Do americans not understand politics? will they blame the DEMS for what REPUBS are responsible for?

Question

I hear often, dems promised change and end to war, but never delivered?

How many Democratic bills were stonewalled or filibustered?
How can you really do anythign when you have half government supporting the presidents terrible policies?

What you have is a stalemate.
Because Republicans have choosen to stand besides the president instea of vote for whats best for america!!!

But even still, will people blame the democrats for lack of progress???

AFEAF -- I love that BeatBox video ..thanks for sharing that

Answer 1

Bush had 6 years of republican congress and did nothing to shrink government hes a joke. dems have had 1 year of the congress and gave bush every penny for his "war" and they are a joke and they all still hate each other ,, they are all a joke.Amid the George W Bush administration's relentless campaign to "change the subject" from Iraq to Iran, how to "win" the war against the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi'ite, now means - according to counter-insurgency messiah General David Petraeus - calling an air strike.

On a parallel level, the Pentagon has practically finished a base in southern Iraq less than 10 kilometers from the border with Iran



called Combat Outpost Shocker. The Pentagon maintains this is for the US to prevent Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. Rather, it's to control a rash of US covert, sabotage operations across the border targeting Iran's Khuzestan province.

With the looming Turkish threat of invading Iraqi Kurdistan and President General President Musharraf's new "let's jail all the lawyers" coup within a coup in Pakistan, the bloody war in the plains of Mesopotamia is lower down in the news cycle - not to mention the interminable 2008 US presidential soap opera. Rosy spinning, though, still rules unchecked.

The Pentagon - via Major General Joseph Fil, commander of US forces in Baghdad - is relentlessly spinning there's now less violence in the capital, a "sustainable" trend. This is rubbish.

Fil cannot even admit to the basic fact that Baghdad has been reduced to a collection of blast-walled, isolated ghettos in search of a city. Baghdad, from being 65% Sunni, is now at least 75% Shi'ite, and counting. Sunni and Shi'ite residents alike confirm sectarian violence has died down because there are virtually no more neighborhoods to be ethnically cleansed.

When Fil says the Iraqi forces are "much, much more effective", what he means is they are much more ferocious. Terrified middle class, secular Shi'ite residents have told Asia Times Online these guards - Shi'ites themselves - roaming Baghdad with their machine guns pointing to the sidewalks are "worse than the Americans".

Violence has also (relatively) decreased because the bulk of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is still lying low, following his strict orders, even though they are being targeted by constant US air strikes on Sadr City.

The falling numbers of US deaths have also been subjected to merciless spinning. Yet already more US troops have been killed in Iraq in 2007 than in all of 2006. This temporary fall is not caused by a burst of Sunni Iraqi resistance good will - even though an array of groups has taken some time out to concentrate forces in these past few months on unifying their struggle (See It's the resistance, stupid Asia Times Online, October 17, 2007.)

Once again, Baghdad residents, who daily have to negotiate life in hell, reveal what's going on. Lately, as a Shi'ite businessman says, "We have not seen the Americans. They used to come to my neighborhood almost every day at night, with Humvees and Bradleys. They stopped at the end of September." This means less US-conducted dangerous "missions" in the Baghdad wasteland - with less exposure to snipers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) - and more time spent in ultra-fortified bases.

The Pentagon even had to admit that sniper attacks, conducted by real pros, have quadrupled during the past year and could "potentially inflict even more casualties than IEDs". The US Department of Defense's Defense Advance Research Projects Agency had to rush a program using lasers to identify snipers before they shoot.

Anyway, whenever there is a mission in Baghdad now it inevitably means an air strike. Mega-slum Sadr City residents confirm the US keeps attacking alleged Mahdi Army "terrorist" haunts - but mostly from the air.

With the US corporate media operating virtually like a Pentagon information agency, the only news fit to print is that as of early this week there were 3,855 American dead in Iraq. But most of all - and never mentioned - there were 28,451 wounded in combat. And as of October 1, there were no less than 30,294 military victims of accidents and diseases so serious they had to be medically sent out of Iraq.

When in doubt, 'liberate' from the air
Brigadier General Qasim Atta, spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, revealed this week Iraq's security forces have set up 250 spy cameras across Baghdad - presumably to track the Sunni resistance, the Mahdi Army and remaining al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers operatives. Atta has argued "the terrorists are now forced to resort to kidnappings and planting roadside bombs because our security plan is working". That's more rubbish.

Kidnapping is an established industry in Baghdad; with the exodus of the middle classes to Jordan, Syria and beyond, now there's virtually no one flush enough to be kidnapped. IEDs continue to follow wherever American convoys roam. And since they are not roaming - they stick to base - fewer IEDs are exploding. As for al-Qaeda, it has relocated from Baghdad neighborhoods such as Dora - but it will be back.

With fewer missions on the ground, the Pentagon could not but launch four times more air strikes on Iraqis in 2007 - the year of Bush's "surge" - than in the whole of 2006. Up to the end of September, there had been 1,140 air strikes. Last month, there were more air strikes than during the siege that devastated Fallujah in November 2004.

Even discounting the criminal absurdity of an occupation routinely dropping the bomb on packed neighborhoods of a city it already occupies, civilians are the inevitable "collateral damage" of these attacks - families, women, children, assorted "non-combatants". The US Air Force does not even take responsibility - claiming the air strikes are ordered by scared-to-death convoys of Humvees patrolling, say, the mean streets of Sadr City.

