Carrying People's Mandate with Mediocrity

 

Bush, Democrats in stalemate over Iraq

 

“Listen, I understand Republicans and Democrats in Washington have differences over the best course in Iraq," Bush said. "That's healthy. That's normal, and we should debate those differences. But our troops should not be caught in the middle."

"The president has a choice to make in the coming days: Cling to the discredited policies that have led our troops further into an intractable civil war, or work with a bipartisan majority of Congress to make us more secure," said Majority Leader Reid.

"We're committed to pressing these goals to the administration until they do change course," he said.

Vice President  Dick Cheney has predicted that Democrats will cave and that Congress will pass a "clean" bill that funds the war in Iraq and Afghanistan without timetables.

The Democrats disagreed. "The president is not going to get a bill that has nothing on it," Reid said. "It would be wrong for this legislative branch of government to capitulate to this wrong-headed policy that the vice president and the president have been leading."

Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters in Michigan Monday that if Bush vetoes their original bill, Democrats would go with a "second-best approach" to dealing with security issues in Iraq. He said the second bill would tie U.S. economic and military support to the Iraqi government's ability to meet performance benchmarks.

Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that Bush and Republican congressional leaders have abandoned efforts to hold the Iraqi people and government accountable.

"As they rush to embrace the Bush plan for more of the same in Iraq, the Republican policy is to make U.S troops bear the full burden of the war on their shoulders," Emanuel said.

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   Obviously nobody is listening to anybody.  Each one is engrossed on his/her own  mindset, except the President who is open to any dialogue. Harry Reid is in no mode for dialogues – he is in combat mode, and will not ‘capitulate’.

   The Democrats want to ‘change course’ but all the course the see is only beyond their noses – to cut and run. They do not see or refuse to see what will happen after ‘cut and run’.  They appear incapable of presenting other alternatives ‘to change course’ and trying to foist such mediocrity as obeying the mandate of the people.