裁判官の設定の日付、ex-presidentを含む上院議員、証明

ヒラリークリントンが選挙遊説のBarack Obamaを戦う間、ロスアンジェルスの裁判官は静かにClintonsおよび民主党によって広まった堕落の疑わしい文化を露出することを向ける$17百万欺瞞のスーツの試験の日付を置くことを準備している。

カリフォルニア高等裁判所の裁判官Aurelio N.の前の明日の朝ヒアリングの終了時点で。 Munoz、ハリウッドのムガール人ピーターF.のための弁護士。 ポールは- Barbra Streisand、ジョンTravolta、Brad PittおよびCherを含む上の民主党のリーダーそしてリストの著名人と共に…すべての3 Clintons -ビル、ヒラリーおよびChelseaからの誓われた証明を、追求し始める。

ポールのチームは10月の試験を望む。 Clintonsの」デイヴィッドKendallヒアリングに出席する長い間弁護士はスーツのコメントを低下させた。

Clintonsは場合を退去させることを試みたがカリフォルニア最高裁判所は、2004年に、低裁判所の動きを否定するために決定を支えた。

Bill Clintonは、不平に従って、彼の妻の2000年の上院キャンペーンへの在庫、現金選択および大きい貢献と交換にポールのインターネットの催し物の会社、Stanリー媒体を、促進すると約束した。 ポールによってはClintonsおよび民主党のリーダーによって作り出し、のために支払い、次に足場についてあることのそれらを結合するために彼が指示されたハリウッドのお祭りおよび募金活動のための手形争う。

Clintonsの」弁護士はポールとのあらゆる取り引きになされる前大統領を否定した。 しかしColetteウイルソンポールの代理人はそれはBill Clintonが彼がオフィスを去った後会社のためのrainmakerであるために準備していたStanリー媒体に共通知識だったことをそこのWNDをである言う証人言った。

ポールは前の副大統領を要求し、Al Gore、エドRendell前の民主党の議長クリントンテリーMcAuliffe大統領キャンペーン議長は取り引きで従事しているポールを確認できる人々間にまたある。

ポールは要求するDNCおよびヒラリークリントンのキャンペーンへのRendellによって指示された様々な違法貢献をおよび2000年にゴアのキャンペーンそして民主党全国委員会のハリウッドのでき事のために与えられた中央政府選挙委員会$100,000以上に報告されなくて。 McAuliffe, Paul says, counseled him in two separate meetings to become a major donor to Hillary Clinton to pave the way to hire her husband. Paul asserts top Clinton adviser Harold Ickes also directed him to give money to the Senate campaign but hid that fact in “perjured testimony” during the trial of campaign finance director David Rosen.

Rosen was acquitted in 2005 for filing false campaign reports that later were charged by the FEC to treasurer Andrew Grossman, who accepted responsibility in a conciliation agreement that fined the campaign 35,000. Paul points out the Rosen trial established his contention that he personally gave more than $1.2 million to Clinton’s campaign and that his contributions intentionally were hidden from the public and the Federal Election Commission.

Rosen, accused of concealing Paul’s in-kind contribution of more than $1 million, was acquitted, but Paul contends the Clinton staffer was a scapegoat. Paul points out chief Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told the Washington Post he was aware of the donation, yet he never was called as a witness in the Rosen trial.

Paul contends his case will expose “the institutional culture of corruption embraced by the Clinton leadership of the Democratic Party,” which seeks to attain “unaccountable power for the Clintons at the expense of the rule of law and respect for the constitutional processes of government.”

The complaint asserts Clinton has filed four false reports to the FEC of Paul’s donations in an attempt to distance herself from him after a Washington Post story days after the August 2000 fundraiser reported his past felony convictions. Clinton then returned a check for $2,000, insisting it was the only money she had taken from Paul.  But one month later, she demanded another $100,000, to be hidden in a state committee using untraceable securities.

“Why wouldn’t that cause someone to inquire?” Paul asked. “Especially since it was days after she said she wouldn’t take any more money from me.”

Paul has the support of a new grass-roots political action group that is helping garner the assistance of one of the nation’s top lawyers

Republican activist Rod Martin says his group plans to highlight Paul’s case as it launches an organization based on the business model of the left-wing MoveOn.org but rooted in the principles and political philosophy of former President Reagan.

Martin’s group also is assisting in Paul’s complaint to the FEC asserting that unless the agency sets aside the conciliation agreement and rescinds immunity granted the senator, it will “have aided and abetted in the commission” of a felony.

Paul’s case is the subject of a video documentary largely comprised of intimate “home movies” of Hillary Clinton and her Hollywood supporters captured by Paul during the period.

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

MATT TAIBBI | Rolling Stone

Elected to end the war, Democrats have surrendered to Bush on Iraq and betrayed the peace movement for their own political ends

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party’s energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn’t fit Iraq into his busy schedule. “We have the presidential election,” Reid said recently. “Our time is really squeezed.”

There was much public shedding of tears among the Democratic leadership, as Reid, Pelosi and other congressional heavyweights expressed deep sadness that their valiant charge up the hill of change had been thwarted by circumstances beyond their control ― that, as much as they would love to continue trying to end the catastrophic Iraq deal, they would now have to wait until, oh, 2009 to try again. “We’ll have a new president,” said Pelosi. “And I do think at that time we’ll take a fresh look at it.”

Pelosi seemed especially broken up about having to surrender on Iraq, sounding like an NFL coach in a postgame presser, trying with a straight face to explain why he punted on first-and-goal. “We just didn’t have any plays we liked down there,” said the coach of the 0-15 Dems. “Sometimes you just have to play the field-position game….”

In reality, though, Pelosi and the Democrats were actually engaged in some serious point-shaving. Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation’s leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. “Our focus is on the Republicans,” one Democratic apparatchik in charge of the anti-war coalition declared. “How can we juice up attacks on them?”

The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what’s to come if they win the White House. And if we don’t pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there’s still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame.

The controversy over the Democratic “strategy” to end the war basically comes down to whom you believe. According to the Reid-Pelosi version of history, the Democrats tried hard to force President Bush’s hand by repeatedly attempting to tie funding for the war to a scheduled withdrawal. Last spring they tried to get him to eat a timeline and failed to get the votes to override a presidential veto. Then they retreated and gave Bush his money, with the aim of trying again after the summer to convince a sufficient number of Republicans to cross the aisle in support of a timeline.

