Will Congress Roll Over To Bush War Demands Again This Week?

By James Donahue

General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander on the ground in Iraq, is expected to be in Washington Tuesday and Wednesday to present to Congress an updated report on the state of the war.

Coupled with the Petraeus report will be a new demand by President George W. Bush for yet another $102 billion to keep the war going.

We are expecting some heavy political manipulating, perhaps outside public view, designed to swing the votes needed to get this money appropriated, in spite of a growing public anger and overall weariness about this unnecessary and senseless war. Will Congress roll over once again and approve yet another appropriation for more guns, bullets and bombs while the financial crisis on the home front grows more and more grim with each passing day?

Oh! Excuse us, perhaps you haven’t noticed that we are in a financial pickle. If you are homeless and out of work this week, you obviously are not reading this story because you have no computer and no home and no power.

If you are catching the REAL news on line, you may be well aware that another 80,000 American workers lost their jobs in March. Hundreds of thousands more homes went into bank foreclosure, which means that many of the people out of work are also living with relatives or camping under a highway bridge overpass.

While political leaders and economists are saying the new mass of job losses appears to have moved the U. S. closer to a “recession,” we say that is hogwash. We are in a depression, with an estimated 40 percent of the nation’s work force now out of work and living on food stamps.

If Congress submits to yet another demand to keep that execrable war extended, all for the purpose of continuing to line the pockets of big business interests, instead of turning attention to the needs of the millions of Americans suffering on American soil, we say it is time for voters to consider a total house-cleaning in November.

The word should be throw the bums out of office and elect a clean slate of people who may have the fortitude to stand up to big business, shut down that war, and start fixing all of the evil deeds committed by the crooks who have remained too long in power.

If you are listening to, and believing the new round of lies dumped into the heads of the masses by the Bush Administration, you may think that the drop of deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq since Mugtada al-Sadr declared a cease-fire, that the so-called “surge” by added forces actually worked.

That al-Sadr’s forces came out the shadows with guns blazing last week, staging pitched battles across Iraq, did not happen without cause. Notice it occurred right after two high-level American power figures, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, made visits to Iraq.

That visit was part of a media campaign designed to convince the world of U.S. success in Iraq. But the truth has been that the Mehdi army militias have been in control of major parts of Iraq all the time. It appears that the propaganda campaign may have been the stimulant behind the sudden disruption of new fighting, which quickly proved that the American ground show has been a massive failure all along.