Blogs

By David Swanson

Alaska Congressman Don Young just attempted on the floor of the House to quote Abraham Lincoln's opinion on opposition to presidents' war plans. Young failed rather dramatically.

By David Swanson

In a video interview with Tom Andrews posted at http://www.movecongress.org Congressman Jack Murtha makes clear that the limitations on additional war money that he intends to include in the forthcoming "emergency" supplemental bill are aimed only at undoing the recent escalation (a.k.a. "surge"), not at ending the war.

By David Swanson, TomPaine.com

David Swanson is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, Washington director of Democrats.com and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America.

By David Swanson

Aiding a nation against a foreign invasion is not grounds for war. The US aided France against Germany and still brags about it.

WMD possession is not grounds for war. The US has more of them than anyone.

By David Swanson

Here's the latest reason they must be telling the truth about Iran and the need for a new war: they lied about the last one. That's right, according to the latest dispatch from the Associated Press,

By David Swanson

How does sex differ from torture? The one is good and the other bad, might be your immediate reply. But were I to describe an act of torture, this would be taken as a serious article. Were I to describe an act of sex, then political publications wouldn't publish it, spam filters wouldn't allow you to receive it, and if you did receive it, you might turn away. In fact, we have set up numerous mechanisms, external and internal, to protect you from sex that just don't exist for torture and should possibly be considered. Such as:

By David Swanson

The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing today at which the Inspector General of the Pentagon, Thomas Gimble, testified that – and I'm loosely paraphrasing – the Iraq War was launched on a pack of lies.

By David Swanson

On Newsweek's website you can flip through a short PDF slideshow of a presentation produced by the Pentagon in 2002. The presentation purports to show that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were working together and had been for years. Not only was this a presentation of intelligence at odds with what the legitimate intelligence community was saying, but the first slide in the presentation provides reasons why the intelligence community had it wrong. This hardly looks like the product of an office doing only policy work, rather than intelligence.

By David Swanson

Democrats on Capitol Hill see the world through bureaucratic shades and have been circulating this self-congratulatory Email:

"Over the last four years,the Republican Congress failed to conduct oversight on the Iraq war and failed to hold the Administration accountable for the conduct of the war. In contrast to this dismal record, in the last five weeks, the new Democratic-led Congress is already exercising vigorous oversight and demanding accountability from the Administration on the Iraq war. Attached is a list of 52 House and Senate hearings that have already occurred on issues related to the Iraq war. There will be numerous other hearings by both House and Senate committees on issues related to the Iraq war over the next several months."

By David Swanson

This MyDD blog entry and this Politico article describe this PDF showing the results of a poll of all 100 U.S. Senators. It asks how they voted on the war in 2002, whether they regret that vote, whether they support escalating the war, and whether they support ending the war by a certain date. This fairly well cuts through the courageous debate over whether to have a debate over whether to meaninglessly dissent from Bush's escalation plans for a war that most Americans want ended.

The first thing that stands out is that Senators Byrd and Cardin, rather than saying that Yes they support ending the occupation by a certain date, both wrote in the word "Immediate." That's 2 Senators for ending the thing. 98 to go.