No More 'Enemy Combatants'

This decision by the Department of Justice released today outlining a new standard for terrorist detainees is disappointing:

The definition does not rely on the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief independent of Congress’s specific authorization. It draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress. It provides that individuals who supported al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was substantial. And it does not employ the phrase “enemy combatant.”

Aside from the needless announcement (in my opinion, as it has nothing to do with the submission to the court) that the phrase “enemy combatant” is a thing of the past, the new definition is more ominous because it marks a President ceding to the Congress, and to the timorous authorities that codify the international laws of war, the independent authority as Commander-in-Chief to decide what to do with captured fighters that every American president has enjoyed since George Washington.

It isn’t in the nature of executives to surrender constitutional power. No matter how benevolent a game they talk prior to election, every president ends up jealously guarding, and expanding where he can, the prerogatives of the executive branch. There’s nothing wrong with it: it was meant by the Founders to be that way. They understood the president would always test the limits of his power and may need to be checked, and they knew that the legislative branch in wartime would dither as usual, just when quick command decisions are imperative.

Our system of government hates a vacuum just as much as nature does. The authority that Obama is surrendering as Commander-in-Chief will immediately be absorbed and expanded upon, somehow, by Congress--which is now under the control of a majority of people who never took the jihadist war we’re defending against seriously. Now that he’s surrendered it in the first few weeks of his first year in the White House, he will never get it back without a horrendous fight.

What I’ve seen of President Obama doesn’t make me believe he’s any less hungry for power than any other President--far from it. Is it possible that he has just shot off one of his own presidential appendages (I won’t speculate which one) out of sheer ideological obtuseness our being in a desperate global war, and not just a persistent cycle of international crime?

Test Drive the New 2009 Barney!

One way or the other the Democrats in Congress are determined to put someone named Barney in charge of the Big Three. What with the Donkey Party’s unswerving sense of priority (e.g., automobiles are the root of all evil, the Planet is on fire), and the historical weakness of Democrats, when they're in a majority, for refusing to consider opposing views, the most Detroit can hope for is a compromise on exactly which Barney gets selected.

With that in mind, we thought we’d ask our readers which, of the three most prominent Barneys on the national scene today, is likely to do the least amount of damage to the auto industry?


Our early research indicated that a fourth prominent Barney was the hands-down favorite for being able to do a better job than either the Congressional Democrats or the current Big Three CEOs.

I’m referring of course to Barney Fife, who, unlike any of the auto companies’ current and recent executives, once enjoyed a reputation for not letting much get by him.

But we haven’t included him in this survey for technical reasons, including that a) the real Don Knotts only played someone named Barney Fife on TV, and b) he's dead.

Too bad. That leaves Detroit one Barney short of a savior, and the future of the automakers very likely in the hands of someone like this:

Watergate II: 'What Did He Plumb, and When Did He Plumb It?'

It all makes sense. Didn't Nixon have "plumbers" too? Hmmmmm?

Media flagship The New York Times has committed umpteen Ivy-League trained Masters of Journalism to prowl the records halls of Ohio digging up the dirt on one Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, under serious suspicion that the individual known to police by his alias,“Joe the Plumber,” is in reality an undocumented Republican. ("Real Deal on ‘Joe the Plumber’ Reveals New Slant”):

Thomas Joseph, the business manager of Local 50 of the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters and Service Mechanics, based in Toledo, said Thursday that Mr. Wurzelbacher had never held a plumber’s license, which is required in Toledo and several surrounding municipalities.

He also never completed an apprenticeship and does not belong to the plumber’s union, which has endorsed Mr. Obama. On Thursday, he acknowledged that he does plumbing work even though he does not have a license.

His full name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. And he owes back taxes, too, public records show. The premise of his complaint to Mr. Obama about taxes may also be flawed, according to tax analysts. Contrary to what Mr. Wurzelbacher asserted and Mr. McCain echoed, neither his personal taxes nor those of the business where he works are likely to rise if Mr. Obama’s tax plan were to go into effect, they said.

