Politicians the world over have to be marveling at Nancy Pelosi's ability to bribe her fellow congressman and have it portrayed in the American press as "a triumph". Well done, Nancy. All it took was $20 billion (with a B) in earmarks and other vote-buying schemes to convince her fellow Democrats to vote for the Iraq appropriations bill:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated she can pile on enough pork to bribe enough Democrats to cobble together a bare, partisan majority to "send a message" that has no chance of becoming law. Congratulations…
The lengths that Democratic leaders had to go to win their "triumph" betrayed its cynicism. To get her narrow majority of 218 votes, Ms. Pelosi and Appropriations Chairman David Obey had to load it up like a farm bill: $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers, $283 million for dairy farmers–all told, some $20 billion in vote-buying earmarks of the kind Democrats campaigned against last year.
Not only has Pelosi proven the hypocracy of the Democrats' earlier promise to rid Washington of this sort of vote-buying and corruption, she has significantly hindered the overall war effort (not just the funding of it) by flatly stating when U.S. troops will withdraw. She has taken the management of the war out of the hands of the U.S. military in Iraq and instead imposed an arbitrary timeline on our troops in the field from 3,000 miles away. Has anyone ever heard of winning a war by declaring your intent to withdraw?
Even more sad (or ironic, depending on your point of view) is that the passage of this bill will accomplish nothing - 0 - zip - nada here in the U.S. The passage of this bill in the Senate is highly unlikely and President Bush has already declared his intention to veto the bill if it reaches his desk in the unlikely scenario that it does pass the Senate. What this bill actually accomplishes is that it sends the clearest message yet to those who would defeat our efforts in Iraq that we are preparing to abandon the place in the near future. Once again, well done Nancy.
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Mar 27th, 2007
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