Mitch McConnel: Democrats want the troops dead.
Published by Mike Stark April 6th, 2007 in UncategorizedI’m not kidding. Listen to the clip. I’ve provided full context - the question before, and the question after. McConnel never qualified his statements. Below is the relevant transcript:
Bennett: “…what does the position feel like, do you suppose, when you’re a Democrat in the Senate when your political well being is tied to, I guess, rooting that we don’t succeed…”
McConnell: “Yeah, I mean that I… there’s no question that they don’t wish this exercise well, which is why they keep moving the goalposts and keeping the issue alive. In the meantime we’re talking about the lives of our soldiers, we’re talking about the lives of a very large number of Iraqis…“
So there you have it: McConnell says Democrats don’t want us to succeed and, in fact, since we’re talking about soldier’s lives, McConnell believes Democrats want more troops to die…
How is Harry Reid supposed to work with this person? How is any Democrat supposed to maintain collegial relations with the Senate Minority Leader after this?
20 Responses to “Mitch McConnel: Democrats want the troops dead.”
- 1 Pingback on Apr 8th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
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Yep, and 9 more American soldiers dead this week. Those Republicans are sure concerned about the troops, aren’t they?
these are the same talking points that all the neocons have been spewing
when is mitch gonna grab a weapon and stand a post
same for the fat moral one….and can someone explain to me how bennett can write a book of virtues, yet was addicted to gambling and now appears to be addicted to food?
Dear Mitch,
Why don’t you ask George Bush WHY it is that he and Cheney REFUSED TO TESTIFY UNDER OATH about 9/11 and their dealings with the Bin Ladens and Saudi TERRORIST financiers???
THEN you MIGHT have credibility. In the meantime you look like another one of those TRAITOR “chickenhawks” who yell for blood but shirked military duty themselves.
TRAITORS Bush and Cheney heading up the brigade…
God Bless America, the Democrats and the WORLD!
Christ is Risen! And he knows Bush is a LIAR and MURDERER…
Sincerely,
Arn Gunnutes
One of YOUR bosses, Mr. McConnell and Bush and Cheney as well…
None are so blind as those who will not see. It doesn’t occur to these people that with thirty-five dead American troops already this month, and now with Sadr calling for all Shia to attack Americans, the “plan” is still not working. Maybe, just maybe the Democratics just want to SAVE lives. Whether they go on Rush’s show or this hypocrit’s show, they’re still talking to the same 30%. No one else listens to these bloviating fools, and it should become apparent in the next election.
Can you say spin? Your spin. I mean, come on. McConnel never said “Democrats want the troops dead” and you know it. He said that they don’t want things to go well in the war for political reasons and that that is immoral because that also means peril for the troops. You can argue that point, but please let’s be honest and precise about what the “opponent” is saying and not resort to the same kind of spin that they engage in. That weakens our position (yes, I’m a liberal) and undermines our credibility.
Where did this interview come from?
After all those years of cigarette smoking, maybe Tubby Bennett quit and the food tastes so mu8ch better now, or the former Drug Czar has an addictive personality…God’s will you know…or Karma ..or IrishDave3
IS THERE A GROWING AMERICAN CONSPIRAC IN THE FOLLOWING?
FIRST: EVOLUTION…GOD IS DEAD
SECOND: ABORTION
THIRD:ELIMINATE PRAYER IN SCHOOL
FOURTH:RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS ELIMINATED
FIFTH: POLITICAL CORRECTIONS
SIXTH:INFLUX OF ILLEGAL ALIENS!
SEVENTH: CONSTITUTION DEGRADED
EIGTH: CONGRESS RULES THE NATION: PRESIDENCY ELIMINATED?
JOURNAL-TRUTH AND LOGIC … OR E-MAIL braincell1@aol.com
Bennett: “…what does the position feel like, do you suppose, when you’re a Democrat in the Senate when your political well being is tied to, I guess, rooting that we don’t succeed…”
SG: Framing is something the (R)z understand and (D)z have begun to show brief glimpses of getting, when countering “surge” with “escalation”, for example.
Here POLITICAL WELL BEING is being framed by Bennett, as a function of winning or loosing the war. For those interested in promoting democracy in their own country, POLITICAL WELL BEING could be understood as representing the public who elected them and who 7 outta 10 have turned against the war. In Bennett’s case as with (R)z generally, POLITICAL WELL BEING emanates from defending a misbegotten, unnecessary, illegal war, incompetently fought, and defending it against the democratically expressed desire to withdraw. Democracy in the face of staggering incompetence and gross illegality is really a better frame of Bennett’s problem.
