This is an opportunity to state what you are doing in your District to pressure your Reps and Senators to end this war. No Blank Check for Bush.
The vote will come up later in the House today, so at the very least, please call your Representative and urge him/her to stop funding Bush's war and only provide funds for withdrawal and redeployment with a firm timetable. And if he vetoes, he is cutting off the funding.
Then, in your comments, please describe what other things you have done and are doing to end the war.
Here's my report:
In Northern Indiana, we have been holding vigils directly outside our Representative's (Joe Donnelly - D IN-02) main office and Senator's (Evan Bayh - IN) office which are conveniently only a block apart. The honks for peace by passersby have been tremendous and overwhelmingly positive. Indiana is tired of endless war. We get truck drivers, bus drivers, even police cars all honking their support to end the war. The staff of the office hears hundreds of honks for the hour we are there. And they have been emailing their boss every time we show up. So we and the honking goes all the way back to DC every week.
We have met personally and in groups with Rep. Donnelly and Sen. Bayh, and kept up the pressure to take a firm stand against Bush's war. They have met with us but not done so. Both voted for funding the supplementals earlier this year. And neither is talking publicly about holding Bush accountable to even the benchmarks in the previous Bill.
We have held and are planning several actions around town hall meetings to continue the pressure. He voted for the funding last time around and stressed the benchmarks were holding Bush accountable. Well, what about those benchmarks. Nary a word about those and how they have not been met.
Rep. Donnelly promised in his campaign against a Bush Republican, that HE would NOT be a rubber stamp, HE would hold Bush accountable and HE would not write a blank check for Bush on Iraq. The time has come to NOT write the check. And we are holding him to his promise.
UPDATE 1: Dov12348 did the work and found the current Bill under consideration today in the House. HR 4156.
http://thomas.loc.gov/...
This Bill is far from perfect since it uses goals instead of mandates with consequences, to remove troops by Dec. 15, 2008. It allows the continuation of operations against "terrorist orgs" which is defined less stringently than the bill last year.
Also, it allow troops to remain for training and protecting US personnel.
Still, despite its flaws, I believe we ought to get our Reps and Sen. to support it. Bush will veto this anyway if the Senate even passes it. It is unlikely even this Bill will get past a cloture vote.
So, then the pressure really needs to be exerted. No money without changing the mission and ending the war/occupation.