Strong leaders would say "WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF!"

[Jeffersons Ghost]

House Begins Debate On War

A Partisan Divide On Bush Troop Plan

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 14, 2007

The House plunged into a heated, partisan debate yesterday on President Bush's war policy, with Democrats challenging lawmakers to take a stand against the deployment of more troops to Iraq while Republicans accused their political foes of emboldening the enemy with their symbolic resolution.

Democrats won control of Congress last fall in a political backlash against Bush's Iraq policy, and yesterday they decried a war they said was illegitimately launched and has been badly managed, with devastating consequences. They were helped by three newly elected Democratic lawmakers who were propelled into politics by their military experience in Iraq.

"We stand together to tell this administration that we are against the escalation, and to say with one voice that Congress will no longer be a blank check to the president's failed policies," said freshman Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D-Pa.), who was a captain with the 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad. "The president's plan to send more of our best and bravest to die refereeing a civil war in Iraq is wrong."

Republicans warn that ceding Iraq to Islamic radicals, bent on destroying not only the Middle East but also America, threatens "our very way of life."

Over the last few years, fostering fear appears to be a generalized theme with Republicans:

In his State of the Union address
Bush said, "As we meet tonight,
our economy is undergoing a
period of uncertainty. At kitchen
tables across our country, there
is a concern about our economic future."

How long will these scare tactics continue
before America stands up on her hind-legs
and says enough is enough?