{"id":8657,"date":"2006-10-04T13:16:16","date_gmt":"2006-10-04T17:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8657.html"},"modified":"2006-10-04T13:16:16","modified_gmt":"2006-10-04T17:16:16","slug":"mission-accomplished-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mission-accomplished-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mission Accomplished’ — redux?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For reasons that defy comprehension, congressional Republicans are so optimistic about the Middle East, they thought it’d be a good idea to put aside $20 million for a DC celebration of winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seriously<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have put down a quiet marker in the apparent hope that V-I Day might be only months away.<\/p>\n

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success” in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.<\/p>\n

Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even if we put aside the notion of using 20 million tax dollars for what would likely become a massive propaganda-fest, how delusional do congressional Republicans have to be to expect “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan to be so close, they can already start planning the post-war party?<\/p>\n

As Harry Reid’s office put it: “If the Bush administration had spent more time planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq, and less time planning ‘mission accomplished’ victory celebrations, America would be closer to finishing the job in Iraq.”<\/p>\n

And here’s the kicker from the NYT article: “Democrats called attention to the measure, an act that Republicans are likely to portray as an effort to embarrass them five weeks before the midterm election.”<\/p>\n

Ya think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For reasons that defy comprehension, congressional Republicans are so optimistic about the Middle East, they thought it’d be a good idea to put aside $20 million for a DC celebration of winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seriously. Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}