Another Veto and More Troops
09 May 2007 9:33 am by Taylor Marsh
VoteVets is running this blistering new ad from one of the troops’ own. Watch it. Jake
Tapper of ABC news has the story.
In an act of defiance perhaps not seen since President Truman fired Gen.
Douglas MacArthur, today the anti-war veterans group VoteVets.org, which has
been influential with Capitol Hill Democrats, is launching a half-million-dollar
TV ad campaign featuring Maj Gen John Batiste (Ret.), former commanding general
of the first infantry division in Iraq.
The truth is that we’re way past a “surge” now. It’s not even an
escalation anymore. It’s a build up.
This is what I began talking about when General Keane was on “Charlie Rose” a while back: The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000
soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as
replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there
until at least the end of this year.” That’s today’s news, with generals
seeing the “surge” into 2008.
Meanwhile, according to an article in Alternet today, the Iraqi parliament
has another idea.
On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members
of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country.
144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States
to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman
for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.
The president doesn’t like the House bill. But he’s got his own plan and his
own legacy to protect. I’ve read the bill, all two hundred pages and then some. It holds Bush accountable to Congress.
That’s what he doesn’t like about it; what he hates about Congress. Tough.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill. … ..