But in September, Gen. David Petraeus reported that Bush’s “surge” in Iraq was working, giving Republicans who might otherwise have flipped sufficient cover to continue supporting the war. The Democrats had no choice, the legend goes, but to wait until 2009, in the hopes that things would be different under a Democratic president.

Democrats insist that the reason they can’t cut off the money for the war, despite their majority in both houses, is purely political. “George Bush would be on TV every five minutes saying that the Democrats betrayed the troops,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Then he glumly adds another reason. “Also, it just wasn’t going to happen.”

Why it “just wasn’t going to happen” is the controversy. In and around the halls of Congress, the notion that the Democrats made a sincere effort to end the war meets with, at best, derisive laughter. Though few congressional aides would think of saying so on the record, in private many dismiss their party’s lame anti-war effort as an absurd dog-and-pony show, a calculated attempt to score political points without ever being serious about bringing the troops home.

“Yeah, the amount of expletives that flew in our office alone was unbelievable,” says an aide to one staunchly anti-war House member. “It was all about the public show. Reid and Pelosi would say they were taking this tough stand against Bush, but if you actually looked at what they were sending to a vote, it was like Swiss cheese. Full of holes.”

In the House, some seventy Democrats joined the Out of Iraq caucus and repeatedly butted heads with Reid and Pelosi, arguing passionately for tougher measures to end the war. The fight left some caucus members bitter about the party’s failure. Rep. Barbara Lee of California was one of the first to submit an amendment to cut off funding unless it was tied to an immediate withdrawal. “I couldn’t even get it through the Rules Committee in the spring,” Lee says.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a fellow caucus member, says Democrats should have refused from the beginning to approve any funding that wasn’t tied to a withdrawal. “If we’d been bold the minute we got control of the House ― and that’s why we got the majority, because the people of this country wanted us out of Iraq ― if we’d been bold, even if we lost the votes, we would have gained our voice.”

An honest attempt to end the war, say Democrats like Woolsey and Lee, would have involved forcing Bush to execute his veto and allowing the Republicans to filibuster all they wanted. Force a showdown, in other words, and use any means necessary to get the bloodshed ended.

“Can you imagine Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert taking no for an answer the way Reid and Pelosi did on Iraq?” asks the House aide in the expletive-filled office. “They’d find a way to get the votes. They’d get it done somehow.”

But any suggestion that the Democrats had an obligation to fight this good fight infuriates the bund of hedging careerists in charge of the party. In fact, nothing sums up the current Democratic leadership better than its vitriolic criticisms of those recalcitrant party members who insist on interpreting their 2006 mandate as a command to actually end the war. Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee and a key Pelosi-Reid ally, lambasted anti-war Democrats who “didn’t want to get specks on those white robes of theirs.” Obey even berated a soldier’s mother who begged him to cut off funds for the war, accusing her and her friends of “smoking something illegal.”

Rather than use the vast power they had to end the war, Democrats devoted their energy to making sure that “anti-war activism” became synonymous with “electing Democrats.” Capitalizing on America’s desire to end the war, they hijacked the anti-war movement itself, filling the ranks of peace groups with loyal party hacks. Anti-war organizations essentially became a political tool for the Democrats ― one operated from inside the Beltway and devoted primarily to targeting Republicans.

This supposedly grass-roots “anti-war coalition” met regularly on K Street, the very capital of top-down Beltway politics. At the forefront of the groups are Thomas Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse of Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, the leader of the anti-war lobby. Along with other K Street crusaders, the two have received iconic treatment from The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which depicted the anti-war warriors as young idealist-progressives in shirtsleeves, riding a mirthful spirit into political combat ― changing the world is fun!

But what exactly are these young idealists campaigning for? At its most recent meeting, the group eerily echoed the Reid-Pelosi “squeezed for time” mantra: Retreat from any attempt to end the war and focus on electing Democrats. “There was a lot of agreement that we can draw distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans,” a spokeswoman for Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq announced.

What the Post and the Times failed to note is that much of the anti-war group’s leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes ― whose partners, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). In addition, these anti-war leaders continue to consult for many of the same U.S. senators whom they need to pressure in order to end the war. This is the kind of conflict of interest that would normally be an embarrassment in the activist community.

Worst of all is the case of Woodhouse, who came to Hildebrand Tewes after years of working as the chief mouthpiece for the DSCC, where he campaigned actively to re-elect Democratic senators who supported the Iraq War in the first place. Anyone bothering to look ― and clearly the Post and the Times did not before penning their ardent bios of Woodhouse ― would have found the youthful idealist bragging to newspapers before the Iraq invasion about the pro-war credentials of North Carolina candidate Erskine Bowles. “No one has been stronger in this race in supporting President Bush in the War on Terror and his efforts to effect a regime change in Iraq,” boasted the future “anti-war” activist Woodhouse.

With guys like this in charge of the anti-war movement, much of what has passed for peace activism in the past year was little more than a thinly veiled scheme to use popular discontent over the war to unseat vulnerable Republicans up for re-election in 2008. David Sirota, a former congressional staffer whose new book, The Uprising, excoriates the Democrats for their failure to end the war, expresses disgust at the strategy of targeting only Republicans. “The whole idea is based on this insane fiction that there is no such thing as a pro-war Democrat,” he says. “Their strategy allows Democrats to take credit for being against the war without doing anything to stop it. It’s crazy.”

Justin Raimondo, the uncompromising editorial director of Antiwar.com, regrets contributing twenty dollars to Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq. “Not only did they use it to target Republicans,” he says, “they went after the ones who were on the fence about Iraq.” The most notorious case involved Lincoln Chafee, a moderate from Rhode Island who lost his Senate seat in 2006. Since then, Chafee has taken shots at Democrats like Reid, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, all of whom campaigned against him despite having voted for the war themselves.

“Look, I understand partisan politics,” says Chafee, who now concedes that voters were correct to punish him for his war vote. “I just find it amusing that those who helped get us into this mess now say we need to change the Senate ― because we’re in a mess.”

The really tragic thing about the Democratic surrender on Iraq is that it’s now all but guaranteed that the war will be off the table during the presidential campaign. Once again ― it happened in 2002, 2004 and 2006 ― the Democrats have essentially decided to rely on the voters to give them credit for being anti-war, despite the fact that, for all the noise they’ve made to the contrary, in the end they’ve done nothing but vote for war and cough up every dime they’ve been asked to give, every step of the way.

