Bill Could Save Internet Radio > Check out this bill here

Check out this bill here

Right, which they have no freaking power to actually do anything. It's a waste of time and the Dems should be flogged for this kind of crap. Take care of your JOB and get this kind of stuff taken care of!
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Alt-This -- My Tech Podcast

What does this have to do with Democrats? A republican is in this bill too.
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just whiners and complainers...

I meant the Dems trying to pass bills on where troops should be and shouldn't be. That's the job of the President and nobody else. They're wasting our time and our tax dollars to make a political statement. I applaud anyone on either side who takes this Internet radio bill and runs with it. The Copyright board's decision was absolutely insane.
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Alt-This -- My Tech Podcast

You mean there not just rubber stamping everything the Prez wants?

Congress has no say. The Constitution of the United States gives the President the powers to be the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. It doesn't matter what anyone in Congress thinks, they have no power to step in and move troops in or out of anywhere. To try and pass legislation to do that is nothing but a political farce and a waste of time and resources.
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Alt-This -- My Tech Podcast

reply to ARGONAUT
Would this be a reference to the "rubber stamp" congress where the dems controlled the senate for his first two years and voted to authorize the use of military force for the following reasons:

* Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 cease fire, including interference with weapons inspectors
* Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and programs to develop such weapons, posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region"
* Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population"
* Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people"
* Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt of former President George H. W. Bush, and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War
* Members of al-Qaeda were "known to be in Iraq"
* Iraq's "continuing to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations
* Fear that Iraq would provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against the United States
* The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight the 9/11 terrorists and those who aided or harbored them
* The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism
* Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.

Just trying to sift through the rhetoric

reply to gwbuffalo
Ah, but Congress does have the power to appropriate funds... And to tie the withdrawl to funds allocations is well within their power. Just like they tie highway funds to things like drinking ages, etc.
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Prove it...

reply to gwbuffalo

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal,
and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money
to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the
land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the
laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel
invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the
militia, and for governing such part of them as may be
employed in the service of the United States, reserving to
the states respectively, the appointment of the officers,
and the authority of training the militia according to the
discipline prescribed by Congress;

reply to lesopp
You mean the part about the prez knowingly lying to scare the American people to war and those dems in the senate being mislead as well?

Maybe you should listen to Rush for a proper response

reply to lesopp
The democrats had a majority of one seat and faced a house that was over 66% Republican. They were presented a wealth of information that consisted of conjecture, speculation, misinterpretation, deliberate obfuscation and outright lies. When not given the facts, faced with a major tragedy stateside it would have been political suicide not to go along, after all Bush lied about the facts that had they been true would have been very damning, but in fact they weren't true as we found out 4 years later after a lot of defections, whistle blowers and court action.

And lets count the number of those that were lies, deliberately pushed forward by the Bush administration against the recommendations of the intelligence community at the time.

1. After the invasion we learn the details that there were no weapons of mass destruction, no buried factories, no nothing. As a result Iraq was actually in nearly full compliance with it's obligations, it just didn't have good paperwork on all the stuff the US military blew up in Gulf 1.0. I bet you didn't know that the IAEA's only concern with Iraq at the time was that they hadn't properly documented what happened to all the stuff the US military blew up, partly because Saddam's administration didn't know exactly where everything was and in what quantity (they kept almost no documentation, added to the fact that a majority of the guys running the bunkers and storage facilities had no idea what was in them). You would know that of course if you had actually read the IAEA reports instead of relying on the mass media to give you an accurate account.

2. Iraq didn't have a WMD's or a program to develop them. Such things as allegations that they were seeking Uranium in Nigeria turned out to be COMPLETE and TOTAL fabrications by the administration with no basis in fact. In short they LIED, to congress and everyone else. The real truth is Iraq presented no present danger to the US and a very questionable future threat.

3. No question, brutal regime. Since when is the US obligated to interfere in other countries politics? We don't like Zimbabwe, they are a brutal regime, do you see us invading Zimbabwe or NK? Did you see us rush into Sudan to stop the genocide?

4. Iraq had no capability at the time to use any WMD because they didn't have them. Questions of who gassed the Kurds during the war remains to this day, the gas used was a cyanide based gas that was actually a principle component of Iranian chemical weapons and the Iraqi's had almost nothing like it. At the time both nations were using gas on each other, it is possible and in fact is advocated by a number of Iraqi groups that Iran actually gassed the Kurds, possibly by mistake. This is not unreasonable as the technology being used to deliver the chemical agents was equivalent to preWWII level technology and was highly inaccurate.

5. I don't blame them for their hostility, after all we had invaded their country, refused to let the WMD inspectors do their job without political interference (including insertion of CIA agents into the IAEA), and were engaged in military actions against their country which comprised a threat to their sovereignty. Saying they were hostile to us was a statement of the obvious without regard to the facts. The real reason for this was, at least from Bush, was that they tried to kill his daddy, nothing more. Everything else was fluff and lies to get the American people to go along with him. His administration started drawing up plans to invade Iraq after he won the election, 3 months before he took office and nearly 10 months BEFORE September 11th.

