Did you vote for that? I didn't. It's great that Pelosi said on national television that Bush won't be receiving a blank check. But it's another part of the interview that bothers me. From Crooks and Liars (italics mine):
PELOSI: I'm saying two things. We will always support the troops who are there. If the president wants to expand the mission, that's a conversation he has to have with the Congress of the United States .But that's not a carte blanche, a blank check to him to do whatever he wishes there.
And I want to make a distinction here. Democrats do support increasing the size of the Army by 30,000, the Marines by 10,000 to make sure we're able to protect the American people.
SCHIEFFER: Enlarging the services overall?
PELOSI: Overall, in order to protect the American people against any threats to our interests, wherever they may occur. That's different, though, from adding troops to Iraq.
Do we really need to expand the military? If we weren't bogged down in Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck, we wouldn't need 30,000 additional troops. Also, what makes anyone think that if the military expands by 30,000 that those troops wouldn't be deployed in Iraq, even if Congress explicitly prohibited an Iraqi deployment? That would involve a presidential signing statement vitiating the intent of the legislation.
That, of course, would never happen.
Intelligent Designer, I hope this is just an idiotic talking point. And I also hope the Democrats aren't being too clever by half.
An aside: It's also unclear where we would actually find 30,000 bodies recruits.
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As I understand it, the new divisions would take more than a year to recruit, train, equip, etc..
They would not be available for the 2007 Escalation Together II operation.
They could come handy for some unforseen other land war in Asia, tho
It is clearly the responsibility of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly to enlist and help with the surge. Unless of course they are cowards,and USA haters. The Bush daughters, and Jub Bush's children should also immediately enlist to show how committed they are to our democracy fighting Islamic terrorists.
I like the fact that she thought that using "carte blanche" was over the heads of most people and had to explain it - or maybe she was explaining it to the President.
I agree, I also found the idea of 30k extra troops, even not in Iraq, very troubling. I can sort of see the logic. Iraq is seriously depleting our reserves, and maybe it's not such a bad idea to replace them. As Arthur implies, they're not going to be ready overnight, so why not start now?
But that does still raise the same question that Pelosi is rightly asking about a troop surge: what are these new troops for?
Coming up with 30,000 recruits, in excess of the current recruiting drive, will be no mean feat. It is well known that recruiting standards have been lowered, lowered again and widened again, in order to come up with enough bodies to ship to sunny Iraq.
Re-enlistment is problematic too, any promises, like say, promises of a non-Iraq posting, are certain to be broken, and the men (women) know it.
All lieutenants not currently undergoing court-martial gets automatically promoted to captain, so it's a great time to be an officer, if you don't mind the odd working hours, and, oh, the bloodshed.
Any immigrant which enlist gets automatic US citizenship (not a new thing). I suspect that aliens with dodgy papers will find their paperwork overlooked, and straightened, too.
It had been suggested that the US starts its own Foreign Legion. As a matter of fact, such a legion already exists in Iraq, they're called "contractors", or other words for Mercenaries. Their pay is often better than the wages of the Marines, they work with / who support them / which will bail their ass.
Of course, no one is whispering the D-word.
One does wonder how many votes she lost the democrats with that statement.
Once again, the party's leaders are showing how little they know of those who voted for them, or why.
It's as if they continue to be trapped in the Reality the Republican propagandists created; they believe that only the Right can annoint the victors in any political contests, and therefor, any victory on their part is a requirement that they shift to the right.