Even beyond the war, the Democrats have repeatedly gone limp-dick every time the Bush administration so much as raises its voice. Most recently, twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to grant immunity to phone companies who participated in Bush’s notorious wiretapping program. Before that, Democrats caved in and confirmed Mike Mukasey as attorney general after he kept his middle finger extended and refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Democrats fattened by Wall Street also got cold feet about upsetting the country’s gazillionaires, refusing to close a tax loophole that rewarded hedge-fund managers with a tax rate less than half that paid by ordinary citizens.

But the war is where they showed their real mettle. Before the 2006 elections, Democrats told us we could expect more specifics on their war plans after Election Day. Nearly two years have passed since then, and now they are once again telling us to wait until after an election to see real action to stop the war. In the meantime, of course, we’re to remember that they’re the good guys, the Republicans are the real enemy, and, well, go Hillary! Semper fi! Yay, team!

How much of this bullshit are we going to take? How long are we supposed to give the Reids and Pelosis and Hillarys of the world credit for wanting, deep down in their moldy hearts, to do the right thing?

Look, fuck your hearts, OK? Just get it done. Because if you don’t, sooner or later this con is going to run dry. It may not be in ‘08, but it’ll be soon. Even Americans can’t be fooled forever.

Declassified letter exposes Democratic Party complicity in CIA torture

By Joe Kay

Last week, the CIA declassified a February 2003 letter from Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California discussing the planned destruction of videotapes depicting the interrogation and torture of prisoners held by the CIA.

Harman requested that the CIA release the letter in order to show her supposed criticism of the agency’s plans to destroy the evidence. In a statement on the letter, Harman said that it “makes clear my concern about possible destruction of any tapes.” In fact, the letter only underscores the fact that the Democratic Party was aware of and supported the CIA’s secret policy of torture.

Democrats knew of plans to destroy evidence of interrogations, but made no serious attempt to stop it or inform the American people. Indeed, Harman’s “concern” was in effect an indication to the CIA that the Democrats would not challenge a decision to destroy the tapes and would not expose the agency if it did so.

The videotapes, involving hundreds of hours of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were secretly destroyed in November 2005. Their destruction was only publicly disclosed last month, though several Democrats had been made aware of the action at least a year ago.

Perhaps the most significant section of the three-paragraph letter is that dealing with the CIA’s interrogation policy, not the plans for destroying the tapes. Harman made clear that she supported the program of “enhanced interrogation,” which included the use of the notorious torture technique of waterboarding. The letter amounted to a green light for the continuation of the program, which was kept secret from the American people for several more years.

In the letter, addressed to CIA General Counsel Scott Muller, Harman discusses a briefing given to a few leading Democratic and Republican congressmen the week before. She says that the briefing “brought home to me the difficult challenges faced by the Central Intelligence Agency in the current threat environment. I realize we are at a time when the balance between security and liberty must be constantly evaluated and recalibrated in order to protect our nation and its people from catastrophic terrorist attack…”

Harman reported that at the hearing, Muller “assured us that the [redacted] approved by the Attorney General have been subject to an extensive review by lawyers at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council and found to be within the law.”

Harman, who is a graduate of Harvard Law School, indicated no disagreement with these legal findings, even though the methods employed by the CIA are clear violations of anti-torture statutes and international treaties. She merely questioned whether or not what she later calls “enhanced techniques” were consistent with US policy and whether or not they had been “authorized and approved by the President.”

Many of the documents arguing for the legality of torture have never been released to the public. However, one such document was leaked to the public―the infamous August 2002 “torture memo,” prepared by Justice Department lawyers―which argued that the president has the constitutional right to torture as part of his war powers. This memo presumably formed part of the legal rationale presented by the CIA to Harman and others to justify the torture methods.

Harman’s acceptance of the legal rationale for torture was in line with the reaction of the entire Democratic Party to the antidemocratic policies implemented by the White House, using the “war on terror” and the attacks of September 11 as a pretext.

According to a Washington Post article published last month, in 2002 four congressional leaders, including the current speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, another Democrat from California, were “given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators devised to try to make the prisoners talk.”

The meeting with Harman in February 2003 evidently also included a discussion of the CIA’s plans to destroy the tapes. Harman wrote to Muller, “You discussed the fact that there is a videotape of Abu Zubaydah following his capture that will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry. I would urge the Agency to reconsider that plan.”

Harman does not suggest that the tapes should be preserved because they depict illegal activity and therefore constitute evidence of a crime. She also does not oppose the Bush administration’s determination that the destruction of the tapes would be legal. Rather, she suggests, “The videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future. The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency,” she concludes. In other words, Harman’s concern was largely one of public relations.

The references to an inquiry by the CIA inspector general apparently refers to an examination, carried out by inspector general John Helgerson, into the CIA’s interrogation techniques. The inquiry was completed in the spring of 2004, but there were no public references to it until November 2005. It was reportedly critical of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

On November 9, 2005, the New York Times published an article citing officials familiar with the report. According to the Times, the officials “said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.”

The Times exposure of the Inspector General report is another possible motivating factor behind the CIA’s decision to go ahead and destroy the tapes in November 2005. That same month, other reports exposed for the first time the existence of the CIA network of secret prisons. The government was also being pressed in several court cases to turn over all evidence and records of interrogation.

The role of the Democrats in supporting and helping cover up the CIA’s torture program and the subsequent destruction of videotapes ensures that any Congressional investigation will be a whitewash. It appears increasingly likely that Democrats will scale down Congressional inquiries on the grounds that the Justice Department has launched its own criminal investigation.

Last week, Democrats moved quickly to praise an announcement by Attorney General Michael Mukasey that a criminal investigation will begin. Mukasey’s selection of John Durham, a deputy US attorney from Connecticut, has been portrayed in the media and by Democrats as a move to give the investigation greater independence. This is false. Durham’s work will be subordinate to and filtered by the Justice Department, which means the Bush administration. It will have no “independence” from those who are deeply complicit in the crime that is supposedly under investigation.

The attitude of sections of the liberal establishment was expressed in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times on January 4. The Times is the principal newspaper in California―the home state of both Harman and Pelosi.

The editors wrote that Mukasey “has displayed a commendable sensitivity to appearances” by appointing Durham to lead the criminal investigation. The newspaper said that congressmen “shouldn’t complicate his assignment by forcing key figures in the criminal investigation to testify on Capitol Hill―at least for now.”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department investigation will likely be dragged out for an extended period of time and possibly through the end of the Bush administration’s term of office.

