The Republicans’ deeper problem is that they still cannot answer the question Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., posed during the House debate. The former Army captain and Iraq veteran recounted questions he said his gunner had asked, as their convoy moved through a perilous area known for ambushes. “He said, ‘Sir, what are we doing over here? What’s our mission? When are these Iraqis going to come off the sidelines and fight for their own country?’ ”

Well actually congressman, they are fighting for their own Country.

Congressman Patrick Murphy, Bucks County, PA voted in during the recent Democratic sweep of Congress, posed as anti-war, but is a self-proclaimed “blue dog” who is about as anti-war as Hillary Clinton. He advocates troops stationed in Iraq, is banging the drum on Iran, is an ardent supporter of Israel who just introduced the bill to condemn British universities for boycotting Israel (a tactic used sucessfully in opposing African apartheid). Although Lieberman has become persona non grata as the posterboy for Israel, these newly elected Dems should not be taken for anti-war candidates. Look what they do, not what they say.

Bush is a liar, of course. 

Bob Elliot sounds like an Ultra Zionist Jew.  Rah Rah Rah for the failed state of Israel.  May their puny little failed state burn eternally as a glassified, radioactive, cinderblock wasteland.

Rah Rah Rah for the war profiteering Bush/Republicans.  May their money chests overflow with gold. 

Rah Rah Rah for the dispensationalist Christian Right fanatics.  May their flocks be raptured up to Heaven.

Bob - listen up - you’re too pathetic for words. If you really believe the crap you’ve spouted you should be seeking competent medical help. Or better yet unlike our dictator in chief - go lead by example. The M16’s are much better now then they used to be, sign up and give us a report from the front line. You’ll find out instantly that a bullet can’t tell the difference between a Republican saving the world from fellow Republicans or a Liberal. Good luck - you’ll need it.

To all you republicans that are on the train with Bush I would like to say ‘we’re makin’ a list, and checking it twice...’
I hope you enjoy your short ride prior to the train wreck! Especially you, Liberman!!! BTW, do you know which country you were elected to represent? You are supposed to carry out your duties as an elected American offical. You were not elected by Israel and what is in the best interests of Israel is not necessarily in the best interests of America. Since you cannot remember that, perhaps you should have it tattooed on your person in a conspicuous place!

The Republicans in Congress are proving what we all suspected:

They don’t work for us, the citizens, the voters.  They work for the owners of the rich corporations that give them money to run for office and stay in office. 

They should be tried for impersonating Congressmen or Senators.

These hypocrites pretend to represent family values, thrift, trustworthiness, self-reliance, etc., and then they all turn out to be a pack of corrupt lapdogs.

Our Democracy is nothing but a stage show to these wannabe Dukes and Counts.  Unfortunately, -for them, fortunately for everyone else, their new King, King Idiot the First, may be facing a firing squad.

I wonder why they always seem to look like church deacons?

I spent my late teens and early twenties being vehemently anti-gov’t(Vietnam being key).I HATED Nixon for what he was and Regan for what he wasn’t(a REAL U.S. President). Dubya disgusts me, as do the imbeciles who elected him.My radical opinions have softened over the years but, after seeing Fahrenheit 911,I had only a single thought. KILL Dubya and every single BUSH that shares the Bush bloodline. Then the other “take advantage of our populace” families. We need to take them all to task. Show them that a price exists for their actions against the U.S. citizens. Extreme times demand extreme measures. We need to rid our beloved country of those that take advantage of our openess and democracy. As long as they are around screwing us, they have the wherewithall to take advantage of that capability, to all our detriment(s). I’m not sure how this imperative situation can be accomplished, but we need to try. It’s all about our survival, folks.
*truthdig staff..you probably won’t allow this to appear but, let me let you know..I understand.

Please won’t someone ask the Iraqi’s how they feel about being the arena for America vs GWOT battles.

2008 will see more Republicans out of office.

Alot of Israel first America second congressmen in that crowd.  ***Liberman***, PNAC, Neocons
Good arguement for term limits.

If the war in Iraq is suddenly defunded and my fellow Marine is stranded “over there” (as Bush alludes to) I will personally sent him a first class plane ticket home and tell him how sorry I am as a U.S. citizen for letting a bunch of morons in office send them there in the first place. 

This country needs to get its own house in order before meddling at the behest of others.

The Bush dictatorship is almost over, but we still need to worry about his itchy finger when it comes to Iran.

