Thursday, June 15, 2006

US House Debate on the Iraq War

The US House of Representatives is holding a debate today about the Iraq war. The Resolution (H.Res 861) they are debating can be found here (.pdf file).

You can watch or listen to the debate at CSPAN's site.

Tom Paine has Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters' reaction to this debate.

Several weeks ago, we were encouraged by news that the Republican leadership in the House had scheduled such a debate. In a press briefing, John Boehner, the Republican Majority Leader said, “We are the people's house, and serious issues of the day ought to be debated here in the House” and announced that the debate would take place today, Thursday, June 15.

Unfortunately, the majority leader had not been completely forthcoming about his true intentions. When the terms of the debate became public, it turned out that what they had planned was anything but a substantive debate that is representative of “the people.” Simply put, HR 861, the legislation offered by the majority for purpose of this debate, is nothing more than a self-aggrandizing, election-year pat on the back for an embattled president and a majority Republican party poised to lose control of the House of Representatives. The script for Thursday's so-called debate has been playing out since the attacks on 9/11. Once again, Republicans will make every attempt to conflate the “global war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq—even after it has been repeatedly proven that there were no direct connections between Iraq and al-Qaida. In fact, all that these issues have in common is how badly the administration has bungled them...

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