Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:
And since you've conflated multiple issues here that have nothing to do with each other, how about moving the congressional grandstanding thread someplace else? And if you can explain what the hell that has to do with the Sunnis going political instead of blowing things up, I'd love to hear where that comes from.

Eh? They're looking for a US withdrawl from Iraq in the short term. Hasn't that been what the discussion has been about this week? The last time Congress acted on Iraq they approved Bush's "surge" plan. If you were anticipating a strategy shift from the U.S. you'd be anticipating it based on the dialog that has been goiing on this week in Congress. And yes, its grandstanding. Congress cannot pass a withdrawl bill that won't get vetoed. Congress knows this. The grand battle you are watching is 100% political theater. How could it be anything else. They can't do anything.

Okay, let's deal with the Senate thing. The point of the Senate thing is this. It is currently the middle of July, and already the Republicans have killed measures (whether Bush would veto them or not is not the issue here) by using the endless debate clause 20 times this year. That's not counting measures killed by saying they would do so, those are the ones where cloture has been asked for and denied (like yesterday, which was #20). Is this political theater? To some extent yes. What's the message they are trying to push? I mean theater has a message right?

The message is, Congress isn't getting anything done, and nothing is getting sent to W to veto because the Republicans are blocking anything from leaving. By using a rule people in this country don't understand, the Republicans are actively working to make Congress look bad because of inaction rather than make the President look bad because of vetoes. Tuesday night was to put the pressure on the Republicans in the Senate who are making Congress look bad. Frankly, I hope Reid does this every time. At the rate the Republicans are going, they'll have caused votes to never be cast on 35-40 bills by the end of the year.

The GOP has been saying for years that government doesn't work. That it can't get things done, and when it does get things done it screws them up. From what I can see, there are plenty of things the government does just fine, but not when the GOP is at the helm. You think Clinton would have allowed everything that happened with Katrina to happen? Gore? Kerry? I don't. Not for one second. Hell, Bill and Poppy went off after the Christmas tsunami and did more to help there than W has done in New Orleans. Do you think the Republicans would have rallied behind Gore after 9/11 the way the Democrats rallied for Bush? Not. A. Chance. In. Hell.

Government doesn't work with Republicans in charge. Running a government is about good governance. Letting the people know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and letting them see how you go about it so if there are people who see you screwing it up, they can say you're screwing it up and maybe get it fixed. Not these guys. These guys have shown they don't have an interest in doing any of that. Bush has no interest in getting his hands dirty and doing the actual work that governance requires. Cheney gets his hands dirty all the damn time, but his agenda is antithetical to a free society because he does everything in the shadows. To use a religious metaphor, he's the devil. He makes all the right sounds, but while he's saying one thing, behind his back he's doing three others to undermine what the country stands for.

So what was the point of the all-nighter? Shine a light on the Republicans in the Senate as obstructionist. They're more interested in protecting the President from actually having to do his job than in doing theirs.

To show you just how insulting this was, what happens if they HAD ALLOWED the vote to proceed? The vote comes up, it passes, the bill goes to the White House, Bush vetoes it, it gets back to the Senate and they do it again with different measures, and everyone moves on from there. The GOP already knows, if the bill moves forward it's getting vetoed, so the only point in filibustering the amendment is to protect W from having to veto it. The Democrats aren't the ones who did this, they were given the right to choose the method of the filibuster, but make no mistake, it was the Republicans who were blocking this thing.

RE: Insurgents form political front to plan for US pullout