Rep. Pete Stark apologizes for telling the truth
During the debate on whether to override Bush's veto of S-CHIP funding last week, Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) set wingnuts aflame with manufactured rage over these remarks he made on the House floor:
You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement.
He was speaking the truth, of course. With this year's appropriation for Afghanistan and the Iraq debacle now approaching $200 billion (and approaching $800 billion since 2001), the $60 billion over five years for children's health insurance anticipated in the S-CHIP bill would have been almost trivial in comparison. Eighty percent of the American public supported the expansion of S-CHIP which Bush vetoed and which Stark was speaking to defend.
This war may or may not be for Bush's literal amusement, but it was certainly predicated on lies. Whatever Bush's motives for invading Iraq, the safety of the American people had nothing to do with it, and our safety has absolutely nothing to do with our continued occupation of that country. Stark's depiction of Bush as a latter-day Caligula ordering people's deaths to satisfy some venal urge may have been theatric, but it articulates perfectly the perverse zeitgeist now consuming the White House.
Stark said what the majority of us already think. Too bad he caved to the fear of the right-wing noise machine and apologized for it.
Nancy Pelosi, perhaps the most spineless Speaker of the House in the modern age, insisted that Stark apologize on the floor of the House or face censure. He dutifully apologized, which triggered the quid pro quo that defeated the censure resolution. Had he not apologized, the censure would have passed.
Pelosi's failure in this situation is twofold: First, she allowed the censure resolution to be brought to the floor in the first place. Second, she has yet to censure (much less impeach) the President for starting a war based on lies. Once again, she has caved to her irrational fear of being called names by Republicans. Rather than lead this country out of the morass Bush has caused, she instead tacitly supports it by shaming a Congressman who dared to speak the truth.
Shame on her. The American people deserve better leadership than this.