DEMOCRATS ARE MAKING A BIG MISTAKE AND PLAYING WITH FIRE

Not a few of my friends would like to take the Inside the Beltway version of the Democratic Party apart today-- not just the out-and-out scumbags like Emanuel and Hoyer who have carefully taken part in sabotaging efforts to stop Bush's Iraq madness, but even the majority of House Democrats who voted no (after approving a procedural rule that would make it possible for them cast that no vote on Bush's Iraq occupation budget while insuring that he'd win anyway). I understand where they're coming from. And they-- as well as the majority of Democratic senators who authorized Bush's invasion and again voted to fund the occupation-- will have to be dealt with. I think the Rahm Emanuels and Steny Hoyers should be dealt with first. (Jonathan Alter doesn't see it the same way either camp does and I want to be sure to offer an opportunity to see his point of view too.)

But I want to share two e-mails I got today with you. First was one from Darcy Burner, a progressive grassroots Democrat who came very close to beating far right warmonger Dave Reichert in the Seattle suburbs last year and will take him on again in the coming election cycle. Darcy, like many non-Beltway progressives, is furious that the Democrats didn't stop Bush. She says she wouldn't have bought into the Hoyer/Emanuel crap. Watch her explain it.



The other e-mail came from a longtime DWT reader, John.

Hi Howie,

I'm sorry I ever gave Tester a friggin' nickel.
this is so disappointing and they can't paint a
positive face on it no matter how hard they try
someone wrote a blog on DWT the other day about how
the Dems are worse than the Republipigs because they
support evil when they know it's wrong
that's so true
it makes me sick
John

I'd post this but I can't figure out how to post
blogs anymore after google screwed with the thing

Democratic senators and congressmembers who think they can play games with the Iraq issue will find themselves weeping the same bitter and ignorant tears as John Boehner if they don't wise up. Carl Levin better hope his treachery will persuade many Republicans to vote for him in 2008. He certainly lost a lot of Democratic support, not from the lobbyists and Inside the Beltway parasites he has spent entirely too many years with, but among real grassroots Democrats.

I just finished a fantastic book by Joseph Wheelan, Invading Mexico. Set a mere 160 years ago, the analogy between the unprovoked invasion of Mexico by the duplicitous James Polk-- nicknamed "The Mole"-- and the similarly unprovoked invasion of Iraq (with far less to gain; at least Polk stole California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and parts of Texas and Oklahoma) by Bush, screams from every page. I read the epilogue as we were starting to land in Chicago. Let me quote a few lines:

Polk's dubious justification for the nation's first offensive war-- "American blood shed on American soil"-- was the first time, but not the last, that an American war had commenced on arguable grounds. Questionable pretexts would later launch the Spanish-American and Vietnam wars and the 2003 Iraq invasion: the mysterious explosion that sank the U.S.S. Maine; the alleged North Vietnamese gunboat attacks on the U.S.S. Maddox in the Golf of Tonkin; and Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction. Crushing Spain in ten months spared William McKinley a backlash over his war but prolonged fighting spurred challenges to the underlying causes of the wars prosecuted by Polk, Lyndon Johnson, and George W. Bush.

As did other presidents, Polk and his allies coerced support for their war agenda by accusing opponents of providing the enemy with "aid and comfort," the constitutional definition of treason. This gambit forced the opposition to walk a tightrope-- authorizing war funds to demonstrate their support for the troops, while criticizing the policies that necessitated the expenditures.

Several future U.S. presidents participated and I want to quote two of them. "Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion... and you allow him to make war at pleasure. This same future president, then a congressman staunchly opposed to the war had this to say about one of Polk's deceitful and cynical speeches about the war: "The half insane mumbling of a fever dream... His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down and be at ease." Abraham Lincoln's opposition to Polk and his war of aggression didn't prevent him Forman being elected president or from being judged by history as the greatest of all American presidents.

The second quote is by a man who served in the war in Mexico and was written by him after he had left the presidency. "Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times." That was Ulysses S. Grant talking about how the U.S. Civil War was divinely ordained punishment for the U.S. invasion of Mexico.

And if Hillary and Obama could figure it, they all can. Of course, Hillary and Obama are motivated. They want to do what the American people are demanding. Democrats who don't shouldn't be re-elected.


OH, AND ABOUT THOSE BENCHMARKS...

Bush signed the disgraceful supplemental spending bill Congress gave him. Some people think-- or say they think-- Bush was forced to accept benchmarks he didn't want. There's a reason Cheney has a wide smile on his ugly puss.

Thursday, May 24 the US Congress voted to continue the war on Iraq. They called it “supporting the troops.” I call it stealing Iraq’s oil-the second largest oil reserves in the world. The “benchmark” or goal the Bush administration has been working on furiously since the US invaded Iraq is the privatization of Iraqi oil. Now they have the US Congress blackmailing the Iraqi Parliament and Iraqi people: no privatization of Iraqi oil, no reconstruction funds.
This threat could not be clearer. If the Iraqi Parliament refuses to pass the privatization legislation, the US Congress will withhold US reconstruction funds promised to the Iraqis to rebuild what the United States has destroyed in Iraq. The privatization law, written by American oil company consultants hired by the Bush administration, would leave the control of only 17 of 80 known oil fields with the Iraq National Oil Company. The remainder (two-thirds) of known oil fields and all yet undiscovered oil fields would be up for grabs by the private oil companies of the world (but guess how many would go to the United States firms given to them by the compliant Iraqi government.)
No other nation in the Middle East has privatized its oil. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Iran give only limited usage contracts to international oil companies for one or two years. The $12 billion dollar “Support the Troops” legislation US Congress passed requires Iraq, in order to get reconstruction funds from the United States, to privatize its oil resources and put them up for long term (20-30 year) contracts.

Maybe the Bush Regime was even more like the rapacious Polk than I thought! Good thing we have a democracy in our country! Just ask Miss McConnell. Bush's Chief Senator Obstructionist doesn't seem to think the voters will hold their representatives accountable for voting against their interests on even the most crucial issues. Speaking to Al Hunt about the immigration controversy, McConnell, completely misreading the mood of America-- and especially of his own GOP Base-- claimed "I don't think there's a single member of either party next year who is going to fail to be re-elected over this issue." Isn't he going to be in for a surprise?