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| President Joe Biden bowing in a picture that went viral after the Kabul Airport attack . Is Joe Biden the "only" President to be lined up for impeachment over Afghanistan ? |
We KNOW that Afghanistan was a big bungle . It should be investigated like it was "Watergate" . It's 20 years worth of American tax payer money , lives wasted in a endless war(s) of terror that it's not just Joe Biden's fumble . There must be accountability going back to Bush all the way through Biden . My personal take is that, like in the case of Trump, (1)>>if Biden does get impeached, nothing will come out of it. Now, as my flair indicates, I’m not a Biden fan. I don’t think he’s doing a good job. But if I’m being realistic, that’s what I think will happen, if he even gets impeached in the first place. (On this sub to at least try to understand the other side)."It doesn't matter that he's created a humanitarian disaster, shaken the confidence of international allies and weakened America's diplomatic leverage on the world, he did what he said he would which is all that matters in the end." Several prominent Republicans, including Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called on Biden to resign and raised the prospect of impeachment. Biden gave a forceful defense of his decision to pull troops from Afghanistan. The last U.S. flight out of Kabul took off a minute before midnight local time Monday.Afghanistan is a territory. Not a country. No matter how many times people try to make it one. There is no unifying national identity, or a desire for one. England tried and failed. Russia tried and failed. We've joined the club finally. But still not learned the lesson. BUT Biden alone is not to blame for the trillions , lives in Afghanistan . (1.2)>>Biden said his advisors agreed with withdrawal. His Secretary of Defense Austin and General DID disagree and said the number of troops should be increased to 4000 from 2500, not withdrawn. Others cited by them are public. What "nuance" or technicality is that?Biden said Al Qaeda was gone. That's nonsense and public reports say that. Hell, the Taliban just released a other 7000 AQ prisoners. (2)>>Biden ignored intelligence assessments predicting and warning against the current chaos all so he could neatly time the withdrawal to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11, logistics be damned. He pulled out 2500 troops only to now have to send more back in as there was no comprehensive plan to safely guarantee the transferal of thousands of US nationals and Afghan associates out of the country, something the administration has had months to formulate even well past the initial withdrawal date. Also not mention the billions of dollars of military equipment that is now in enemy hands.There is no one interpretation. Some said a few days, some a few weeks, some a few months. This falls at the feet of everyone involved since Bush not just Biden. This is an utter screw up. And the way its being done now by not evacuating personnel from US, our allies and Afghanistan falls on Biden and military leadership. But Biden can't be blamed for afghans handing their weapons over to the Taliban even if some reports said that was a possibility.My own conspiracy theory (cause all get one, right?) Is that the on the ground military leaders (and those with their hands in the pockets of the military industrial complex) were so upset with the prospect of a withdrawal that they basically said, fine....we are taking our ball and going home. They just packed up and left in a hurry to spite this decision.. To not even consider an evac first or our allies goes way beyond Biden's decision to withdraw. There's more to this than what we're being told at the moment.
Impeach Obama
Obama had 8 years to do it( Biden was with him as well) and didn't ever do it then? (3)>>Biden wasn’t president then. Obama deserves some criticism for not ending the war. I think after bin laden was found and killed we should have ended it there. Obama isn’t blameless in all of this. But Biden wasn’t commander in chief during his time as VP. Remember when Former presidential candidate 👉Ralph Nader said President Obama 👈should be (3.1)>>impeached for committing "war crimes" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The consumer advocate and former presidential candidate said in an interview that aired that Obama has committed "war crimes" on the same level as President Bush.I knew there would come a time when Obama would have to do the same things Bush did. I knew a small few on the Left would then oppose Obama - I disagree with the Left, but I at least can respect someone who is ideologically consistent. Nader is one of these people. The rest of you - your silence only underlines your hypocrisy. You either have to excuse Bush or impeach Obama, you can't have it both ways. (4)>>Obama was one of the few who were against the war in Iraq from the beginning, so he got elected , "changed" with this in mind. Now Libya was suddenly and deliberately attacked (sound familiar? Ethically just like our entry into WWII except we were not the perpetrators back then) We don't need to make new enemies, We don't need new empires, We don't need new expenses We don't need to violate the only restraint we have against tyranny: the constitution. President Obama pledged one thing: to protect and defend the Constitution. Every president must do that, for it is his primary duty in holding office. Yet his own words convict him: "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military act in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual imminent threat to the nation" - Senator Barack Obama - December 20 2007. His vice president's words also convict him: "The president has no Constitutional authority to take this country to war against a country of seventy million people unless we're attacked or there is proof that we are about to be attacked and if he does, I would move to impeach him. The House obviously has to do that but I would lead an effort to impeach him. The reason for my doing that... I don't say it lightly. I don't say it lightly." - Joe Biden - November 29 2007
Impeach Trump .
