The hall of mirrors was just beginning. In March of 2007, a minority
within the new majority party proposed to end the occupation through an
amendment that would be proposed to a bill funding the continuation of
the occupation. So, nobody lobbied against the bill, because they
wanted the amendment. In fact, most of the well-funded backers of the
new majority quietly opposed the amendment and backed the bill. On the
day before the vote on the bill, the party leadership announced that no
amendments would be allowed.
"And the case begins all over again?" asked K. almost incredulously.
Forgotten before it could even be thought of was the fact that you
could end the occupation by simply not voting on any bills to keep
funding it. With that firmly forgotten, the bill was passed and
promoted as a way to gradually end the occupation through a series of
steps. Now the steps could all be "waived" by the president, so forcing
him to end his war would require his cooperation. And instead of
bringing the soldiers home, they would be "redeployed" to occupy some
other country. But there would be so many loopholes that actually they
could all stay right where they were. Nonetheless, the bill required
that the president meet certain silly goals (or claim to have done so)
by July 1 and others by October 1or begin "redeployment" and be done in
180 days. Of course, the president vetoed this.
And the peace groups that had opposed the bill now protested its veto,
because their televisions had told them for weeks it was a bill to
slowly end the war. They completely forgot how enraged they had been
when it passed, so enraged were they when it was vetoed.
Universally accepted was that we all needed a new bill.
Again, it had been firmly forgotten before even being thought of that
you would end the occupation by not bringing up bills to fund it. So,
on May 7, the minority for peace within the majority party for peace
cut a deal with the leadership. If this time they could be allowed a
vote on their proposal to end the occupation, even though they'd lose
the vote, they'd be happy to vote again for an even worse bill that the
president wouldn't veto.
The new bill deleted everything related to "redeploying" the troops,
but nobody was allowed to mention that topic on television or in a
newspaper. Instead, the whole discussion was about the silly goals or
"benchmarks" and how tough they were, even though the president was
already known to approve of them. On May 10th, Congress voted on a bill
to end the occupation, which failed, and then all but 10 of the same
Congress Members who had just voted to end the occupation turned around
and voted for the new bill to fund the occupation.
Congress Members Nancy Pelosi and David Obey turned against their own
bill. They made sure it came up for a vote and passed, but voted
against it. They were quite distressed. Obey remarked on the floor: "I
hate this agreement. I'm going to vote against the major portion of
this agreement even though I negotiated it." Too confused to cover this
nonsense, the media finally remembered that this new bill said nothing
about ending the war.
The president signed the bill.
But even this bill did say something about a bunch of stupid
"benchmarks" and actually required that the president report to
Congress on his progress, even though Congress wouldn't actually do
anything about it, no matter what he said. The president was required
by this law, which he himself signed into law, to produce two reports,
one by July 15th and the other by September 15th . And the law requires
that:
"Prior to the submission of the President's second report on September
15, 2007, and at a time to be agreed upon by the leadership of the
Congress and the Administration, the United States Ambassador to Iraq
and the Commander, Multi-National Forces Iraq will be made available to
testify in open and closed sessions before the relevant committees of
the Congress."
Thus was created the notion that Congress couldn't get its act together
and end the occupation until after September. That little fiction ate
up four months. The White House announced that General David Petraeus,
as the commander in Iraq, would produce the report. Then somebody
leaked word that the White House would actually produce the report.
Then somebody else leaked the content of an early draft of the report,
and it conflicted with known facts. Then somebody else let it be known
that there would be no written report at all, but that Petraeus would
testify and might bring some "charts."
Petraeus is still widely expected to show up and claim that violence is
down in Iraq, although that would seem to be grounds for ending the
occupation. But it is widely known that violence is actually up in
Iraq, which might also seem to be good reason to end the occupation.
The leadership in Congress has again made clear that it will provide
yet more money for the occupation quite regardless of what Petraeus
says. And again a minority of about 72 Congress Members is making a
stand, but their position now is to "redeploy" the troops by 2009.
However, they're unlikely to stand by that.
Petraeus will come to Congress on Monday to murder it. After this,
there can be no more pretense that Congress is an independent branch of
government.
"A melancholy conclusion," said K. "It turns lying into a universal principle."
http://www.BetrayUsReport.com
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