Certainly perspective is interesting. Perhaps some other blogger might have chosen to write a head line of "Smith votes to support troops with finds" or "Oregon Democrats fail to vote for bill with emergency funding for counties"

I guess its all where one wants to fall. The bill with a hard timeline in it was never going to get past Bushes desk and it wasn't veto proof. Rather than political grandstanding from both parties, a meaningful set of bills aimed at the required funding AND getting us out of the mess that we created should be in order.

Considering that Oregon Democrats were leading the charge to get county payments passed Nutmeg, your headline choice for the emergency funding for rural counties is a little off. Perhaps you forgot it was the Republicans that failed to even address the issue last session when they led the do nothing congress. Or perhaps you forgot it was the President who threatened to veto the payments because apparently it is "pork". Your headline should have read, "President and Republican Congress don't care about rural communities."

You obviously think that if the suppplemental was again vetoed, that someohow the troops were going to run out of bullets, and fuel, etc.

Lestatdelc -- I'm confused by your position. On the one hand you're advocating that Democrats only pass a supplemental that has timelines for withdrawal. On the other hand, you're saying that the supplemental doesn't really do anything. . . funding for the troops won't be cut off if it doesn't pass.

If there is enough funding for the troops regardless of whether the supplemental passes or not, why does it matter whether the supplemental contains timelines? The only power Congress has over the military is to restrict funding; they cannot make strategic decisions. If adequate funding already exists in the budget, then the timelines placed on the supplemental funding will have no impact. The President can just ignore them.

I don't think you can have it both ways. Either the supplemental is needed to fund the troops (and hence timelines would be relevant), or it's not (and hence timelines are not relevant). If it's the former, I just don't understand what we accomplish by sending the same bill for Bush to veto over and over. As I and others have argued, such an action risks eroding public support for the Democratic position.

I've said it once and I'll say it again. Gordon Smith is our aloof, out of touch, absentee Senator. He would prefer to spend weekends in the Green Zone than in Oregon.

The only way to get him out of his comfortable bubble is to label the behavior and make people notice that he almost never available to the public. Once forced into the public limelight, people can start to get a first hand sense of who he really is. At this point, he is so unaccustomed to talking to real people that the probablility of a Macaca moment is pretty good.

Now contrast the lethargic and lazy Smith with a young, dynamic, eager-to-serve Democrat, and you've got a real contest!

First, Gordon Smith is one of the reasons the original funding bill wasn’t “veto proof.” It isn’t a foregone conclusion that a veto cannot be overridden, all it takes is a few so-called moderate Republicans, like Sen. Smith, to stand up to the President in the halls of Congress in the same manner that they oppose him when nothing is on the line.

Second, Sen. Smith’s opposition to the war rang false even before this vote was cast.

The gist of Sen. Smith argument can be summed up in a few quotes (from a now legendary speech on the floor of the Senate):

“[Pres. Bush] is not guilty of perfidy, but I do believe he is guilty of believing bad intelligence and giving us the same.”

And then at another moment in the same speech:

“[W]e are paying the price to sit on a mountain that is little more than a volcano of ingratitude.”

These two quotes are instructive. To Sen. Smith’s thinking we wouldn’t be in Iraq if it weren’t for bad intelligence, for which apparently no one is responsible. And blame for the current failure in Iraq rests squarely with the ungrateful Iraqis. To be fair Sen. Smith does talk about his frustration with how the war is being waged, but since he is disinclined to blame the executive nor the military leaders on the ground directly it’s hard to see where else Sen. Smith lays the blame.

It may be the Sen. Smith believes in the mission; and like any good imperialist, Sen. Smith might be truly dumbfounded by the savages’ ingratitude for our civilizing mission. Or it may just be easier to blame all of these problems on the fact that we didn’t understand “fully the nature of the ancient hatreds of the Middle East” rather than hold our leaders to account for their mismanagement. Either way what comes to the fore is at best a stereotypical image of the region that should have long since passed from our collective memory, and at a worst that Sen. Smith’s reasoning belies a bigotry hidden below a façade of moderation and tolerance. Whatever the case we are responsible for the horrible situation in Iraq and the destabilization of the entire region, and so long as we have leader’s like Sen. Smith who are unwilling to own responsibility nor hold our Executive to account the opportunity for a peaceful and prosperous future is foreclosed to all of us.

