An Exercise in Misdirection
quick! look over there!
By streiff Posted in Democrats — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It is called transference. It happens when you attribute to someone else the motives or behaviors you yourself would exhibit. With the left, they live by the lie and so they can be counted on to reflexively accuse others of lying.
What passes for a brain trust on the left is accusing the Administration of lying about the importance of passing a Defense supplemental bill. It is they who are lying.
Read on.
The comically misnamed “Think Progress” has this to say:
Bush Caught Hyping False Iraq Spending Deadline
The Bush administration has been trying to force Congress to abandon its support for an Iraq withdrawal time line by claiming that a “clean” Iraq spending bill must be signed by mid-April or U.S. troops will suffer.
Here they are simply telling THE BIG LIE.
Their own quote from Bush says this:
BUSH: Congress continues to pursue these [withdrawal] bills, and as they do, 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.
And Secretary Gates, in the video, says "the service will be forced to consider" cuts including training, quality of life funding for troops and families, equipment repair. That "disruption to key programs", he said, "will have a genuinely adverse affect on the readiness of the Army and quality of life for Soldiers and their families".
They cherry pick a non-sequitur statement from the CRS report on the subject because the statements of Bush and Gates refer to when damage to existing programs will start and not to some nebulous date when funding runs out. In fact, the CRS report does not even mention a date when funds begin to run out.
In a memo to the Senate Budget Committee dated Wednesday, the congressional analysts said the Army has enough money in its existing budget to fund operations and maintenance through the end of May — about $52.6 billion. If additional transfer authority is tapped, subject to Congress approving a reprogramming request, the Army would have enough funds to make it through nearly two additional months, or toward the end of July. Using all of its transfer authority, the Army could have as much as $60.1 billion available.
And ignore what the CRS really said:
To use this transfer authority, DOD would have to submit a reprogramming request that could temporarily move for example, procurement funds into Army O&M as long as the four defense committees approved.”
- - -
The Army has suggested that these actions would disrupt its programs including facilities repair, depot maintenance, and training. In order to ensure that funding is available for the later months of the year, the Army may very well decide that it must slow down its non-war-related operations before money would run out by, for example, limiting facility maintenance and repairs, delaying equipment overhauls, restricting travel and meetings, and, perhaps slowing down training. Although it is true that a delay in passage of the FY2007 supplemental could require additional management actions, Congress has given DOD flexibility by providing transfer authority so that funds can be moved to meet more urgent requirements. In this case, because the transfers would presumably be temporary, the disruptions might also be less onerous.
In addition, funding for operation and maintenance finances a wide variety of activities ranging from day-to-day maintenance of military facilities to pre-deployment training of troops. The Army could take some actions that might be less efficient but would not necessarily harm readiness by for example, delaying facilities repairs until later in the year or splitting support contracts into smaller increments so that obligations would be smaller initially and larger later in the year.
The fact is, funds do start to run out on April 15, just as Secretary Gates said. The fact is that while reprogramming authority will allow combat operations to proceed, the bill payer will be just what Secretary Gates said: quality of life expenditures for troops and their families, equipment repair, real property maintenance, and procurement. And while a later supplemental can restore budget authority what it can't restore is the lost time.
Of course it doesn’t matter to them if barracks, family quarters, and hospitals can’t be maintained. It doesn’t matter to them if equipment needed to train troops for deployment or to support disaster relief operations domestically isn’t repaired. It doesn’t matter to them if training for troops deploying to combat have their training curtailed. The “slow bleed” is what they are after.
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An Exercise in Misdirection 11 Comments (0 topical, 11 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
but the mission of deposing Saddam's regime and defeating its military was indeed accomplished at the time of the USS Abraham Lincoln ceremony. We weren't destroying entire divisions anymore. The occupation and rehabilitation phase may not have been represented well to the public but the planners always knew there was a distinction. I can't really blame people for the confusion because it could have been better explained at the time.
You should be completely ashamed. This crap is the genesis of Miss Nancy's slow bleed strategy. You don't like the sign so stamp your little feet and cut off funding for the US military that you've sent into harms way.
It's late, I'm grouchy, be glad you're not here.
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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
Notice I didn't defend Pelosi once on this issue although as far as what she has to do politically, this is it, she'd be deposed as speaker if she refused to do anything token.
Now the democrats made their token statement, they need to pass the supplemental with no strings attached after Bush vetoes it, which a fraction of them in cooperation wtih the republicans probably will.
And I won't apologize for cursing republicans for scoring political points with "this war will be easy, rah rah" -- they screwed up and it's coming back to bite the armed forces with the current disillusioned public attitude.
You get to go through the text of Bush's speech that you're criticizing, and find any mention of what Bush says about how things will be in the future - specifically, whether they will be easy or hard, quick or slow. Copy this speech into an email, and bold those relevant portions. Send that email to me, and you can have your posting privileges back.
Thanks in advance.
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
KnownFact™ - "this war will be easy, rah rah"
Actual Statement from Senior Administration Official:
"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog." - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
Memo: Global War on Terror - October 16, 2003
The memo is discussed in context and in great detail during Sec Def Rumdfeld's interview with the Washington Times Editorial Board.
***
“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
acknowledged that the occupation of Iraq would need to last for a decade. They voted for the war knowing that it would take that long. They have only discovered since then that they actually thought it would be short. Having convinced themselves that they believed in 2002 that the war would be short, they have now concluded that the only reason it has lasted four years is the incompetence of the President.
In fact, of course, it is due to the supreme competence of the President that the war has progressed so far ahead of the schedule that Biden and Hegel believed likely when they voted for the war.
So, in summary, in 2002 10 years was to be expected. In 2007 four years is way too long.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
By its very nature, BushDerangementSyndrome™ has hindered coalition efforts to secure Iraq and Afghanistan, and has emboldened Iran.
Intentionally or misguidedly, the result of this unmitigated hatred for President Bush has been a weakening of our political influence and credibility in the Middle East, and now serves to embolden Iran to act with impunity, rejecting all of the UN Security Council Resolutions regarding Iran's nuclear program, and violating international law in the taking, and in the public display, of the British hostages.
If Sen. Biden and Sen. Hagel instinctively acted on principle, as opposed to political expedience, they would not have so easily succumbed to that hatred.
***
“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
“Mission Accomplished” referred to the USS Abraham Lincoln, her crew and the successful completion of the longest deployment of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in U.S. history.
The Lincoln’s aircraft conducted more than 16,500 sorties during its 10-month deployment that included three-separate sustained missions: Operation Southern Watch, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
President Bush certainly did not indicate anything other than the “end of major combat operations.”
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.
(snip…)
We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. (Applause.)
The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq. (Applause.)
***
“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” – Ronald Reagan
that you've tossed out the "Mission Accomplished" meme.
While you might not like it, the mission, ie the overthrow of Saddam, had been accomplished.
If we stay at it, the mission, ie a free, independent Iraq at peace internally and with her neighbors, will be accomplished.
The announcement was required because on May 1 we officially assumed responsibility for Iraq and no legal resistance could continue past that date.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
But that this complete and utter garbage goes unchallenged. By monday I will be talking to customers and colleagues and they will be talking about how Bush is lying.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
As the democratic caucus splits over compromising when the veto or whatever comes back. Meanwhile, I don't really have any sympathy for republicans being beat up over Iraq after the whole "mission accomplished" thing -- that was at just as dishonest and opportunistic as the current democratic idiocy.