By Deirdre Shesgreen

The first session of the 110th Congress started off with a snap and had plenty of crackle. But the end was more fizzle than pop.

“We had 50 weeks of basically polarization and brinksmanship and two weeks of problem-solving,” said Rep. Todd Akin, R-Town and Country.

Democrats were catapulted into power after the 2006 elections on big promises: They would clean up Washington, change course in Iraq and devote new attention to domestic needs.

But as lawmakers rushed home for the holidays last week, Republicans were declaring victory for confounding their political foes at almost every turn, with one GOP lawmaker deriding this as the “cave-in Congress.”

Even as Democrats trumpeted some meaty achievements ― from ethics reform to a minimum-wage increase to a landmark energy bill ― their liberal base was fuming over some of the concessions Democrats made.

After bruising battles with the White House and congressional Republicans, Democrats swallowed three bitter pills in the final days of the year:

― They handed President George W. Bush $70 billion in funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with no strings attached.

― They passed a flat extension of a children’s health insurance program ― something the GOP had been calling for, for months ― after conceding that their efforts to expand the popular program could not overcome Bush’s vetoes.

― They approved an 11th-hour, $50 billion tax fix that will shield the middle class from a major tax increase, but without raising additional revenue ― violating their self-imposed vow to offset any new spending or tax breaks so as not to worsen the deficit.

“Our members probably went home yesterday happier than … in the 11 years I’ve been here,” said House GOP Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Congress’ final weeks were so chaotic that many lawmakers booked multiple flights home because they had no idea when last votes would be cast on a $555 billion omnibus budget loaded with more than 8,000 of lawmakers’ pet projects.

Where Akin saw polarization and brinksmanship, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., saw idealism and pragmatism, and she said the Senate had “a healthy dose of both this year,” making for bitter fights as well as solid, albeit last-minute, agreements.

“At the end of the day it’s not bad what we got done in spite of ourselves,” she said. But the process “sure isn’t pretty.”

Steven Smith, a political science professor at Washington University, said that with Democrats barely in control of the Senate and a Republican in the White House, “there was essentially a stalemate” on all major legislative initiatives. “This was a situation where both parties had the ability to veto the highest priorities of the other.”

He said the 49-member Republican minority in the Senate used threats of a filibuster to protect Bush from embarrassing vetoes on Iraq and other matters. In the process, he said, they were able to make the Democrats look bad “for not governing an institution they seemed to control.”

EARLY VICTORIES

The messy ending to the first half of this Congress stands out all the more because of its sharp beginning.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the first woman to be speaker of the House, swept into office with a 100-hour legislative blitz. With the help of moderate Republicans, Democrats racked up a raft of early victories: cutting interest rates on student loans, enacting long-stalled recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, and raising the minimum wage, among other things.

“Those are issues that the American people wanted to see us address, and we did,” said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis. “And we became more fiscally responsible than previous Congresses and this administration.”

Indeed, some Republicans found themselves cheering the Democrats’ final spending package as one that was much better than any they ever produced. Bush forced Democrats to stick to his bottom line, something he never did when the GOP was in control, rather than allow them to add $22 billion in new spending.

“We’re leaving with Bush’s numbers plus some emergency spending for things we can support,” such as veterans care, said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville. With that new financial restraint, he said, “we’re going back to our base in a Democratic majority. … That’s a pretty good Christmas present.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the budget deal was “really a heartbreak” because Democrats wanted desperately to boost spending for health care, education and other programs they felt have been ignored. Democrats did shift money to fill some of their priorities but failed to force Bush to agree to a higher overall budget number.

WHITE HOUSE POWER

Durbin said Democrats had no options in the budget showdown because they simply did not have the votes to override Bush’s threatened veto.

“In the end there was only one card that could be played: the Newt Gingrich government shut-down card,” Durbin said, referring to the standoff between the former GOP House speaker and President Bill Clinton that led to government offices being shuttered and a political fallout for the GOP. “We were never going to let that happen, and the president knew it,” Durbin said.

Democrats also saw the collapse of a sweeping and controversial immigration reform package. They failed to override Bush’s veto of a bill to lift restrictions on government funding for stem cell research. And most irksome to their liberal supporters, they failed to win a raft of Iraq votes that would have imposed withdrawal timetables for U.S. troops or restricted war funding.

Pelosi said Congress had “put a lot of pressure on the administration” over the war through “very intense oversight.” But, she conceded, “No one is more disappointed with the fact that we couldn’t change that (the course of the war) than I am.”

Pelosi said she and other Democrats made one miscalculation on that front: They underestimated the GOP’s willingness to rally behind an unpopular president on an unpopular issue.

Republicans said they were unified against the Democrats’ “slow-bleed” strategy for Iraq.

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., said Democrats spent “an awful lot of time redoing” varying Iraq votes to send “a message to their extreme left-wing base.” Now that the United States is seeing some military progress in Iraq, he said, “I think we’ll see them temper their political efforts” on the war.

SETTING UP FOR ‘08

But that’s unlikely when Congress reconvenes next month.

“We will keep pushing the president to come up with withdrawal dates, with benchmarks, with time lines, and he will resist all of it,” Clay said. “So it’ll be a test of wills again.”

At the same time, Democrats said they hoped to shine a brighter spotlight on some new domestic issues. Pelosi said health care would be front and center, along with legislation to address global warming.

Durbin said he expected a major push on economic issues and the mortgage crisis in particular.

But others said the main issue on the agenda would be politics. With next year’s presidential race and congressional elections at full throttle, there will be “more of the same” gridlock, said Smith, the Washington University professor.

“Legislative accomplishments will not be their chief goal,” he said. “Setting themselves up for 2008 will be.”

Megan Boehnke of the Post-Dispatch Washington bureau contributed to this story.

The GOP is negotiating in bad faith, Obey says.

By Jonathan Weisman

    A Democratic deal to give President Bush some war funding in exchange for additional domestic spending appeared to collapse last night after House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) accused Republicans of bargaining in bad faith.

    Instead, Obey said he will push a huge spending bill that would hew to the president’s spending limit by stripping it of all lawmakers’ pet projects, as well as most of the Bush administration’s top priorities. It would also contain no money for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    ”Absent a Republican willingness to sit down and work out a reasonable compromise, I think we ought to end the game and go to the president’s numbers,” Obey said. “I was willing to listen to the argument that we ought to at least add more for Afghanistan, but when the White House refuses to compromise, when the White House continues to stick it in our eye, I say to hell with it.”