We know that Trump signed a peace deal in 2020 with the Taliban . (5)>>YOU have to remember for decades Donald Trump argued against the war from the start . Is Trump worthy of the blame or shared blame about the debacle in Afghanistan ? But Biden can go only so far in claiming the agreement boxed him in. It had an escape clause: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.The Taliban takeover, far swifter than officials from either administration had envisioned, has prompted questions from even some Trump-era officials about whether the terms and conditions of the deal — and the decisions that followed after — did enough to protect Afghanistan once the U.S. military pulled out.The historic deal was always high-wire diplomacy, requiring a degree of trust in the Taliban as a potential peace partner and inked despite skepticism from war-weary Afghans who feared losing authority in any power-sharing agreement.On April 27, 2016, then-Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump used an invitation-only event at Washington’s ornate Mayflower Hotel to argue that presidents of both parties had gotten the US ensnared in too many costly, grinding foreign wars.That, Trump promised, would change once he moved into the White House.“I will never send our finest into battle unless necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, and will only do so if we have a plan for victory with a capital V,” he thundered. “The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies.”The speech was part of Trump’s attempt to make a decisive break with the more hawkish and interventionist wings of his own party, which he blamed for the Iraq War and Washington’s icy relationship with Moscow. He wasn’t just trying to argue that he’d be a different kind of president than (6)>>Democrats like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. He was also arguing that he’d be a different kind of president than Republicans like George W. Bush.
Impeaching Bush !
That Republican (7)>>George W Bush started the war, or that Republican Donald Trump signed a deal with the Taliban to end it, has not prevented them portraying Biden as a man out of his depth who left behind more than a hundred US citizens, thousands of Afghan allies and abundant military hardware.The US initially invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because its Taliban regime had sheltered Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group al-Qaeda; the military deposed the Taliban and sent bin Laden fleeing from the country by the end of that year.After that, Americans became distracted by a separate war of choice in Iraq, while a Taliban insurgency brewed in Afghanistan and terrorist groups relocated to Pakistan and other countries. (8)>>REMEMBER TOO that American's were lied to by their government on WMD's IN IRAQ. On September 15, 2001, George W. Bush declared, “A terrorist attack designed to tear us apart has instead bound us together as a nation.” America’s indulgent interlude after the Cold War had ended; in taking up arms, the nation would find its purpose and keep the carnage away. Bush maintained this view to the end of his tenure, telling the American Legion, in 2007, “Our strategy is this: we will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.” Becoming the dictatress of the world would renew America’s spirit.Since the war began, however, every element of the Bush administration campaign on weapons of mass destruction has been shown to be false. That was just one element of a full-fledged propaganda campaign waged to persuade the American people to attack a country that hadn't attacked us. In the wake of 9/11, it wasn't all that difficult, particularly with the media wrapping itself in the flag so tight it almost strangled itself.From its inception in 2001 to its ignominious end, the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been defined by lies. It was a lie when, in 2001, President George W. Bush told service members that “your mission is defined, your objectives are clear.... We will not fail.”In 2019, the Afghanistan Papers proved that the U.S. government had been lying about the war’s progress for years. The Bush administration blocked subsequent efforts to investigate the mass murder, even after the FBI interviewed witnesses among the surviving Afghans who had been moved to the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and after human rights officials publicly identified the mass grave site where Dostum’s forces had disposed of bodies. Later, President Barack Obama promised to investigate, and then took no action.
