The GOP Demanded on An "Up or Down Vote" on Hack Republican Judges. Why Won't They Give One to Save Our GIs?

The GOP Busheviks Demanded an Up or Down Vote on Partisan GOP Federal Judge Appointments. But The Same Republican Hacks in the Senate are Filibustering a Vote on Whether or Not to Support Our Troops by Saving Them From Dying in a Failed War.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Any Republican or Democrat in Congress or the White House who supports a war that is only running on the fuel of failed leadership and GOP solidarity should go and fight in it, instead of mouthing lies about "supporting our troops."

During the skirmishes over Bush’s appointment of radical GOP partisan judges to the Supreme Court, the White House sent out a message point: "An up or down vote." In fact, then GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who must have had a skeleton in his closet for him to disappear from political life so precipitously) threatened to end the time-honored filibuster in the Senate to give the Bush judicial hit men an "up or down vote."

Only the intervention of a small group of GOP Dems who teamed up with "moderate" Republicans prevented Frist from "bombing" the filibuster by eliminating it with a majority vote. Essentially, the "centrist" GOP Dems gave the Republicans what they wanted (it’s called capitulation) – and Bush got Alito and other "Constitutional Revisionist" (forget that misleading "framing" claim that they are "Strict Constructionists") judges on the federal bench.

Now, it’s a short time later and the Republicans won’t even allow a vote on saving the lives of our troops. They even, just last week, filibustered a bill sponsored by Senator James Webb that would have simply required that the troops be combat ready!

No, we don’t hear any more from the Republicans of giving them an "up or down vote." Hack judges who will deliver rulings that will back up Bush and Cheney policies and keep their hit men out of jail apparently deserve an "up or down vote," but the lives of our GIs don’t.

The chronic and unceasing Republican hypocrisy would not be so unforgivable if it were not so sanctimonious. This is a White House and political party that has so diverged from reality, in the name of sticking together as "a team," that they might as well be taking LSD. Maybe they are, although these are the guys who prefer alcoholism to drugs, and promiscuous sex while extolling the sanctity of marriage to honesty.

During a week when news stories revealed further outrages of how the Bush Administration has let companies increase their profits instead of ensuring the safety of our troops, when we learn that Al-Qaeda is as strong as at the time of 9/11 and ready to renew attacks on the mainland (after Bush keeps selling the war as necessary to keep Al-Qaeda from attacking us at home), when a report is released basically indicating that the Iraq War continues to deteriorate, when the White House dismisses a question about why the Iraqi government is taking August off when our soldiers will continue dying there with Tony Snow’s snide remark that the Iraqi government deserves the rest because it gets extremely hot in Baghdad in August, when Bush resurrects the falsehood that Saddam was linked to 9/11 after the LA Times reports that the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Iraq is from Saudi Arabia (remember that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia – as is Bin Laden, AND altogether foreign fighters still compose just about 5% of the people killing our soldiers – in short the "enemy" is 95% indigenous to Iraq by most credible estimates), when the number of GIs killed hits record levels, when daily reports of bombings and attacks reveal the deaths of an uncountable number of Iraqi civilians … during this week Bush claimed that the Iraq War was vital to our national security and he was going to continue to "support the troops." Now the Pentagon, after years of Bush claiming "victory" is just around the corner, is talking about the possibility of yet another "increase in troops."

The Republicans don't support our troops; they send them ill-equpped to die in a war fashioned by a Rasputin and an empty vessel of a man, both of whom value corporate profits over lives -- and who are guilty of years of governmental malfeasance.

The White House lives on an alternate plane of reality – as we have noted many a time. But maybe they don’t. They practice the politics of "we have power, you don’t, so shove it up your as*." Bush is a guy who is so sociopathic that he can stare a train wreck in the face and claim that it’s moving safely to its destination. Cheney is just of the mind that America’s corporations own the world, and are entitled to profit from warfare and the world’s natural resources alike.

It’s a vision of haves and have nots, where the have nots do the fighting and dying for the haves.

When Republicans chant the mantra, "Support our Troops," it means just the opposite. It means "Support our safe, comfortable, wealthy lifestyle in the United States and let these expendable GIs die for us."

That’s why the GOP will fight an up or down vote on saving our GIs once again today.

Right-wing federal judges who will vote to support the Busheviks whenever the White House gives them a wink must have an "up or down vote," the GOP has hammered home.

Our GIs, however, are just so much cannon fodder. All they deserve, according to the real Republican agenda, is to have the privilege of dying for the GOP folly in Iraq, because preserving power for the privileged is the only thing at stake at this point in that most failed of conflicts.

If we were trying to ensure the national security of America, Bush wouldn’t have abandoned the pursuit of Osama bin-Laden, Saudi Arabia would be culprit # 1, and Al-Qaeda would be the target, not the diverse group of insurgents engaged in a civil war in Iraq – which Bush’s actions precipitated – only stopping to kill American GIs because they are the common enemy there.

That is the horrifying situation that the GOP loyalists have put us in.

Our very security as a nation is at stake because of their blundering, as are the lives of our GIs.

But national security and the welfare of our troops don’t merit the up or down vote that right-wing quack jurists received.

The Republican Party is a danger to the future of America. Greed, hypocrisy, corruption and self-absorption have turned them into a threat to the future of this nation and to our own personal security.

Led by Bush and Cheney, the GOP has betrayed America and our military.

That is what most urgently deserves an "up or down" vote.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

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