    House Democratic leaders were scheduled to complete work last night on a $520 billion spending bill that included $11 billion in funding for domestic programs above the president’s request, half of what Democrats had initially approved. The bill would have also contained $30 billion for the war in Afghanistan, upon which the Senate would have added billions more for Iraq before final congressional approval.

    But a stern veto threat this weekend from White House budget director Jim Nussle put the deal in jeopardy, and Obey said he is prepared for a long standoff with the White House.

    ”If anybody thinks we can get out of here this week, they’re smoking something illegal,” he said.

    Obey’s proposal would ax about 9,500 home-district and home-state projects worth a total of $9.5 billion, according to Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Republicans inserted about 40 percent of those projects. Not all of that money could be eliminated, however. The budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is parceled out as home-district projects, and Congress has no intention of eliminating the Army Corps.

    Obey would not specify where the remaining billions would come from to reach Bush’s bottom line, beyond saying the money would be shaved from the president’s priorities. One possibility would be funding for abstinence education. Other targets could be nuclear weapons research and development in the Energy Department, NASA programs and high-technology border security efforts that have come under criticism for being wasteful and ineffective, said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
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    Obey’s proposal did not move the White House to negotiate, spokesman Tony Fratto said. “Different day, different Democrat, different direction. Our position hasn’t changed,” Fratto said.

    House Republican leaders would be happy to take Obey’s offer on spending, GOP aides said yesterday. But rank-and-file lawmakers from both parties could revolt. Home-district projects - known as earmarks - were stripped from the fiscal 2007 spending bills early this year, after Democrats took control of Congress and hastily disposed of budget bills their Republican predecessors had not passed. Earmarks were also eliminated from the 2006 appropriations bill that funded labor, health and education programs, the biggest domestic spending bill of the year.

    ”There are a lot of people who were very disappointed last year when nobody got any earmarks. If they do it again for the second year in a row, it will be a very bitter pill to swallow,” said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), an appropriator who complained that he could lose $400,000 he needs for the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial celebration, slated to begin Feb. 12.

    LaHood is not the only Republican appropriator who is angry at the White House and at GOP leaders who have refused to negotiate with Democrats on domestic spending levels. In recent days, Rep. David L. Hobson (Ohio), ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee in charge of energy and water projects, had a heated discussion with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), arguing that Boehner should come off his hard line.

    Rep. James T. Walsh (N.Y.), another senior Republican appropriator, took to the House floor to argue: “If the proposal is to split the difference, to reduce the amount of spending above the president’s request by $11 billion, I would advise the president to take yes for an answer.”

    But most Republicans are expected to fall in line, as the GOP leadership pushes to regain the mantle of small-government conservatism. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), another member of the Appropriations Committee, said Republican lawmakers will face no political jeopardy for not bringing money home for their districts, because they can simply blame Democrats.

    ”The smartest thing for [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi to do is to realize the White House always wins these spending contests,” he said, advising her to “cut your losses, get out of town and say Bush is still relevant” to the legislative process.

    That still leaves the war-funding issue unresolved. Democratic leadership aides on Capitol Hill concede that at some point, Republicans can add some money for Iraq as a stripped-down spending bill winds through Congress. But plans for a quick end to the showdown appear to be fading.

    ”It is extraordinary that the president would request an 11 percent increase for the Department of Defense, a 12 percent increase for foreign aid, and $195 billion of emergency funding for the war while asserting that a 4.7 percent increase for domestic programs is fiscally irresponsible,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) said.

The fix was in

US elections are rigged long before the voting results are falsified.

The good news is that the Internet has made this kind of chicanery, much more difficult.

IN A MATCH UP with Giuliani there is no more than a 3 point difference between Clinton, Obama or Gore in our three poll moving average. What this means is that people are making their choices based on party rather than individual.

One thing could change this dramatically: if one candidate became an easier target for the Republicans than the others. And only one candidate is a logical contender for this dismal role: Hillary Clinton. Clinton is currently in a bubble of protection created by a media that steadfastly refuses to mention her sordid past. But if the bubble is burst - as it likely will be - by the Republicans after her nomination, it will be a whole different ball game.

There is simply no comparison between Obama and Edwards on the one hand and Clinton on the other when it comes to personal integrity. The former are far from perfect but it is likely that we have heard the worst about each. This is not the case with Clinton, witness the Chinatown funny money scandal that much of the media is choosing to ignore.

Proposal Would Involve FISA Court in Warrants

By Ellen Nakashima and Spencer S. Hsu

Congressional Democrats outlined a temporary plan yesterday that would expand the government’s authority to conduct electronic surveillance of overseas communications in search of terrorists.

The proposal, according to House and Senate Democrats, would permit a secret court to issue broad orders approving eavesdropping of communications involving suspects overseas and other people, who may be in the United States. To issue an order, the court would not need to identify a particular target overseas, but it would have to determine that those being targeted are “likely,” in fact, overseas.

If a foreign target’s communications to a person inside the United States reaches a “significant” number, then an court order based on probable cause would be required. It is unclear how “significant” would be defined.

Under a sunset provision, the authority would have to be revisited in six months.

“Given the continued threat environment and some recent technical developments, I have become convinced that we must take some immediate, but interim, step to improve collection of foreign intelligence in a manner that doesn’t compromise civil liberties of U.S. citizens,” said John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In recent days, the administration has proposed giving the attorney general sole authority to authorize the surveillance, suggesting that if Democrats do not act quickly Americans would be at greater risk of attack.

Democrats said that giving sole authority to the attorney general would be unacceptable and insisted that the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have an oversight role.

Some civil liberties advocates were pleased.

“It is vastly better than the administration’s bill and preserves the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.

Others, including some Democrats, said that granting the government authority to intercept calls with broad warrants could allow a large number of phone calls and e-mails of U.S. individuals and companies to be intercepted, as well.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, contended that Democrats are “capitulating to the politics of fear.”

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said that the proposal, while better than the administration’s, “does not have adequate safeguards to protect Americans’ privacy.”

Still, Democratic leaders are holding out hope of reaching a deal and passing legislation before leaving for the August recess.

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires the government to obtain an order from a secret court to conduct electronic surveillance of terrorist or intelligence suspects in the United States. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush authorized a secret warrantless wiretapping program that allowed the National Security Agency to intercept communications between individuals in the United States and others overseas when at least one of them is suspected of links to terrorism.