Impeach Democrats and Republicans!
The "war on terror" , the "endless wars" was a globalist agenda to drag the United States in a war[s] that would stretch the American army and resources into oblivion. BUT the LAST 20 YEARS of the war, the American Democrats and Republic congress members who voted for this insane war not backed by US tax payers should be black listed and impeached . (9)>>The Democrats’ support for the supplemental war funding is also evidence of fiscal irresponsibility. If the Democrats really want to spend that kind of money for war, at least they should find some way to pay for it, such as cutting spending for some of the Pentagon’s elaborate and unnecessary new weapons systems or by eliminating some of the tax breaks given to the wealthy. Instead, the Democrats insist on borrowing it from primarily foreign financial institutions or from future government revenue. By the time it is paid off with interest, the total cost will likely be more than twice the $100 billion the Democrats claim the war is costing. But what about the great and glorious first Gulf War, back in 1991? That "victory" was the main reason Democrats with presidential ambitions voted for the second go-around in 2003. Anyone who had voted against the first Gulf War resolution under George H.W. Bush was considered dead meat in presidential politics afterwards. (10)>>Democrats were literally fighting the last war when they voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force after 9/11.Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and other Democratic leaders unconditional funding was necessary to “support the troops” and to “not leave them in harm’s way” is a lie. If they really supported the troops and wanted them out of harm’s way, they would have passed legislation that would bring them home. The Democrats had other priorities, however. Pelosi claimed that they had to provide unconditional funding for President Bush’s war in Iraq because they could not get enough Republican support to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto. However, they did not need a two-thirds majority to stop funding the war. All they needed to do was to refuse to pass any unconditional funding for the war and instead pass a funding measure that allocated money for the sole purpose of facilitating a safe and orderly withdrawal from Iraq, or, at the very least, a funding measure that set a strict deadline for the withdrawal of troops.
Impeach the U.S. News Media .
Next in line (11)>>we need to impeach the pro war US media . For 20 years the support for the endless wars has been the mainstream media , the left wing media for example.But when it comes to U.S. press outlets, they’re more likely to critique Biden when he steps away from militarism. This reality was on full display following the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Bagram Air Base, which began in late June as part of the Biden administration’s broader exit from Afghanistan (which, it is important to note, does not constitute a full withdrawal and is likely to result in the farming out of the war to the CIA).But most of the media was staunchly pro‐war, and that bias greatly skewed the narrative presented to the public. The media to a large extent has been a complete failure in covering the Taliban victory in Afghanistan after twenty years of (12)>>Donald Rumsfeld’s “Forever Wars.”The same media that embraces an often absurd allergy to the appearance of “bias” in domestic politics showed no similar modesty in letting enthusiasm for American imperialism fly over the weekend. Instead, the collapse of the Afghan government was portrayed as a massive political liability for Biden. The media war machine as People can accept cues from those seeking to “manipulate” them—such as public officials, party leaders, opinion elites, the media, and advertisers. For the media and other “opinion leaders,” the incentives were (and are) to play to the consensus galleries and to stoke their fears: if the public remains terrified by terrorism, there is likely to be considerably more purchase in servicing those fears than in seeking to counter them. The Media's role in 20 years was fear , controlling public opinion , we see that right now with the Covid -19 pandemic we have the same brainwashing , control of information .Propaganda put forth by the media during war time has a great influence on the American public. BUT it's pro war staunch is now widely exposed as Biden pulled the out of Afghanistan from under their eyes.
Afterword Biden Impeachment on "perfect phone call".
