Pelosi hints at denying Bush Iraq funds

[QMPMom]

Pelosi hints at denying Bush Iraq funds
1 hour, 1 minute ago

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070107/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_59

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said newly empowered Democrats will not give President Bush a blank check to wage war in Iraq, hinting they could deny funding if he seeks additional troops.

"If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request, we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now," she said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon them. But if the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it and this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions," said Pelosi, D-Calif.

more at link

[BayCityProgressive]

1. Please God

let her cut funding!

[Monkeyman]

2. All funding to Iraq will be reviewed and checked Pay-As- You-Go

Dam need to add this she wants to make sure the troops are funded. A lot of Bush's bull will no longer fly

[Tom Joad]

3. Must stop funding this occupation period.

[Monkeyman]

4. One Thing troops in harms way must be funded

We need no more KIA or wounded without that funding it will happen worse then it is now. Cut all other funding

[aquart]

6. Define that.

George does not intend to tell us where the money is going. That fight is already shaping up.

[Monkeyman]

7. He will have to under the Democrats

King George will no longer get away hiding the truth.

[aquart]

5. Nobody thinks that Grandma's got the guts.

I'm beginning to think that I'll put my money on Grandma.

[madfloridian]

8. Recommended..why is this getting no attention?

Good for Pelosi.

[noamnety]

11. Because she's not saying they'll stop funding the war.

She's saying they'll think long and hard about funding additional troops. They intend to continue to fund the occupation.

To hell with that; to hell with her.

[Stinky The Clown]

12. "To hell with her"?

Nice ..... :/

[noamnety]

13. Funding genocide isn't "nice."

I'm not interested in smiling sweetly and playing nice while our elected officials continue to fund destruction, imperialism, death, and environmental catastrophes. This isn't a time for "nice."

[Stinky The Clown]

14. If I don't get my way and get it now, I'm gunna keep blowing spitballs

through my milk straw.

[noamnety]

15. This isn't a game of spit balls.

People are dying.

I'm trying to think of a situation in history where a country illegally invaded another country, people worldwide know the occupation was illegal, and the general consensus was that the invading country should continue to fund the invasion because they needed to make sure their soldiers were well taken care of.

I'm trying to imagine German soldiers in France, for instance, and the French (or anyone else, for that matter) saying "well, we don't want them here, they don't have a right to be here, but we hope Hitler keeps funding them because otherwise they'd have inadequate equipment and would be in danger."

[Stinky The Clown]

16. I don't dispute your emotions, but I do think you're expecting the

impossible to happen. Would that it were as simple as 'defunding'. To keep calling for this is to appear more and more out of touch with reality.

But again, I share your basic emotion about all this.

[noamnety]

17. Why is it "out of touch with reality" to defund an illegal occupation?

That last post of yours came off as a personal attack. I trust you didn't mean it to come out that way.

It didn't, however, address my main point, which is that a country which illegally invades another country cannot morally justify continuing the occupation by stating if they don't continue to fund the occupation, their soldiers would be at risk.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

19. Because.

No Democratic politician is going to refuse funding for troops who are actually in combat at the time. It's the one sure way to get beaten severely about the head with the "Democrats don't support the troops" stick.

[noamnety]

21. Their political futures

aren't justification for funding an illegal occupation.

I wish they would look at the ethics of the occupation, and work backwards from that, rather than starting with the political consequences to democrats and moving forward from there. No US troops should be sacrificing their lives in Iraq to line the pockets of Halliburton and BushCo, but neither should the Iraqis be subject to an occupation in order to protect a political party in another country.

I'm looking at this as if we were being occupied, you know? Sometimes holding a mirror up to our own actions helps clarify the ethics. If some foreign army invaded us, if some of your immediate family were raped by them or murdered, you only had running water a half hour a day, the women in your family were no longer allowed outside unless they were covered up, would you agree the foreign army ought to stay here if it was for the good of one or the other of their political parties back home?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

22. Look, you asked.

And I'm telling you. I didn't say it was pretty.

As for defunding the war totally, it's a bit like playing chicken with a madman, isn't it? If Bush decided to ignore the defunding (by whatever means available) who do you think is going to back down first? The fanatic nutjob, or the sane people? The democrats would relent, give him the funding, throw up their hands and wait for the political fallout to further eviscerate the Republicans.

Look, the American people had their chance to end this war. It was in 2004, not 2006. I'm sorry that the do-over isn't working out as well as everybody had planned, but there are very, very few legislative solutions to this problem. There are a great many political solutions, and that is where we should be looking, because a political solution has the likeliest chance of succeeding... and actually occuring.

[riderinthestorm]

20. Bu$h already has his $$ for Iraq funding. The last congress approved it.

The entire DOD budget was already passed so the Chimperor can allocate those funds as he likes. Pelosi is posturing for anyone who isn't savvy about what's already gone down - she's basically saying that when supplemental funding bills come up, THEN the Dems will strike it down. However the reality is Bu$h has enough money to fund his escalation right now. When the supplemental funding bill comes up (and the best estimates I've heard are in late spring), the troops are going to be so whacked, their equipment so decrepit, and I worry about a manufactured incident ramping up war fever again, Pelosi and Reid are going to be in a tough spot to vote down funding.

[goodhue]

9. good start

Now if she would just adopt the common sense approach of Dennis Kucinich of no more $100 billion, then the war might actually end before the next two years.

[petgoat]

10. How much does it cost to feed 150,000 people for a few

months? Let KBR take an IOU.

Maybe if they need the money to fund the troops, the Pentagon will put a
bit more energy into accounting for that $2.3 trillion they can't account
for.

[Raine]

18. Chimp should only get funds

if and when he comes up with an exit strategy.