrantly doomed to failure. It looked like that disgusing salivating Clinton-impeacher, the sacreligious slimeball Lindsay Graham, was about to erupt. The accusatory words Biden directed against the mendacious bush/cheney war mongering machine were dripping with scorn, magnifying the depths into which they have gone in order to ensure this debacle of death and destruction in Iraq continue ad infinitim (or until the next schmuck takes the helm as our American ship sinks further into this quagmire). He's setting the direction for Democrats to keep the glare of the spotlights on this 'compassionate' warrior, this travesty, this complete embarrassment, this clueless fool, out front stage, in all his vainglorious hypocritical trappings, stripping away the last vestiges of his 'likeability' - his truthiness! The faux cowboy, the clueless cheerleader, the uniting decider is but a hateful, vengeful bullshit slinging child of privelege who'd step on a bible if it was in his way. The more Americans see bush as the crooked bs carney barker that sold em a bill of phoney goods and made em all suckers, the more intense the momentum to impeach him will become. Biden, a well spoken, obviously extremely intelligent and experienced Senator makes for a credible critic who will be excedingly impossible to malign or marginalize as a radical lefty by those Blitzer-types who hold such unearned sway in our ball-less media.

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Biden said nothing. I am fed up with Dems who don't have the spine to say that the war was started with a pack of lies and we should quit it. They only say "We have to support the troops," which leads to a cop out. If a war was started erroneously, mendaciously, illegally isn't more supportive of the troops to get them out? Like, NOW?

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It just may be that King George II has mired us in a situation in Iraq that has no solution. As much as we in America feel that we own and control the world, and that anything is possible, it is not, and there are events that, once they're set in motion and spin out of control, cannot be fixed. Example: the Russian Revolution, which spun into Stalinism and lasted three generations before it collapsed because of its own weight and corruption. For 75 years, no outside force had any effect. Another: the Dark Ages, which began approximately with the Burning of the Great Library at Alexandria and lasted 1,000 years.

To bring it back home and talk about Bush: When a three-year-old pulls the pin on a hand grenade, there is no going back.

And although that is approximately where we find ourselves in Iraq, I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. However, much, much more needs to change in Iraq than anyone in Washington is willing to admit. Among the changes but certainly not all of them:

A change of administration here, leading to;
A truly international peacekeeping force augmenting our troops in Iraq, evenually replacing them; along with the Arab League and the UN acting as "good faith" representatives to help form a truly IRAQI government to replace the puppet one in power now;
Industrial-strength diplomacy to try and reconcile Shiite/Sunni/Kurdish animosities and their claims to Iraq's resources;
Revocation of H. Paul Bremer's 100 Rules for Iraq. Remember those? They have turned Iraq into an American colony; and believe me, Iraqis know it. They now do not feel that they have any stake in their country, and so fight any reconstruction efforts, because they DON'T have a stake.
To help change that situation::
Inact a comprehensive auditing of all construction contracts in Iraq, followed by the immediate revocation of ANY AND ALL contracts held by American companies guilty of fraud (and those companies being thrown out of the country); those contracts to be relet for bid by Iraqi and/or Arab contractors, with the stipulation that they hire qualified Iraqis for as many positions as possible. I believe that if it is done fairly, this will do more to stanch the violence than any other single act. People tend not to blow up the source of their paychecks. (I'm sure there's more I've forgotten, but I'm tired and it's late...)

This sketch is doubtless full of faults – but if I, and I'm sure many, many more of us too, can bang out at least a preliminary course of action to improve the Iraq mess in a few minutes, then what could be done by the more talented and experienced of our supposed "leaders" – if they cared? So why don't they? (Think: corporate whores.)

President Clinton got us into a sticky war in Kosovo; but with diplomacy, the UN and intelligence, he and his administration got us out of it and produced at least a semblance of peace there that still stands today. Why isn't anyone talking to Clinton, the most intelligent president in our history and consummate dealmaker?

There ARE great thinkers out there who could help solve this problem. We need every bit of their expertise – and right now. The only things, and I mean "things," standing in the way, are the current arrogant, pig-headed criminals in the executive branch – and the spineless enablers in the legislsture.

One thing IS certain: if the rot in Iraq continues much longer, it WILL become a situation that cannot be fixed – along with our democracy.

Care to rethink impeachment, Ms. Pelosi?

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atleast joe has some cahones and will put up his plan for this fffed up mess, love the quote "were runnin around iraq looking for thomas jefferson".. iam tired of these wussy dems joes got my vote!!

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is the subtitle to a succinct book by Bernard Lewis entitled "The Crisis of Islam". This is a very short look at a very long history, but it should be required reading for anyone with any question of historical context to the current conflict, it's broad dimensions, it's unexpected and inconvenient duration and our place in it.

The likely complications and costs of our involvement in Iraq are largely unknown to Americans due in large part to the profound ignorance of history that we suffer. Our powerlessness as a electorate is in that we think of ourselves as one thing as a nation, a cultivated view rife with contradictions, when we really are quite something else. The most shocking part of it is that we're shocked by little things like stolen elections.
Oh my!

The one very significant thing that we just can't seem to face up to is the fact that we are Rome. Please take note. Rome had it's Nader's and Robertson's, it's Warhol's and it's Cheney's, it's Franklin's and it's Nero's,... I mean Bush's. We exempt ourselves because we believe in Mayberry. Barney would never put his bullet in his gun and make a prisoner stand naked in detention. (Andy wouldn't allow it).

How we got here is a traceable enough path of long heritage with a rather unambiguous price tag of many, many millions inclusive of virtually every nationhood over thirty or so centuries. We, or rather our very tenaciously determined masters are clear on the macro dynamics and are very set on prevailing, idiotic puppet princes notwithstanding. The economics of expanding the war are hedious. Those of withdrawal unimaginable.

There will be no end to this war in our lifetime. That's all of us alive today. The stakes are just too high. It's is the beginning of a very long haul, and the thing that we will eventually face is the understanding of who we collectively really are and what we are truly about whether we like it or not. ( Just where in the US are those detention centers that Haliburton was given over a half billion dollars by Congress to build last year?)

We will as a nation not suffer the practical concessions required to apply a loftier ideal than the circumstances that imperial war otherwise dictates. The toxic effect of both political authority and environmental degradation will choke us all to varying degree, but a small price to pay to enable the continuity of a drive to the mall.

We will be reminded again and again of the terror, the very real terror of 911, and the increasing constrictions of freedoms both political and practical in the very near future. Make room in your wallet in 2008 for your National Identity Card, and consider long and hard the consequences of refusing one. Then, to be followed by the very necessary implanted chip to insure safety and inviolability. Everyone will need one. Everyone.

Unfortunately untrue for many soldiers, but we're just getting started burying our dead.

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You can scratch and kick and bitch about the slug in the highest office in the country BUT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE. NO IMPEACHMENT. NO NOTHING. I can't think of anything more frustating than listening to what he is going to do to our country. And it leaves me to wonder what if anything we as the people are going to do or can do.

LOST!!!!

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