Last YEAR Donald Trump was in trouble after a telephone call to the Ukrainian leader trying to get info on Biden's dealings with the a oil company there . The subject of the phone call caught my eye how strikingly similar they both are . (13)>>Trump was impeached for making a call like the one Biden did with Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani . As reports circulate regarding the leaked phone call transcript between President Joe Biden and former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, critics of President Biden are now demanding answers, while others speculate the alleged phone call is an impeachable offenseIn the phone call, Biden pressured Ghani to create the “perception” that the Taliban weren’t winning, “whether it’s true or not,” according to transcripts.Any Democrat who does not have a shockingly selective and short-term memory ought to understand this. Democrats’ first attempted impeachment of Trump, commenced in 2019 due to a thoroughly unmemorable and unremarkable (if imperfect) phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that amounted to a five-page printed transcript, was clearly underpinned by nothing whatsoever if not an alleged and amorphous “violation of some public trust.”Indeed, with this ham-fisted foreign-policy quid pro quo phone call as recent impeachment precedent, Biden’s unearthed July phone call with former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani is arguably alone sufficient to trigger impeachment proceedings. As Reuters reported this week, Biden instructed Ghani to outright lie, if need be, about the failed US-led effort to contain the Taliban.“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said. “And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”Two weeks before the call, on July 8, Biden told reporters in the U.S. that it was "highly unlikely" the Taliban would take control of Afghanistan. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are in the Persian Gulf currently meeting with leaders about other national security challenges. BUT in keeping with the August 31 deadline for withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden did not consult with European and Middle Eastern allies.Yet in a 14-minute phone call, Biden told Ghani to join him in the lie and that “whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”Is that Biden’s version of “truth, justice and the American way”? His lies put Americans and Afghanis at risk in order to cover for his epic failure in Afghanistan.
NOTES AND COMMENTS :
(1)>>if Biden does get impeached, nothing will come out of it. Politico reports today that House Republicans are being "bombarded" with calls from GOP voters to impeach the president following the chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan. "It's a grassroots pressure — we're feeling it," said. Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.). Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has also called for Biden's impeachment several times in recent weeks. "I think the best you could describe is dereliction of duty at the highest level," Graham said about the president's handling of the U.S. withdrawal. There will be no impeachment as long as Democrats hold the House, of course, but if Republicans win the chamber in next year's elections — as seems likely — it will be time for Biden to start hiring lawyers. (1.2)>>Biden said his advisors agreed with withdrawal. Biden had been riding high in July, when mass vaccinations blunted the coronavirus, and early August, when he claimed a bipartisan infrastructure deal as vindication of his faith in bipartisanship. But the chaotic scenes from Afghanistan, including desperate people clinging to a US military plane – and a 17-year-old footballer plunging from one to his death – rewrote the narrative. Biden not only facilitated the Taliban’s sweep of Afghanistan but also is now seeking to strike a Faustian bargain with this Pakistan-reared terrorist militia. Biden kept his promise to the Taliban, including a complete U.S. withdrawal by Aug. 31, but not his word to U.S. allies in Afghanistan or to partner countries. Some Democrats have also expressed frustration at the botched withdrawal, and three Democratic-led Senate committees have pledged to investigate “failures”, a rare rebuke for the president from his own party. Biden will also have to contend with the resettlement of thousands of Afghan refugees, a potentially incendiary issue.(2)>>Biden ignored intelligence assessments predicting and warning against the current chaos all so he could neatly time the withdrawal to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11, logistics be damned. By empowering the Taliban, Biden has strengthened all jihadi groups, promising the rebirth of global terrorism. And by betraying one ally -- the elected Afghan government -- he has made other U.S. allies feel that they too could be betrayed when they most need American support. In fact, the U.S. defeat and humiliation in Afghanistan, while highlighting the irreversible decline of American power, have created greater space for China’s assertive global expansion, for Russia’s geopolitical ambitions in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and for Iran’s continued defiance. The calamitous U.S. withdrawal also threatens to destabilize the wider region extending across the Indian subcontinent.Historians will be baffled that the world's mightiest power waged war for two decades to make the Taliban, the world's deadliest terrorists, great again. But the immediate message from Biden's Afghanistan disaster is that U.S. allies cannot count on America when the chips are down. The damage to America's reputation and credibility could potentially herald a paradigm shift in international geopolitics.