The full extent of that program has never been disclosed. In January, it was put under the supervision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, though officials have never made public the terms of the court’s oversight.

In recent weeks, the administration has warned that the United States is under heightened threat of another terrorist attack. It is seeking broadened authority to step up surveillance, but for now, Democrats do not want to provide that power indefinitely. Congressional leaders met with Bush yesterday at the White House, where they discussed the administration’s wiretapping authority.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell submitted a proposal to Congress that asked for the authority to intercept without a court order any international phone call or e-mail between a surveillance target outside the United States and any person in the United States.

Yesterday, the administration updated its proposal by saying that the attorney general and the director of national intelligence could authorize such surveillance and that the guidelines on what constitutes an overseas target be subject to some court review. But the surveillance could begin before the court review and the oversight would be limited.

A Bush administration official, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said, “What we want to be careful about is not having FISA take on a role for which it was never intended, which is to essentially . . . extend privacy rights to foreigners located in foreign lands.”

A Democratic aide familiar with the negotiations said that if communications are determined to involve U.S. persons, then their names would be removed before any transcript is disseminated unless they were relevant to a foreign terrorism investigation.

If further investigation were needed, “individualized warrants for Americans” would be required, according to a proposal by conservative House Democrats led by Reps. Robert E. “Bud” Cramer (Ala.) and Jane Harman (Calif.). It is unclear what would specifically trigger that requirement.

The Democrats‘ proposal also would compel compliance by private companies.

It would also affirm that no court order is needed to eavesdrop on communications that begin and end outside the United States, even if routed through the United States.

TOP US Democrats condemned as “disgraceful” and a “betrayal” President George W. Bush’s decision today to commute the jail term of former senior White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

“The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people,” Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, said in a statement.

Mr Bush commuted the 30-month jail term imposed on Libby for lying to federal investigators in a case over an outed spy which highlighted doubts about the administration’s case for the war in Iraq.

Ms Pelosi’s condemnation echoed that of the other top Democrat in Congress, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.

“The President’s decision to commute Mr Libby’s sentence is disgraceful,” Mr Reid said.

“Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war.

“Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone,” Mr Reid said in a statement.

“The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice-President’s chief of staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.”

Announcing his decision to commute the term, Mr Bush said in a statement: “I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr Libby is excessive.”

Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office issued a short statement saying he “supports the President’s decision”.

Libby was found guilty of lying to federal investigators in a case probing whether White House officials had leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, but not of actually leaking her name to the press in July 2003.

It was alleged that Ms Plame’s cover as a CIA agent was blown to avenge criticism of the White House’s decision to go to war by her husband, ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson, who argued the case for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was flawed.

Mr Wilson said the Bush administration was “painting this almost as a compromise here, saying the President could have pardoned Scooter Libby, but rather he commuted the sentence.

“I would remind people that this is the president who was governor of Texas (and) refused to commute the first death sentence of a female prisoner, even after the Pope pleaded for clemency,” he said.

Senator John Edwards, a Democratic presidential hopeful, said the “cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today.

“George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences.”

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said “accountability has been in short supply in this Bush administration, and this commutation fits that pattern”.

Yet another Democratic Senator, Charles Schumer, weighed in to criticise Mr Bush’s decision, citing principles of US justice ahead of the nation’s July 4 anniversary of independence.

“One of the principles our forefathers fought for was equal justice under the law. This commutation completely tramples on that principle,” he said.

AFP

John Doraemi

 See these comments:

“Most Americans have tended to give the Bush-Cheney administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its failure to take action in advance of 9/11 to guard against an attack. Hindsight casts a harsh light on mistakes that should have been visible at the time they were made. But now, years later, with the benefit of investigations that have been made public, it is no longer clear that the administration deserves this act of political grace from the American people.”[1]

What is he saying?

This is couched in diplomatic language, but the intention is clear. He is not buying the Bushies’ excuses for September 11th 2001. He’s attributing this lack of trust to the “American people,” which polls on 9/11 support. But he is also going out on a political limb and making a value judgment as to whether the Bush regime “deserve” any trust on September 11th issues.

Very few politicians have dared challenge the regime on September 11th. Gore is the exception here, which is notable. These are carefully chosen words that appear in his book The Assault on Reason as well as on the Guardian website and “progressive” US websites.

A lot of very committed peope have been shouting about the regime’s “failure to take action in advance of 9/11 to guard against an attack” (as well as during the actual attacks) for a very long time, and yet are routinely attacked for doing so ― sometimes on the very same websites that re-published Gore’s article. Well how’s that for a bit of hypocrisy?

Back in 2004, Gore touched upon some 9/11 issues in a speech:

“Bush described this rigorous and formal analysis as just guessing. If that’s all the respect he has for reports given to him by the CIA, then perhaps it explains why he completely ignored the warning he received on August 6 th, 2001, that bin Laden was determined to attack our country. From all appearances, he never gave a second thought on that report until he finished reading My Pet Goat on September 11 th.” [2]

This is ― if you can believe it ― also diplomatic language, because the other explanation of Bush’s actions is too politically unthinkable for him to say out loud. Gore belongs to a political caste that doesn’t accuse others of the caste of criminality, or of high treason. It’s just not done.

For clarity sake, let’s have no mistakes here. The August 6 PDB is NOT the only warning this regime received by a long shot. Bush himself was moved out of his high rise hotel, by his own Secret Service, in Genoa Italy in July 2001 because of a warning of an “Al Qaeda plot” to hijack commercial airliners and “crash them into the summit of industrialized nations.” [3]The ignorance excuse ends right there.

Many dozens of warnings [4]were reported by mainstream news organizations. Even CIA head George Tenet and CIA Counterterrorism head Cofer Black warned the administration,[5] every member of the cabinet – including Bush in Crawford TX [6] ― of impending and imminent attacks.

Nothing was done about these warnings.

Gore elaborates on similar warnings received during his tenure as Vice President:

“The only warnings of this nature that remotely resembled the one given to George Bush was about the so-called Millenium threats predicted for the end of the year 1999 and less-specific warnings about the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. In both cases these warnings in the President’s Daily Briefing were followed, immediately, the same day - by the beginning of urgent daily meetings in the White House of all of the agencies and offices involved in preparing our nation to prevent the threatened attack.” [7]

I think it’s safe to say that Gore smells a rat. Perhaps he can’t come right out and say it, but he’s leaving clues for others to take up and pursue. He appears on the surface to have accepted some of the excuses put out by the regime, but in other contexts he flatly rebukes them and seeks more investigation.

