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White House announces: Bush plans to ask for $50 billion more for Iraq War
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

This is NOT okay. The Washington Post has reported that yesterday, an anonymous White House official announced President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the Iraq War. The Bush Administration appears to be confident that congressional calls for drawing down U.S. troops will not be an issue. "This is pretty close to a done deal," the White House spokesman said.

The Pentagon has said that the cost of the Iraq war has gone over $330 billion, and the war in Afghanistan at $78 billion. A spokesman for the Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev) responded, "We haven't seen the details, but we'll give it the scrutiny it deserves. It's long past time for giving blank checks to the administration."

"The request," the Post reports, "which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - is expected to be announced after Congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq...the revised supplemental would total about $200 billion, indicating that the cost of the war in Iraq now exceeds $3 billion a week."

In a Zogby interactive poll of 6,711 U.S. residents, conducted August 17-20, 2007, 48.7% of Americans disagreed that increasing troops in Iraq is working. In a CNN news poll of 1,214 U.S. residents, 69% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq. In Fort Worth, Texas, as the Bush administration is preparing their report on Iraq, Texans are preparing a rally of Iraq war veterans, musicians, and opponents of the war, to take place in General Worth Square on Saturday, September 1st.

Charlie Jackson, founder of Texans for Peace, has thousands signed up to participate. "We're simply saying the people have spoken on this issue...the war, and with one voice, they've said that we need to bring our troops home. We're just here to remind [everyone] that the people have already voted for peace."

Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, told reporters, "It's been [Bush's] misguided policy and his mismanaged war that have actually fueled extremism and extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. The President, in my view, likes to confuse the American people by conflating Iraq, Al Queda in Iraq, with the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11."

1. Peace Action West has nearly 12,000 signatures in a petition to end the war in Iraq. Their petition states: "Our elected officials may not be ready to end the occupation of Iraq - but we are! There will be pivotal votes on the Iraq war throughout the summer, leading up to General Petraeus' progress report in September. We must be relentless in our pressure on politicians and let them know that the American people will accept nothing less than a timelined withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. We must be ready to end this occupation ourselves - by exercising our power as citizens. Take our pledge not to vote, volunteer or contribute to any candidate that doesn't support ending the occupation of Iraq." You can sign their petition, which has a goal of 30,000 signatures and is almost halfway there, here.

2. United for Peace has an entire site dedicated to what you can do to put an end to the Iraq War. Check it out!

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