[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] De-escalate, investigate, troops out now!

[Ricky Baldwin]

The Urbana Free Library did keep Z on the shelves at
least very recently.

I think it's a great summation of what's wrong with
Obama politically, but necessarily a little out of
date.  By that I mean it seems an opportune moment, as
Carl says, to press our agenda with him.  Any chance
of at least setting up a meeting with an aide sometime
soon?  

And there's always the phone: 866-340-9281
(Congresssional switchboard). 

Ricky
--- "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
wrote:

> And read Paul Street's article deconstructing Obama
> in Z Magazine  
> this month (Does our Urbana library stock it?), or
> at the ZNet website.
> --mkb
> 
> 
> On Feb 1, 2007, at 3:56 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
> > It's definitely an advance over his earlier
> position(s) and an  
> > indication that the pressure on him from
> elections, demonstrations,  
> > and constituents' demands is having an effect. 
> And a great reason  
> > to increase the pressure on him and others for a
> real end to the war.
> >
> > OTOH, as usual with Obama, what you see is not
> what you get.
> >
> > 	[1] He's not proposing an American withdrawal but
> (as his bill  
> > says) a "de-escalation."  It proposes the removal
> of *combat  
> > brigades*. Garrison troops for the four main bases
> on oil lines and  
> > the billion-dollar embassy in Baghdad --
> particularly in units of  
> > less than brigade size (ca. 3,000)-- would not be
> covered. Neither  
> > would our army of some 100,000 mercenaries, the US
> Ambassador's  
> > Praetorian Guard, as Jeremy Scahill calls them.
> >
> > 	[2] The arbitrary date of 3/31/08 is comfortably
> far off.  If the  
> > US were to announce that it's actually leaving and
> negotiate a  
> > cease-fire to facilitate withdrawal, that could be
> accomplished  
> > much faster.  But it will be easy to say, more
> that a year from  
> > now, that conditions have changed, and this date
> disappears like  
> > the snows of yesteryear.  An attack on Iran (which
> Obama proposed  
> > in 2004), of course, would make all earlier
> statements inoperative...
> >
> > The WP article notes the bill's huge loopholes. 
> It points out that  
> > Obama's bill "would leave a limited number of
> troops in place [As  
> > if we have an unlimited number there now?] to
> conduct  
> > counterterrorism activities [What are they doing
> now?] and train  
> > Iraqi forces [That's Petraeus' mantra, isn't it?].
> And the  
> > withdrawal could be temporarily suspended [Ah,
> "temporarily"...] if  
> > the Iraqi government meets a series of benchmarks
> laid out by the  
> > Bush administration [That's the current policy!]."
> >
> > I frankly think that, with very few exceptions,
> all mainline US  
> > politicians know that the US has to continue to
> control Iraqi oil  
> > ("We cannot leave Iraq" --H. Kissinger), and that
> means some  
> > continuous American presence in Iraq.  What
> they're doing now is  
> > trying to find what modality of that presence can
> be sold to an  
> > increasingly anti-war public.  Obama -- who we
> know has had no  
> > moral objection to the war but only a prudential
> one ("It's  
> > stupid") -- has just got his snake-oil to the
> market first.  --CGE
> >
> >
> > Stuart Levy wrote:
> >> ...
> >> Hey, what do you all think of Obama's recent
> announcement that he's
> >> actually calling for a pullout of combat troops
> from Iraq,
> >> with specific completion date (of early next
> year), in line with the
> >> ISG's proposal?  Commentary, and link to Obama's
> announcement at
> >>    
> http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0201-25.htm
> >> If (cynically) he's doing this because that's the
> way the
> >> political winds are blowing, then I say more
> power to him.
> >> If the people of this country have better sense
> than most of
> >> their representatives, then why complain if the
> representatives
> >> simply start listening to the population?
> >>    Stuart
> > _______________________________________________
> > Peace-discuss mailing list
> > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >
>
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