Iraq War Funding

I was outraged when I found that my congress critter, Dennis Moore, the man who is supposed to represent my interests in Congress, though a Democrat who professes that he is unhappy about the war still voted for the supplemental appropriations bill to give the Idiot in Chief enough money for another year of mass murder.

Here is what I sent him immediately after the vote:

Dear Congressman, I am terribly disappointed that you voted for the Iraq Supplemental money bill. Besides the pork included as a sweetener which is a terrible waste of the people's money you allowed the mass murder to go on for many more months.
At the rate that deaths have been occuring, you probably signed on for at least 20,000 more deaths (if you count Iraqis as human beings, that is).

Since money is the only lever that congress has to stop the war, with an evil man in the White House, you gave up the opportunity to stop the slaughter till this pile of money is used up.
Can you explain why you did this other than some cynical vote calculus? end

Today, I received his answer. It is a three page letter but I shall distill it down to three paragraphs that actually answered the question and we shall see what it all means.

Dennis Moore wrote:
"This passage of this legislation marks the beginning of the end of the Iraq war. H.R. 2206 brings accountability to the war for the first time and ends the previous policy of blank checks and open ended commitments.

I understand and share your frustration with the continued U.S. military involvement in Iraq, but to cut off all funding for the troops by voting against this bill would have been irresponsible and unrealistic. In early May, Congress sent the President an emergency supplemental spending bill for Iraq that provided every dollar President Bush requested for military operations in Iraq. It also provided a plan to bring this war to a responsible end, including language to start to redeploy our troops in four months, and to have the majority of them out by 2008, apart from a small number that would remain to continue training Iraqi Security.Forces. I supported this legislation, but President Bush vetoed this bill on May 1, 2007, and repeatedly stated his intention to veto any future bill containing a timeline for withdrawal. Due to the unwillingness of the Administration to compromise on this matter, Congress was forced to alter portions of the original bill in order to ensure our troops currently serving in Iraq have the equipment and supplies they need. While President Bush may be willing to play political games with this issue, I am not. As long as U.S. military personnel will remain in Iraq, I will do everything I can to ensure they, and their families back home, have the protection and support they deserve.

My support for the supplemental to ensure our troops have necessary funding does not mean I support the current strategy in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group (ISG) report, which was published in December 2006, contains several key strategies that I believe need to be implemented in Iraq as soon as possible. As you may know, the most important recommendations from the ISG call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the U.S. to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly." end of letter

So, when 50% of congress could cut off money and end the war, they passed that opportunity by and gave Bush enough money for another year. Now it will take 2/3 to take the money back or otherwise force the end of the war (needed to over ride the expected veto). What do we do now?

What Are They Smoking?

I sometimes wonder what the Republican mainstream is thinking. Are they thinking at all? Are they all under the influence of some dastardly drug? Maybe the Democrats drugged them to induce this idiotic self destructive behavior.

How can they expect to win an election with a pro-war candidate? Yet they have put up 9 pro-war candidates and apparently are holding 2 more pro-war candidates in the wings. They ridicule their one and only anti-war candidate.

The Republican candidate will be up against an anti-war Democrat (of variable degree of believability) in November of 2008. Do they really think the public will vote for more war by then? The war is an increasing disaster. It will be unbearable by 2008.

The results will be a Democratic victory and we will then suffer all the other baggage that comes from economically illiterate Democrats. We will have socialized medicine and more welfare state generally. It will be a disaster.

Making sure that Ron Paul is the nominee is an absolute necessity. Any pro-war candidate is idiocy of the first degree.

As a Libertarian, I should probably shut up and watch the Republicans commit party suicide, but I cannot remain silent when the risk to the nation is so great.

Who Is Ron Paul?

Today's title is an unabashed reference to Atlas Shrugged. Who is John Galt? That question permeated the book. Of course, if you persevered, you eventually met the hero of the book and the savior of civilization from the dark cloud of collectivism.

I don't know if Ron Paul can save us from the death of civilization that big government collectivism is leading us to. It may be too late. Nevertheless, we had better give him a chance.

In the past, the two party duopoly got people to vote for the lesser evil over and over again by keeping the existence of a libertarian alternative a secret. If anyone asked, he was told that he would be wasting his vote on the Libertarian and he should pick the lesser evil of the duopoly.

Election after election, the lesser evil won and the evil consequences have cumulatively put us into a precarious situation. Total government debt, including all the welfare entitlements, now exceeds the net worth of the entire nation (that of the government and of the people).

What is different this time is the libertarian alternative is running with a major party label. Of course, the main line Republicans can't stand this and will do their best to kill the only chance the nation has to break free from the evil of the two party lesser evil choice. For the most part, they are using the 'ignore him' approach. I suppose we will see how well that works for them.

The polls are giving mixed results. The polls taken immediately after a debate from debate viewers give Paul the lead. Polls taken of the nation as a whole do not. It appears that name recognition is the difference.

Ron Paul

Today I joined a group of people at the Plaza in Kansas City who were supporters of Ron Paul. These are not paid campaign workers. They are just citizens who know that something is very wrong in our nation. The government ignores the limits on its power put in place by the constitution and that is just not acceptable.

Because the government ignores its limits, we have confiscatory taxation to pay for things that the government should never be paying for. We have bureaucrats telling us what to do and what not to do in every aspect of our lives. We have a rapidly disappearing dollar and a huge debt. We have citizens and non-citizens alike locked up without charge or trial and our government is torturing people in our name.

These people, of many ethnic and party affiliations, all understand what is wrong-too much government. They want desperately to do something to support the one major party candidate that openly favors smaller government and means it. His lifetime voting record proves that he means it.

He is the only Republican candidate who is against the illegal and immoral war in Iraq. Since the vast majority of the public is also anti-war, one wonders what the other nine candidates are thinking. How do they think that they can win a general election?

Is it their expectation to be running against a pro-war Democrat and then give us the usual "lesser evil" story. Well no more lesser evil for this voter. The lesser evil that was elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004 has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings for no reason. How is that a lesser and acceptable evil?

If neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have an acceptable, peace loving and freedom loving candidate, then I urge all voters to elect the Libertarian candidate. We cannot survive a lesser evil again. You are not wasting your vote. You would waste it voting for the lesser evil one more time.

They Know They are Doing Wrong

There has been some debate in anti-war circles about the motives of the administration. Are they just idiots who do not understand human nature, the horrors of war or the consequences of their actions? Maybe they know full well what they are doing but consider the war profits worth the price that the American and Iraqi people are paying.

Some recent under the table activity might help us decide. They show shame! The website of the Kansas City architectural firm, Berger Devine Yaeger showed artist sketches of the proposed Baghdad embassy that they are designing. When it started getting noticed and linked to in anti-war websites, where it was referred to as the The Colossus of Baghdad, the Pentagon got upset. They did not want the nice pretty details made public. The excuse was that it might give terrorists information, but there was insufficient detail for that. The real reason could only be shame.

The firm's website was scrubbed and the Google cache of disappeared web sites was also scrubbed. Of course, in today's world, that is not nearly good enough. Anyone, anywhere in the world might well have saved copies and, in fact, they did. Take a look at what your tax dollars are building in a city where the locals still have no reliable public utilities four years after our government's illegal invasion.

http://dissentradio.com/embassy/embassy.html

I believe that this proves that the administration and the Neo-conservatives behind them know full well that they are doing wrong and they are a group of evil people, working toward their own riches and power. We, as a nation, have an obligation to renounce them and their actions up to the point of criminal action. We owe the world nothing less to remove the stain on our honor.