The other agenda in Bennett’s POLITICAL WELLING BEING is the opportunity to smear (D)z. Here the (R)z typically frame any opposition in the toxic terms of ‘wanting American defeat’. In fact the truth is (D)z could more accurately be framed as acting to represent the majority public opinion in a democracy.
Framing is even more significant when coupled with the bully pulpit provided by the co(R)po(R)ate MSM, where (R) ‘frames’ go largely unchallenged. In such an environment, the (D)z need to be more skilled at framing their message so that it pierces the MSM p(R)opaganda wall surrounding political dialogue in the USA … so that the POLITICAL WELL BEING of America wins the War of Reasoned Discourse.
Snerd
I’m wth Kevin from Chicago on this one. The technique of exaggerated inference that you are using is right out of the right-wing playbook. Sean Hannity is a master of such distortions. I’m no fan of McConnell and I don’t agree with his sentiment in the interview at all, but to say that he is sayng, or implying or thinking that Democrats want troops dead is a huge stretch, and unworthy of you.
A response to Carl and Kevin:
I’ll take you at your word that you aren’t concern trolls, but I spent four years inthe Corps, I’m a Democrat and when Mitch McConnell tells me I don’t want to see things go well in Iraq… well, things not going well in Iraq has certain implications.
But I don’t need to go there because McConnell explicitely lays it out for us. He says we’re talking about American troops. And he was, and we are.
If you are going to say that we don’t want things to go well, you are saying we want the US to lose this war. Losing the war means only one thing: more dead troops.
You can beat on me all you want, but McConnell said what he said. He accused you and me of wanting things to go badly in Iraq. What does that mean to you?
Before anyone gets all pissy and telling me what I don’t know,McConnel’s a Senator from my friggin’ state.
And he’s a bonerfied wingnutter,typical of the ideology.
He’s pumped a shitload of money into a transpark in BowlingGreen Kentucky,tht’s being built on karst land. they’ve known for a few years about this particular stretch of ground,because the bottom falls the hell out when they try to lay the park.
Yet McConnel and his bullshitters in the state gov have supported this fiasco to the hilt.
And on top of that,he’s not delivered on what he promised to the citizens of Kentucky.
So the Bushivics better enjoy his blowhardedness. He comes up for re-election in 2008,and it won’t be a suprise when he takes the long walk back home.
Bennett’s question is about the politics of the war debate in the Senate. That in it self, is an abstraction of the central issue.
McConnell’s answer is indefensible. He asserts Senate Democrats want (hope for) the results (of the surge) to be failure to justify the Democratic policy position of “results or out by August 08.” McConnell is making a presumption; he sites no evidence for his opinion about what Democrats want. It’s like saying Democrats want the US Treasury to go bankrupt to lend political support to their policy of pay as you go, rather than financing our government by issuing debt to China and Japan. Both McConnell and Bennett are so wrapped up in the politics of the debate; they have lost sight of the central issue, the war policy itself.
Bennett and McConnell are attacking the political character of those who disagree with their policy position and have proposed an alternative.
McConnell claims Democrats are moving the goal posts. The goals set forth in the bill for the Iraqi government are Bush’s goals. Full funding for the surge is in the bill. The democratic majority wants the President to finish the job and bring the troops home. If he cannot finish the job, then bring the troops home.
Remember that the Republicans have done all they can to avoid a debate in the Senate about the war through procedural maneuvers.. This has been a deliberate and legal tactic but one, nonetheless, that should not go unnoticed by the majority of Americans who would like to see our elected officials deal with this most urgent and pressing abortion of foreign policy.
Bennett’s question is clever, not unlike the no-win question: Do you still beat your wife? Bennett asks McConnell if Democrats in the Senate who are against the war, gain political advantage when news indicates the new war strategy seems to be failing. McConnell, and anybody with half a brain would have to say yes. But the question is not the same as asking, “Is failure in Iraq what Senate democrats hope for?” Yet, that is the question McConnell frames in his answer, and asserts affirmatively, yes, they do hope for failure. Of course, he offers no evidence thereof. You be the judge.
If McConnell wanted to be accurate, he would say, Democrats think the President’s story about terrorists and al Queda in Iraq is as much bullshit as the smoking gun and mushroom cloud, and Niger uranium, and aluminum tubes and al Quada and Saddam in cahoots. And therefore any surge strategy would be putting the cart before the horse: We have no just reason for war making in Iraq related to our national security. The failure was the pre-emptive war policy sold on fraudulent evidence about imminent threat to our national security.
