Bush faces mutiny over extra troops for Iraq

[CatWoman]

As George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney inveighed against their Democratic critics, the White House tried to prevent a Republican mutiny on Capitol Hill from engulfing the President's bitterly contested decision to send more than 20,000 extra US troops to Iraq.

The moves came as public opposition to Mr Bush's new policy seemed, if anything, to harden, while Congress geared up for what is shaping up as the fiercest constitutional battle over the war-waging powers of a President since the Vietnam war.

Mr Bush and Mr Cheney challenged Democrats to come up with a better way: "To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," Mr Bush said, while his Vice-President, predictably, was more trenchant. "They have absolutely nothing to offer in its place," Mr Cheney told the conservative Fox News. "I have yet to hear a coherent policy from the Democratic side." And, he added: "If the United States doesn't have the stomach to finish the task in Iraq, we put at risk what we've done" - confirming the belief of al-Qa'ida that the US could be driven from the Middle East.

The most important arm-twisting, however, this weekend was not on television but at Camp David. Mr Bush invited Republican congressional leaders to the presidential retreat in a bid to rally support, and dissuade members of his own party from breaking ranks with a "lame duck" leader, whose approval ratings are at 35 per cent or less.

Though the White House insists that it alone charts the conduct of the war, the administration is deeply worried how non-binding resolutions opposing the troop build-up, likely to be voted upon in both Senate and House of Representatives in the next few weeks, could erode its authority and credibility.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2154792.ece

[SpiralHawk]

1. Where's the US press on this? Zzzzzzzz

On bended knee to their republicon corporate owners. As usual. No real journalists left in the corporate mish-mash of Info-freekin-tainment.

America's so-called journalists are primarily republicon-corporate brown-nosers, as Scott Pelly of 60 Minutes infamy just proved
as he brown-nosed Commander AWOL

[BadgerKid]

4. You got first dibs

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[msongs]

2. the task IS finished: no WMD, no Saddam, elections were held - everything bushler

said he wanted originally has been accomplished.

time to declare victory and go home a winner!

wish I would hear an elected dem talk like this.

Msongs
www.msongs.com

[Art_from_Ark]

9. You're forgetting something

According to bu$h, if we pull out now, then the "radicals" will control the Iraqi oil fields and use oil as a weapon

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2006110401025

[VegasWolf]

3. Bush sees his oil stock options going down the tube if he loses Iraq. nt

[MasonJar]

5. What credibility? He has already overstepped his authority. It

needs to be stripped away NOW.

[willthekid]

6. Mr. Cheney, if al Qaeda wanted to hit us again, they would have by now believe me....

How many American "soft targets" overseas would have been easy targets for al Qaeda or other allied terrorists to attack? American resorts in Bali and in Africa. American worker areas in the Middle East. Halliburton "truck drivers" in Iraq who make 2 and a half times as much as American soldiers do on the same tax dollar that I send in every time the government raids my check.(American troops make roughly 40-50K per year served in Iraq while tax-payer paid Halliburton truck drivers pull in 6 figures and at least 100K for doing a job that is a hell of a lot safer than playing policeman between 2 rival ethnic groups who want to murder each other.

You know, at least over here cops usually face criminals with semi-automatic handguns. Our troops over there are "policing" crooks and murderers where every house has is legally-entitled to have an AK-47(imagine if that were legal here the bullshit we would have to put up with) and RPGs and IEDs are commonly used weapons not to mention other larger machine guns and grenades.

American troops should look into police work in the United States. The pay may be a little worse in various areas but at least you're near your family and friends and it's a hell of a lot safer and the cop on the American street usually has a much higher lifespan than that of an American soldier patrolling the streets of Baghdad.

[aquart]

8. So what if they do??? Terrorism is a flea-bite. It is NOT our biggest problem.

It isn't even on the top ten of our biggest problems, all of which George has neglected to pursue boogeymen for fun and somebody else's profit.

[gratuitous]

7. "We put at risk what we've done"

Is that right, Mr. Cheney? And just what, pray tell, have we done so far in Iraq? Oh, I know that Halliburton, which was flirting with bankruptcy at the end of 2002 is now on a much more solid financial footing. And those contracts for Iraq's oil revenues are just waiting for the ink to dry before being signed, but besides the obvious war profiteering by you and your business cronies, what have we done in Iraq?

Also, I note that according to the story Bush went to Camp David this weekend to put pressure on congressional Republicans. He cut his weekend short, though, according to other published reports. I wonder if his former pals in Congress told Little Lord Pissypants to get bent, and that's why he came back early?