The Pentagon talk of "precision strikes" and "reducing collateral damage" means nothing in this context. This appalling human-rights disaster has to be attributed to counter-insurgency messiah Petraeus, the "loser", according to Martin van Creveld, who wrote the latest book on the matter, The Changing Face Of War.

But for public relations purposes inside the US, Petraeus' "by his book" approach works wonders. The Pentagon can spin to oblivion to a cowered media that US deaths are falling. Who cares what the Nuri al-Maliki "sovereign" Iraqi government says? Maliki is nothing but the mayor of the Green Zone anyway. Who cares what the "fish" - who support the "sea" of the resistance, Sunni or Shi'ite - feel? 80% of them are unemployed anyway - and they merely struggle to survive as second-class citizens in their own land.

There's hardly any electricity, fuel or food in Baghdad - everything is rationed - for anyone who's not aligned with a militia-protected faction. The only other option is to flee. With at least a staggering 4.4 million, according to the United Nations, either refugees or internally displaced, options are dwindling fast. There may be as many as 2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria alone. Damascus, in despair, has tightened its visa rules: only academics and businessmen are now entitled. No less than 14% of the entire Iraqi population has been displaced - courtesy of the Bush administration.

Oh, but the Bush administration is "winning" the war, of course. Counter-insurgency doctrine rules that the enemy must be controlled with social, political, ideological and psychological weapons, and risks have to be taken so civilians can be protected.

The surging Petraeus turned that upside down. Or maybe not - he's just providing his own scholarly follow-up to the indiscriminate bombings of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s. Petraeus, His master's voice, might as well call an air strike over the whole of Mesopotamia and then call it "victory".

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at [e-mail].

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.

I wondered why Asia times was no longer linked on yahoo news Go read the real news people

Answer 2

We have all been sedated. What rules America is it's people... don't ever forget that, but because we have all been sedated by the media, we lack aggression toward bad leader, bad policies, and bad decisions. Where is the public outrage, where are all these people who feel we are being taken for a ride. In the 60's and the 70's we would line-up the streets and protest again things that offend us and seemingly take away our freedom. Today we don't watch C-Span to see what new policies are going to be put in place, we don't care who controls our desicion makin. It's not entertaining enough, so we ignore it. We would rather watch Dancing with the Stars then to see what is shaping the future of our country. Wake up folks... this is our country... and we can take control.

Answer 3

The truth is that the democrats control OVER half the legislative branch not an equal part. They can't even get all the democrats to vote for their bill. Let's not forget the fact that a majority of the democrats voted for military action. Kind of hard to put the genie back in the bottle. After the shooting starts then it is up to the Commander in Chief what happens next. Read the Constitution. They can cut off funding (which they can't seem to get a majority to vote for) but they can't tell the President how to conduct a war.

Answer 4

Many of us don't really blame the Democrats. We realize there is only so much you can get done, when you have a tiny majority in congress, a right-leaning Supreme Court, and a corrupt executive branch. But there is some disappointment, because we expected the Dems to put up more of a fight. Why not vote to stop funding the war? We'd lose that vote now, but it would give us hope for real change after next election.

Answer 5

At this time American politics is all fouled up because of the war and elections. Neither party is really telling it the way it is because they are afraid of losing votes. American politics has always been foul but at this time it is the worst in over one hundred years. Will it straighten out after the election? It depends upon who get in and what the policies are. The far left will always be at war with the far right and in my opinion it is up to the middle of both parties to straighten out the present mess.

Answer 6

Each party will blame the other until the end of time. Each will contribute some good and provide some bad, so in the long run, each one provides some benefit at the cost of the progress of the other. No party will ever fix all the problems. so the two party system works for now. Its just annoying.

Answer 7

its semantics, the arguments you hear about the war are more about getting elected than truly ending the war, the democrat majority in the house and Congress could have cut the funding for the war for the past 2 years, and haven't

why?

because they have no intention of ending the war, both sides of the isle are fully aware of whats at stake in Iraq and Afghanistan, both know the importance of being sure Iraq is rebuilt before we pull out, both know the importance of extracting information from captured terrorists, and both side are fully aware of the intelligence coming out of GuitMo

but you can't get your president elected by saying the other guy is doing a good job

and you bought it

Answer 8

Because Republicans have choosen to stand besides the president instea of vote for whats best for america!!!
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Joking right ?

The only Dem that I know that stood up for America since Kennedy is Joe Leiberman!

The rest of you are swine!

Answer 9

Democrats control Congress. Sounds pretty much like they can shine if they so choose... but for some reason, many are not barking so loudly lately. And some don't even support the leading Democratic contender for the Presidency. I just wonder why.

Answer 10

It's neither one, it is both.
They all are politicians and politicians care for one thing; power.
Power through money
Power through taxation
Power through earmarks

Right now, the big money is in fuel with 'green' coming up fast so a wise person would be investing in and/or inventing more carbon credit scams. It is the new Micro$oft.

Answer 11

In my opinion, REPUBS AND DEMS, represent, R=$$$ and D=trying as always, to undo the staggering,amount the other party has put The UNITED STATES Of Americia, Our Land, in debt. Sure the D= are going to be blamed
x President Jimmy Carter, in a, statement, did not even blink, when he spoke out agans't, President G.Bush, for putting our country in debt,Trillions, of Dollars, more than All of our other Presidents,combined!! Who in the name of My higher power,(GOD), can go in and just Fix It!!