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More Stupidity From The Senate — Why Now?
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More Stupidity From The Senate

Dr. Cole notes: Senate Partitions Iraq

The US Senate voted for a soft partition of Iraq on Thursday. First they messed up Iraq by authorizing Terrible George to blow it up, now they want to further mess it up by dividing it. It makes no sense to me; the US Senate doesn’t even have the authority to divide Iraq. Wouldn’t that be for the Iraqi parliament?

He links to the US Senate votes to divide Iraq article in The Australian. This is about the Biden Amendment 2997 which proclaims the “Sense of the Senate” that Iraq should have a Federal system under circumstances that make it a de facto partition.

It time for Congress to fix the US government and stop worrying about the governments in other countries. Once the US government is put back into conformance with the US Constitution, we can think about giving other people advice.

7 comments

1 Steve Bates { 09.29.07 at 12:47 am }

There certainly are a lot of “sense of the Senate” resolutions these days. That’s odd, since the Senate obviously hasn’t a damned bit of sense.

I agree completely with your last paragraph.

2 hipparchia { 09.29.07 at 1:17 am }

dude! you’ve got it sideways! we wrote their constitution and designed their democracy for them, it’s our to break if we want to.

3 hipparchia { 09.29.07 at 1:36 am }

hmmm, that roger owen op-ed piece that juan cole links to has some spelling and grammar errors in it. it’s not a huge number, but it’s more than i usually see at boston.com.

i predicted last year that the kurds, who were taking the ball and running with it in the matter of getting their oil fields up and running, would split off from the rest of iraq [or try to; turkey would fight that]. iraq was probably destined to break out into civil war anyway, if saddam hussein had died of old age and left the country in the hands of his psycho offspring.

none of this excuses the hedgemony for precipitating events like they have, but it’s as good a reason as any for our not sticking around and participating in the bloodbath any longer.

4 Badtux { 09.29.07 at 1:39 am }

Did the “sense of the Senate” resolution proclaim names for the partitions? If not, “Regular”, “Premium”, and “Diesel” are the best recommendations I’ve seen so far. Or maybe “Exxon-Mobil”, “Chevron”, and “ConocoPhillips”? You must admit those names best sum up the whole justification for partition, given that 60% of Iraqis oppose partition…

5 Bryan { 09.29.07 at 9:57 am }

Badtux, Hunt Oil is buying Kurdistan, and Hunt will probably want to name it for his grandmother or dog.

Hipparchia, they haven’t shown much respect for our Constitution, so I guess we can’t expect respect for the Iraqi constitution. Kurdistan will get pounded by the Turks and Iranians if it doesn’t do something about the PKK and PJEK operating from there.

Steve, this sort of foolishness is another of the many reasons we need to get out of Iraq and so we can focus on our problems. High food and oil prices aren’t going away, and resolutions aren’t going to deal with global climate change. They might want to think about where we will move the government when DC floods.

6 Steve Bates { 09.29.07 at 7:52 pm }

“Badtux, Hunt Oil is buying Kurdistan, and Hunt will probably want to name it for his grandmother or dog.” – Bryan

Bryan, that dog won’t, um, uh, won’t Hunt. (Yes, my standards are declining.)

“They might want to think about where we will move the government when DC floods.” – Bryan

After reading (among other things) Gore’s latest, I’m starting to think about where we’ll move more than just the seat of the federal government. Looks to me like the real question is not whether, but when, we start seeing other major cities look like NOLA, or worse.

Read this Scientific American article from last year and tell me I am an alarmist. A sample:

Such a sea level rise would permanently inundate low-lying lands like New Orleans, southern Florida, Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Already sea level rise has increased to an inch per decade, thanks to melting ice and warm water expansion, according to Overpeck. And evidence that the Arctic is exponentially warming continues to accumulate. …

“We need to start serious measures to reduce greenhouse gases within the next decade,” Overpeck says. “If we don’t do something soon, we’re committed to [13 to 20 feet] of sea level rise in the future.”

Thirteen to 20 feet. I don’t think I’ll be buying any property here in the city I grew up in.

7 Bryan { 09.29.07 at 8:02 pm }

They refuse to see any problem that isn’t instantly obvious, and refuse to plan for the future. We are wasting 8 years and trillions of dollars for nothing.