- "The magic number is 41, not 60. What am I talking
about? I'm talking about the fact it takes only 41 Senators to kill any
bill in the Senate.
- In other words, 41 Senate Democrats could have ALREADY
ENDED THIS WAR by their 41 selves, by simply filibustering Bush's warfunding
bills. Such an option is an old, tried and true tactic used by both parties
in the Senate. Each party has more than the 41 Senators needed to block
each other's bills. Currently, each party has 49 Senators and two "independents."
-
- THEREFORE, I reiterate: 41 Democratic Senators could
have already ended this war by preventing Bush's war appropriations bills
from even coming to the Senate floor for a vote. THE PROBLEM IS, the
Democratic Party refuses to cut funding to this war. Democratic Speaker
of the House Nancy Pelosi flat out stated that, "Democrats will not
cut funding to this war." The problem with this Democratic Party
zero-sum position is history - American history; the ONLY WAY our troops
have been brought home since the inception of the War Powers Act is when
Congress completely cut ALL funds to the war or military action in question;
and each time, it was AGAINST the sitting U.S. President's will."
(1)
-
- The very simple solution to the immediate quagmire is
outlined above, in the short article by Ron Corvus. Think of this as a
requirement to prevent all that is currently "On-the-Table"
in Iraq and Iran and by extension in the world-according-to the- outlaws
in the US and Israel. Cheney's Doctrine is perhaps the single most cynical
and dangerous piece of paranoia that we have yet embraced: surpassing
in its arrogance even the invasion of Iraq. But just as in Iraq, there
will apparently be no public discussion of whether or not Americans might
think that this coming war is even remotely necessary.
-
- The FRONTLINE broadcast: "Showdown With Iran"
that aired last night on PBS gave the public some perspective about the
political situation and our massive failures to grasp the real interests
of the various participants in the region. These failures, are at the
heart of why we have lost Iraq, and why we're about to lose far more-if
we attempt to carry out the continuing Cheney-Bush threat to bomb Iran.
(2)
- What's missing from the FRONTLINE documentary are the
extremely powerful 'other-players' that will move to center stage if we
prove to be as shallow as the current war-machine policy proposals indicate.
It is this tendency by the hijackers of this government to ignore
all but their own agenda's that has led us into this impasse. From
Democracy Now:
-
- Iraq, Afghan War Cost Estimated at $2.4 Trillion
-
- "Meanwhile a new estimate says the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan could cost upwards of two point four trillion dollars
over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office says the figure
takes into account more than seven hundred billion dollars in interest
since the wars are being funded with borrowed money. The total amounts
to nearly eight thousand dollars for every U.S. resident. The Iraq war
accounts for roughly eighty percent, at one point nine trillion dollars.
In the lead-up to the Iraq war four years ago, the Bush administration
estimated the invasion would cost no more than fifty billion dollars."
-
- Couple this fiscal crime with the refusal to oversee
or even modify the behavior of our growing dependence upon mercenary armies:
"the Bush administration has admitted State Department contracts
to private security contractors have quadrupled to nearly four billion
dollars per year. The rise in payments has not been accompanied by an
increase in oversight. According to the New York Times, administration
officials admit they have hired few new officials to monitor the contracts.
There are currently only seventeen contract compliance officers overseeing
the billions of dollars in contracts to companies like Blackwater and
Dyncorps. In addition to work in Iraq and Afghanistan, the State Department's
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has doled
out more than $2.2 billion dollars for police training and drug eradication
abroad. Ninety-four percent of that money has gone to DynCorp."
-
- Some may have noticed that the Wildfires in Southern
California are presenting Americans with a massive new problem of our
own and of course since the money and the equipment as well as the
manpower needed to fight the fires has been siphoned off to 'the wars,'
it appears that the damage done will be increased by several-hundred percent:
and all because the Cheney-Bush Doctrine recognizes only one priority;
and that monomaniacal 'priority' is WAR!
-
-
-
-
-
- It has never been more important to stop a US "president"
from an act of pure insanity, than it is right now. 'Not another cent'
should be allowed to go to the war. "The troops" must leave
immediately. There is more than enough money in the pipeline now - to
do just that! The issues at the center of this firestorm have not been
debated by the public in the open forums that we deserve-largely this
is because these questions have been left to the half-truths imposed on
the public by the privatized corporate media that shares the views of
the Cheney-Bush Doctrine of 2002.
-
- This is far too important to history, and to the United
States to allow this kind of political strong-arming over the facts to
continue. The public needs to have this dialogue after the troops are
entirely and immediately withdrawn. Nothing, by way of argument from the
failed leaders that have run these bogus wars into the ground should even
be considered-based on their absolutely incompetent record that has been
amassed over the last seven years of unadulterated misjudgments that have
literally killed millions of people-just to increase their profits and
to further destabilize the whole world. When Bush took office oil was
$20 a barrel, today it hovers around $90 as barrel: If the attack on Iran
goes forward, that figure will shoot up beyond anything currently imaginable.
-
- Only concerted action by those 41 Senators that have
to date remained invisible will change any part of this nightmare. But
the action advocated in the opening paragraphs here must begin immediately
if there is to be any hope of derailing our now Trillion-dollar-Wars-of-Conquest
that are draining this nation of everything we once held dear-just to
pay for private armies that may one day soon be used to silence all dissent
in the one nation that the world used to think of as being truly free.
Just Forty-One votes in the Senate is all it will take to stop the bleeding.
-
- For those who like to write and call the same people
that allowed all this to happen in the first place maybe this ought
to be your challenge -- your pivotal moment in the sun, to help stop
this self-inflicted plunge into a nuclear winter of our discontent! If
the Forty-one fail to act then we shall have cancelled the future and
invited ourselves to join in the freefall that will follow, as surely
as night follows day. . .
-
- --Kirwan
-
- 1) The "Magic Number" is 41 - Not 60:
- http://www.projectfilibuster.com
-
- 2) Showdown With Iran PBS video
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/view/
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