Bush Vetoes Greatly Needed Health And Education Funds For Poor Americans

Then Demands More Money For More War

It is now abundantly clear, if it wasn't already, that President Bush's final mission of his two term presidency is to divert every single American dollar that he can from health and education for the poor to the profit sheets of America's biggest defence and arms contractors.

It is remarkable, even for Bush, that within hours of vetoing health and education funding, he was on TV demanding Congress pull its finger out and sign over tens of billions of more dollars, immediately, for the war industries.

From the Associated Press :

President Bush on Tuesday vetoed a spending measure for health and education programs prized by congressional Democrats. He also signed a big increase in the Pentagon's non-war budget.

The president's action was announced on Air Force One as Bush flew to Indiana for a speech expected to criticize the Democratic-led Congress on its budget priorities.

More than any other spending bill, the $606 billion education and health measure defines the differences between Bush and majority Democrats. The House fell three votes short of winning a veto-proof margin as it sent the measure to Bush.

Rep. David Obey, the Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, pounced immediately on Bush's veto.

"This is a bipartisan bill supported by over 50 Republicans," Obey said. "There has been virtually no criticism of its contents. It is clear the only reason the president vetoed this bill is pure politics."

Since winning re-election, Bush has sought to cut the labor, health and education measure below the prior year level. But lawmakers have rejected the cuts. The budget that Bush presented in February sought almost $4 billion in cuts to this year's bill.

Democrats responded by adding $10 billion to Bush's request for the 2008 bill. Democrats say spending increases for domestic programs are small compared with Bush's pending war request totaling almost $200 billion.

The $471 billion defense budget gives the Pentagon a 9 percent, $40 billion budget increase. The measure only funds core department operations, omitting Bush's $196 billion request for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, except for an almost $12 billion infusion for new troop vehicles that are resistant to roadside bombs.

Much of the increase in the defense bill is devoted to procuring new and expensive weapons systems, including $6.3 billion for the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, $2.8 billion for the Navy's DD(X) destroyer and $3.1 billion for the new Virginia-class attack submarine.

Huge procurement costs are driving the Pentagon budget ever upward. Once war costs are added in, the total defense budget will be significantly higher than during the typical Cold War year, even after adjusting for inflation.

"Commander Guy" Vetoes Iraq War Funding Bill

Bush And The NeoCons Are Betting The House On A More Peaceful, Vastly Wealthy Future For Iraq


Photo selection from The Huffington Post

President Bush said he'd do it, and now he's done it :

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I am returning herewith without my approval H.R. 1591, the “U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007.”

He didn't like the fact the bill included a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq, or "the timeline for defeat" as the NeoCons and their media lackeys like to call it, he didn't like all the added "pork" and he didn't the idea of not being the "decider" when it comes to announcing that American troops are coming home.

Here's the basic coverage :

US president George Bush vetoed legislation to pull US troops out of Iraq in a showdown with Congress over whether the unpopular and costly war should end or escalate.

In only the second veto of his presidency, Bush last night rejected legislation that would have required the first US combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by October 1, with a goal of a complete pull-out six months later.

He vetoed the Bill immediately on his return to the White House from a visit to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, headquarters of US Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

Democrats made a last-minute plea for Bush to sign the Bill, knowing their request would be ignored.

“The president has put our troops in the middle of a civil war,” said Senate majority leader Harry Reid. “Reality on the ground proves what we all know: a change of course is needed.”

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But lacking the votes to override the president, Democratic leaders quietly considered what might be included or kept out of their next version of the £62 billion spending Bill.

It was a day of high political drama, falling on the fourth anniversary of Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech on an aircraft carrier and his declaration that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

The seriousness of the Veto Event has been underscored by another almost-childlike comment from President Bush, which has inspired the usual round of blogger mockery. Bush used to call himself "The Decider", now he's tagged himself with a new moniker that's inspired much mirth :

“The question is, ‘Who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders?,’’ Mr. Bush said. “As you know, my position is clear – I’m the commander guy.”

How soon will a mock online comic book about 'The Commander Guy' appear? We'll give it a few days, or less.


Excellent coverage on the Veto Event and important comment, as usual, from Dan Froomkin at White House Watch. He also has a good round-up of the American commentariat reaction :

With the public resoundingly against him, Republican support wearing thin, and -- most importantly -- Congress in Democratic hands, President Bush today finds himself in the unusual position of actually having to negotiate.

The question is: Does he have it in him?

A day after vetoing legislation that would have established a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Bush has invited congressional leaders to the White House for a sit-down.

"I am confident that with goodwill on both sides, we can agree on a bill that gets our troops the money and flexibility they need as soon as possible," Bush said in a short televised address last night, announcing the veto.

But the president's language was inflexible: "It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing," he said. "All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength -- and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq. I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure -- and that would be irresponsible."