(3)>>Biden wasn’t president then. Obama deserves some criticism for not ending the war. Former President Barack Obama redeployed U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2009 to combat a resurgence of the Taliban. The administration also called for greater cooperation from Pakistan after discovering ties between Afghan and Pakistani Taliban forces. Obama said in a televised address that the additional US troops would "help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans." But later, aides said Obama felt jammed by military commanders pushing for a counterinsurgency strategy.In the book "The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War," set to be released ,author Craig Whitlock outlines statements from Obama in late 2014 suggesting the war had reached a conclusion and pointed out that a military ceremony directed by the former president did not mark the end of the conflict. (3.1)>>impeached for committing "war crimes" . Obama’s first year in office over what, exactly, the US’s goals should then be in Afghanistan, and whether many more troops were needed to accomplish them. Woodward chronicles this debate in Obama’s Wars in exhaustive detail. Military leaders wanted tens of thousands more troops to implement an expansive counterinsurgency mission in an effort to stabilize the country, as had just been done in Iraq.The U.S. military has systematically covered up or disregarded “abundant and compelling evidence” of war crimes, torture, and unlawful killings in Afghanistan , according to a report by Amnesty International published today in Kabul.,Obama took the opportunity to defend the U.S. occupation. “We did not choose this war,” he told U.S. troops. “This was not an act of America wanting to expand its influence; of us wanting to meddle in somebody else’s business. We were attacked viciously on 9/11. Thousands of our fellow countrymen and women were killed. And this is the region where the perpetrators of that crime, al Qaeda, still base their leadership.” Obama has definitively made it his own, significantly escalating the U.S. military presence and the level of aggression over the past. The commandos shot and killed two civilian Afghan men, two pregnant women and a teenage girl in the southeast town of Gardez, then attempted to cover up what they had done by digging the bullets out of the women’s bodies and cleaning up the crime scene. The incident was horrific, but in general terms by no means an aberration. As Obama embraces his role as protector of the U.S. empire, we can expect the civilian death count and the atrocities to mount further.Thirty percent of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have occurred since Obama became president. Meanwhile, each week brings new reports of Afghan civilians who have become “collateral damage” in the war, and military operations have now spread across the border into Pakistan, creating millions of refugees and hundreds more civilian casualties.The destabilization of Pakistan is one reason why Obama has sent 30,000 additional U.S. troops to the area and has expanded military operations, including deadly attacks by unmanned military drones. It is also an indication that despite over eight years of war, the U.S. has been unable to achieve its goals, and has no chance of doing so in the foreseeable future. Administration and military insiders are now talking about a decade or more of occupation and war.(4)>>Obama was one of the few who were against the war in Iraq from the beginning, so he got elected , "changed" with this in mind. Obama backed away from his promises to "end the endless wars ". He broke his promises , he made the war in Afghanistan worse than under Bush . Obama’s campaign spoke out against the war in Iraq, promised to close Guantanamo Bay, and looked to downgrade the US military presence abroad – yet in office his administration fundamentally failed to break with the legacy of Bush’s war on terror.A key example of this is the failure of his administration to prosecute the main architects of the black site torture program –Obama presidency actually expanded the military complex. A prime example of this is the administration’s increasing use of drones. (5)>>YOU have to remember for decades Donald Trump argued against the war from the start . President Donald Trump, facing criticism for plans to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany, told West Point’s graduating class on Saturday that their job will be to defend “America’s vital interests” and not fight “endless wars” in faraway lands. Trump was more outspoken against about getting America out of wars . It's perhaps to note why he had so many of the top notch generals resign in four years .In his commencement address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Trump told more than 1,000 graduating cadets, arrayed in a social-distancing pattern, that the job of the American soldier is not to rebuild foreign nations but “defend, and defend strongly, our nation from foreign enemies.”