We can argue in circles about "funding the troops" and the political ramifications of this. This is certainly what the neo-Cons would love us to be framing it as, wouldn't they? That is certainly what some bloggers on here have fallen for.

This bill was NOT about funding the troops. It WAS about funding the continued occupation with a blank check. Simple. Let's not mix things up. Democrats should have put forth a bill that funded ONLY the safe withdrawl of the troops and nothing else. Period. After it was vetoed, then they should have said, "The President does not support the troops." Or, "The President is murdering the troops." No one has the balls to say this. They then should have passed the exact same bill over and over again.

For those that authorized this bill, they now carry the burden of every death that takes place from this point on. For every American that supports those that voted for these, or even voted for Bush in 2004, they have blood on their hands. You can justify it any other way you wish, but in the end, you have voted to put our troops in continued harms way rather than safely bring them home.

Smith is in the "Green Zone" alright - the kind with 18 holes and a caddy, and he brought his putter.

Even the Pentagon acknowledges that they have funds to continue operations until the end of July without passage of the emergency supplemental. In short, there was no excuse for passing this blank-check toothless bill.

So you would have just waited two months and then passed the toothless bill?

Democrats had two options. Continue sending the same bill to the President for a veto until funding really did run out -- at which point they would be accused of abandoning the troops in a war zone and risk losing their majority in 2008. Or pass something the President will sign while they continue to build the case for withdrawal.

Given those two options, the Democrats made the right choice. But what the hell, let's shoot them anyway.

August?

Well, that sounds like a great opportunity for Democratic candidates.

Smith is a double-shuffle artist who takes his cues from Rove. It is a shame that our terrific state has such a weak democrat party leadership. Oh well, it appears to be reflective of the national democrat leadership given the results of the events of the last 24 plus hours. Rove and his surrogate Smith I'm afraid continue to have the majority of Oregonians (and that worthless Oregonian one must add) completely bullshitted!!.

I've said it once and I'll say it again. Gordon Smith is our aloof, out of touch, absentee Senator. He would prefer to spend weekends in the Green Zone than in Oregon.

I don't know about the second sentence, but the first is key to understanding Smith. He was raised in a privileged society and appears to have the usual deficits that go with that experience with one of the primary shortcomings being an inability to understand others outside the gated communities of their minds.

Smith managed to be very humane and compassionate for which he deserves credit when he sponsored the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act to help prevent suicides among young people in college. But motivation for that act came only from his personal involvement in this issue. Young people have been committing suicide for generations but neither Smith nor any other politician seems to have been interested in doing anything about it for a very long time. If some ordinary citizen from Oregon who was not a big campaign donor had asked Smith to do something similar based on that person's experience, it would be a good bet Smith wouldn't have given this person more than a friendly smile and insincere comments about feeling that person's pain and looking into it.

We keep reading reports about young men and women returning from Iraq with post traumatic stress disorders that lead to suicide in many cases. Has Smith made a special effort to sponsor a similar version of the Garrett Smith Act to help these vets? I doubt it, and believe the reason is that no one in his circle of friends has a son or daughter in that predicament to help him understand and appreciate the enormity of these vets' agony. Vets, we might note, that fall through the crevasses of the current military and VA systems.

Counterpunch has an interesting article by Jonathan Feldman on Congress and the Iraq War Vote. He makes very interesting points that go beyond contemporary aspects.

Ann Wright, former colonel and diplomat, makes a good case that the Iraq vote had a lot to do with oil.

A Senator you can barley talk to and basically never see (That is without an pre-approved appointment)

Double Speak - Hiding From Constituent's - Fund-N-Run - and flip-flop Spin!

YouTube clip from out on-the-street about "Sen Smiths private property office" and... The 3 arrested at the front door to Smiths office.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av41_xOYe6Q

Link below is more of clips of numerous people at different recent times, getting arrested at his Portland Office, for wanting to speak with the Senator about "Non-Funding" the war since Senator Smith had said (Iraq War) was wrong, those arrested wanted to know why would he fund it if it was wrong? .... senators Smiths answer..... "Arrest them , I am on private property" <sorry low="" quality="" audio="">

http://www.joe-anybody.com/id87.html

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