Despite the ongoing threat of a veto from the President, the House passed its war-funding measure by a 218-208 margin, and that war-funding measure includes time-tables for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. As noted in the linked WaPo piece, it is remarkably rare for Congress to engage in this level of management of an ongoing war.
Of course, it was remarkably just as rare for the Congress to have utterly abandoned its oversight responsibilities of the Executive branch for the last six years, including the handing to the President of a blank check authority to carry out the war in the first place with virtually no debate, despite some of the largest protests in American history against that war. The argument at this point, I suppose, is that the President has overdrawn that blank check, and… well, it’s back to oversight. In response, we can all expect rhetoric about cheese-eating surrender monkeys… oh wait, that’s the French isn’t it? Well, we all know what’s coming… expect to hear about “voting for defeat”… and I daresay… is it too late to call a measure favored by the vast majority of Americans polled and now the majority of Congress “treason”? Of course it’s not!
The Senate is expected to pass the same bill shortly, and hand it up to the President by May Day, just in time for the fourth anniversary of the famous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the HMS USS Lincoln.
Well, this is the bill that Congress wants to pass. Maybe the President will get the bill he wants after vetoing it. He’s certainly counting on that. But maybe he won’t… indeed, maybe he won’t get any war funding bill at all. If that’s the case… what’s the phrase we’ve been hearing for over six years now? Oh yes: GET OVER IT.
tdog
btw: two more trickled out today…
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Lea Go
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