5 and 6. Members of Al-Queda had tried to talk with Saddam but were soundly rejected. Saddam was actually hostile towards Al-Queda, after all Al-Queda's primary current basis for existence was that the US was involved in kicking Saddam out of Kuwait when Bin Ladin had wanted to do it. In fact that is the primary reason cited by Bin Ladin when he held his "press conference" announcing the creation of Al-Queda in 1991 and citing their target as the US. The President and Vice president concocted intelligence to try to back up this theory, citing A Terrorist group in the Kurdish region (your item 6) that Saddam was actually prevented from taking action against by the no-fly zone. In fact this "terrorist group", although still labeled terrorists was primarily engaged in action against Iran, and reports have indicated that the US government is working with and training the organization for action against the Iranian government. In violation of US law and undoubtedly something that will come back and bite us later.

7. They didn't have WMD's to provide to anyone. Contrary to popular belief you can't fit a nuclear weapon in a suitcase and carry it around. For one thing it's still going to weigh at least 100 pounds just for small plutonium based weapon as the triggering explosives and the computer to fire them in the correct timed sequence will make up the majority of that weight. For a second thing it's gonna need to be a square suitcase, and at least 3-5' in diameter, again because of the firing sequence and the explosives needed. For a third thing, there will be so much radiation coming off it that it will be lethal exposure after a few days, and any radiation detection equipment in our ports, navel or air would detect it from half a mile away because of the radiation intensity. In fact the ability of a terrorist to get a nuclear weapon stateside is nearly impossible. In fact the only targets they could legitimately hit would be targets in europe or soft targets in other countries. As far as other WMD's like chemical weapons, they are far easier to make then to transport. So lets summarize, they didn't have WMD's, they didn't like the terrorists because they wanted to get rid of Saddam and recreate the caliphate again and the actual transport of those weapons to the US is prohibitive. So in effect this argument is baseless fear mongering something Bush and his cronies are very good at.

8. Saddam was never involved in the 911 plot, not associated with it, didn't harbor any of them and certainly didn't provide material or assets to them. So exactly what does this have to do with the invasion?

9. Again, Saddam wasn't involved in terrorism against the US, in fact Saddam only participated in one area that could be considered terrorism. He provided payment to Palestinian suicide bombers families in Palestine. So are you advocating that we attack anyone that attacks or participates in attacks against Israel? If that's true we should have invaded Saudi and Syria long before Iraq.

10. Did the liberation act authorize the use of force in removal or did it talk about diplomatic efforts? Be careful here, don't lie like the president did.

If you want to skip the rhetoric you also want to talk about what Iraq and this administration has cost us.

1. Worldwide support of the anti-terrorism activities of the US.
2. Worldwide admiration of the US system.
3. Focus on the real problem, namely Afghanistan and Pakistan.
4. There has been no effort to stop Wahabism and it's preaching of hatred and violence.
5. Habeus Corpus disappeared. (Although he may only be missing)
6. Trust of American people in the Executive.
7. Undermining and deliberate attempts to destroy or deny rights specifically prohibited from Government interference. Namely the the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 14th amendments to the constitution.
8. An executive who flaunts and violates the law and actively engages in subverting the US Constitution.
9. The kidnapping of foreign citizens for the purpose of information extraction using torture.
10. The use of secret prisons where US government agents violate the US Constitution and laws by engaging in or otherwise participating in the questioning by torture of foreign nationals.
11. Innocent people captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This includes minors, some as young as 15. Many of which had done nothing illegal either in Afghanistan, or the US. Most of which that had been forced into fighting for the Taliban at gunpoint. And 100% of them were detained without judicial oversight in an arbitrary process, who had no ability to challenge their detention (and have been detained for over 5 years in some cases), are denied access from family members and who's detention violates the Geneva Convention of which the US is a signatory. This not only gives the US a bad reputation worldwide, it also gives many regimes throughout the world the ability to do the same and use the US as an example. In particular it opens US citizens up to serious dangers of arbitrary detainment internationally.

Those are just the juiciest, we have lost far more as a nation as a result of this administration than we will likely ever know. It's quite tragic.

reply to gwbuffalo
First the president has no war power until congress authorizes it. Second read the constitution congress has equal power to the executive branch just different power . That equal power is given to keep things in Balance just in case Oh I dont know maybe to curb a out of control president . 70% of the US population sides against the idiot in office so I guess my friend you are in the Minority . We went to war under lies from this administration . Yeah I know I know the terrorists will follow us home. Yada Yada. Quit watching FOX NEWS its messing your head up

reply to lesopp
Holy crap your one of those 30% people who actually believe that the administration told congress the truth. You probably still believe Iraq had something to do with 911. Have found over time that it makes no difference what some people are told they still stay in that dilusional world . Is it a happy Little killing field in that little world of yours ?