The only thing more frustrating than the debate between Congress and the White House on this war funding bill is the mainstream media’s complete ineptitude in reporting about it. Andrew Sullivan points us to this comprehensive post by Marty Lederman. The background:
In budget request after budget request over the past few years, the President has failed to ask Congress for resources sufficient to fund the Iraq War. (This has presumably been intentional; it allows the President to avoid publicly acknowledging the true cost of the war.) Therefore, it has been necessary for Congress repeatedly to enact supplemental appropriations bills to fund the war — seven in total.
The latest being the bill now making headlines. Lederman writes: “As usual, the nation’s media have written countless stories about the public debate on this bill without providing ready access to the actual statutory language at the heart of the dispute.” Following a detailed reading of that language, Lederman concludes:
The President will veto this bill — which provides the troops, and returning veterans, with much greater funding and support than the President himself proposed — simply because the bill would also, quite modestly, establish a presumption that redeployment is to begin by this July, if the Iraqis are not meeting the President’s benchmarks, and if the President is unable to make the case to delay the beginning of redeployment to a later date. [Emphasis in original.]
And yet the President accuses the Democratic leaders of “[choosing] to further delay funding our troops.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Comments are closed.