Name is Sam not Joe? Makes an honest living as a plumber without union membership?? Owes a small tax debt???

Well, I know I feel betrayed by Joe the Plumber.

They'll probably find out next that he actually likes it when his taxes go up, and wouldn't have minded Obama's tax hike at all.

Now Joe must join the ranks of other famous and outspoken persons who, upon examination, were discovered to be unlicensed posers, such as Abe Lincoln (who practiced law in Illinois without benefit of ABA sanction), and Jesus of Nazareth, (the myth of whose "Jewish carpenter" status has now been debunked by higher critics denying His lack of union sanction).

(I know what you're thinking: Does Obama meet his own high standard? He sure does. He never community organized, and still doesn't, without the express sanction of the official community organizing governing body, ACORN).

If Joe the Plumber's imposture as a legitimate member of the working class doesn't demand prompt investigation by House and Senate committees in the new Democratic Congress, I don't know what will.

Freethinking Isn't Free

From time to time in politics there are issues that are so divisive they exclude any neutral position--claim a middle ground only at the expense of your moral existence and any claim to rational thought. These kinds of issues force people to choose sides, even against people whom formerly were close allies.

Abortion does that: you can’t deny what grows in a pregnant woman’s belly, so if you want to endorse its homicide you’ll have to choose to make your own the specious arguments of that side, like that aborting mothers are having their “lives” saved by the procedure, and "anti-choice" advocates are not trying to save babies, but only hurt women. It took 25 years for Naomi Wolf to finally admit, “Yeah, we know we’re killing babies. You got a problem with that?”

The war against jihadism is the same; with an enemy so explicit about hating us, and so devoted to killing us as the Islamists are, that denying we're in a war means a complete mental shutdown (you know, sort of like the Democratic debate series). So if you really must try to prevent our side from fighting back, you’ll have to embrace the insane position that all that violence out there is the result of us unfairly attacking them.

John McCain’s likely nomination is going to force that kind of choosing up. Supporters of McCain, many of them highly respected, very intelligent, usually rational, many of them exemplary leaders, are simply not going to be able to keep saying that McCain is clearly a conservative when he clearly is not. And because they all know he clearly is not, sooner or later they're going to have to choose to explain those of us who won't trust McCain the same way liberals always explain conservatives, as just a bunch of intolerant, narrow-minded wackos.

By way of example, today Detroit News editorial page editor Nolan Finley, whom we here at DU have, at least once or twice, had a kind word for, reveals how angry he is that McCain isn’t being embraced by “the Republican Party's right wing.” In fact, he’s gone and called us all “self-righteous screechers” and “right-wing nuts.” (“No room in GOP tent for free thinkers”).

Using as an example the experience of former Michigan Congressman Joe Schwartz, (a one-term Republican turned out in 2006 for being too liberal), Finley describes how Schwartz must now watch “the GOP’s self-righteous screechers try to hang a scarlet ‘L’ around the neck of his good friend John McCain.” Finley explains that the self-righteous party purists can’t stand McCain because he’s an independent thinker who has engaged in the “occasional flirtation with moderate politics.”

But to describe McCain’s magnetic attraction to moderate-to-liberal politics as an occasional flirtation is like saying that Kwame Kilpatrick has been rumored, in those rare instances he encounters a woman he finds more attractive than his wife, to bestow upon her a chaste, good-natured wink.

Nor does it speak well for Finley’s confidence in his man’s bona fides that he has to viciously attack someone like Ann Coulter as a “character assassin” with an “emaciated face.” (We recall that Finley last year insulted our friend Debbie Schlussel by denouncing her as a “chubby Ann Coulter”; Nolan must have a very exacting standard for when a woman is just right). Anyhow, Coulter’s ironical-satirical announcement that she would vote for Clinton because President Hillary might arguably govern in a fashion less liberal than McCain is intended to draw attention to McCain’s liberal record, and has nothing to do with actually endorsing Clinton.

