Roxie, Roxie, Roxie

"What matters is that the ground and the discourse have shifted. Troop reductions will happen. If the administration can fudge the data enough to make its claims of progress appear credible (to the credulous), then the reductions may be larger and sooner than Petraeus was willing to suggest in his testimony before Congress."
Roxie, September 15, 2007

Roxie, you know you are my favorite doggie niece and my very favorite wire-haired fox terrier on the planet, but I must respectfully disagree that anything has changed in this country's involvement in Iraq. I offer up last night's very disappointing vote that defeated the Webb Amendment that would have made legal the decent goal of allowing troops the time at home to rest and recuperate from this god-awful occupation. The final vote was 56 - 44, the identical number of pro votes that the amendment garnered before the Democrats compromised with Republicans and made changes that promised to bring in more GOP votes - what happened?

Well, in my cynical little brain not a damned thing has changed, it's all only gotten worse. Not only have the Dems failed to attract enough Republican votes, but they have also squandered a rare opportunity to stand up to BushCo and force the administration's hand by threatening to cut the funding of this immoral and illegal occupation in which we are currently engaged in Iraq.

It is more than a skosh ironic that today the Senate takes up the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (S. 1547 version of H.R. 1585). Should the lawmakers inside the beltway who have so blatantly ignored the desires of those of us who live outside Washington D.C. decide that they are truly representatives of the people rather than props for this administration's failed foreign policies, then they will hold hostage this important piece of legislation until they all agree to remove any more funding for operations in Iraq. This will not leave the troops in harm's way high and dry - they are funded through the end of the year and lawmakers are clever enough to draft language that would provide funding to bring them all safely home. This must be done if any of these lawmakers want to return to their jobs after the elections of 2008.

Sorry Roxie, I wish I had half of your optimism, but I am a cynical human who lives in a very red state that sends the two absolute worst senators (Coburn and Inhofe) to congress every cycle. I am more inclined to agree with you and the brilliant Paul Krugman that the current strategy (or what passes for strategy in this administration) is to kick the problem down the road with the hope that extricating ourselves from the quagmire that is Iraq will prove to be so disastrous and will result in such a bloodbath (although it's hard to imagine how things there could get much worse) that it would provide fodder for a Republican come-back in 2012 or at least a GOP congressional gain in 2010.

"Roxie's World predicted that if conditions in Iraq don't improve enough for even the adept liars of Bush world to declare a success, the administration would simply 'buy time until the disaster can be passed along to someone else.' No less a genius than New York Times columnist Paul Krugman agrees with us on that one. Yesterday, Krugman declared that the administration already realizes 'that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia.'"

Roxie, September 15, 2007

"All in all, Mr. Bush’s actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you’d expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor."

Paul Krugman, NYTimes, September 14, 2007

BTB, Rox, I haven't seen the new Jodie Foster vehicle and probably won't - vigilante violence just doesn't have much appeal for me right now ;(