Eleanor Clift: Time to Take a Stand --->>>

[Stephanie]

Time to take a stand indeed! I'm working for a progressive, anti-war Democratic candidate for Senate, Jonathan Tasini, for precisely this reason. Now is the time to take a stand. You either support this immoral war or you oppose it. You can't have it both ways. Get off the fence, Democrats. Gen. Zinni was very clear on MTP today. He said he was shown no evidence for WMD and that sanctions were working. Why are Congressional Democrats still too skeered to speak out?


Good stuff at the end of this article about how George won't discuss anything but family matters with his old man.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12098907/site/newsweek/

Time to Take a Stand
Democrats have good reason to fear being tagged the antiwar party. But that doesn’t mean they should be afraid of bold steps.

Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 3:42 p.m. ET March 31, 2006

March 31, 2006 - Democrats released their national-security plan this week. Like the proverbial talking dog, it’s not so much what it says, but that it says anything at all. Democrats have been in a defensive crouch for so long that when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid previewed the plan at a breakfast with print reporters, he felt compelled to say that “Democrats are just as patriotic as Republicans”—as though that were in dispute.


“How did you get in a box where you have to make a statement like that?” a reporter asked Reid. Speaking in a voice barely above a whisper and tight with anger, Reid invoked the “Karl machine,” as in Karl Rove, the GOP strategist most responsible for turning the war against terror into a political windfall for the Republicans. Reid said it was time for Democrats who saw what happened to former Georgia senator Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran, to take a more aggressive stand on national security. “They had the audacity to take him out,” Reid said, recalling the ’02 election when war with Iraq was on the horizon and patriotism was running high.

Cleland was accused of taking the side of the terrorists because he and other Democrats held up legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security in a dispute over labor rights. With another set of midterm elections just seven months away, Reid vows Democrats are not going to sit back and confine themselves to domestic issues, where polls show them comfortably ahead. They’re going to take stands. OK, they’re not major new groundbreaking stands—unless you count making the capture of Osama bin Laden a “priority” and “redoubling” efforts to stop Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. But it’s a start. The 10-page document, half in Spanish—a nice touch to counter the GOP’s immigrant bashing—is so noncontroversial that it may test the thesis that you can please all the people all the time.

There is no timetable for withdrawal from Iraq other than to repeat language from a November 2005 Senate resolution that passed with 79 votes declaring 2006 “a year of significant transition” for Iraqis to assume primary responsibility for their own security. Quoting Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, who has said he expects a drawdown of U.S. troops this year, Reid said, “It’s a matter of when, not if. Murtha was the first to mouth the words, but it’s been accepted by everybody.” Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a hawkish veteran of the Korean conflict and the Vietnam War, created a sensation when he said on the heels of the Senate vote that U.S. troops should begin to withdraw. It was revolutionary to say at the time, but in the four months since—months that have seen an upsurge in ethnic violence—polls show the American public wants out of Iraq.

<more>

[Call me Deacon Blues]

1. Take a stand. Right, Eleanor.

The reason so many Democrats won't take a stand is that members of the fourth estate, your peers, take everything the Bush White House says at face value and parrot it as if it were fact. Why should a Democrat speak the truth, when they know CNN or MSNBC or Fox (of course) or Newsweek will be repeating the old "if you're against W, you're for the terrorists" meme without critical questioning. Who is responsible for the situation in Iraq? You are.

Impeach the Media!

[leftchick]

3. I can think of one Democrat taking a stand with no fear of the media

and that would be Russ Fiengold. And what does he get from other Democrats in congress? ZERO support!

[Jensen]

4. That is the reason I will support Russ in anyway I can!

I will only send my money to those who stand up and be counted, the rest should be voted OUT!Repugs and Dinos alike!

[Stephanie]

5. Exactly. Not just Feingold, but Conyers, Murtha, Kucinich, Boxer.

Where are the Democrats? Why won't they stand with Feingold on censure, Conyers on impeachment, Murtha on pulling out of Iraq, Kucinich on opposing the war in the first place, Boxer on challenging the 2004 stolen election - the list is endless.