With no apparent sense of irony, Bush described the Democratic plan as "a prescription for chaos and confusion."

So what happens now? Will Bush refuse to genuinely engage with his critics? (His traditional response to Democrats who disagree with him.) Will he try to find some way to make it look like he's compromising when he really isn't? (His traditional response to Republicans who disagree with him.) Or will he start talking in earnest about ways both sides can compromise?

The conventional wisdom is that the White House's big concession will be to entertain discussions about benchmarks for the Iraqi government. But it's important to keep in mind that the White House has been talking about such benchmarks for many months now. In his prime-time address in January, Bush even announced: "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."

The administration has even previously indicated it had some deadlines in mind for those benchmarks. It's just that none of them have been met. On the same day in January that Bush made his announcement, senior administration officials promised that the Iraqis would deliver three additional Iraqi brigades to Baghdad by the end of February. That didn't happen. And the following day, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged in Senate testimony that without progress toward some key benchmarks within "one or two months . . . this plan is not going to work." It's now been four months, with little or no progress. (For background and links, see my Thursday column, Keep Your Eye on the Benchmarks.)

So the central issue is not whether there are benchmarks, or even timetables. The central issue is whether failure to meet those benchmarks has any genuine consequences -- and whether those consequences include the withdrawal of American forces.

So what's next? Bush will meet with key Democrats in the coming days to hash out the new bill to keep funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democrats are widely seen as having got their point across, that the president will not have an easy time letting the Iraq War drag on forever, and they've given some satisfaction to the more than 50% of Americans demanding that the US troop withdrawal from Iraq begin before the end of the year.

But there will be no US troop withdrawal before the 2008 presidential elections. The power brokers in the Republican Party have all but admitted that they don't have a chance of keeping control of the White House through 2009-2012.

It will take an even more horrifying US body count in Iraq for a sudden shift in the long term plans of the Bush administration to maintain a heavy presence in Iraq, and therefore the Middle East, for decades to come.


President Bush, following recent lines by Vice President Cheney and General Petreaus, is setting the scene for a very violent future for Iraq, which will have to be accepted by Americans as something close to normal :

"... the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve."

As Think Progress points out, an Iraq that has to learn to live with car bombings and suicide attacks is a long, long way from the democratic, and peaceful, Iraq used to sell and re-sell the continuation of the war and occupation :

During the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) explained that success against terrorism will occur when terrorist acts, such as those in Iraq, are reduced to the level that “they’re a nuisance.” Kerry explained gains can be made against terrorism when “it isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”

Now Bush, Cheney and key generals are virtually repeating Kerry's formula for lesser success verbatim.


Although the Iraq War will have cost close to $580 billion by the end of 2007, it is still only a small slice of the more than $5 trillion the US spent fighting World War 2, and as far as the Republicans, many Democrats and the still powerful NeoCon alliance in Washington is concerned, the stakes in the Iraq War are as just as important for the long-term security and economic survival of the United States as World War 2 was, while it was being fought, and proved to be in the following decades.

Iraq's oil riches may total up to $12 trillion, and the United States intends to remain as the chief non-Iraqi stakeholder in the country's future. The security situation is grim indeed, and more than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes and neighbourhoods in the past three years. More than 500,000 Iraqis have been killed, and the locals call Baghdad a dying city.

But the United States is betting on vast returns of their investment in re-creating Iraq as a democratic, free market, and extremely wealthy Middle East nation ten to twenty years from now.

When the oil is flowing at a projected rate of 4 million barrels a day, and Iraq becomes an IT and high-tech centre of development for the gradual transformation of the entire Middle East, the United States clearly intends to be the Iraqis gateway to a more prosperous future.

Of course, all of that remains, literally, a pipe dream for now. But the long-term presumption amongst the NeoColonialists is that the Iraqis can't keep fighting the occupation of their nation forever.

If a possible peoples revolution in the United States spawned of anger over the tragedy and losses of the Iraq War can be suppressed long enough, the NeoCons are likely to be proven right about Iraq. But that is a day decades away, and the Middle East may fracture further between now and then, or sink into outright war.

Bush Still Holds Upper Hand In Fight With Congress Over Iraq War Funding

The 'War At Home' Set To Grow Even Uglier As Bush Threatens To Veto Democrats Demands For Withdrawal Timetable

President Bush now acknowledges that Americans voted for a dramatic change in last year's mid-term elections on how the US goes about handling the war in Iraq. But Bush thinks this vote for change was answered by the "troop surge" plan first announced three months ago, which could see another 40,000 American troops mobilised and sent to Iraq within the year.

That is not exactly the kind of "change" Americans were voting for, and Bush knows it.

