Kucinich Calls for Cutting Off Iraq War Funds
“That’s the only way we’re going to end this war.”
Nov 15, 2006
Congressman Kucinich called Wednesday for cutting off funding of the Iraq war, as the surest way out of Iraq. His statements were made in an interview by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman.
“I want to say that there’s one solution here, and it’s not to engage in a debate with the President, who has taken us down a path of disaster in Iraq, but it’s for Congress to assume the full power that it has under the Constitution to cut off funds. We don’t need to keep indulging in this debate about what to do, because as long as we keep temporizing, the situation gets worse in Iraq.”
“We have to determine that the time has come to cut off funds. There’s enough money in the pipeline to achieve the orderly withdrawal that Senator McGovern is talking about. But cut off funds, we must. That’s the ultimate power of the Congress, the power of the purse. That’s how we’ll end this war, and that’s the only way we’re going to end this war.”
“We need to shift our direction.”
“We have to take a whole new approach. We’re spending over $400 billion a year, money that’s also needed for healthcare, for education, for job creation, for seniors. We have to take a new look at this. We need to be a strong country, but strength isn’t only military. Strength is also the economic strength of the people, their chance to have good neighborhoods. We spend more money than all the countries of the world put together for the military.”
“It’s time for us to start to shift our vision about who we are as a nation, because if we don’t do that — we’re borrowing money right now to wage the war in Iraq. We’re borrowing money from China. We’re not looking at our trade deficit. We’re not looking at conditions, where people are going bankrupt trying to pay their hospital bills. We need to shift our direction, and the direction has to be away from the continued militarization of the United States society.”
Wild Thing’s comment…….
Hey Dennis, terrorists watch the news, you know. They are emboldened by your support. Shut the hell up, you lily-livered coward and crawl back under the rock from whence you came. These people are NOT Americans they are the scum of the earth.
And ah Dennis this is my message to you! CLICK HERE …taken from the film Pulp Fiction, a quote by Samuel Jackson.
Did this creep escape from some twisted agricultural experiment? Maybe a cross between a mushroom, or a rutabaga, with a human being? I’m convinced that leftism has more to do with the ugly and stupid finding sexual partners than it does with politics. Study any video of a protest, and you’ll see the evidence. Kucinich types prevail.
One more thing. Christopher Hitchens, in an interview recently, pronounced one of the most unacknowledged principles of a Democracy.
He said, “Stupid people have the right to be represented, by not BY stupid people”.
Boy, am I stupid. That should read “…but not BY stupid people”.
OK, we all know that Kuchinch had a couple of his wheels come off a long time ago and he’s never found them. But I heard nearly the exact same words come out of nutroots-darling John Murtha’s mouth on GMA last Monday. And there are two things to pay attention to here. One is, obviously, that an immediate pullout from Iraq would be a disaster, and it’s a disaster that the Democratic Party seems to be craving. Rather than just rooting for an American defeat, they are now putting in plans to see that it happens.
But the other aspect of it, I haven’t seen any comment on. Pay attention to these words: “We’re spending over $400 billion a year, money that’s also needed for healthcare, for education…” What they are talking about, plain and simple, is raiding the DoD budget for social spending. Remember Jimmy Carter and the “hollow army”? That’s one reason that the Iranian hostage rescue failed. Why did Ronald Reagan run up such a budget deficit? Because of the crash programs he had to launch to get the military back up to capability. It needed everything — equipment and supplies needed to be upgraded, troops needed training, R&D had to be hugely accelerated because of the amount of time it takes to develop new weapons systems, and everyone in uniform was falling behind the rest of the country on pay. Of course, dipping into social spending was off the table even with a Republican majority, so the only way to fund all of this was to increase the deficit. But it had to be done; we were within a few years of a dangerous capability gap re the Soviets that might have convinced that aggressive KGB man Andropov that a pre-emptive first strike was possible. And believe me, if the Soviets had ever perceived that there was a window to do that, they would have pulled the trigger in a heartbeat.
We face an even worse situation today, because unlike the Soviets, our new enemy is perfectly happy to strike at us even under circumstances where it means their own annihilation. The only way to stop them from hitting us is to hit them first, and hard enough so that their capability for retaliation is eliminated on the first shot. Under the current rules of engagement (and, arguably, there are good political and humanitarian reasons for those rules to exist), we cannot accomplish that mission unless we have an overwhelming advantage in the four T’s — talent, tactics, training, and technology. That’s why we cannot afford to let the DoD budget lapse, even for two years until a presumptive Republican return in 2008. By then, it will probably be too late for us to catch back up.
Your “click here” from Pulp Fiction was great! Kucinich is a nuttard.
Dave:
They will, of course, choose to chatter and babble about the issues of the past. I wonder, though, if it could work this time around.
Ah Dennis the Menace, It shames me to admit it but I too, am from Ohio. I didn’t vote for him and everybody I know didn’t vote for him, but he keeps getting re-elected. Must be all those dead democrats who keep putting him in office.
Just a little back ground, Dennis was elected Mayor of Cleveland, 1978-1980 , usually the city of Cleveland has a Mayor for 4 years, but because of Dennis the Menace, he got booted in a recall election in 1980, because of his inept guidance the City of Cleveland became known as the Capital of Crisis, the rating on city bonds dropped twice in the first two months he was in Office, After a year he had the city budget 20 million dollars in the red. Then there was the police strike, it began after Kucinich ordered one-man patrols rather than the two-man units, to begin daytime patrols through housing projects occupied by 30,000 residents, police complained about roving gangs with automatic weapons and the cops refused to obey. Kucinich fired 13 policeman which forced the strike.
It gets better, other city workers honored the Police picket line, and the city was without, garbage pickup, street cleaning, and other essential services. During a city council meeting the leader of the council threw a chair at him.
Shortly after the Governor called a ‘Re-call’ election and dennis got booted.
This is the nitwit, the 10th congressional district keeps re-electing, it is partly out of survival, they don’t want him in the area or anywhere the city he can do damage, so they did the next best thing they sent him to Washington where he can’t harm anybody.
To listen to this half-wit is to be done at your own peril. Even the demos know this and they put him in a corner pretend he isn’t there.
Mark:
Thanks for the FYI on the idiot. I remember the “Boy Mayor” era, when he was on Time Magazine and Newsweek. I thought he’d withered away until he showed up running for President.
Well if what Kerry said is true, then Dennis the Menace will be heading to Iraq. Oops. I meant Irak.
Rhod that is a great quote by Hitchens. Thanks. And you are so right about the people we see at those Protests.
Cousin Dave I agree, I want us to spend all we can on the DOD, we need to have and keep the strongest military in the world. Maybe now more then ever with all that is going on in the world.
DE644 thanks so much.
🙂
Mark, LMAO oh yesss it has to be those dead Democrats.
razOr good one, I should try to remember how to spell it like that. heh heh