6.23.2007
UniParty? You Betcha!- a quick survey...
Hillary booed for her stance on the Iraq war she voted for:
Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton was booed at a conference on Wednesday for blaming failure in Iraq on the Iraqi government.
Some members of the audience at a conference of a liberal activist group called ‘Take Back America’ were dissatisfied with Hillary's remarks on Iraq.
They were also unhappy with the Senator asking for more US troops to be sent to Iraq. The 'Take Back America' group had also protested Hillary's stand on Iraq in 2006.
Clinton had been doing well with the crowd, slamming President Bush in unusually harsh terms for a full 23 minutes before treading into the political danger zone of Iraq.
"The American military has succeeded," Clinton said, before she triggered jeers and competing cheers from supporters by adding, "It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions."
She also said, “"I love coming here every year. I see the signs - 'Lead us out of Iraq now.' That is what we are trying to do.” But the crowd booed her again.
Obviously there were some actual thinkers in the crowd- considering her actions, not her rhetoric.
Have you noticed the political arm of the elite is as far removed from reality on one side of the uniparty aisle as the other?
Take exception to the uniparty label? think the Democrats are our only hope?
Clinton and Obama Raiding Donors Who Backed Bush
As senators Clinton and Obama crisscross the country seeking the Democratic presidential nomination and sharply criticizing President Bush, they have been collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors who funded one or both of Mr. Bush's campaigns for the White House.
In the first quarter of this year, more than 150 former Bush donors pitched in for Mrs. Clinton's campaign, while a similar number anted up for Mr. Obama, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data performed for The New York Sun by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.
Even NeoCons love Obama:
...a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama – that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.
But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by
Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was “pure John Kennedy”, a neocon hero of the cold war.
In his speech, Obama called for an increase in defence spending and an extra 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines to “stay on the offense” against terrorism and ensure America had “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world”. He talked about building democracies, stopping weapons of mass destruction and the right to take unilateral action to protect US “vital interests” if necessary, as well as the importance of building alliances.
Mr Bush has the same stands.
Let Robert Kagan breathelessly inform you:
He wants the American military to "stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar," and he believes that "the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face." He wants to ensure that we continue to have "the strongest, best-equipped military in the world."
Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that "no president should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary," not only "to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked," but also to protect "our vital interests" when they are "imminently threatened." That's known as preemptive military action. It won't reassure those around the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a "vital interest" is and when it is "imminently threatened."
Read the full article. See what the Obama component of "The opposition" thinks.
Bases in Iraq forever? You bet- our hands on the gas pump- well Halliburtons, the oil companies, etc; fascism is a merging of corporate and state power, so yup, our hands.
Look:
Democrat-Led House Lays Legal Groundwork for Korea-Style Bases in Iraq
It seems the Democratic-led House of Representatives Thursday approved an amendment that, contrary to the leadership’s intention, lays the legal groundwork for a protracted – if not “permanent” — U.S. military presence in Iraq.
During debate on the 2008 Foreign Operations bill, the House approved by voice vote an amendment submitted by Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King that inserted the word “permanent” before “basing rights agreement” in the following text:
“SEC. 685. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Government of the United States to enter into a basing rights agreement between the United States and Iraq.”
As King has pointed out in the past, the United States has never had a “permanent” basing rights agreement with any country where, like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, Washington has based troops for decades. So the amendment, if it becomes law, means that the administration may now use funds to enter into any kind of basing rights agreement with the government of Iraq that it wishes – be it five, ten, 25 or even 50 years. Jim Fine of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) explained the effect of the amendment in a memo last month after King almost succeeded in getting the same amendment attached to the defense authorization bill.
6/23/2007
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