The $700 million

Atrios makes a great point about the diverted $700 million and why we should all be outraged by it.

After 9/11, we went to war in Afghanistan to punish those responsible as well as to remove support for the al Qaeda network more generally. We didn't put enough troops on the ground either finish the job of rounding up the terrorists or to rebuild and install a stable governmenment. The consequence of this is that Bin Laden and many other al Qaeda members were allowed to escape, and much of Afghanistan has reverted to their Taliban-era existence. We know now that part of the reason was that the Bush administration was diverting resources allocated to that purpose in order to attack a country which posed no threat to us or its neighbors. They stole money allocated to make us safer, and used it to make us less safe.

This is yet another situation where if it had been a Democrat in office accused of diverting $700 million from the Afghanistan war to preparations for the Iraq war we'd ALREADY have hearings and investigations underway. That needs to be done, and done now.

Keep in mind that a number of people in the Bush administration had previously worked during the Reagan and Bush the First administrations. Some of them may well have been involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved other forms of illegal diversions. And we shouldn't forget that when the Pentagon wanted extra money for a project they didn't want Congress to know about, they leaned on various military bases to "pad" their budget requests so that the bases could then send that money to the Pentagon for their projects.

In other words, the idea of diverting resources for purposes other than what's intended is not an alien concept to this group. It is quite likely that this is a violation of the letter of the law as laid out in the Constritution, and it is certainly a violation of the spirit of the Constitution. Isn't the President supposed to uphold it, not undermine it?

Posted by thorswitch at April 24, 2004 05:22 AM | TrackBack