Afghanistan Withdrawal Debate in Congress 3/9

Institute for Public Accuracy
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The Washington Post reports today: "House leaders will allow three hours
of formal debate, probably Wednesday, on an antiwar resolution written
by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), one of the leading antiwar voices in
Congress. The resolution, which has 16 co-sponsors, calls for the United
States to remove all of its troops from Afghanistan in 30 days -- or by
the end of the year, if it is determined that trying to do so in a month
would be too dangerous."

BRUCE FEIN
     Author of the book "Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death
Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy," Fein was a Justice
Department attorney in the Nixon administration. He said today:
"Congress has been continually deferring to the president on war. That
stands the Constitution on its head. Congress needs to decide about war."

ROBERT NAIMAN, http://www.JustForeignPolicy.org
     Naiman is policy director of Just Foreign Policy. He just wrote the
piece "Kucinich Forces Congress to Debate Afghanistan," which states:
"The Pentagon doesn't want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon
wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more to pay for the current
military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a
withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy.

     "Ideally, from the point of view of the Pentagon, Congress would
fork over that money right away, before the coming Kandahar offensive
that the $33 billion is supposed to pay for, because you can expect a
lot of bad news out of Afghanistan in the form of deaths of American
soldiers and Afghan civilians once the Kandahar offensive starts, and it
would sure be awkward if all that bad news reached Washington while the
$33 billion was hanging fire." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/05-3

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167