Posted on 01/11/2007 11:39:56 AM PST by The South Texan
Excuse the vanity, but Chuck Hagel has really gotten under my skin. You Nebraska Freepers need to get busy and find a well known Republican in that state to run against this Rino in the next GOP Priamry. I am tired of crap like this from this AP story.
"Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska told Rice the president's plan was "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out."
Rice engaged in a tense exchange with Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and longtime critic of Bush's Iraq policy, disputing his characterization of Bush's buildup as an "escalation."
"Putting in 22,000 more troops is not an escalation?" Hagel asked. "I think, senator, escalation is not just a matter of how many numbers you put in."
"Would you call it a decrease?" Hagel asked.
"I would call it, senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad," she said.
Hagel told Rice, "Madame Secretary, Iraqis are killing Iraqis. We are in a civil war. This is sectarian violence out of control."
She disputed that Iraq was in the throes of a civil war. To that, Hagel said, "To sit there and say that, that's just not true."
Whats his conservative rating?
In fairness to Hagel, he's excellent on spending issues. He's just horrible on foreign policy. He's basically a Buchannanite.
That is fine. But you need to do one more thing (if you are not already) and do it over and over and over:
Tell the RNC, both local chapters and national, that you refuse to give them monies and why. Do it once a month, once a week, etc.
When they start receiving hundres, maybe thousands, of messages like this, maybe, just maybe, they will start to listen.
Congressman Ron Paul, before the US House of Representatives, January 5, 2007
Mr. Speaker, Saddam Hussein is Dead. So are Three Thousand Americans.
The regime in Iraq has been changed. Yet victory will not be declared: not only does the war go on, it’s about to escalate. Obviously the turmoil in Iraq is worse than ever, and most Americans no longer are willing to tolerate the costs, both human and economic, associated with this war.
We have been in Iraq for 45 months. Many more Americans have been killed in Iraq than were killed in the first 45 months of our war in Vietnam. I was in the U.S. Air Force in 1965, and I remember well when President Johnson announced a troop surge in Vietnam to hasten victory. That war went on for another decade, and by the time we finally got out 60,000 Americans had died. God knows we should have gotten out ten years earlier. “Troop surge” meant serious escalation.
The election is over and Americans have spoken. Enough is enough! They want the war ended and our troops brought home. But the opposite likely will occur, with bipartisan support. Up to 50,000 more troops will be sent. The goal no longer is to win, but simply to secure Baghdad! So much has been spent with so little to show for it.
Who possibly benefits from escalating chaos in Iraq? Neoconservatives unabashedly have written about how chaos presents opportunities for promoting their goals. Certainly Osama bin Laden has benefited from the turmoil in Iraq, as have the Iranian Shiites who now are better positioned to take control of southern Iraq.
Yes, Saddam Hussein is dead, and only the Sunnis mourn. The Shiites and Kurds celebrate his death, as do the Iranians and especially bin Laden – all enemies of Saddam Hussein. We have performed a tremendous service for both bin Laden and Ahmadinejad, and it will cost us plenty. The violent reaction to our complicity in the execution of Saddam Hussein is yet to come.
Three thousand American military personnel are dead, more than 22,000 are wounded, and tens of thousands will be psychologically traumatized by their tours of duty in Iraq. Little concern is given to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in this war. We’ve spent $400 billion so far, with no end in sight.
This is money we don’t have. It is all borrowed from countries like China, that increasingly succeed in the global economy while we drain wealth from our citizens through heavy taxation and insidious inflation. Our manufacturing base is now nearly extinct.
Where the additional U.S. troops in Iraq will come from is anybody’s guess. But surely they won’t be redeployed from Japan, Korea, or Europe. We at least must pretend that our bankrupt empire is intact. But then again, the Soviet empire appeared intact in 1988.
Some Members of Congress, intent on equitably distributing the suffering among all Americans, want to bring back the draft. Administration officials vehemently deny making any concrete plans for a draft. But why should we believe this? Look what happened when so many believed the reasons given for our preemptive invasion of Iraq.