Most egregious is the IWR vote. Here are the Senators who vote NO. Is YOUR Senator on this list? Mine isn't.

http://usliberals.about.com/od/liberalleadership/a/IraqNayVote.htm

United States Senate

In the Senate, the 21 Democrats, one Republican and one Independent who courageously voted their consciences in 2002 against the War in Iraq were:


Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico)
Barbara Boxer (D-California)
Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia)
Lincoln Chaffee (R-Rhode Island)
Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota)
Jon Corzine (D-New Jersey)
Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota)
Dick Durbin (D-Illinois)
Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin)
Bob Graham (D-Florida)
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Jim Jeffords (I-Vermont)
Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts)
Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)
Carl Levin (D-Michigan)
Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland)
Patty Murray (D-Washington)
Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island)
Paul Sarbanes (D-Maryland)
Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan)
The late Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota)
Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)

[leftchick]

8. That IWR is the worst example of chickeshit Democrats

afraid of being called soft on security so they vote for a fucking war with no end.

My senator at the time was John Edwards. At least he has come out and said his vote was a mistake. WTF is wrong with the rest of them??

:argh:

[Stephanie]

10. that's what I want to know

and why I'm so sick of all of them

[KAT119]

2. Shock!! Could the Dems be- PAID - by military-industrials & other corps?

[Stephanie]

6. I don't know - go look up the contributions they have received

Go to www.opensecrets.org and see who is giving them money - that should answer your question.

[Generator]

7. Yes!

I've come to believe the Democrats are complicit if they continue to support this war and all it's side effects-that are giving me and you LESS liberty at home. How hard does it have to be to figure out that you take away the sham war you take away the sham excuses to trash our liberties?

Here's why they are complicit-if they were lied to to support this war-and many Du'ers are much less forgiving than I and say they knew there were no WMD or they knew it was a defacto vote FOR war-but that's the past. NOW they bloody well know. They know Bush was set on this war in January 2003 at the least. They know he was USING WMD as a ruse to start the war and that all the intelligence agences knew they weren't there. And EVEN if they weren't-war anyway! That's a fraud. And everyday the Demcorats support this war and don't ask for total withdrawth they are supporting this fraud. AND yes, I supported the war originally-and no I'm not up for election. But maybe if we had some real people that were-people that cared about trillion dollar lies against the American people-maybe we would a Democracy again.

[Stephanie]

9. After what Gen Zinni said today its hard to believe they believed the lies

But if they did in fact believe them, it's time to stand up now.

[Jigarotta]

11. the pic... fat bottomed boy.

something oogly about a man with hips wider than his shoulders.

[Stephanie]

14. isn't that freaky?

ish

[Writer]

12. Think this through!

"Yet Democrats are wary of being tagged the antiwar party, and with good reason. The party’s opposition to the Vietnam War, while borne out by history as correct, left Democrats with an image of weakness that continues to plague them. Former Michigan senator Don Riegle remembers that era well, and sees its echoes playing out in the Iraq conflict. Riegle was elected to the House at age 28 in 1966 and then to the Senate in 1976. He came to Washington as a Republican but switched parties because of the war. When he read a news report this week of a British memo recounting the minutes of a meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in January 2003, he was struck by the memo’s account of Bush’s determination to go to war even if he had to provoke a confrontation with Saddam Hussein. “That’s like the Gulf of Tonkin,” Riegel exclaimed, recalling the incident that President Johnson seized on as a pretext to escalate the war with North Vietnam."

35 years isn't as long as we think.

[Stephanie]

13. Think what through? I won't support anyone who supports this immoral war.

It's time to stand up.

[Writer]

15. Standing up doesn't mean a black and white, simplistic perspective.

How about standing up and ...giving an alternative suggestion for winding down and withdrawing? ...finding a way to slow down military incursion and broker a strategy with NATO or the UN so we can withdraw with some assistance? ...doing whatever we can to lessen the possibility that this whole catastrophe will likely lead to more terrorist activity?

One of the follies of the war debate is that we live on either one side of the argument or the other. War and peace are not so simplistic. War and peace means careful debate, consideration of all options, and compromise. Yet we love divisive speech - it blinds us into thinking we have political power. Bush's entire mess is from a radical, extremist ideology. Let's not make it worse with alternate extremes.

But... I don't expect too much reason in this debate. Only emotion. That's why writing this is moot.

[Stephanie]

16. I heard an Iraq vet speak the other day and he said >

he said "we don't need an exit strategy. What we need is an exit ORDER. Give us the order and the military will determine the strategy. All this talk about exit strategies is just excuses."