While I don't normally get too political, I know that the world supposedly doesn't like Bush, but do we really need to perpetuate it with pictures like this of him in the news?
While Bush approved the overall budget, he criticized the thousands of "earmarks" -- specific spending allocations for projects and programs favored by specific members of Congress, often for their home states and districts -- included in it.
"I am disappointed in the way the Congress compiled this legislation, including abandoning the goal I set early this year to reduce the number and cost of earmarks by half," he said (from http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071226/pl_afp/uspoliticsbudgetiraqmilitary_071226231432).
So while he asked for these funds months ago, Congress finally approves it anyway. I hope all that grandstanding got their point across.
I listen to the Sean Hannity radio show on my way home from work and concur with his assessment that progress is being made in Iraq. I don't think you can simply abandon it to its fate now, whatever the original point of going in there was. If the U.S. just up and leaves, there will be a quicksand that will have everything worse ten years from now, or hasn't anybody learned that from Desert Storm?
(Picture taken from http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/President-Bush/ss/events/us/081201presidentbush;_ylt=AkhB2qHW_pU3z8g3TX0H729vzwcF)
2 comments:
Matt, what Sean Hannity doesn't tell you is that the "impression" of progress being made in Iraq (less civilians killed each month) is due entirely to the fact that Baghdad and surround areas have now been nearly ethnically cleansed...in short, the Shiites and Sunnis have run out of each other to kill in the area. Desert Storm was 100% different...we didn't occupy Iraq. Bush Sr was smart enough to not do that because he knew what would happen. And, when you repeat the talking point that "if we leave Iraq what will happen", you totally ignore the facts of what is going on now. Even the military families are now firmly against Bush for what he's done to them. The sooner we get out, the better it will get. We ended up leaving Vietnam and that turned out to be the best thing to happen.
When the US lost Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists banned all other political parties, arrested public servants and sent them to "reeducation camps." They became Communist, and only because their economy was dying, in 1986 opened up a free market. I would argue that it is better now, in 2007, but not good from roughly 1973 to the late 80s. Is this "soon" enough if the US leaves?
I also feel that we never should have entered the war. I feel it was under false pretenses and now only think we need to finish the job. The first Bush: In a foreign policy move that would later be questioned, President Bush achieved his stated objectives of liberating Kuwait and forcing Iraqi withdrawal, then ordered a cessation of combat operations —allowing Saddam Hussein to stay in power. Bush later explained that he did not give the order to overthrow the Iraqi government because it would have "incurred incalculable human and political costs... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq" (Wikipedia page on BUSH).
However, my main point in my little post was that the money was finally approved anyway. And if the war effort needed that money, come hell or high water the Congress voted them to go there, they should have the funds without people back home holding up the works.
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