Just as the United States Senate was dominated last week with the fight to raise the Federal Minimum Wage, the next few days will see a heated battle over what sentiments — if any — the Senate should formally express in opposition to George W. Bush’s plan to escalate the Iraq war.
While that issue will dominate the woefully single-threaded media on Capitol Hill, a Senate resolution proposed by John Kerry (D-MA) is also very relevant to America’s national security and should at least get some mention as it waits in the wings.
A couple of weeks ago, Kerry introduced S. RES. 34, which calls on the White House to start focusing on something vaguely related to the attacks of September 11 and beef up “…the efforts of the United States to defeat the Taliban and terrorist networks in Afghanistan.”
Cosponsored by Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Joe Biden (D-DE) and Chris Dodd (D-CT), the resolution warns that Taliban activity is returning full-force to the region and that continuing to place that conflict in the back seat to Iraq will cause Afghanistan to “become what it was before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a haven for those who seek to harm the United States and a source of instability that threatens the security of the United States.”
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby told a grand jury that he largely “could not recall” several details of conversations he had with Vice President Cheney and others regarding Joseph C. Wilson IV, the war critic who accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to audiotapes played in court this afternoon.
Carefully and deliberately testifying in 2004 as part of the probe that eventually led to criminal charges against him, Libby, who was then Cheney’s chief of staff, said he did remember his boss telling him in June 2003 that former ambassador Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. But Cheney said it in “sort of an offhand manner, as a curiosity,” Libby said.
The vice president used a tone unlike his regular voice, Libby said, which “was much more matter of fact and straight.”
The audiotapes of Libby’s own words are being played to a jury that is weighing whether he is guilty of lying to investigators probing the leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity to the media.
Read more at the Washington Post
The vote was 49/47. They wanted no debate when they were in control, and they still want no debate, and are managing to control the Senate.
Not Voting - 4
Johnson (D-SD)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
A long-awaited Senate showdown on the war in Iraq was slammed shut before it even started last night when a nearly united Republican front voted to stop the Senate from debating a resolution opposing President Bush’s plan to send 21,500 additional combat troops into battle.
A day of posturing, finger pointing and backroom wrangling came to nothing when Democratic and Republican leaders failed to reach agreement on which resolutions would come to a vote and which would be subject to a filibuster. Republicans insisted that the impasse soon would be broken, but after Democrats came up 11 votes short of the 60 needed to break the filibuster, a solution was nowhere in evidence.
“It is clear their actions are not driven by getting votes on Republican proposals. They are driven by a desire to provide political cover for President Bush,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said. “They can’t rubber’stamp the president’s policies in Iraq any more, so they’ve decided to stamp out debate and let the president’s escalation plan proceed unchecked.”
I saw this a year or so ago. I guess the Superbowl made me think of it so I went searching and found it again. You have to watch this… and turn that volume WAY UP!
How Would You Train a Referee If You Get Yelled At or Scream
DAMASCUS (AFP) - The United Nations has opened a tented school for some 90 Palestinian refugee children in the no-man’s land between Iraq and Syria.
The children are among 354 Palestinians who have been stranded at the border for nine months since fleeing sectarian violence in Iraq in which Palestinians are often targeted as suspected sympathisers of Sunni Arab insurgents.
The school’s eight teachers are drawn from among the refugees themselves and underwent a week-long training course in Damascus last month, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Monday.
Why do we sit around, year after year, and allow this crap to go on???
Government watchdog groups say the system clearly needs to be changed. Naomi Seligman Steiner, spokeswoman for a government watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said what the fallen members of Congress are doing isn’t considered illegal.
“But that doesn’t mean the practice should continue,” she said.
Foley’s money keeps flowing
It’s legal for the ex-lawmaker to spend his campaign cash.
Former Congressman Mark Foley may be out of office and facing possible criminal charges, but that isn’t stopping him from spending money intended for his now-defunct re-election campaign.
Since resigning in late September amid allegations that he made inappropriate advances toward teenage interns, Foley has paid his sister more than $14,000 to run his campaign, almost $2,000 to lease a Volkswagen for the bygone campaign and an additional $50,000 to hire prominent criminal defense attorneys.
And there is still a lot more money to spend.
Foley has more than $1.6 million sitting in his campaign account, the biggest war chest of any candidate for office in Florida, according to the Federal Election Commission. And there are very few things he can’t use the money for, as long as he can prove the expenditures are associated with him having been in Congress.
Foley, a Fort Pierce Republican whose district included most of Charlotte County, resigned from the House on Sept. 29 after sexually suggestive computer messages he had sent to teenage boys became public.
Even though he no longer represents the 16th District and isn’t running for office, Foley, like other fallen members of Congress, still can use leftover campaign funds for anything but directly personal expenses.
BAGHDAD, Feb. 5 - A growing number of Iraqis are saying that the United States is to blame for creating conditions that led to the worst single suicide bombing in the war, which devastated a Shiite market in Baghdad on Saturday. They argued that the Americans had been slow in completing the vaunted new American security plan, making Shiite neighborhoods much more vulnerable to such horrific attacks.
The critics said the new plan, which the Americans have started to execute, had emasculated the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that is considered responsible for many attacks on Sunnis, but that many Shiites say had been the only effective deterrent against sectarian reprisal attacks in Baghdadfs Shiite neighborhoods. Even some Iraqi supporters of the plan, like Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister who is a Kurd, said delays in carrying it out had caused great disappointment.
In advance of the plan, which would flood Baghdad with thousands of new American and Iraqi troops, many Mahdi Army checkpoints were dismantled and its leaders were either in hiding or under arrest, which was one of the plan’s intended goals to reduce sectarian fighting. But with no immediate influx of new security forces to fill the void, Shiites say, Sunni militants and other anti-Shiite forces have been emboldened to plot the type of attack that obliterated the bustling Sadriya market on Saturday, killing at least 135 people and wounding more than 300 from a suicide driverfs truck bomb.
“A long time has passed since the plan was announced,” Basim Shareef, a Shiite member of Parliament, said Sunday. “But so far security has only deteriorated.”
American officials have said the new plan will take time, but new concerns emerged Sunday about the readiness of Iraqi military units that are supposed to work with the roughly 17,000 additional American soldiers who will be stationed in Baghdad under the plan, which President Bush announced last month.
Monday, February 5th
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