The Congress is moving correctly with a “death of a thousand cuts,” which will bring the American people along and slowly turn the tide until the day comes that they can smoothly and simply just cut the financial support for the war.  Slowly we will see the need to reconstitute our military strength and remove ourselve from the opponents home field and START defending our home field with good security.

Never again will any President get a blank check to go to war in such a haphazard way. This could be a problem in an extreme case (which can be solved), but good business in the large majority of occasions.  We have to learn to be vigilant, and above all SMART. We must be in communication with all nations at all times. At the head of our goals, we must reinvigorate what we are fighting for, The People and the Constitution.

The democrats have the POWER to cut off spending, but will NOT! Why don’t they?

The democrats do NOT have a backbone, BUT they do have an agenda! Their focus is on discrediting Bush and the Republican party in order to win the 2008 election!

This is unfortunately at America’s expense.

The Democrats have the POWER to cut off spending, but will NOT! Why don’t they?

The Democrats do NOT have a backbone! BUT, they do have an agenda! Their focus is solely on discrediting Bush and the Republican party in order to win the 2008 election!

This is unfortunately at America’s expense.

To Mr Bob Elliott
No one is coming back from Iraq in a coffin or living sans limbs, a face, nor internal organs for me nor to fight terrorism. They are doing it because as military that is what they do, follow orders.
If we had a decent human being in the office of the president of the United States of America the war in Iraq would not have happened.
Your president let the terrorists into our country. Your president let them stay with expired student visas. Your president let the terrorists take flight lessons sans landing lessons. Your president let them fly into our buildings and over our forests. Your president would admit his sins if he really is a Christian. You would believe him if he said that he is G-d.
Maybe if you lose everything you ever had in a disaster and ended up in trailor that you were evicted from as soon as you almost got back on your feet, you would see the light, but I doubt it. His lies and deceit make you feel so safe.

Bob Elliot trudge on. You, the Bushites and all others of your ilk should sign up and volunteer to be on the front lines to fight for your beliefs. However, that is not the situation. The lives that are being sacrificed are not from the so called thinkers, but actually from the true American constituency. These are men and women who believe in their country and are looking for a better chance in life. What you and the Bushites have given them instead with your mis-guided follies and your misinformation, is a sense of distrust in American leadership. The whole time this wreckless misadventure has been taking place the Bush administration has steadily cut funding to the returning veterans and their families, not to mention the whole Walter Reed debacle. So if you believe in this president, and you believe it’s better to fight them there (where they weren’t before)and to continue to line the pockets of the many war profiteers, join up and get those like you together and show the rest of America how to be strong.

As long as the ‘Bob Elliots’ in this country are fired up to support unconstitutional actions (yes, the Treaties to which the US is a signatory ARE part of the US Constitution) there will be ‘Incompublicans’ chanting mindless garble about why we fight and where. THERE WERE NO TERRORISTS IN IRAQ, Bob. Can we agree on the fact and now ask “Who are we fighting and how do we know?” Mr. Bush told them “Bring it on!” while we had troops on the ground. That hubris alone cost several thousands of US lives. May as well have said, “neener-neener!” and directed them to employ a battle plan of bombings, terror and sectarian violence against a defenseless civilian population… oh, he did.

The daily, unremitting, accelerating terror which the neoconservative movement has unleashed on Iraq is far more vast and ever more devastating (an entire country) than an attack on New York which originated from an element of party extremists affiliated with Afganistan. Are we clear on that?

The ongoing incursions of surveilance, espionage, detentions and abuse of persons ‘accused’ of being ‘bad people’ are FAR greater an assault on the INSTITUTION of American Justice, Liberty and Freedoms than the most destructive attack an ‘enemy’ could ever launch! Lives and buildings destroyed versus 230 years tradition of freedom waived virtually overnight by the Patriot Act? Recall being told “No one will abuse your trusts in the government.”? Americans who waved a flag and eagerly surrendered everyone else’s Rights are the real cowards: “Don’t attack us! “We’ll even give up sanctity of our most precious Freedoms to be safe!!” And to feel better about ourselves, we’ll chant cliches to ‘support our troops’. Panty-waste sissies.

I served during the other unpopular war and it wasn’t for this ‘country’ or a ‘democracy’ but because that’s an obligation like jury duty, and I agreed to serve after my student deferments. It’s notable that Mr. Cheney and every other neocon shirked that obligation for their own risk-free agendas. Now they command the military to occupy Iraq and do things they would not do themselves. They claim it’s an obligation, a duty, to “Stay the Course” (said in a deep tone with Cowardly Lion solemnity) Another group of cowards whose only convictions may prove to be Impeachment.

Fight them ‘over there’ indeed! We already lost our Freedoms at home while the Republican Party was at the healm. I’d say they own the war AND the results. But then, I’m decorated, and that’s MY right. What’s your based on, Bob?

Bob Elliott, write to us as you fight against the terrorists in Iraq

Bob Elliot, of the many things you got wrong in your post, this one stands out like a sore thumb:

“We are fighting the Terrorists in their homeland, the outcome of the Liberal Party (Ex-Democratic Party + Liberal Media) will be to encourage more Terrorism worldwide and will certainly bring it home to the shores of the USA.”

You’re a little late to the party. Bush’s sham of a war has ALREADY encourage more terrorism worldwide. Further, you can not prove with any ‘certainty’ what so ever the flypaper theory: that we are fighting terrorism there so we’re not fighting it here.

You Bush-bots need to find new talking points.

Marie Cocco quotes one of America’s most powerful lawmakers - “House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio went so far as to charge that the Iraq funding measure would “end Israel as I know it”.

Someone needs to remind Mr. Boehner that he represents just one US Congressional district in Ohio, not the State of Israel.

John Boehner and every elected lawmaker should also reconsider the “wisdom” of the popular belief, which seems to have infected all of our leaders in Washington. Our elected officials are enamored with and enthralled by the crazy notion that what is good for the State of Israel is also good for each of the states within our union of states; and that what is good for the State of Israel is also good for the USA, as a whole.

What is good for Maine may not be good for Arizona, of course; and what is good for any one American state is not always good for the USA as a whole. We accept those fundamental premises, that’s why we have a House of Representatives - to sort it all out, as fairly as possible.

But in the case of the State of Israel, the American federal government suspends reality and grants every Israeli request and accedes to every Israeli demand. It’s full representation without any US taxation. This is a dangerous and an un-natural relationship; such deference to a dependent client state seems to be unprecedented in human history.

When de facto Israeli agents, like Rep. John Boehner, boldly and unashamedly assert that supporting the Iraq funding measure “would “end Israel as I know it”, patriotic, America-first, Americans ought to question the man’s honesty, allegiance and competence.

Boehner’s scare tactics serve to advance the neocon agenda of fear-based governance, but fear-mongering, for Israeli benefit, is not part of Boehner’s compact with his American constituency.

Issuing phony “existential threat” warnings, like Boehner’s ridiculous assertion, may not be in the best interests of Israel; certainly, they are not in the best interests of the USA. Boehner should think first, before he flaps his jaws for AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby.

Boehner’s comments should also clarify the true “casus belli” for Bush’s pre-emptive war in Iraq - the US invasion was at the behest of our little buddy in Palestine - the self-described “Jewish State”.

If leaving Iraq now means “the end of Israel”, as Rep. Boehner knows it, then certainly the notions that - the Iraq war was initiated for Israel’s benefit and that the war is being waged for Israel’s benefit - become highly credible.

US losses in Iraq stand at over 3,200 killed in action and some half trillion US Dollars have been squandered in the process of theocratizing Mesopotamia. Israel, of course holds Uncle Sam’s tattered cloak, while he wrestles with the “enemies of Israel”; but no Israeli lives have been lost on the battlefields of Iraq and not one single an Israeli Shekel has been invested in the unfolding debacle.

Still, Americans overwhelmingly support the failed utopian experiment in Palestine and we gladly hand out over 2.4 billion in US aid to Israel every year, with few if any strings attached.

The entire US foreign aid budget amounts to about 14 billion per year. The Israelis, even with their high standard of living, are first-in-line to receive this American taxpayer-generated funding.

Some Americans, Americans like Republican Representative John Boehner, still argue that “The Israel Lobby” is just a leftist, anti-Semitic myth.

Incompetence at the highest levels, that is the Republican’s dubious claim to fame and the damage caused by their shortcomings shall be their enduring legacy.

20 BILLION of this bill is going to non-military pork add-ons to garner votes, and you call it “more robust”?!?!?

The republican party reminds me of what history taught us about the Nazi party in the late 30’s. They too must have known they were being led by a madman, but he offered them power and riches so they went along and followed Hitler (bush) into hell.

That’s great, the war belongs to the Republicans.
It is understandable, I suppose why a large faction of the American people are uninformed regarding world affairs. Perhaps it is because after they have spent their day working hard just to barely pay their bills, they don’t have much more energy left, so they turn on their TV sets. How would any of you reading this like to have to form an opinion about anything of any consequence from what you get from that dehumanizing block of wires plastic and metal, or the newspaper they seem to be magnetized to with their morning cup of coffee. However there is virtually no excuse for the so called leaders of this country to be uninformed.
How many blunders does this team of misfits in office have to make, how many books have to be written, how many countless thousands of articles by the most intelligent people this world has to offer, how many countless corpses and the trails of suffering that go with them will it take for some one out there to get the picture who has the brains, backbone, sense of what is right and wrong, to really do something to keep this world from sliding further into the abyss that it is heading for.
I don’t like to lament about the past too much, yet wouldn’t it just be grand if the founding fathers had put in place some sort of mechanism for a situation like we have now that would truly hold accountable the ones in office for the things that they do? We all know the interminable path of blatant disregard for anything that is good, that Bush Cheney and the rest of the crew have inflicted on our world since that darkest of stones was lifted and they emerged into our lives, yet the impotency of any entity so far to counter this little man with a seemingly below average IQ who without the help of his family probably wouldn’t qualify to drive a Coors truck is truly astounding. Every one seems to kowtow to him, why is this? Right now I feel that I could design a more efficient government on the back of a baseball card.
Oh yea, the article, The war belongs to the Republicans, well as I have said, that’s great, is this something that is supposed to tickle us pink?

I strongly believe this war is covering up yet another fiasco by Bush. While congress and Americans are centered on the war-effort This administration is in a stealth maneuver in doing away with our borders. The name of this cockamamie plan is “ North America Union”. Bush knows he has lost out on Iraq but his other main goal is moving forward the “North America Union”, and most newsmen and women haven’t a clue to this devastation of our way of life and the assault on our constitution.

Just think of all of the money and lives you would still have if George Bush was not “elected” in the dubious 2000 election result.

These are both enormous figures, in my mind, and are the result of the hijacking of a country.

I am amazed at this point in the political game that there are still a handful of Americans left that still believe the propaganda of George Bush and his neocon allies.

The current struggle between the Executive and Legislative branches of government indicate to me that this current president has too much power. If the power of the presidency is so strong that it causes its equal oppposing branch to engage in politics without producing meaningful results as expected by the people then the system is broken.

Nice try, but it won’t work.

It’s not “Bush’s war” or “the Republican’s war,” but it is OUR war, and it is our war because we coveted Iraqi oil, we lied ourselves into it, we killed a shamefully countless horde of innocent people so we could STEAL the Iraqi oil and control it as our own.

“What are we doint over here?” indeed. Will no one tell our troops what our mission was and is? You certainly won’t talk about it, so it is more your war than mine, but at least I own up to being the recipient of the great good fortune of ecaping a depression by using Iraqi oil as the “backing” for the dollar I spend on food, shelter, and clothing, as well as computers.

As Walt Kelly (Pogo) said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Memories of the 60’s and all the protest songs and protests/demonstrations; and the reality of the consequences of war are burned into the minds of many, including myself. For those of you who are 30 or under these things are only pictures and words or stories from others; or something you may have (hopefully) studied in history class. This whole Iraq thing is like a recurring nightmare; its not Vietnam but the arguments are very much the same for continuing a war that we cannot and never could win. If the politicains “waging” war and carefully discussing how many will be put in harm’s way were required to be on the front lines, perhaps we would not be so quick to attack.

The Liberal Party (used to be Democratic Party) and the Liberal Media have combined to put the blame for 9/11 on the President of the USA giving the Terrorists a clear signal that they can do what they like cause all the blame will be on the President for generations to come. Every failure of the Liberal Party (EX Democratic Party) will alway point the blame on the President of the USA who is charged with the defense of all Americans.

We are fighting the Terrorists in their homeland, the outcome of the Liberal Party (Ex-Democratic Party + Liberal Media) will be to encourage more Terrorism worldwide and will certainly bring it home to the shores of the USA.

Stand your ground Mr. President and all ye hornorable men who are fighting for our way of life on the Terrorists home turf.