Here is another great video from the good folks at Brave New Films. Check out their website and please sign the petition!

Today, the House of Representatives began debate on a non-binding resolution on the Iraq War troop escalation. Below is the text of that resolution.

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Disapproving of the decision of the President announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That —

(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Each member of the House has been given five minutes to speak on this resolution. The Democrats have made this resolution as straightforward and as easy to grasp as possible. What does a non-binding resolution do, you may ask? It sends a clear message to the White House that Congress (via the American people) reject Bush’s policy of sending more troops to referee a civil war in Iraq.

NPR’s Morning Edition has more on this great debate.

This clip speaks for itself.

Think Progress has more…

Sometimes it boggles my mind that the man I happily voted for in 2000 as the Democratic nominee for Vice President has so sunk to the depths he has. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who for some reason the press continues to call a Democrat, has lined up with Bush and Cheney and against the American people, the US generals, and even the troops on the ground in calling for more war and more death.

I’ve just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.

Ahh, invoking 9/11. How Rovian of him.

To turn around the crisis we need to send more American troops while we also train more Iraqi troops and strengthen the moderate political forces in the national government. After speaking with our military commanders and soldiers there, I strongly believe that additional U.S. troops must be deployed to Baghdad and Anbar province — an increase that will at last allow us to establish security throughout the Iraqi capital, hold critical central neighborhoods in the city, clamp down on the insurgency and defeat al-Qaeda in that province.

Didn’t we try that six months ago? Didn’t violence and death increase? Are we really supposed to believe that 20,000 or even 50,000 more troops will stop the violence in a country of 26 million where thousands are killed each month? Sen. Lieberman closes with his favorite strawman:

Rather than engaging in hand-wringing, carping or calls for withdrawal, we must summon the vision, will and courage to take the difficult and decisive steps needed for success and, yes, victory in Iraq.

Ahh Joe, you’re just so courageous. What are a few more dead Americans so you can look brave? What are a few more thousand dead Iraqis so you can be a strong centrist with “vision?”

Call Senator Lieberman and tell him to stop wasting lives for his own ego. (202) 224-4041.

In a revelation that will surprise very, very few of our listeners and readers, the Iraq Study Group says that the Bush administration has been lying about the level of violence in Iraq to cover its own failure.

The Bush administration routinely has underreported the level of violence in Iraq in order to disguise its policy failings, the Iraq Study Group report said Wednesday.

The bipartisan group called on the Pentagon and the director of the U.S. intelligence community to immediately institute a new reporting system that provides “a more accurate picture of events on the ground.”

…

On page 94 of its report, the Iraq Study Group found that there had been “significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq.” The reason, the group said, was because the tracking system was designed in a way that minimized the deaths of Iraqis.

“The standard for recording attacks acts a filter to keep events out of reports and databases,” the report said. “A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count.”

To quote a bumpersticker, “When Clinton Lied, Nobody Died.”

So you’ve heard lots of talk already about the ISG report most likely. Wondering what someone who, unlike the entire ISG panel, didn’t support the war initially thinks? Cue Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) on last night’s Keith Olbermann:

The fact is this commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that’s who is doing this report. Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism. So this is really a Washington inside job and it shows not in the description of what’s happened - that’s fairly accurate - but it shows in the recommendations. It’s been called a classic Washington compromise that does not do the job of extricating us from Iraq in a way that we can deal with the issues in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia which are every bit as important as what is happening in Iraq. This report does not do the job and it’s because it was not composed of a real representative group of Americans who believe what the American people showed in the election, which is that it’s time for us to have a timetable to bring the troops out of Iraq.

This picture was taken in 1983, one year after Saddam Hussein ordered the execution of 148 men and boys for which he was sentenced to death by hanging today.

A few months ago, a group of Congressional Republicans, prompted by the urging of right wing bloggers and conservative media, pressured the Bush administration to create the “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” a website that archived millions of pages of documents captured in Iraq. The idea was that the blogosphere would do the work to find the WMDs I guess?

Turns out that our Republican administration didn’t make the effort to remove the documents that explained how to build a nuclear weapon. Playing politics with national security again:

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

Why do Bush and his Republican cronies care so little for the safety of the American people? Why are they so completely incompetent and corrupt in every single thing they do? Why can’t they ever take responsibility for anything they do? And why doesn’t the Republican Congress care?

We are ruled by idiots. I can’t wait to knock a bunch of them out on Tuesday.

[Ed. Note - Welcome to our new guest poster, Tim James. Tim is a teacher, law student, and long-time admirer of the Doublespeak team's ability to throw the party that rocks the party. He fancies the following paraphrase of Sir Mix-A-Lot applies to him, “’Cause I’m long[-winded], and I’m strong[minded], and I’m down to get the freak[y] [geopolitics] on.” And if you are a single woman who enjoys Indian food and occasional dancing until dawn, he’s interested in meeting you.]

A beach bully pummels someone, the 90 lb. weakling, on the grounds that the 90 lb. weakling is going to bulk up and challenge his alpha male status; however, there’s no convincing evidence that the 90 lb. weakling is bulking up. What do you suppose the other 90 lb. weaklings whom the bully dislikes are going to do? Speaking as a 90 lb. weakling, I’d go and get my Charles Atlas workout kit; more to the point, I’d probably start packing heat. Wouldn’t you? If the bully’s irrational, I’d make sure that he couldn’t push me around.

The North Korean test of what the press is reporting as a nuclear device is yet another consequence of the folly of this administration’s foreign policy. To subscribe to the notion that the Republicans are ’stronger’ on national security is to wallow in a sort of geopolitical dementia, to immerse oneself in a fantasy land. Only if we define ’stronger’ as ‘pig-headed’ or ’stubborn’ could such claim be made without being laughed out of the room.

North Korea’s test of a nuclear device was wholly predictable as a response to our invasion of Iraq, as is the likely Iranian nuclear test to come. The Bush administration forced the U.S. to invade Iraq, knowing that this invasion would, in all probability, push Iran and North Korea closer to developing nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent.

One hopes, almost, that the president and his advisers have violated their oath of office in this tragicomedy of foreign policy gaffes; I can only pray that they are not ‘faithfully executing their offices’ to the BEST of their abilities. But I fear that this might be as good as it gets. Scary thought.

The world has sailed into a terrifying and dangerous sea of nuclear brinksmanship, a sea that could have been avoided by the most elementary statesmanship; however, this administration has shown itself to be without statesmen, without intelligent leadership, and without the capacity to steer our ship of state to safe harbor.