Its. The. War. Stupid!

[LSK]

I see a lot of people defending Lieberman and saying there are other issues besides the war. Are there really???

Of course theres the 2500+ dead soldiers and thousands more dead Iraqis. We all know that people die in wars. Our soldiers (many of whom are National Guard soldiers) have been stuck in the miserable deserts of Iraq thousands of miles away from their families with no end in sight. Does supporting our troops mean keeping them prisoner in a desert prison with possible death lurking right around the corner?

Most of us know that Iraq is a terrorists breeding ground and a ground zero for resentment against the US "invaders". The regime that the Iraqis have setup there have sided with Hezbollah . Is this how we fight the war on terror by setting up terrorist friendly regimes and havens?

Our foreign policy is severely damaged from this war as nobody will believe us if we cry wolf again and other regimes race to get Nukes out of fear that they are next to be invaded.

Meanwhile on the home front, our treasury continues to be sucked dry by the Defense budget and by "extra spending bills" dedicated to the War in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently our Defense budget almost exceeds all other government departments. We are spending $9 billion a month in Iraq. Defense contractors are seeing record profits. There is no accountability on any of these contracts. If its for the War, it gets a free pass, no questions asked.

Can American afford to continue to operate this way??? We are in debt over $8 trillion. We have doubled our debt in the past 5 years. Don't we have a bunch of baby boomers about to retire??? Don't we have a health care crisis here at home? Don't we need national health care?? Don't we need money for education, roads, parks, FEMA, medical research, etc etc etc????

America cannot do what it needs to do for Americans while at the same time having the War BLEED US DRY.

While some say there are other issues besides the war, I say we cannot address those issues until we get the great LEECH that is the War off our back.

http://www.costofwar.com

[bryant69]

1. I don't think it's even the war really

I mean there are plenty of Democrats that voted for IWR and we aren't targeting them. I think Glenn Greenwold sitting in at Salon's War Room has a good point.

The vigor and intensity of the opposition to Lieberman stem not merely from the fact that he shared the president's positions on Iraq and foreign policy generally, but far worse, that he adopted the Bush/Rove political rhetoric on those issues and -- alone among prominent Democrats -- repeatedly wielded that rhetoric as a tool to bash and demonize anyone who opposed Bush's policies.

It's one thing to say that we need to finish Iraq - I might disagree with that, but I can understand it. It's something else to imply that failing to agree with the need to "finish" Iraq indicates that one hates freedom or some other rovian nonsense. And Lieberman is guilty of continually spewing such nonsense.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[wtmusic]

6. An IWR vote was a stupid vote

because it trusted a Republican, not because it started a war. W is the criminal, Dems were criminally negligent.

[bryant69]

8. OK if you believe that, do you believe that we should target

everybody who voted for the IWR? Get them all out of congress for their failed justice?

And if not, why does Joe get the special bums rush?

Bryant

[LSK]

9. there are people who never forgive those who voted for IWR

Id rather target those who have not learned from their ways yet.

[wtmusic]

10. what he said ^

may it be the first lesson Democrats remember longer than, oh, forty years or so.

Joe deserves an extra special bum's rush because he supported the invasion. Big difference.

[wtmusic]

2. The war is the 500-lb gorilla

both in terms of human and monetary sacrifice

Minor correction: debt is "only" 8.3T (as of May)

[LSK]

4. corrected

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[ThomWV]

3. There's No More Important Issue Than The War

And if he's dead wrong on the most important issue it really doesn't matter much how he feels about all the rest.

[rock]

5. Symptom, not problem

[kenny blankenship]

7. There are other issues besides the war, but saying that ignores so much!

The "war", THE PERMA-WAR, is the rock used by the overclass to bash in the skull of America and to destroy everything about our democracy and political-legal system that ever made it legitimate and worth fighting for.

If you care about economic fairness, the environment, Constitutional government and legal process, civil rights issues of all kinds--women's rights, labor rights, gay rights, racial equality--electoral legitimacy--those so called "OTHER" issues-- you must understand there can be no progress on those fronts while we have a Wartime Dictator and a one party state monopolizing power because of a war meant to last forever.
If you bow to the Emperor and this War you surrender all the rest.

Frankly I have no use for a Democrat that doesn't understand BY NOW how central the War is to everything of value that Democrats and Americans have said they stood for and achieved in the past, and everything of value we have pursued for our futures. We don't have time for idiots and Quislings. We need our country back NOW.

As long as America accepts Bush's war-on-everything-forever it is in the position, objectively, of Nazi Germany. Until the Democrats present a unified front against the PermaWar and Fascist uses of state power (constant terrorizing of the people by war rhetoric and unConstitutional surveillance and detention/interrogation) they are objectively in the position of the Germany's Center Party which crucially enabled Hitler and the Nazis to achieve a lock on emergency wartime powers.