That is the primary purpose of the 9/11 Truth Movement, to uncover the ugly buried truth that the Bushies have made “classified.” Gore is at least to some extent working toward the same ends.

Notes.

[1] The Guardian/UK, A Drive For Global Domination Has Put Us In Greater Danger, by Al Gore, excerpt from The Assault on Reason, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2086737,00.html

[2] Al Gore Speaks on Iraq, t r u t h o u t | Speech, Monday 18 October 2004, Gaston Hall, Georgetown University, http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004X.shtml
 [3] LA Times, Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit, September 27, 2001, http://www.prisonplanet.com/Italy_Tells_of_Threat_at_Genoa_Summit.htm
 [4] Complete 911 Timeline: Foreign Intelligence Agency Attack Warnings, click here

[5] Tenet told 9/11 panel that he warned Rice of Al Qaeda Former CIA head said she took threat seriously, By Dan Eggen and Robin Wright, Washington Post | October 3, 2006, click here

[6] They Knew, Tenet’s Book Reveals 9/11 Perjury, http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2007/05/they-knew-tenets-book-reveals-9-11.html
[7] Al Gore Speaks on Iraq, t r u t h o u t | Speech, Monday 18 October 2004, Gaston Hall, Georgetown University, http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004X.shtml

Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell

President George W. Bush won a battle over nearly $100 billion to fund the Iraq war as Democratic leaders in Congress on Tuesday abandoned efforts to withdraw troops for now but pledged to try again in July.

Instead of setting schedules for pulling U.S. troops, it appeared the Democratic-run Congress and the Republican White House agreed for the first time to include conditions prodding Baghdad to make better progress toward quelling violence or risk losing around $1.3 billion in U.S. reconstruction aid.

Bush could waive the provision, however.

Congress wants to deliver by week’s end the $100 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September.

With the Iraq funding deal, Democrats said the first minimum wage increase in a decade, a high priority for them, would be included. Congress already has approved tax breaks for small businesses to go along with the wage hike.

Democrats also will try to attach about $20 billion in domestic initiatives ― from farm aid and better health care for veterans, to health insurance for poor children and money to continue rebuilding states hit by hurricanes in 2005.

Negotiations between the White House and Congress were continuing on details, however.

House liberals were disappointed by the emerging deal, and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who signed off on the plan, said she opposed the Iraq portion of it.

VOTE LATER THIS WEEK

Pelosi said she was “not likely to vote for something that does not have a timetable” for withdrawing troops from the war that has killed at least 3,420 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 34,000.

But enough Republicans are expected to join some Democrats in backing the Iraq measure to ensure passage if it is put to a vote later this week, as planned by Pelosi.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin said Democrats will move the troop withdrawal fight to another bill. “The practical result of this would be we would transfer the debate on the Iraqi war” from the current emergency funding bill to fiscal 2008 war spending bills moving through Congress starting in July, he said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the negotiated measure would provide “the funding and flexibility the forces need. That’s what we’ve wanted all along.”

Bush vetoed Congress’ first version of this year’s emergency war funds bill because it set an Oct. 1 deadline for starting to pull most of the 147,000 soldiers out of Iraq, a goal of anti-war Democrats.

In postponing their demand for timetables to withdraw combat troops, Democrats acknowledged the political realities.

“The president has made it very clear he’s not going to sign timelines (for withdrawing troops). We can’t pass timelines over his veto,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters.

Virginia Democratic Rep. James Moran, who pushed for withdrawing troops, said Democrats would get blamed for any further hang-ups in passing the war funds. “The president has the bully pulpit,” Moran said.

While disappointing to some Democrats who say they won control of Congress last November largely because voters wanted an end to the 4-year-old Iraq war, it was welcome news for Republicans who have argued Congress should not be “micro-managing” the war.

“Democrats have finally conceded defeat in their effort to include mandatory surrender dates in a funding bill for the troops,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

But some Democrats argued that even with a weaker bill, they have ended four years of “rubber stamp” war funding bills of the previous Republican-run Congress.

Bush and most Republicans have argued that setting dates for withdrawing U.S. troops would rob military commanders of the flexibility they need to conduct the war.

Despite those charges, even some congressional Republicans, Boehner among them, have spoken of autumn as the timeframe for reassessing progress in Iraq and possibly producing “Plan B.”

Barry Grey

After weeks of public posturing and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, Democrats in the House of Representatives secured passage Friday of an emergency spending bill that grants the Bush administration’s request for over $100 billion in additional funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In what amounts to a colossal political fraud, they presented their “Troop Readiness, Veterans Health and Iraq Accountability Act” as a measure to force an end to the war in Iraq by September 1, 2008.

It does nothing of the kind. Even if a similar Democratic measure were to be passed in the Senate―and it will not―and the final bill were to survive a presidential veto―a political impossibility―the resulting law would do nothing to halt the current military escalation in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and would allow upwards of 75,000 US troops to remain in Iraq indefinitely.

The bill is a labored attempt by the Democratic leadership to pose as opponents of the Iraq war, while in practice ensuring its continuation. The vote to authorize war funding flies in the face of the will of the electorate, which expressed its desire to end the war and its opposition to the policies of the Bush administration in last November’s congressional elections, overturning Republican control in both houses of Congress.

In remarks following the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to declare her party’s support for the US military and the so-called “war on terror,” calling the bill “a giant step to end the war and responsibly redeploy our troops out of Iraq” so they could concentrate on Afghanistan, “where the war on terrorism is.”

The Bush administration has denounced the bill and promised to veto it, in line with the White House’s blanket opposition to any conditions, no matter how toothless, being placed on its war-making powers.

The bill passed by the narrowest possible margin, with 218 votes in favor and 212 opposed. Only two Republicans voted for the bill and 14 Democrats voted against it.

The conditions attached to US troop deployments by the bill are themselves so conditional as to be meaningless. Under the measure, Bush would be obliged to certify to Congress on July 1, 2007 and again on October 1, 2007 that the Iraqi government has made progress in meeting certain benchmarks, such as containing sectarian violence, reining in militias, and reforming the constitution. Should Bush fail to go through the motions of making such a certification, withdrawal of US combat troops would begin. Even if the government certified progress, US combat troops would be withdrawn by September 1, 2008.