“We are ending the era of endless wars,” Trump said. It is not the job of American forces “to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of,” he said. The American public was so brainwashed since the 9-11 attacks that America's wars in the middle-east was something of the "new normal" . HARDLY , but Trump was trapped , he could not even deal with Russia on peaceful terms , since the Russia-phobic Russia gate raged for his entire term . It prevented any removal of any troops from anywhere . (6)>>Democrats like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Obama seemed to have made things much worse during the Arab Spring the US was again engineering another debacle in the Middle-East . But when you look at what has happened from the Arab Spring, from its 2011 beginning through today, you see institutional failure everywhere. The reasons for the Obama administration’s passivity during the Arab spring have been many, but perhaps none is more helpful in explaining it than the notion of “declinism.” With the exception of neoconservatives and a relatively small group of liberal hawks, nearly everyone seems to think America has less power to shape events than it used to. 7)>>George W Bush started the war. The Bush administration, aided and abetted by U.S. corporate media, manipulated a politics of fear to push through a right-wing agenda that included the Patriot Act, massive changes in the legal system, a dramatic expansion of the U.S. military, and U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.President George W. Bush’s "War on Terror" publicly began on Sept. 11, 2001.We think of wars beginning with a cataclysmic event—everything up to that moment could have gone either way until "the moment" occurs that makes a war inevitable. It is that clap of thunder, we believe, that coalesces events into something that we recognize as "war."For President Bush, the "War on Terror" encompassed more than the fight against Osama bin Laden and his minions and began well before 9/11. Bush declared war against disparate enemies; in his estimation the War on Terror was not only properly fought in Afghanistan once the Taliban refused to give up al Qaeda leaders, but included battles of all kinds — against the terrorism of Saddam Hussein, the "terrorist regime" of North Korea.From the first declaration of the "War on Terror," American and British media reiterated President Bush’s avowed connection among the 9/11 terrorists, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Iraq and other "axis of evil" countries. (8)>>REMEMBER TOO that American's were lied to by their government on WMD's . The best estimates available suggest that more than 250,000 people have died as a result of George W. Bush and Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. A newly released investigative report from the UK government suggests that intelligence officials knew ahead of time that the war would cause massive instability and societal collapse and make the problem of terrorism worse — and that Blair and Bush went ahead with the effort anyway. To the lie about the possession of WMDs, Bush added a few more: that Hussein “trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.” Moreover, left unchecked, those Saddam-supplied terrorists could “kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country.”The disaster that followed cost over a hundred-thousand lives just in Iraq and drained north of $2 trillion from the budget. Once we were in and the “most lethal weapons ever devised” were not discovered, it quickly became obvious that large numbers of people at the highest levels of society had either lied, screwed up, or both.While US war propagandists presented the attack on Iraq as an extension of the “war on terrorism,” it is well known that the Bush administration had drawn up plans to use military force to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. September 11 was seized on as a pretext for stampeding public opinion to accept US military intervention.(9)>>The Democrats’ support for the supplemental war funding is also evidence of fiscal irresponsibility. The war resolution’s text is an amalgam of the lies and distortions issued by the Bush administration to justify its long-sought goal of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, including repeated mentions of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, although there is no evidence connecting Baghdad and the suicide hijackings.The gist of the resolution is a blank check for Bush to use military force against Iraq: “The president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.”(10)>>Democrats were literally fighting the last war when they voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force after 9/11.Speaker Pelosi . IN 2003 So the leaders of that caucus, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are crafting a compromise they hope all Democrats can support, and maybe even a few Republicans.The legislation, which would give Bush $162.5 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through mid-2009, had been scheduled for debate in the House of Representatives on Thursday. With its timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, it already faced a White House veto.At that point, Speaker Pelosi stepped in and brokered a deal among the major players. She has been consistent in saying that her party will not cut funds for the troops, so she has pulled back. The plan right now is to put some of the new 2007 money (what is called the "urgent supplemental request") into equipment and training for the troops, and also to lay out benchmarks for military readiness.The new benchmarks will be standards that units must meet before they're deployed. At the same time, Pelosi's plan calls for other benchmarks in Iraq — Compare those remarks to this statement from now-Speaker of the House Pelosi on July 1, 2010, following her "Yes" vote for placing "tough restrictions" on Afghanistan war funding:"Our men and women in uniform continue to perform heroically in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world, and it is critical that Congress has the most up-to-date information as we debate policies that impact our soldiers, their families and our national security."Not quite as assured as her thoughts on Iraq in 2005. After issuing the above statement, Mrs. Pelosi on the same day proceeded to vote to continue funding the Afghanistan war. The vote was close, 215-210. Elsewhere on July 1, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Afghanistan was a war of Barack Obama's choice. I agree. While the Bush Administration should have ended the war also, the Obama administration chose to up the commitment there.But isn't Afghanistan Nancy Pelosi's war, also?