What Congress Should Do: Fund the Troops; Defund the Contractors

A new appro- priations bill for $50 billion to fight the war in Iraq will soon be before Congress. Bush will charac- terize it as support for our troops. If you don't vote for it, you will be accused of not supporting the troops. But wait a minute. This appropriations bill, like the others before it, if you read the fine print, will be about minimal support for the troops and maximal support for the contractors who are as numerous in Iraq as the troops themselves, and they earn 10 times as much as the troops. Couple this with the enormous profits that go to the companies that employ them, and you start to realize that the bulk of the money goes not to the troops but to the contractors. Why has Congress not realized this and made an issue of it? They should submit a bill that defunds the contractors but supports the troops. Bush's propaganda machine will go to work saying they're not supporting the troops. Let's have a pitched battle if necessary. If Bush keeps vetoing similar bills, who is not supporting the  troops?

The contractors in Iraq are a thorn in Iraq's side. They  are accountable to no one by fiats imposed by the US on Iraq. Recently, a Blackwater PSD (personal security detail) shot, killed and wounded a large number of innocent Iraqi  civilians. It's not the first time. The Iraqi government proceeded to kick Blackwater out of the country. However, after "consultations" with the US, they rescinded that order. This goes to show that they are a US puppet government not a sovereign state and besides they are totally corrupt. Who would want to serve in the Iraqi government unless they were getting their pockets copiously lined?

Congress should submit and then resubmit essen- tially the same bill. Stand up for what you believe, Congress- men and women. If it means that the whole war then becomes defunded because Bush keeps vetoing a bill that would provide funding for the troops (but not the  contractors), so be it. The war and US involvement in Iraq would be over. If Bush, as Commmander-in-Chief, wants to leave his own troops there to fend for themselves without adequate funding to get out of Iraq gracefully, let it be on his shoulders that he wouldn't accept funding that would have either allowed the troops to continue on their mission or be redeployed with a minimum of hassle. If the Dems don't stand up to this guy and end this stupid war which is costing several American lives and $300 million per day not to mention numerous innocent Iraqi lives and millions of internal and external Iraqi refugees, they will become political nonentities. They will be irrelevant. Why play for time? For what? To win the Presidency? Show the American people they have some cajones and do the right thing. Stand up to Bush and the Publican neocons. They're total f---ups!

Oh, and by the way, Bush has finally admitted that he plans for the US to have an "enduring relationship" with Iraq. How prescient of him to have started building the "enduring bases" as soon as the US invaded and took over. That and the enormous US Embassy. Why they thought they were going to be leaving as soon as the nasty business was done. At least that was what the American people were led to believe. But no, as it turns out, the best thing is to have an "enduring relationship." Finally, the neocons are owning the intentions they had in the first place: an American power base in the middle east and easy access to huge oil deposits. And Alan Greenspan admits in his book, "The Age of Turbulence," that the US is in it for the oil. Surprise. Surprise! Jeez, I thought it was only to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. They sure had me fooled. They were there for the oil and permanent (some say "enduring") military bases from day 1!

The  Democrats are disappointing because they have done nothing since they gained control of Congress except to wimp out. Why did Harry Reid even allow a vote on that stupid bill to censure MoveOn.org? If the  Republicans controlled the Senate, would they even let a Democrat sponsored bill come to the floor for a vote. You bet not!  The Dems have good ideas, but they need to play hardball as long as the Publicans are playing hardball. They're being too nice to them. And where has it gotten them? You can go back through the history of a lot of nice, well-intentioned, intelligent men who've gone down to defeat at  Publican hands simply because they were too nice, starting with Adlai Stevenson, an extremely capable man who was labeled an "egghead," dismissed and dispatched by the Pubs. And then there was "Happy Warrior"  Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry. Even successsful Democratic Presidential candidates with extraordinary achievements like Franklin D Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were and are still being mocked, castigated, demonized, vilified, derided and otherwise ridiculed. I don't have to go through the whole litany of how these gentlemen were  mischaracterized from being "soft" on communism", the Willie Horton ads, Dukakis in the tank, Swift Boating etc. etc.

Why do the American people fall for such garbage? Why did the German people fall for Hitler?  It is for similar reasons in  both cases. Emotional appeals to fear, hatred, egotism and selfishness seem to trump appeals to logic, reason, understanding, caring and compasssion. The headline in a British newspaper after George W Bush won the Presidency the  second time was "How can 159 million people be so dumb?" In a democracy you're stuck with the average mentality of the average voter, and, as long as the average voter is a son of a bitch, the average President will be a son of a bitch. Unfortunately, human nature is much more susceptible to being appealed to by negative attack ads than by ideas for making the US and the world a better place. Unfortunately, because one would like to believe than human nature is basically good, but history belies that assertion. It is indeed unfortunate. Perhaps we're an evolutionary dead end and another more loving species will evolve some day. But hope springs eternal. Another Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, did the most positive thing of the 20th century for the American people by enacting the Civil Rights act and ending Jim Crow discrimination in public places. And he and the Democratic Party paid dearly for it. They lost the South to the Republicans who have no problem with exclusion and prejudice. Now at least my grandchildren will not have to put up with the crap that Billie Holliday, Miles Davis and other black people had to endure. That's at least a smidgeon of progress for the 20th century. But the US is still a "money talks, shit walks" society and always will be if the Publicans have anything to do with it.

Some think Hillary has the balls, the cajones, to take these scoundrels on. I tend to agree. She's been through it once. The Publicans lost no opportunity to villify and castigate Bill and Hillary from Whitewater to Travelgate to Vince Foster to Monica Lewinsky. I think Hillary knows what's in store for her if she's the Democratic nominee for President, and I think she's a tough enough cookie to back the Publicans off and put them in their place. If someone stands up to them, they, like most bullies, will back down. They're already attacking "Hillarycare."I hope Hillary has her attack ads ready!