I'm sure the non-angry Finley might figure that out. But he's chafing against his loyalty to the freethinking John McCain. And we already know that when one side in an argument hasn’t any facts, it promptly resorts to name-calling. (By the way, I don’t consider political commentators referring to McCain as “liberal” as calling names. I haven't heard anybody call McCain a "liberal nut." Nor is it possible to discuss American politics without placing people and ideas somewhere along the liberal-conservative extremes. On the other hand, I think being called a “right wing nut” is meant to be an insult.)

Finley wants to see the GOP move to the center, which means farther to the left. But we didn't win in 2004, 2000, and 1994 by running away from conservative principles, even if our leadership didn't always live up to the ideals. And if the party had stayed closer to its tradition the past few years, we wouldn’t have lost Congress in 2006.

But Schwartz and Finley think the Republicans will be better off with more freethinkers and less “ideology,” (i.e., less Reagan conservatism). Schwartz describes those folks with cold objectivity as “the same gang that got me.”

Not that I’m saying these guys are “liberals,” (chubby, emaciated, or otherwise). But just check out this list of what Joe Schwartz and Finley like and don’t like about the current Republican Party.

They dislike “moral absolutism,” “conservative orthodoxy,” and “doctrinal purity,” and they prefer “pragmatism,” “influence,”and victory based upon the sentiments of the “center” (the left).

Freedom of thought is one thing, being a “freethinker” another. The term “freethinker” actually denotes a person drifting along in a sea of moral relativism, resistant to hard-and-fast rules, and mistrustful of the constraints of tradition, religion, society, etc.--in other words, freethinkers are liberals. The opposite of being a freethinker is to hold firm principles. In other words, conservative. (The official flower of the freethinker, by the way, is the pansy. (“A Pansy for Your Thoughts”). Not, for all I dislike his politics, that I think McCain is a pansy.)

But it doesn’t shock my conscience if there’s no room for such freethinking people in the Republican Party. Don't they already have their own party, and at least 2 others if you count the Greens and the Socialist Workers Party? And isn’t Cindy Sheehan getting a new one up?

You see, it's the rest of us who still need a party. Leave this one alone.

Life sometime pitches us a moral dilemma. It may well be that I do vote for McCain next November, holding my nose, as all those other millions who say they’ll be holding their noses (here’s an idea: we can all leave the polls showing off our pinched red noses the same way the liberated Iraqis proudly showed off their purple fingers--we can even start the rumor that Bill Clinton secretly voted for McCain). I would do this, naturally, only to avoid the greater moral evil of helping elect a nation-ending Clinton or Obama administration. But the reason it will pose a dilemma is precisely because I'm squeezed from onse side by a pragmatic need to spare the country a Democratic government in wartime, and from the other by certain moral and political absolutes and orthodoxies that I hold dear--and that McCain does not hold dear-in fact, despises.

Also, I was one of the people extremely unhappy that in 2006 Republican voters felt that “punishing” their party by allowing a Democratic majority in Congress made either moral or political sense, when to me it made neither. Sometimes adulthood means you don't get a choice of good and evil, only a choice between evils.

In spite of Finley’s feeling the need to say it, McCain’s nomination is still not “inevitable.” It is not even mid-February. We conservatives have only just been bereaved of any viable conservative nominee, and we ought to be entitled to a few weeks of grieving the fact and discussing our options before we resign ourselves (if we do) to having to support a demon in preference to an archdemon. But I don’t have to put up with any revision of reality that will make me start believing McCain is a conservative.

To me that makes us, on some level anyway, principled. To the freethinking Nolan Finley, that just makes us all right-wing nuts.

Does This Count?

Women walk through Baghdad's Zawra Park. (NYT)

I wonder if it’s official enough when the newspaper of record reports that we're prevailing in Iraq.

In today’s New York Times, we’re given a picture of returning normalcy, freedom of movement, and defiant hope by returning Iraqi exiles, and Baghdad residents enjoying the return of peaceful neighborhoods. (“Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves”).

This is all thanks to the surge, by the way, as even the Times reporters eventually acknowledged, with conditions, in paragraph seven.

