What Is Your Congressman's Position

    I have made the statement more than once that the American public elected the Democrats into office  to put a stop to the Bush Iraq war fiasco and to bring our troops home.

   I've also complained on more than one occasion that the Democrats needed to get off their asses and to do the job that we hired them to do.

   It would seem that now, others are getting tired of the Democrats playing games and a few are starting to vent.

Original Article

Where Does Your Congressman Stand?

by BarbinMD

Tue Mar 06, 2007 at 04:43:35 AM PST

After nearly four years of a Republican-controlled Congress rubber stamping George Bush's Iraq war policy, a fed up American public voted for change.  And today we learn that instead of legislating that change, it seems that our newly-elected Democratic majority is willing to continue the practice of looking the other way while George Bush stays the course in Iraq.  How else can this be described?  

Senior House Democrats, seeking to placate members of their party from Republican-leaning districts, are pushing a plan that would place restrictions on President Bush's ability to wage the war in Iraq but would allow him to waive them if he publicly justifies his position.   [...]

The plan is an attempt to bridge the differences between anti-war Democrats, led by John Murtha (Pa.), who have wanted to devise standards of troop readiness strict enough to force Bush to delay some deployments and bring some troops home, and Democrats wary of seeming to place restrictions on the president's role as commander in chief.

So the question is, which Democrats are "wary" about requiring that our troops be properly rested, trained and equipped before being sent to fight in Iraq's civil war?  And after six long years, which part of Bush not being interested in either the will of Congress or the American people, do these "wary" Democrats not understand?   Oh, but there are concerns that:

...any dilution of Murtha's original proposal is likely to infuriate the antiwar wing of the party, which wants dramatic action now.

Perhaps it has escaped the attention of the "wary" that the antiwar wing of the party is made up of an overwhelming majority of the American people.  The same people who elected them to take real, meaningful action, not to placate us with non-binding resolutions and non-binding legislation.   And in what universe is protecting the troops that our representatives so often claim to support, considered "dramatic" action?  What it is, is the right thing to do.  Who is willing to argue that basic safety and readiness requirements for our servicemen and women is something that can be "waived" by a President who has spent the last four years over-extending our military to the breaking point?  

The bottom line is, because of George Bush's reckless misuse of our military, neither deployments nor his escalation can be sustained without further sacrificing the safety of our troops.  It is that simple, and both the administration and the Republican party knows it, which is why Murtha's plan terrifies them.  The last thing they want to see is a vote that, at its heart, asks, do you support requiring that our troops be fully rested, trained and equipped before being sent to Iraq?  If these "wary" Democratic Congressmen get their way and this toothless compromise is allowed to go forward, then they will have done nothing to protect our troops and they will have done nothing to help hasten the end of this war.  In a perfect world, we would be having a vote to cut funding and to bring the troops home, but as we are all painfully aware, we don't live in a perfect world.  At this point in time, Murtha's plan is the only realistic chance we have to begin the process of ending our involvement in this war.  

So it's time to ask your Congressman, who do you support, the troops or this administration?

 

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