OBERMAN TELLS BIG TRUTHS
Intro by Deanna Gorzynski 5/24/07
We at World Can’t Wait are energized by hearing truth spoken to power. I believe you will be quite impressed by what TV commentator of MSNBC, Keith Oberman, had to say regarding the recent caved-in Congress in regards to the Iraq funding legislation.
The entire government has failed us on Iraq
For the
president, and the majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file
Congressmen and Senators of either party-there is only blame for this
shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal
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MSNBC video
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SPECIAL
COMMENT
By
Keith Olbermann
Countdown
Updated:
10:33 a.m. ET May 24, 2007
A Special Comment about the Democrats” deal with President
Bush to continue This is, in fact, a comment about” betrayal.
Few men or women elected in our
history-whether executive or legislative, state or national-have been sent into
office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:
Get us out of Iraq.
Yet after six months of preparation and execution-half a
year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the
collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of
Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:
- The Democratic leadership
has surrendered to a president-if not the worst president, then easily the
most selfish, in our history-who happily blackmails his own people, and
uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that
the Democrats “give the troops their money”; - The Democratic leadership
has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only
reduced the security of Americans; - The Democratic leadership
has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not
merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government,
but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi
government. - The Democratic leadership
has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the
only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of
the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and
family, in Iraq.
You, the men and women elected with the simplest of
directions-Stop The War-have traded your strength, your bargaining position,
and the uniform support of those who elected you” for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway
dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the
end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope
that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what
you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”” is a step right off a cliff.
And this President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult… hold his breath, and threaten to
continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is” to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to
continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are
bled white.
You lead this country, sir?
You claim to defend it?
And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your
stubbornness-your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and
thousands more their limbs-you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t
give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in
Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at
the enemy with their bare hands.
How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic.
Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would
have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no
matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally-first,
last and always-that the troops would not suffer.
A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he has already, not to manipulate
an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a “second surge,” but to say
in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already
allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he
will make sure the troops are safe-even if the only safety to be found, is in
getting them the hell out of there.
Well, any true President would have done that, Sir.
You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when
you did so.
Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and
sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can
carry home.
“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and
shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British
signed the Munich accords with Germany in
1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a
little later””
That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it?
Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World
War.
All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader
waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our
time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.
The Democrats have merely streamlined the process.
Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.
And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this
evening?
See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself?
Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the
original Iraq
authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history
now.
The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided…
tomorrow.
The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest
construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of
tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on
Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed
to practical politics.
Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to-for their own political
futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the
individual futures of our troops-denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and,
if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue
down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will
of a monomaniacal president.
For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has
failed us.
- Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the
other Democrats… have failed us.
They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been
entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this
country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as
possible. - Mr. Bush and his government…
have failed us.
They have behaved venomously and without dignity-of course.
That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted.
We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here.
With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic
presidential candidates have (so far at least) failed us.
They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has
been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in
the thousand tomorrows to come.
Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic
nominating process-indeed the whole of our political discourse until further
notice-has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one
thing alone.
The electorate figured this out, six months ago.
The President and the Republicans have not-doubtless will not.
The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go
home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay
there-and permanently.
Because, on the subject of Iraq…
The people have been ahead of the media….
Ahead of the government…
Ahead of the politicians…
For the last year, or two years, or maybe three.
Our politics… is now about the answer to one
briefly-worded question.
Mr. Bush has failed.
Mr. Warner has failed.
Mr. Reid has failed.
So.
Who among us will stop this war-this War of Lies?
To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.
To all the others-presidents and majority leaders and candidates and
rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party-there is only blame” for
this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.