On Friday, during his weekly radio address, he again pummelled the Democrats over their delays in delivering the "emergency supplemental" bill to continue funding the Iraq War beyond July this year. The greatest holiday-taking president in history chastised Democrats for taking an extended Easter break and not coughing up the $100 billion of war funding fast enough.

The delay and the proposed timetables for withdrawal of American troops all play into the enemies' hands, claimed Bush, "giving our enemies the victory they desperately want."

Bush has agreed to meet with top Democrats this week to chew over the war-funding bill details, but Bush has already said he will veto any bill that includes timetables for withdrawals, or any firm markers of progress.

The president wants to keep the war money spigot turned on full, for as long as he can. The longer the money is guaranteed, the more time he has to turn around America's growing defeat in Iraq.

From CNN :

At Bush's invitation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are due at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the war, particularly a bill funding the military mission through September.

In both the House and Senate, Democrats have attached timelines for withdrawing troops to the bill containing $96 billion in military funding.

"Instead of approving this funding, Democrats in Congress have spent the past 68 days pushing legislation that would undercut our troops," (Bush) said in his weekly radio address. "They passed bills that would impose restrictions on our military commanders and set an arbitrary date for withdrawal from Iraq, giving our enemies the victory they desperately want."

In a statement, Reid, D-Nevada, responded: "Democrats are continuing to fight to fully fund our troops and give them a strategy for success worthy of their sacrifices. President Bush continues to insist that we follow his same failed strategy that has drawn our troops further into an intractable civil war."

"The longer Congress delays the worse the impact on the men and women of the armed forces will be," Bush said. "I recognize that Republicans and Democrats in Washington have differences over the best course in Iraq, and we should vigorously debate those differences. But our troops should not be trapped in the middle."

Both Bush and the Democrats have been arguing that the public is behind their position -- the president says Americans want success in Iraq, while Democrats argue voters backed an end to war when they put them in charge of Congress in the November elections.

On Saturday, the president agreed with Democrats that "the American people voted for change in Iraq." But he said that is what is happening now, under a new war plan he announced three months ago to send extra U.S. troops to Iraq to calm Baghdad and Anbar province and to install a new war commander, Gen. David Petraeus.

This Reuters report argues that the Democrats will clearly not cut off funding for America's troops in Iraq, so Bush, therefore, still holds "the upper hand" in the battle over war funding.

But Bush is running out of time to turn around the Iraq War :

Administration officials have set late summer as a possible benchmark to gauge whether 28,000 extra troops Bush has ordered to Iraq are succeeding in stemming chaos, particularly in Baghdad.

That is also a crucial time on the U.S. political calendar as candidates gear up for the 2008 election amid growing Republican fears they may face a further bruising after stinging defeats in last year's congressional races.

All three leading Republican presidential contenders, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, support Bush's Iraq policy. But McCain, struggling with sliding poll numbers and lackluster fund raising, has been the most outspoken supporter of the troop increase and appears to have paid a price.

"Bush is trying to use the bully pulpit of the presidency the way Clinton used it against the Republicans," said Stephen Wayne, professor of government at Georgetown University.

"The difference here is that public opinion is strongly formed against the war."

He said pressure on Bush to shift course on Iraq will build in coming months if signs of improvement do not materialize because more Republicans, including some of the presidential candidates, may abandon him. Eventually, this could force him to scale back the troop presence, Wayne said.

Polls show that a majority of Americans agree with Democrats that there should be a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

There are few military analysts who credibly claim that a major turnaround on the violence in Iraq will happen anytime before the 2008 presidential elections. It will take years, and no doubt dominate the first term of the next US president.

What is rarely discussed, at least openly in the media, is how the Bush administration and the Democrats, will deal with the growing anger of Americans over the continuation of the Iraq War.
It is slowly becoming a known reality to the tens of millions of anti-Iraq War Americans who voted the Dems back into control of Congress that the war will not be ending before Bush leaves the White House.

They will keep demanding their Democrat senators do something, and the senators will continue to blame Bush. But what will the American public do when they fully realise that the Iraq War will go on long after President Bush has left to open his library and work on his memoirs?

The Bush legacy on America will remain toxic for years to come, even if violence in Iraq drops substantially, and a staged withdrawal begins. It will infect and drag down the next administration, whether the president is a Democrat or Republican.

If Bush Vetos Troops Out Of Iraq Bill, He Will Deny The Demands Of Most Americans

With more and more senior Republicans abandoning the president by the day, Bush is now set to make what will prove to be one of the most unpopular moves of his entire presidency when he uses his veto power to try and kill off the Democrats 'Troops Out In 2008' war spending bill.

As Dan Froomkin from the Washington Post's White House Watch observes, "Bush is in a real bind" :

The combination of veto power and a sizeable Republican minority means the president can reliably block any Democratic legislation he dislikes from becoming law.

