...Republicans say this year is different. Democrats have included a $5 billion increase for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help aid nations affected by the global financial crisis. Republicans say that is reason enough to vote against the entire $106 billion spending bill and are certain voters will understand.
Sure, the voters will understand the amazing hypocrisy of the Republican party. It doesn't matter to the GOP that the global financial crisis was our doing. They're taking a stand, dammit, and troops in Afghanistan be damned. It doesn't matter that there were non-war additions when they voted for the funding during the Bush administration, like farm subsidies or an increase in the minimum wage, luckily advanced by Democrats.
In 2005, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) went so far as to say sending troops into battle and not paying for it would be an “immoral thing to do.”
But this is different, isn't it Rep. Cole? Because It's OKIf You Are Republican.
UPDATE (2:25pm): John Boehner now makes it all clear. Voting for war supplemental bills pre-2009 supports the troops. But now, voting against war supplemental bills supports the troops. Another bourbon, please!
For weeks now, John McCain and the GOP have been jumping on Barack Obama for his supposed lack of knowledge of what's happening in Iraq simply due to the fact that he hasn't traveled to Iraq (as of this writing) in the last 923 days, and even rigged a clock to their website in an attempt to make it an embarrassing issue.
John McCain had even suggested that he and Obama should make the trip together. My guess on that bright idea is so the Maverick could show Obama all the hot spots and perhaps go bar hopping. Maybe even take Obama to the local strip club where the burkas only go down to just above the ankle. Ultimately, McCain was trying to pull an Izzy Mandelbaum and show the young kid the ropes, a position that the Illinois Senator wouldn't be caught dead in.
Now that Senator Obama has left on a world tour to visit war zones as well as foreign dignitaries, the McCain campaign and surrogates dare to call the trip a stunt, while McThuselah is trying to get his story straight after initially saying that Obama's trip was good thing. The audacity of Obama to go on a foreign trip, visit war zones and introduce himself around the world! It's not as if he would visit a country and by the strangest of coincidences, US hostages would be released from said country. That wouldn't be considered a stunt, would it?
"Barack Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan."
It turns out that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain has attended even fewer Afghanistan-related Senate hearings over the past two years than Obama's one. Which is a nice way of saying, McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Service Committee, has attended zero of his committee's six hearings on Afghanistan over the last two years.
...A review of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings as listed on the committee Web site for the past two years reveals that McCain's committee has held six hearings that included the word "Afghanistan" in the title or Central Command -- which overseas U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
McCain missed them all.
"[Obama] hasn't been to Iraq in years."
Not that it matters whether he's been there or not, but this trip will change that fact. It's also worthy to note that a person which such vast foreign policy experience as McCain should probably know not to leak the possible itinerary of a fellow Senator when travelling in hostile territory.
"[Obama] voted against funding our troops."
From Media Matters: "...on March 29, 2007, McCain himself voted againstH.R. 1591, an emergency spending bill that would have funded the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and would have provided more than $1 billion in additional funds to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Senate passed H.R. 1591 by a margin of 51-47. Once the bill's conference report was agreed to by the House, the Senate again passed the measure on April 26, 2007, by a vote of 51-46. McCain did not vote on that version of the bill. By contrast, Obama voted for it onboth occasions. President Bush vetoed the bill, citing its provision for a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Moreover, McCain has voted against other legislation funding care for veterans. On April 26, 2006, McCain voted against an amendment by Sen. Daniel Akaka(D-HI) that would have "provide[d] an additional $430,000,000 for the Department of Veteran Affairs for Medical Services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans." In addition, on March 14, 2006, McCain voted against "increas[ing] Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes." On March 10, 2004, McCain also voted against "creat[ing] a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans' medical care by $1.8 billion by eliminating tax loopholes." Obama voted for the first two measures; he had not yet entered the Senate when the third vote was cast."
"John McCain has always supported our troops and the surge that's working."
Well, that's the rhetoric. But when it comes to putting your vote where your mouth is, McCain has been conspicuously absent. And as far as the "surge working," isn't it pretty obvious that when you negotiate with terrorists and pay insurgents to stop shooting at you, that violence is bound to go down?
Don't you just love the free market? Too bad it wasn't used when these no-bid contracts were handed out by the Bushies.
NY TIMES:WASHINGTON — Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.
During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.
And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis.
...The reports of shoddy electrical work have raised new questions about the Bush administration’s heavy reliance on contractors in Iraq, particularly because they come after other high-profile disputes involving KBR. They include accusations of overbilling, providing unsafe water to soldiers and failing to protect female employees who were sexually assaulted.
Taking credit for successes and blaming others for failures is what Republicans do. Over the past couple of days I've been listening to GOP Senators on MSNBC blaming NATO for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. I suppose "Support The Troops" only means our troops. Fuck the other allies' troops. They can't do anything right, right?
And now McThuselah claims that he "knows how to win wars." Yes, "wars" as in plural. I'm sure he wasn't just thinking of Iraq and Afghanistan as Beach Boys tunes danced in his head.
"...It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. It is by applying the tried and true principles of counter-insurgency used in the surge -- which Senator Obama opposed -- that we will win in Afghanistan. With the right strategy and the right forces, we can succeed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I know how to win wars. And if I'm elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory."
Perhaps McCain's definition of winning a war is getting shot down over enemy territory and being a prisoner of war for over five years. We win.
That the "success in Iraq" is the model McThuselah would use in Afghanistan if he became president is absolutely ludicrous. I would not so kindly ask, "What success would you be talking about?!"
It seems that everyone touting success in Iraq is selectively remembering only the post-surge reduction in violence and not the fact that the whole reason for the surge in the first place was to give the Iraqi government time to get its shit together. That hasn't happened and moving the goalposts from "when they stand up, we'll stand down" to "an acceptable level of violence" won't make the surge a success.
And even if you accept McCain's premise that the model of Iraq is the way we'd do things in Afghanistan, one would have to realize that it's an impossibility to do it the Iraq way with the lack of resources we now face. We don't have the troops to send to Afghanistan unless we pull them out of Iraq!
And this is the man that is lauded by the McCainstream Media as a foreign policy wiz!
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