Iraqis are clearly surprised and relieved to see commerce and movement finally increase, five months after an extra 30,000 American troops arrived in the country. But the depth and sustainability of the changes remain open to question.

Open to question, that is, by the New York Times.

Nor is it only Iraqis who are clearly surprised. I’ll bet they are less surprised than the New York Times staff, and the rest of anti-war media who made a solemn pact not to report any progress.

Not two weeks ago on November 7th the Times editorial board (which monitors the nation’s pulse from Times Square, NY, NY), had this message to Congress from “the Heartland”:

Iraq War: The Heartland Speaks

By

The Editorial Board

How does middle America feel about the Iraq War? Yesterday’s election gave a good indication, in the results of two referendums in Montana.

In Helena, voters backed a referendum – by a 5,032 to 3,108 margin — “urging the Congress of the United States to authorize and fund an immediate and orderly withdrawal of the United States military from Iraq.” That’s nearly 62 percent of the vote.

A referendum asking Congress to “fund our military forces totally and without conditions in the global war on terror” went down to defeat.

In Missoula, a referendum asking Congress “to authorize and fund an immediate and orderly withdrawal of the United States military from Iraq in a manner that is fully protective of U.S. soldiers” won with nearly 65 percent of the vote.

The question now is what Congress intends to do about it.

We’re all for the Big Sky state. But is Montana, which has a population lower than 1 million, (all patriots, I'm sure), really the heartland?

And as for what Congress intends to do about it, and did do about it, they launched yet one more Iraq funding bill with withdrawal strings attached in complete detachment from reality of what's happening in Iraq.

Since taking the majority, they have forced 40 votes on bills limiting President Bush’s war policy. Only one of those has passed both chambers, even though both are run by Democrats.

That one was vetoed by Bush.

I don’t think you rack up a 40-0 record when you know the heartland is behind you.

In any event, today’s Times article proceeds, by fits and starts, to report on what are clearly significant signs of returning normalcy in Baghdad:

“Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.”

Reporters Damien Cave and Alissa J. Rubin use a lot of this kind of cautious language. Moreover, I think they do some imputing onto their interviewees of their own real difficulties believing that they could have gotten it so wrong--the liberation of Iraq, the battle against Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shia insurgents, the surge. This kind of thing wasn't supposed to be possible, ever, ever again:

Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.

The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says.

As a result, for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this city. In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at a handful of once shuttered liquor stores customers now line up outside in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi Army.

The Times reporters tell us, “Iraqis sound uncertain about the future, but defiantly optimistic.” And who exactly are the pessimists they're defying?

“Many Baghdad residents seem to be willing themselves to normalcy, ignoring risks and suppressing fears to reclaim their lives. Pushing past boundaries of sect and neighborhood, they said they were often pleasantly surprised and kept going; in other instances, traumatic memories or a dark look from a stranger were enough to tug them back behind closed doors.”

And yet, from what we read here, the traumatic memories are only that--memories--and the perceived “dark looks” aren’t real--strangers aren’t bothering them now. The story nowhere mentions where any returning Iraqi, or any Baghdad resident daring to cross into the other sect’s territory, or venturing out after dark, finds out that the thing he fears happening actually does happen.

These Baghdad residents aren’t “willing themselves to normalcy”; they're re-discovering that the conditions of normalcy--or many of them--have returned, and are willing themselves to take their neighborhoods and lives back. Willing it even in spite of these buzzkill reporters who undoubtedly keep suggesting to them that this progress--that the media has long since declared could not possibly happen--is happening, has happened. That in spit of many signs to the contrary, this may not be “only a temporary respite from violence,” something the reporter cannot possibly know.

Time and again the reporters run across residents who refuse to be the terrified victims Times readers have been promised. Instead,

“They can joke because they no longer fear that the violence will engulf them.

“In longer interviews across Baghdad, the pattern was repeated. Iraqis acknowledged how far their country still needed to go before a return to normalcy, but they also expressed amazement at even the most embryonic signs of recovery.”

What pattern was repeated? The pattern of "longer" interviews with unsinkably cheerful Iraqis. The only thing a reporter wants is a good quote, then he's done. Prolonging an interview means he hasn't got what he wants yet. These interviews that had to be prolonged so realistic (and much smarter) journalists could wear these poor Iraqis down with suggestions that all this apparent progress may seem good now, but has its “limits,” lor lacks “depth and sustainability,” or is only “tentative.”

No matter.

Cave and Rubin may as well be Tom Cruise telling his sob story to that little kid in "Jerry Maguire": it's hard to be serious when the other party can't stop laughing from sheer joy. (And see how the reporters do report the Iraqi reactions with something like pity mixed with awe.) In spite of lenghty interviews, the interviewees continue to express amazement with how well things are going. Amazement even at these “most embryonic signs of recovery.”

But hey. I have to remind myself these are Times reporters, after all. They're hard-wired not to see anything amazing in the "embryonic." Nor have they any concept of the tell-tale signs of victory, even when they're reporting it for themselves.

Democrats and the Low Road

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal editorial, "Trashing Petraeus" hits it right on the head by saying that "[m]embers of the Democratic leadership and their supporters have now normalized the practice of accusing their opponents of lying."

With the exception of Joe Biden, Democrats refused to clearly renounce the MoveOn.org New York Times ad accusing General Petraues of "cooking the books," and transmuting the General's name into "General Betray Us."

The editorial gives these examples of how widespread is the new normal on the Left:

In an editorial on Sunday, the New York Times, after saying that President Bush "isn't looking for the truth, only for ways to confound the public," asserted that "General Petraeus has his own credibility problems." We read this as an elision from George Bush, the oft-accused liar on WMD and all the rest, to David Petraeus, also a liar merely for serving in the chain of command. With this editorial, the Times establishes that the party line is no longer just "Bush lied," but anyone who says anything good about Iraq or our effort there is also lying. As such, the Times enables and ratifies MoveOn.org's rhetoric as common usage for Democrats.

Late last week, for instance, we heard it said of General Petraeus that, "He's made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual." This was from Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate.

The Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Lantos, said Thursday that General Petraeus would not be the author of his report; it would be written "by Administration political operatives." He opened yesterday's hearing, moments before General Petraeus was to speak, by saying, "We cannot take anything this Administration says on Iraq at face value."....

Can this really be the new standard of political rhetoric across the Democratic Party?....

Under these new terms, public policy is no longer subject to debate, discussion and disagreement over competing views and interpretations. Instead, the opposition is reduced to the status of liar. Now the opposition is not merely wrong, but lacks legitimacy and political standing. The goal here is not to debate, but to destroy.

Sounds accurate. And this was written before the disgraceful performance of so many Congressional Democrats during Monday's and Tuesday's hearings with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

The destroy-don't-debate goal explains why there's been nothing like meaningful discussion over policy in the war against Islamic jihad since the Democratic Party, bare months after 9/11, chose a strategy of political annihilation of a popular war-time administration over cooperation on vital matters of national security or--for that matter--on any other issue in the national interest.

For all kinds of reasons, Democrats just don't do moral indignation very well. Like everything else, they overreach, thinking that a soapbox, a furrowed brow, and self-righteous braying at a captive witness who can't respond in kind makes them look like modern-day John the Baptists, rather than insufferable Elmer Gantrys. They also can't get it through their heads that seizing the moral high ground takes more than just convincing people their opponents are liars--it also means convincing people your side is pure of that defect as well.

Ralph Peters on 'The "Quit Iraq" Caucus'

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters gives this timely view in the New York Post of the latest Congressional effort to end the war in Iraq the hard way: by deliberately losing it.

THE 'QUIT IRAQ' CAUCUS:

By RALPH PETERS
July 11, 2007 --

EVEN as our troops make serious progress against al-Qaeda-in-Iraq and other extremists, Congress - including Republican members - is sending the terrorists a message: "Don't lose heart, we'll save you!"

Iraq's a mess. Got it. The Bush administration has made so many mistakes I stopped counting a year ago. But we've finally got a general in Baghdad - Dave Petraeus - who's doing things right. Iraqi politicians are still disgracing themselves, but our troops are killing America's enemies - with the help of our former enemies.

Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq is suffering a humiliating defeat, as fellow Sunni Muslims turn against the fanatics and help them find the martyrdom they advertise. Yet for purely political reasons - next year's elections - cowards on Capitol Hill are spurning the courage of our troops on the ground.

The frantic political gamesmanship in Congress would nauseate a ghoul. Pols desperate for any cover and concealment they can get have dragged the Iraq Study Group plan from the grave.
Masterminded by former Secretary of State Jim "Have Your Hugged Your Saudi Prince Today?" Baker, the report is a blueprint for a return to yesteryear's dictator-smooching policy (which helped create al Qaeda - thanks, Jimbo!).

That Baker report reminds me of cheap horror films where the zombies just keep coming back - except that zombies retain a measure of integrity.

But if Republicans are rushing to desert our troops and spit on the graves of heroes, the Democratic Party at least has been consistent - they've supported our enemies from the start, undercutting our troops and refusing to explain in detail what happens if we flee Iraq.
So I'll tell you what happens: massacres. And while I have nothing against Shia militiamen and Sunni insurgents killing each other 24/7, the overwhelming number of victims will be innocent women, children and the elderly.

Bosnia? That was just rough-necking at recess compared to what Islamist fanatics and ethnic beasts will do. Given that Senate Majority Misleader Harry Reid and Commissar of the House Nancy Pelosi won't tell us what they foresee after we quit, let me lay it out:

* After suffering a strategic defeat, al-Qaeda-in-Iraq comes back from the dead (those zombies again . . .) and gets to declare a strategic victory over the Great Satan.

* Iran establishes hegemony over Iraq's southern oil fields and menaces the other Persian Gulf producers. (Sorry, Comrade Gore, even that Toyota Prius needs some gasoline . . . )

* Our troops will have died in vain. Of course, that doesn't really matter to much of anyone in Washington, Democrat or Republican. So we'll just write off those young Americans stupid enough to join the military when they could've ducked out the way most members of Congress did.

* A slaughter of the innocents - so many dead, the bodies will never be counted.

But I hope somebody tries to count the dead after our Congress kills them. As for those on the left who sanctimoniously set out rows of shabby combat boots to "teach" the rest of us the cost of war, I fully expect them to put out displays of women's slippers and children's shoes to show the world how many innocents died when they "brought our troops home now." (Note to the demonstrators - better start bulk-ordering those slippers and booties now.)

I hate the long-mismanaged mess in Iraq. I wish there were a sensible, decent way to get out that wouldn't undercut our security and produce massive innocent casualties. But there isn't. Not now. And, like it or not, we have a moral responsibility as well as practical interests in refusing to surrender to the butchers in Iraq.

This has been the Bush-Cheney War. But it will only be fair to call the carnage after we run away the "Reid-Pelosi Massacres."

Ralph Peters' new book, "Wars of Blood and Faith," goes on sale next week.

Congress Blinks, Media Winks

If you have an interest in the how-to’s of journalistic advocacy posing as news writing, there's a good example in today’s Detroit News about the Congress’s passage of the Iraq spending bill with the withdrawal timelines completely removed.

As an irreducible political fact, Congress and the President squared off on this issue, and the President got what he wanted. In other words, he clearly won.

(Or, as Jimmy Carter might phrase it, the worst President in history once again bests outfoxed the smarter and morally superior Congress.)

(Or, as the elitist press would phrase it, the stupidest moron to ever occupy the Oval Office once again gets the majority smarter party to go along with what he wants.)

Clearly the President's victory, even if you don't agree with it, is the real newsworthy nugget. And had a liberal President prevailed over a stubborn Republican majority in a similar standoff, is there any doubt the headlines would all have been some variation of “Congress Blinks”?

