Friday, July 06, 2007

General Odom on "playing chicken with the troops"

You may have heard by now that General William Odom, Ronald Reagan's old NSA chief, is now calling for withdrawal. But look at this, from his essay on the matter:
To force [the president] to begin a withdrawal before [he leaves office], the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Apparently Odom suspects the same thing I do, and that in my interpretation, Barack Obama does as well: if Congress cuts off funds, the president may keep the troops there anyway, threatening to let them run out of bullets, and dare Congress not to pass a funding bill to save them, hence Obama's verbiage about "not wanting to play chicken with our troops."

This is what even Republicans have been hinting at and implying all this time when they say "defunding the troops" or "defunding the war endangers the troops." What could they possibly mean other than the Commander in Chief letting the troops run out of bullets? And for that matter, why aren't Democrats screaming from the rafters that this is what the Republicans are telling us?!?!

No comments: