Of the people, by the people, for the people

Jim Hightower:

Let’s be blunt. It’s no longer the Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, or al Queda bombers killing our troops in Iraq. Washington is killing them.

George W – still clinging to his disgraced neo-con fantasies – and the congressional leaders of both parties – unwilling to use their budgetary and oversight authority – are the ones who have 150,000 American men and women trapped in Iraq’s civil war. The troops are doing all they can, yet they have been betrayed by a White House and Congress that has no strategy to make “victory” possible and is unwilling either to provide the massive troop strength it would take to secure that country… or to bring our troops home.

So, our men and women are locked in a gruesome shooting gallery by U.S. politicians who apparently intend to keep them there for the year and a half or so left in Bush’s term. Hundreds of them will die, thousands will be horribly maimed, and all will suffer trauma. They are not victims of the “enemy,” but of America’s own failed “leaders.” It is immoral to do this to them, but there they are.

Meanwhile, Bush keeps saying that his war is essential to America’s own security and is the “challenge of our generation.” But he is obviously lying to us. If it was true, all Americans would be enlisted in the cause. If it was true, we’d have half a million troops in Iraq, or more.

But that would mean that the families of the elites would have to be called to duty – and this is politically unacceptable to Washington. As one Bushite, Sen. Jeff Sessions, put it: “We have a limited number of men and women we can send to Iraq.” In other words, don’t call on his family or friends to make any sacrifices for this "essential" war.

They are killing Americans in a war they know they can’t win – and a war their families won’t join. This is a dishonorable sham, and only We the People can stop it. Protest more. Protest louder.

Concur.

Do whatever you can, but do something if you believe in the idea that is America and everything it stands for, as opposed to the narrow agendas and priorities that the current administration and its Neo Conservative and elite backers would have us believe is the true meaning of this amazing group of people that make up America:

Dennis Kucinich:

We all know that the Iraq Study Group, in one of its major recommendations, Recommendation 63, said the United States should encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and international energy companies; that the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise; that the United States should ensure the World Bank's efforts to assure that best practices are used in contracting.

Mr. Speaker, the last 50 minutes that I have spent talking about the effort to try to privatize Iraq's oil, if you go to one of the search engines, you can find perhaps 1 million different citations relating to this. So it is impossible to cover this kind of a subject, even in a period of an hour. But it needs to be said that this administration has pushed the Congress to put language in funding bills for Iraq that would set the stage for the privatization of Iraq's oil.

I am going to quote from the first war supplemental, that "the President shall make and transmit to Congress a determination, No. 2, whether the Government of Iraq is making substantial progress in meeting its commitment to pursue reconciliation initiatives, including enactment of a hydrocarbon law." Then under subsection (b), it says "if the President fails to make this determination, the Secretary of Defense shall commence the redeployment of our Armed Forces from Iraq."

In other words, privatize your oil, or we are leaving you without having a security and peacekeeping force to replace the United States Army.