Selective Service officials admit running a check of their lists of available young men. If the draft is reinstated, we probably will include young women as well to serve the god of “equality.” Conscription is slavery, plain and simple. And it was made illegal under the 13th amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude. One may well be killed as a military draftee, which makes conscription a very dangerous kind of enslavement.
Instead of testing the efficacy of the Selective Service System and sending more troops off to a war we’re losing, we ought to revive our love of liberty. We should repeal the Selective Service Act. A free society should never depend on compulsory conscription to defend itself.
We get into trouble by not following the precepts of liberty or obeying the rule of law. Preemptive, undeclared wars fought under false pretenses are a road to disaster. If a full declaration of war by Congress had been demanded as the Constitution requires, this war never would have been fought. If we did not create credit out of thin air as the Constitution prohibits, we never would have convinced taxpayers to support this war directly from their pockets. How long this financial charade can go on is difficult to judge, but when the end comes it will not go unnoticed by any American.
CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL.
A very good point.
I haven't sent them one of my missives since the late '90s.
He was assigned to the 611th Ord. Co. in Chu Lai.
I was with HHC/3rdBde at LZ Mace. He was there almost a year or more earlier than I as they'd moved the Cav down to III Corp from I Corp by then. Before that I was with 3/8th Inf of the 4th Inf Div based out of Camp Radcliffe, An Khe up in II Corp.
Uh, how would you know?
He needs to stand up for America, our Commander in Chief, and victory.
Right now he sounds like a defeatist.
I hope Nebraska replaces him with a real conservative next time he's up for election.
Plenty of conservatives won't support Up-Chuck Hag-el in the primary.
I have it on good authority that Hagel won't run for re-election in '08.
Rep. primary will be Bruning v. Daub.
Fahey for the Rats.
Which in Hagel's case could represent a move to to right.
I have first dibs on this guy; I want to pistol whip him -- and I had quite a few people offering to help me.
What IS the story on this guy? What "wing" of the party is he catering to?
I just cannot put into words what I was feeling when I watched him talking about President Bush yesterday.
Obviously I have not paid enough attention to this guy; what IS his story?
Not me or anybody I know.
I have a LONG memory; he will NOT get my vote. Ever. Under ANY circumstance.
He'll never get the nomination though.
He is alligned with the inside the belt way crowd and the country club types. I happened to watch him by accident on the Charlie Rose show last night and that's the impression I got. I bet he hardly goes back to Nebraska except when the senate is out of session for awhile and when he leaves the senate, he'll probably end up at the Brookings Institute or as a "Republican" commentator on CNN that will be used to bash whatever Republican is in office or wanting to be in office, including his buddy McCain.
I'm behind Bruning, because Daub is more of a beltway-insider type, and because I like Bruning.
Watching him beat Mike "Fidel" Fahey's socialist @$$ like a rented mule will be fun to watch. Fahey might carry North O, and parts of Grand Island, but that's going to be it.
He is evil.
I'd rather target 'rats.
The way to reduce the influence of the Hagels of the Senate is to elect more Republicans. When Johnson had 70 'rat Senators he could tell any one of them to go to hell because he had plenty who would do as he said.
We never had 50 conservative Senators! However, the so-called "RINOs" like Mike DeWine did help confirm Roberts and Alito and Janice Rogers Brown.
People like you won't be satisfied until Republicans are reduced to a hopeless minority of virgin-pure conservatives who watch helplessly as the Supreme Court is filled with liberals when 'rats are President and good conservatives like Bork nominated by Republicans are blocked because we don't have a majority.
You may not have noticed, but we are running out of Republican Senators in the Northeast and Midwest. The few who remain don't fit your definition of Republican, so you want to run them out. I am fed up and sick of so-called "conservatives" who think destruction of the Republican Party in the midwest and northeast will somehow help. You want Voinovich and Specter and Collins and Snowe replaced by hard core 'rats? Because that's what we have up here.
Get a clue.
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