McConnell invocation of Iraqi civilians and US troops as part of his answer is hard to parse. I think he’s saying that the Senate policy, wherever it comes down, has real consequences. Operation Iraqi Freedom has taken more than 3000 American lives and more than 650,000 Iraqi civilian lives. Is McConnell proposing the surge will end the bloodshed? Increase it? That the Democratic plan is blind to that consideration? Who the f*ck knows.
senile.
This is a simple situation;
Bush doesn’t give a hoot about vetertans or troops.
He lied the USA into a war, he had planned for years before he even became president.
He is a pig and should be tried for treason toward the United States of America, along with his “friends” that control the USA in the CDC, EPA and all other aspects of Amerian life.
Why has it taken us FOUR YEARS to win? Define winning? WWII was over in less time… Bush and Company have F___ked this up to a faretheewell and they know it. We have already lost.
Putting 20,000 more troops in Bagdad ain’t gonna do it, besides only about 5,000 can be in combat at one time, they have to sleep and eat and be off duty they can’t all be in combat 24/7, and 5,000 is too little too late.
So Mr. Decider do the will of the people and get us out, 20 months is too long to wait to hand your war off to another President. Redeploy them, some to Kuwait, some to protect the border between the Kurds, get Iraq’s neighbors involved, Turkey, Syria, Iran because it’s in their intrest to have a stable Iraq…Dummy!!
Democrats are “moving the goalposts”?
Okay, fine, no WMD, so there’s one “goalpost” gone.
Saddam’s regime gone, there’s another.
Saddam had NO ties to 9-11, Iraq handed over to “sovereign” government, and on and onand on.
Hell, we’re not “moving” the goalposts, they just keep falling over and the wingnuts keep putting up new ones.
If you actually said what is in that quote Senator, then I have but two things to say to you and that would be
1.) you have got to be about THE LYINGEST FUCKING BASTARD IN CONGRESS
2.) AND I WOULD LOVE TO BE A FLY ON THE WALL AT SAINT PETER’S GATE THE DAY YOU TRY TO ENTER HEAVEN, BECAUSE OF ALL THE LYING, AND STEALING YOU HAVE DONE IN WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN AN HONORABLE POSITION WITH INTEGRITY, BEING A MEMBER OF OUR AMERICAN CONGRESS, WHICH BY THE WAY YOU POSESS NEITHER.
McConnell: “Yeah, I mean that I… there’s no question that they don’t wish this exercise well, which is why they keep moving the goalposts and keeping the issue alive. In the meantime we’re talking about the lives of our soldiers, we’re talking about the lives of a very large number of Iraqis…“
I hope you don’t mind an off-topic comment, but I think this is important:
Re: the Iraq war in general
(also see this post)
Ever since the months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there have been a few reports in the newspapers that the Central Intelligence Agency was casting aspersions on the intelligence the White House was relying on to justify the war. The CIA has never given a position on whether the war is needed or justified or said that Bush is wrong to go to war. But doesn’t it seem much more likely that the CIA is an extremely right wing organization than a left wing one? After all, even if the people working for them and at least a lot of the leadership really wanted a war for their own reasons, there are a lot of reasons for them to not want to tie their credibility to what they know is faulty information. They and their personnel, present and former, could use other means of promoting the Iraq war, and still be motivated to make the statements in the media. If the CIA got behind faulty information, they would have to make a choice between whether they would be involved in scamming the American people and the world once the military had invaded Iraq and no weapons were found- so: 1) Imagine the incredible difficulties involved in pulling off a hoax that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Imagine all the people you would have to be able to show the weapons to- the inspectors from the UN / the international community, the American press, statesmen, etc. Then imagine the difficulties of substantiating that story to people who would examine it- the lack of witnesses to a production plant that made the weapons or to transportation operations or storage of the weapons during Hussein’s regime of them. 2) If the story fell apart upon inspection or the CIA tried not to hoax it at all, imagine the loss of credibility they would suffer. The CIA, it is safe to bet, does not want to be known to the American people as a group that lies to them to send them to war. Even within the CIA there could be disagreement among people about how involved they should be in promoting the war or the neo-con agenda more broadly, so the CIA would have to worry about lying to and managing its own people after trying so hard to get them to trust their superiors in the agency, and perhaps there simply might be too many people in the agency who knew enough about what was going on in Iraq to know if someone was deceiving people to promote this war.
So there is a lot of reason to be cautious against being seen as endorsing what they knew was false intelligence even if they were very strong supporters of going to war.