Instead, the media is presenting Bush’s victory, and the defeat of the Pelosi and Reid “new direction” on Iraq, as a neutral event:

“Congress voted Thursday to meet President Bush's demand for about $95 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, providing a momentary truce in a bitter struggle over war policy.”

A momentary truce? Does that mean that the two sides are going to go back to fighting about this bill after the President has signed it?

And according to the headlines in the Detroit News, the Democrats did not lose: “Congress approves $95B for Iraq war: Dems back off, take out troop pullout timetable after earlier Bush veto."

So the Dems didn’t lose, they just “backed off.” There are no losers here, especially the Democrats; nor is there a winner, especially the illiterate Moron in Chief.

And the New York Times, from which the identical Detroit News report was taken, has this interesting headline: “Congress Passes War Funds Bill, Ending Impasse.”

So you see, it isn’t that Bush stuck to his guns, or did exactly what he said he would do, and wrested a proper bill from Congress, and handed the Democratic caucus a major loss in return. Nor did the Democratic majority back down after one of the most overheated rhetorical grandstanding ever. Rather, Congress ended an “impasse,” not only avoiding being the loser, but getting credit for initiative and doing something actually rather positive.

A similar headline may have been written in April 1865, "Army of Norther Virginia Surrenders to Federal Troops at Appamatox Courthouse, Ending Impasse."

Never mind that if Congress had passed the same goddamned bill in January when the President first asked for it, and before creating the impasse that the Times is now crediting them with ending, the troops would have had the money by now.

As if we didn’t know the difference.

By way of reminder of just how much Pelosi and Reid anted up in their losing hand against the President, here is a brief remider, from her own website, of how Pelosi’s fans were raving her up in March for her brave position on imeidate withdrawals,

Pelosi war-bill gamble pays off; The House speaker's triumph was anything but assured when she announced the measure -- without votes

03/24/2007
By Noam Levey

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced an angry group of liberal lawmakers when she stepped into her red-walled Capitol office on the afternoon of March 8.

That morning, the San Francisco Democrat had announced plans to push legislation requiring President Bush to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of August 2008 -- at the latest.
But the antiwar members of her party who gathered in the large conference room overlooking the National Mall wanted the war over sooner. Many were threatening to defy their leader and vote against the bill.

For 2 1/2 hours Pelosi listened, parrying each complaint with an argument she would make hundreds of times over the next two weeks: Democrats had to unite behind a bill that challenged Bush's management of the war.

Friday, Pelosi carried the day.

In the most difficult trial of her speakership, Pelosi pushed through the first legislation mandating an end to U.S. involvement in the Iraq war.

The 218-212 vote vindicated the risk she took in championing the controversial withdrawal plan before she had the votes.

And it rewarded the round-the-clock cajoling, lobbying and pleading by Pelosi and her top lieutenants, who worked until just before the vote to keep Democrats united behind the bill. In the end, only 14 Democrats voted against it.

"She was the general here, and there wasn't a stone left unturned, a person left uncontacted or a member whose position was left unknown," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), one of the chamber's staunchest war opponents, whose decision to back the bill helped put it over the edge. "It was a brilliant campaign."

Pelosi, who closed the debate for the Democrats on Friday, afterward called the vote the beginning of a "new direction."

"This new Congress voted to bring an end to the war in Iraq," she said.

Less than a month ago, it was far from clear that the new speaker could get her party there. Democrats united behind a nonbinding resolution criticizing Bush's plan to deploy additional troops to Iraq, but they appeared to be splintering over what to do next when they took up an emergency spending bill to pay for the war.

Moderates, worried about meddling in military affairs, rebelled over a plan to require troops to meet a set of readiness standards before they could be sent to Iraq.

And lawmakers in the Out of Iraq Caucus, which has more than 80 members, demanded that the spending bill include a timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces -- an idea that party leaders had largely dismissed when they took power.

But after days of huddling with party leaders, Pelosi decided to embrace a timeline. On the morning of March 8, she strode into the ceremonial speaker's office to announce that Democrats would force the president to begin withdrawing U.S. troops no later than next year.

