During the recent Iraq theatrics in Congress, the Pentagon put together docs for GOP Senators to use, with our money. Lautenberg wrote a letter. A letter? Why not bring charges? Why is it that the only actions taken against blatant lawbreaking are useless? This stuff happens all the time, and our elected officials do nothing of substance. (Can't they do something that would stop all this? some of this? a little bit of this?
Seriously--OUR government does not exist just to help the GOP, and it must be stopped.)
...Here's the letter to Rumsfeld from Lautenberg in its entirety (sans footnotes):
It has come to my attention that your office is spending taxpayer dollars to produce partisan political documents for Republican Senators to use during debate on pending Senate Resolutions on the Iraq War. Taxpayer dollars appropriated to the Pentagon should be used to help our troops win the war in Iraq, not help you win political debates in Washington.
In addition, your office's activities appear to violate two laws that prohibit the Executive Branch from using taxpayer dollars for lobbying and propaganda activities: 18 U.S.C. § 1913 and the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006, P.L. 109-115, §824 (2005).
On June 14, your office electronically submitted a "debate prep book" to Members of Congress, the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium and the Embassy of Iraq. This prep book contains large sections of highly political and partisan attacks that can be made against the pending Senate Resolutions. To make matters worse, it appears that your office forwarded these materials to representatives of a foreign government to be used against American legislators.
I have attached the briefing book to this correspondence. I urge you to immediately stop using taxpayer funds for propaganda and political purposes in the future and instead, concentrate on serving the needs of our men and women in uniform.
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