But in this case, Bush affirmatively needs Congress to send him a war funding bill so he can keep fighting the war in Iraq. Now that the Democrats have succeeded in attaching a timetable for troop withdrawal to the funding bill, he is left with two basic options: negotiate with the Democrats -- or play a hugely consequential game of chicken.

So far signs are that Bush is going with the latter option.

"Some Democrats believe that by delaying funding for our troops, they can force me to accept restrictions on our commanders that I believe would make withdrawal and defeat more likely," Bush said in a belligerent speech to a boisterous bunch of beef barons this morning. "That's not going to happen. . . .

"The clock is ticking for our troops in the field," he added. "If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible."

In the same speech Bush said :

"...at the very moment that General Petraeus's strategy is beginning to show signs of success, the Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed an emergency war spending bill that undercuts him and the troops under his command.

"This bill would damage our effort in Iraq three ways. First, the House bill would impose restrictions on our commanders in Iraq, as well as rigid conditions and arbitrary deadlines on the Iraqi government. It would mandate a precipitous withdrawal of American forces, if every one of these conditions is not met by a date certain. Even if they are met, the bill would still require that most American forces begin retreating from Iraq by March 1st of next year, regardless of conditions on the ground.

"It's unclear what the military significance of this date is. What is clear is that the consequences of imposing such a specific and random date for withdrawal would be disastrous. If the House bill becomes law, our enemies in Iraq would simply have to mark their calendars. They'd spend the months ahead picking how to use their new -- plotting how to use their new safe havens once we were to leave. It makes no sense for politicians in Washington, D.C. to be dictating arbitrary time lines for our military commanders in a war zone 6,000 miles away.

"...the House bill also undermines the Iraqi government, and contradicts the Democrats' claim that they simply want to help the Iraqis solve their own problems. For example, the House bill would cut funding for the Iraqi security forces if Iraqi leaders did not meet arbitrary deadlines.

"The Democrats cannot have it both ways. They can't say that the Iraqis must do more, and then take away the funds that will help them do so. Iraq is a young democracy. It is fighting for its survival in a region that is vital to our security. The lesson of September the 11th must not be forgot. To cut off support for the security forces would put our own security at risk.

"...the clock is ticking for our troops in the field. Funding for our forces in Iraq will begin to run out in mid-April. Members of Congress need to stop making political statements, and start providing vital funds for our troops. They need to get that bill to my desk so I can sign it into law.

"I know when you see somebody in the uniform, you praise them, and I thank you for that. We need to praise those military families, too, that are strong, standing by their loved one in this mighty struggle to defend this country. They risk their lives to fight a brutal and determined enemy, an enemy that has no respect for human life.

"We saw that brutality in a recent attack. Just two weeks ago, terrorists in Baghdad put two children in the back of an explosive-laden car, and they used them to get the car past a security checkpoint. And once through, the terrorists fled the vehicle and detonated the car with the children inside. Some call this civil war; others call it emergency [sic] -- I call it pure evil. And that evil that uses children in a terrorist attack in Iraq is the same evil that inspired and rejoiced in the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. And that evil must be defeated overseas, so we don't have to face them here again.

"If we cannot muster the resolve to defeat this evil in Iraq, America will have lost its moral purpose in the world, and we will endanger our citizens, because if we leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here. Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy. Four years after this war began, the nature of the fight has changed, but this is a fight that can be won. We can have confidence in the outcome, because this nation has done this kind of work before."

Bush also enthusiastically talked up what he said were signs of stability and progress in Iraq. He cited two bloggers, in particular, whose posts, while they may have been genuine, read like they were the work of the same people who wrote Bush's speech. Presumably, Bush was not quoting the Iraqi bloggers directly.

But while Bush enthused about the "spreading" stability in Iraq, the violence there hit shocking heights :

...news agencies reported a grim list of incidents of continuing insurgent and sectarian violence across the country.

For example, in Tall Afar, a northern Iraqi city that Bush has extolled as a model for U.S. pacification efforts, Shiite gunmen, reportedly including policemen, stormed a Sunni Muslim district and killed at least 50 people today in reprisal for twin truck bombings yesterday that killed at least 55 in Shiite areas of the city.

In Fallujah, two suicide bombers blew up trucks loaded with chlorine outside a local government building, injuring at least 15 Iraqi and U.S. personnel in the latest of a series of such makeshift chemical weapons attacks. In Baghdad, a car bomb killed two Iraqi civilians, and an American soldier and a government contractor died in mortar or rocket attacks on the heavily fortified Green Zone.

CORRECTION : Bush quoted a blog called 'Iraq The Model' and used the following passage in his speech, though he cherry-picked the quotes from a compilation of posts on Opinion Journal :

"Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now. Our people want to see this effort succeed. We hope the governments in Baghdad and America do not lose their resolve."

Bush Warns Against Iraq Timetable, Pelosi Tells Bush To "Calm Down"