The debate in the Senate over a new Iraq resolution will cement the republican party's reputation and status as the nation's 'War Party', or more appropriately for the time, the 'Iraq War Party'.
Relegated to the dustbin of history in the debate will be the Bush regime's strident claims of hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; all the warnings about uranium tubes, bio-chem weapons labs, bio-chem weapon attacks discredited and no longer effective tools to cow a fearful public as they managed in the wake of the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings.
Revived by the republican War Party, and ready for prime time will be the appeals to fear that worked so well in allowing them to mortgage ours, and our children’s' future to the violent and costly aftereffects of their reckless militarism.
House Majority Leader John Boehner laid out the Iraq War Party's vision and agenda in a memo revealed to the country yesterday by ThinkProgress.org. In it Boehner reveals a republican party so bereft of ideas, and so enamored of war, that it is compelled to re-exploit the tragedy of 9-11 in an attempt to frighten Americans into believing that withdrawing our troops from Iraq would make the U.S. less secure. The three main goals of the republican War Party are (as ThinkProgress describes) to:
1. Exploit 9/11. The two page memo mentions 9/11 seven times. It describes debating Iraq in the context of 9/11 as “imperative.”
2. Attack opponents ad hominem. The memo describes those who opposes President Bush’s policies in Iraq as “sheepish,” “weak,” and “prone to waver endlessly.”
3. Create a false choice. The memo says the decision is between supporting President Bush’s policies and hoping terrorist threats will “fade away on their own.”
The republicans are finally coming to grips with their true selves. There will be no more pretending to care about the health care needs of the nation's citizens from the War Party; no more concern about exploding energy costs; no more wondering aloud from them about whether our children is learning.
The republican War Party is stepping out of their citizen's clothing and into their militarist garb; the war hawks, the war hounds, the warmongers, the tyrants.
More precisely, with $10b a month in tax dollars going to fund wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hijacked from our Treasury by republicans with 'emergency' spending bills, the republican War Party has decided that supporting their junta in Iraq is more important than supporting the needs and concerns of the American people.
"I've directed our Secretary of Treasury and the Treasury Department to send teams of experts to Iraq to help the government create a public finance system." Bush said yesterday. "These advisors will help Iraqis develop an economic framework that promotes growth and job creation and opportunity. I've directed the Secretaries of Commerce and Agriculture to travel to Iraq as soon as possible to meet with their counterparts."
"To revitalize the Iraqi economy, the Prime Minister is working to increase oil and electricity production." Bush explained. "We spent a lot of time talking about energy in Iraq."
But, what about the needs and concerns of Americans? Where does Bush and the republican War Party get the money to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure as our own country's needs get short shrift from them at appropriations time?
" American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are spent," House Democratic leader Pelosi, "and if it's in furtherance of the goals as stated by the Bush Administration."
"This New Direction of fiscal soundness, pay-as-you-go, audit the books is the guiding principle." she continued. "Under that, we say that our troops must be provided a future worthy of their sacrifice. While they're fighting, what's happening here at home?"
"Health insurance costs have gone up 70 percent under the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress -- six million more Americans do not have coverage." Pelosi said. "The cost of gasoline has nearly doubled in the five years of the Bush Administration -- up to $3 a gallon. Tuition for higher education has increased enormously, yet the Bush Administration has taken us in the wrong direction, cutting $12 billion in assistance for higher education. And the purchasing power of middle-income families' wages has been greatly reduced under the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress."
Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price
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