Explaining the 87 Billion Thing (It Works)

IdaBriggs

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Wed Aug-25-04 06:44 AM
Original message

Explaining the 87 Billion Thing (It Works)

The quick explanation -- "Bush is a lying weasel."

The longer one:

Let me give you a history lesson. (I always start this way.) Bush Sr, no matter what else you say about him, was a foreign policy genius. (everyone nods) In Gulf War 1, he went to all of our allies and got their support for kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. This meant other countries were supplying troops, but it also meant the countries that weren't supplying troops (like Japan and Saudi Arabia) agreed to give MONEY to cover the expenses of the war. At the end of the war, the US taxpayers didn't end up paying anything FINANCIALLY -- in fact, we may have MADE some money on the deal.

Fast forward to nowadays. Saddam is playing his typical games; that makes sense, because he needs to do stuff like that as a dictator to stay in power. George comes to Congress and says, "look, we're playing poker with the inspectors, I need to be able to back my bluff and threaten to go 'all in.' Of course I would never actually do that unless it was the last resort AND I had the support of our allies." Congress agrees BECAUSE IT MAKES SENSE and they haven't figured out yet that George would behave like a lying weasel over putting the country into a war. George "bluffs" and wins, Saddam lets the weapons inspectors do whatever they want, saves face -- and then suddenly GEORGE ORDERS THE WEAPONS INSPECTORS OUT OF THE COUNTRY BEFORE THEY ARE DONE AND INVADES IRAQ!!!

Now, our allies think we're nuts because we don't need to waste money on bullets (among other things!) when the weapons inspectors are working, so they refuse to add troops, AND they refuse to give us money. George didn't expect that because I guess he didn't realize actual work was involved in getting our allies on board with money and troops, so after a bit he comes back to Congress and asks for US money to keep the invasion running.

One of Congress's jobs is to watch over the country's checkbook. I'm not going to argue with anyone about how well they do that, but the bottom line was there were two final versions of "how to pay the bills in Iraq" (since no one else was helping out because George's people, having flunked Diplomacy 101, were busying calling them "cheese eating surrender monkeys" and "old Europe"): Option one was to give the Pentagon a "blank check" for $87 Billion. Option two was a "blank check" for $67 Billion, with a "show us the receipts" option on the remaining $20 Billion, which wasn't needed immediately. Kerry and Edwards voted for the $67 Billion & Receipts + $20 Billion. Now Bush is saying "they didn't support the troops" which is a load of nonsense because the only question was how the bills were going to get paid -- cash, check or credit card! And if you don't think Kerry and Edwards were making the right decision, then you should pay attention to the latest Halliburton headlines: They've "lost" the receipts for $1.8 BILLION dollars (OOPS!) and the Pentagon is PAYING THEM ANYWAY!!!

The whole thing can be explained in under three minutes, and I usually toss stuff in about sound bytes versus reality. People get it, and then they usually get annoyed at the misleading crap they've been being fed. :)