He Questions the Timing.

Jeff Goldstein points us to what may be the article of the week. Hang with me, folks, as I quote liberally and try not to spew tea all over my keyboard in laughter. You aren’t going to believe this.

WASHINGTON — Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly.

The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

Reads like a Ludlum novel, doesn’t it? What nefarious backroom deal are we about to witness? What horrible strongarming of a noble Democrat leader by the evil Bush-Cheney Cerebus will unfold?

But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber’s schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.

“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’”

“Please, Mr. President! Please don’t make us vote on a war before the election. Please, I beg of you!

Please don’t politicize the war? Please, for the love of all that is decent, don’t make me use more buzzwords!

And please find me a dictionary, so I can look up the word “urgent” because I’m apparently not quite sure that it means!”

How did the cruel Warmonger-in-Chief respond to this impassioned plea?

“He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’ ”

*thunder crashes* *orchestra strikes a booming minor chord*

The dreaded half-smile? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Daschle’s account, which White House officials said they could not confirm or deny, highlights a crucial factor that has drawn little attention amid rising controversy over the congressional vote that authorized the war in Iraq. The recent partisan dispute has focused almost entirely on the intelligence information legislators had as they cast their votes. But the debate may have been shaped as much by when Congress voted as by what it knew.

Is the Los Angeles Times playing some sort of elaborate joke on us today? Are they really trying to tell us that the Administration cowed the leader of the Loyal Opposition into a vote to authorize a war with a
half-smile? Do they really believe that portraying Tom Daschle as a bumbling idiot who doesn’t realize that “urgent” means “have to do this now” is highlighting anything but that it’s an incredibly good thing for our country that he’s out of office?

And since when did Republicans become able to cow their opponents without saying a single word? Today it’s the President and his concigliere Cheyney. Last year it was UN Ambassador John Bolton making various staffers wet themselves simply with crossed arms and a stern look. Today’s Anti-War Party wants to appear strong on matters of national defense, yet its leaders can’t can’t up to a half-smile or a bristling moustache.

What chance do they have of standing up to a belligerent North Korea or a posturing Iran?

Here’s the rub, though. The article doesn’t fault – or even recognize the comical weakness in Daschle’s position. It simply tosses out the notion, along with some falsehood about Bush 41, that the vote wasn’t predicated on anything but politics.

In short, it frames the Anti-War Party’s entire position on the Iraq War as one of political gain over national security. Think about what Daschle and the Times are really saying. He and his fellow members of Congress couldn’t actually vote their conscience or what they thought was for the good of the nation because they’d take a beating in the coming election. They had to vote the way they did – to send American men and women to die – simply to secure their seats in Congress.

You could laugh at Tom Daschle for any number of thins in this article – his ignorance about what “urgent” means, his watery-legged cowardice in the face of a Presidential Smirk, his after-the-fact whining about the timing of the vote. Believe me, I did.

But when you’re done laughing at Daschle, you could ask yourself what about his party has changed since he was unceremoniously tossed out of office by his voters. What about Daschle’s former colleagues who still work in Washington has given you any indication that they prize winning the war we’re in above their own political position? Can you read some of the craven political calculations people like Daschle and Kennedy make right out in the open in this article and say that their party is one bit different today?

I surely don’t think so.

I have taken recently to calling the Democrats the Anti-War Party because virtually all of their efforts in the past couple of months have been to hammer away at the President’s poll numbers on the war in Iraq regardles of the effect that hammering would have on how we fight the war, or whether we continue to fight the overal GWOT. This article only affirms my belief that my new sobriquet is accurate. Read the rest of the article and wonder what our country would be like at this moment if those folks were running it. Sure, it may seem funny at first thought, but the more I think about it, the more thankful I am that our national defense isn’t in the hands of the likes of Tom Daschle, Pants-Wetter-in-Chief.

Oh and if you’re reading this Mr. Daschle, don’t mess with me. I have a wicked half-smile and a moustache.

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Category: Fighting the Islamists, Moonbat Nonsense