[QUOTE=Lemur866]
You call it politics, we call it the fucking Constitution of the United States.
See, under the fucking Constitution of the United States, the president is commander-in-chief of the military. That means he gives his orders to the generals, and they obey the orders. The Speaker of the House cannot give orders to the generals. She is not in the chain of command. It’s a simple concept, really.
She could call for impeachment of the President, but that would just replace Bush with Cheney…so she’d have to impeach both of them. And there’s no consensus for impeachment…yet. So impeachment as a “first 100 hours” measure fails.
The fucking Constitution of the United States gives the House of Representatives control over appropriations. That means that Speaker Pelosi could cut funding for the Iraq war. Ah, then Bush would have to withdraw! Except there’s so much money in the Department of Defense, that it would be possible to fund the Iraq war by taking money from other things. And it would take months for the money to begin to run out. And besides that, she wouldn’t neccesarily have the support of all the Democrats. Because cutting funding for the military would be a pretty radical step and it would have unforseeen consequences, especially since it is very unlikely that it would actually work. And remember, the President can VETO any legislation, and it requires a supermajority to override a Presidential veto…a supermajority the Democrats don’t have.
Do you want to hear for the next 20 years how we could have won in Iraq, but the Democrats stabbed our brave soldiers in the back?
The Democrats DO have lots of things that they CAN do about the Iraq war, but none of those things are the type that can be done in the first 100 hours of power. They can hold hearings, force generals and appointees to either tell the truth about how the Iraq war was screwed up or perjure themselves. The Senate can refuse to confirm appointees that don’t acknowlege reality in Iraq. They can pass resolutions telling the President that he’s screwing up. They can go on the national media and explain to the American people how the Iraq war isn’t working.
But what they can’t do is get on the phone to the Pentagon and order them to bring the troops back. They don’t have that authority, any more than I do. And cutting funding for our brave men and women in uniform would be political suicide.
The things you can do in your first 100 hours are things that there is already a solid consensus for, things where you don’t have to compromise on because only a small fringe disagrees. Kneecapping the military with a disasterous funding cut is not one of those things. And to compare it to the defunding of the Vietnam war is disingenous, because by the time the war was defunded we no longer had any brave men and women in uniform over there…we had pulled out. If we had no servicepeople in Iraq, and Maliki’s government was tottering, cutting funds meant to prop him up a bit longer would be analgous. But we still have American soldiers over there, so it isn’t.
[/QUOTE]
There you go again, “political suicide” versus our soldiers being killed. Defunding the war in Iraq would have no more effect than us pulling out when the President decides to, except alot sooner. Obviously, a pull out by defunding or by the Executive will always involve soldiers on the ground by definition, no difference.
The Senate won’t do crap. Lieberman is behind this war all the way.
The f’g Constitution also gives the Congress the power of the purse. Like Rep. Rangel said, you can’t fight a war if nobody funds it (para).