Pelosi acknowledged she didn't have votes to pass the measure. In fact, the bill was still in the drafting stage. But the speaker left no doubt about the stakes. "We have to pass it," she told dozens of journalists packed into the office….

Later, Pelosi’s website quoted these editorials with approval in response to Bush’s veto of the withdrawal bill:

Rocky Mountain News: Bush’s Farwell (sic) Tantrum
By Paul Campos
May 1, 2007

“Whatever one thought of the original decision to invade Iraq, the political question the nation now faces could not be clearer: Should we ask our troops to continue to fight this war, and our children to pay for it through future tax increases…

“The American people have already answered that question, and their answer is ‘No.’… Every opinion poll shows that, by large majorities, Americans support the efforts of Democrats to force President Bush to begin withdrawing our troops…

“In the end, President Bush's failure to heed the will of the people isn't so much an act of principle, but rather an outburst of sheer peevishness. With Democrats in control of Congress, he's no longer getting a blank check to fund his military adventures.”

The Miami Herald: Congress Declares Vote of No Confidence
May 1, 2007

“By sending President Bush an Iraq spending bill with a timetable for withdrawal, Congress has declared itself unequivocally against the war even though the nation's troops are still on the battlefield. This is an unmistakable, and we believe deserved, vote of no confidence in the way the administration has managed the war…

“Congress is responding to the popular will and, more important, fulfilling a constitutional duty.”

And there was there was Harry Reid’s speech on April 23rd, in which he said,

“Now in the fifth year of President Bush's mismanagement and mistakes, there is no magic formula. But, there is a way forward that gives us our best chance for a responsible end to the war - that protects our strategic interests, strengthens our security, and brings our troops home.

“That way forward is being forged today in Congress, with the help and advice of Democrats and Republicans, civilian experts and retired generals, as well as the good judgment of the American people, who have made their voices heard loud and clear.

“Today, I speak of where things stand on the ground in Iraq and in the public discourse at home. I also speak of why an Iraq strategy that a bipartisan majority in Congress supports is our best way forward.”

If the Miami Herald is correct that the original bill requiring withdrawal timelines was Congress's way of “Responding to the popular will and, more important, fulfilling a constitutional duty.” then yesterday Congress either ignored the popular will, failed in their Constitutional duty, or just revealed itself as the posturing, political windbags that they are.

Still More Conyers

Michigan’s Rep. John Conyers, possibly wary of spending too much time away from the Capitol with his influential wife, Detroit Councilwoman Monica Conyers, discussing her theories on presidential impeachment, (“Councilwoman Conyers Skips Vote on Her Own Impeachment Resolution”), has been busy introducing a bill in the House to sue the OPEC countries, forcing them to lower their prices on crude oil. (“House approves anti-OPEC bill” ).

The Democratic House, continuing its impressive record of passing meaningless symbolic legislation, approved the bill 354-72.

From the AP:

"We don't have to stand by and watch OPEC dictate the price of gas," Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers D-Mich., the bill's chief sponsor, declared, reflecting the frustration lawmakers have felt over their inability to address people's worries about high summer fuel costs…. Conyers accused the OPEC engaging in a "price fixing conspiracy" that has "unfairly driven up the price" of crude oil and, in turn gasoline.

His measure would change antitrust laws so that the Justice Department can sue OPEC member countries for price-fixing, and would remove the immunity given a sovereign state against such lawsuits.

Experts testifying at House hearings explained to congressmen that “that crude oil prices have played a relatively minor role in the sharp increase in gasoline costs over the last three months, putting the blame on lower gasoline imports, refinery outages and continuing growth in demand from motorists.”

In addition, there is also the issue of the respect for the sovereignty of foreign oil-producing states, and the possibility that the bill could lead to retaliatory measures and further market disruptions.

“Nevertheless, the House felt it was important to take on OPEC, the major player in oil production.”

The House has a real thing for symbolism these days.

Maybe it isn’t exactly blood for oil. But isn’t war really just legislative diplomacy by other means?