(11)>>we need to impeach the pro war US media . Often referred to as propaganda, some forms of media have been used to promote conflicts. An unregulated media environment is also able to prolong the conflict by minimizing the
impact of positive media projects.The pro-war media and military-industrial complex literally raging and crying for the troops to stay there and failing so far.It's so amusing to watch how the establishment media of both neocon and neoliberal side went full crybaby mode and desperately try to do anything they can to push Biden in their direction, which means stay in an oversee war for more decades with no goal whatsoever, other than MIC profit. I only hope, that Biden won't back off this time- the majority supports withdrawal. The politicians and their tools will brazenly con the American public to drag the nation into unnecessary wars. Not because we didn’t already know the mendacity of that endless queue of ex-generals and connected neocons and “humanitarian interventionists” who parade in front of us telling us about cakewalks and the need to project US power or the importance of removing the horrible dictator of the day. (12)>>Donald Rumsfeld’s “Forever Wars.” One TIME Donald Rumsfeld was being groomed for the US Presidency, we are lucky it never happened . In charge of the US military for most of George W. Bush´s presidency, Rumsfeld was stubborn and brash, famously dismissing widespread looting after US troops captured Baghdad by quipping, "Stuff happens."Rumsfeld and vice president Dick Cheney were emblematic of what was seen as excesses in Bush´s "war on terror," including the indefinite detention of suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the abuse of Iraqis by US jailers at Abu Ghraib prison.The former congressman´s brand of hawkish politics eventually fell from favour as politicians from both sides turned on "forever wars," and the troops he first sent to Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks will make their final withdrawal weeks after his death. Speaking in Kabul, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld declared that, in Afghanistan, “we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities. “ Later that same day, standing on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, President George W. Bush proclaimed that “...major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” He described the U.S. overthrow of the Iraqi government as “one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001," adding that our “war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless.” But, evidently, it is indeed endless. Secretary Rumsfeld defined success in this war as not creating more terrorists than we kill. That seems a fair standard. But, by this criterion, what we have done is clearly counterproductive. (13)>>Trump was impeached for making a call like the one Biden did with Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani . Biden nor Ashraf Ghani appeared aware of or prepared for the immediate danger of the entire country falling to insurgents, a transcript reviewed by Reuters shows.The men spoke for roughly 14 minutes on July 23. On August 15, Ghani fled the presidential palace, and the Taliban entered Kabul. Since then, tens of thousands of desperate Afghans have fled and 13 U.S. troops and scores of Afghan civilians were killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport during the frenetic U.S. military evacuation.Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs sent a letter to Biden on Tuesday requesting the transcript of a call between him and former Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani in which Biden urged him to address “perception” problems. The focus on the call is remarkably similar to Democrats’ reaction to a 2019 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump urged working with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate the current president’s son, Hunter Biden. The call, a transcript of which was eventually released by Trump, led to the House Democrats impeaching Trump later in the year.Biggs is not the only Republican to call for the Biden-Ghani transcript release. Last week, New York Rep. Claudia Tenney was joined by 26 of her colleagues, including No. 3 House Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, in calling for a full transcript.“This damning phone call further erodes your credibility and the confidence of the American people in your ability to lead,” they wrote, so “Congress can determine the degree to which you may have deliberately misled the American people leading up to and during this disastrously executed operation.”House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, has also centered his attention on the Biden-Ghani call, saying last week that the president “tried to pressure” Ghani and that the call “opens up a lot more questions that deserve answers.”
