We are so far wretched monetarily, yet they manage to find more to have a war. Where is it actually coming from? Me thinks the money presses are burning up.



WASHINGTON - Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will vote as early as Friday on legislation that would spend $50 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but require that President Bush start bringing troops home.

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The money is about a quarter of the $196 billion requested by Bush. It would finance about four months of combat in Iraq, Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.

"This is not a blank check for the president," she said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "This is providing funding for the troops limited to a particular purpose, for a short time frame."

The bill would set the requirement that troop withdrawals begin immediately and that soldiers and Marines spend as much time at home as they do in combat.

The measure also sets a goal that combat end by December 2008. After that, troops left behind should be restricted to a narrow sets of missions, namely counterterrorism, training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. assets.

Bush rejected a similar measure in May, and Democrats lacked the votes to override the veto.

Pelosi said the bill also would require that the government rely on an Army field manual when conducting interrogations.The field manual makes no mention of waterboarding, a harsh technique that simulates drowning and is believed to have been used by the CIA.

Since taking control of Congress in January, Democrats have struggled to challenge the president on the war. Holding a shaky majority, they lack the votes to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate or override a presidential veto.

Pelosi's measure will likely scrape by the House, but become hamstrung in the Senate over Republican objections. Buoyed by recent progress in Iraq, where enemy attacks have declined but political efforts remain in a stalemate, GOP lawmakers are more hopeful than ever that the war is turning a corner. They oppose setting a timetable for troop withdrawals.

Republicans also would likely oppose applying Defense Department interrogation standards government-wide because it would limit the CIA's use of aggressive techniques against high-value terrorism suspects.

On Thursday, the House and Senate were on track to approve $460 billion in annual military spending, as well as a stopgap funding measure to keep the rest of the government running through mid-December.

Without the $50 billion for combat operations, the Defense Department would have to transfer money from less urgent spending accounts to keep the wars afloat.

Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the top Republican on the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, predicts the Army would run out of money entirely by January if Congress does not approve some war money.

Kat

BRING'EM HOME!

Have your taxes gone up??? Maybe the cable, water, heat, housing markets, oil, gas,.... have you noticed the hikes?

Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh..... I don't think all the taxes go to that though. There has to be money from somewhere else. That's a lot of money in a short amount of time. Billions have been spent over there billions.
Kat

they are taking the money from your healthcare, education funds, upping the price of food, clothing, taxing you to death.....they are taking it out of municipalities....even street cleaning.....

scttrbrain,

What will happen in Iraq if we bring the troops home?

it is called printing

and a bit of a yen

over printing causes the fall of value

borrowing from china also causes devaluation

it is not finding it

they are manufacturing it

actually spider i would hate to see what will

happen in iraq if we leave

but what i am coming to is

that i hate what will happen here even more

if we dont

sorry to say it

but we need to take care of us

and quit being the world police force

i agree we had a reason to go

and i agree we have a reason to stay

but i also feel we have a bigger reason to leave

they should of went in done it right and got it under control

war is hell and needs to be treated as such

WWII did not last this long although we are still in germany

hhhmmmmm imagine that

if the world wants to handle it let them

but it is time for the yankee to go home

adj4u,

Changing a dictatorship into a democracy isn't an over night job. MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE. But do we want to show the world that we will start something like this and then abandon those people to be murdered? The only moral option at this point is to stay in Iraq. And as for this country, Americans need to grow up. More people died on D-Day than have died since we entered Iraq. So many people in this country hate Bush so much that they don't care what the results are, they just want to see a defeat for Bush. Others are just sheep and they follow the crowd. Others are parrots, who repeat sound bites that they here on the TV or radio without thinking about or understanding what they are saying. Actually taking the time to learn a little history and think for themselves is what America needs to do. We already tried the cut and run in Vietnam and it resulted in 2.5 million deaths of OUR ALLIES. The people who helped us, the people who appreciated our help...murdered, because Americans were tired of hearing about war on the news. And now there are plenty of people who want to see a repeat of that shameful history.

that is part of my point spider

war is hell and needs to be treated as such

if they would have went in there like they did on d-day

it would be over and done with
what has changed since day 543

oh yea some counties drastically reduced their forces

if yer gonna fight a war

people are gonna get killed

realize it

fight it

win it

git them up n running

get out

if it would have been handled like d-day

we would have most of are people back by now

and probably a new military installation there


hhhhmmmmm imagine that