But this “final deadline” could be extended if the administration obtained approval from Congress. In any event, less than half of the 140,000 US troops currently in Iraq are designated as combat forces, meaning that 75,000 or more troops would remain after the “deadline” to conduct counterinsurgency operations, train Iraqi forces, police borders and protect US assets.

As New York Senator Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, made clear in an interview with the New York Times last week, if elected she would keep a large force of American troops in Iraq indefinitely to secure “remaining vital national security interests” there. She elaborated on these “national security interests” by noting that Iraq is “right in the heart of the oil region.”

Similarly, the House Democrats’ bill upholds the war aims of US imperialism by listing as one of the benchmarks the passage of an oil law that will open up Iraq’s vast reserves to exploitation by US energy conglomerates.

The bill also requires the Pentagon to observe standards for training, equipping and resting troops before their deployment and limits the duration of Army tours of duty to 365 days. With the military already stretched to the limit, these provisions could actually create obstacles to the further escalation of the war under Bush’s so-called troop “surge” in Baghdad and Anbar Province. Consequently, the bill allows Bush to waive these requirements in the name of “national security,” giving him a free hand to send as many additional troops as he desires.

In the weeks leading up to Friday’s vote on the floor of the House, the White House and congressional Republicans continually called the Democrats’ bluff, exposing their antiwar pretenses by challenging them to cut off war funding. This culminated last week in the passage, with overwhelming Democratic support, of a Republican-sponsored nonbinding Senate resolution vowing to never cut funds for “troops in the field.”

For their part, Pelsoi and the rest of the Democratic leadership continually tacked to the right, readjusting their war spending bill to placate Blue Dog Democrats and other war supporters within the Democratic caucus by further watering down its nominal restrictions on Bush’s war powers. They secured the support of the party’s right wing by dropping language that would have required Bush to obtain congressional support before launching an attack on Iran.

They loaded the bill with allocations for special projects targeted to win over specific congressmen. Thus the final result includes $25 million for spinach farmers in California, $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia, $15 million for Louisiana rice fields and $120 million for shrimp fishermen.

As Pelosi and her subordinates scrambled to assemble the necessary 218 votes to secure passage, groups on the so-called liberal wing of the party declared their support, including the Congressional Black Caucus and MoveOn.org.

The critical role was played by the misnamed “Out of Iraq Caucus” of House Democrats. This group of some 70 congressmen has postured as the most militant critics of the war. Their key leaders, such as Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters, both of California, have been paraded before antiwar demonstrators by protest organizers as living proof that the Democratic Party can be pressured to end the war.

Pelosi dealt with them through a combination of threats and inducements. The house speaker reportedly warned California Rep. Barbara Lee, another leader of the Out of Iraq Caucus, that she would be stripped of her post on the powerful House Appropriations Committee if she sought to block passage of the bill.

On Thursday, Lee, Woolsey, Waters and company insured passage of the bill at a closed-door session with Pelosi. The Washington Post reported on Friday:

“As debate began on the bill yesterday, members of the antiwar caucus and party leaders held a backroom meeting in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a final plea to the group, asking it to deliver at least four votes when the roll is called. The members promised ten.”

Lee, the author of a bill that would supposedly withdraw US troops from Iraq by the end of 2007, said, “While I cannot betray my conscience, I cannot stand in the way of passing a measure that puts a concrete end date on this unnecessary war.”

Waters said the leaders of the caucus had told their members, “We don’t want them to be in a position of undermining Nancy’s speakership.”

In the debate on the floor of the House, supposedly antiwar liberals denounced the war, and proceeded to call for a vote to fund it. Typical were the remarks of Jim McDermott of Washington State, who declared, “The Iraq war is a fraud… Perpetuating it is a tragedy,” and then announced he would vote for the war funding measure.

Virtually all of the Democratic speakers wrapped themselves in the flag and declared their unconditional “support for the troops.” According to one press report: “In the closing round of the debate, most Democrats focused on elements of the bill that they said would protect American troops by requiring better training and longer periods of rest between deployments.”

Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, who heads the Armed Services Committee, said the bill would strengthen the US military, which has been strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I’m deeply concerned about the readiness of our forces,” he said.

The legislative charade mounted by the Democratic Party has nothing to do with ending the war in Iraq. There are, in fact, no principled differences between the Democrats and Bush when it comes to the imperialist aims of the war. Both parties, the Democrats no less than the Republicans, serve the corporate interests―the oil conglomerates, the Wall Street banks, and the American financial oligarchy as a whole―that seek through military violence to establish US control of the resources and markets of the world.

The differences between those within the political establishment who favor continued escalation of the war and those who seek to continue the colonial occupation with reduced US troops are purely tactical. They have to do with the best means of salvaging the US debacle in Iraq by killing and brutalizing more Iraqis, in order to secure US control of the Middle East.

The real political purpose of the Democrats’ bill was indicated in an interview this week on the “Democracy Now” radio program with Robert Borosage, a long-time Democratic Party operative and contributing editor at the Nation magazine. Arguing in support of the war spending bill, he said, “The question is about, can you create a symbolic vote―because the president has vowed to veto it if it passes―a symbolic vote that unites the opponents of the war and shows that there’s a majority in the Congress now united about a date certain to get the troops out.”

In other words, a measure that will have no effect on the war, but will promote the fiction that the Democratic Party is in some way a vehicle for the antiwar sentiments of the people, and thereby keep social opposition within the bounds of the two-party system.

In this critical task for the American ruling elite, forces like the Out of Iraq Caucus and their “left” allies in the protest movement play a crucial role. They serve not to end the war, but to provide a right-wing, pro-war party with a left-wing, antiwar gloss, the better to block the emergence of an independent movement of working people against war, repression and social inequality.

Four-and-a-half months after the election, in which the people expressed their opposition to the war, the result is the opposite of their wishes. Tens of thousands more troops are being deployed, the carnage and death are increasing, and US military spokesmen like Gen. David Petraeus are speaking of an escalation unlimited in both size and duration.

Ending the catastrophe inflicted by American imperialism on Iraq, and preventing new wars in Iran and elsewhere, requires a complete political break with the Democratic Party and the two-party system. It requires the independent political mobilization of working people, both in the US and internationally, in a class-conscious socialist movement.

We urge all those who agree with this perspective to make preparations to attend the Emergency Conference Against War sponsored by the World Socialist Web Site, the Socialist Equality Party and the International Students for Social Equality on the weekend of March 31-April 1.