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MO-07: Blunt: Dems Are Plotting To Establish "Department Of Peace"
From this morning's Washington Post piece on Nancy Pelosi:
On his Web site, Majority Whip Roy Blunt calls the prospect of Pelosi becoming speaker "just plain scary" and says: "While Republicans fight the War on Terror . . . House Democrats plot to establish a Department of Peace."
Which gives us an opportunity to plug that glorious, oft-quoted headline from The Onion: "Bush: Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over."
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I guess Blunt has never heard of the US Institute of Peace, "an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress."
Odd. As a member of Congress, I'd have thought he'd know about it. Guess he's too busy with the Foley thing.
October 21, 2006 9:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
We already have a "Department of Peace".
Well, theoretically it is.
October 21, 2006 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Som we have come to this. Peace is now something else to be afraid of! These guys are sameless and they HAVE become the enemy.
October 21, 2006 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
And, the US Institute of Peace was established in 1984 and signed into law by Pres. Ronald Reagan. Republicans were also the majority party in the Senate.
The question remains; Is Roy Blunt an idiot, or is he just assuming the voters are?
October 21, 2006 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even within the military, there is the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, formerly the On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA). When it was the OSIA, it managed the mutual inspections with the fUSSR as part of arms control treaties, but now has a wider role, such as being the focal point for WMD detection.
People laughed about the slogan of the Strategic Air Command, "peace is our profession", although, from a deterrence standpoint, there was tructh to that. DTRA, however, clearly is in the war prevention business, and, when one prevents a war, one has peace.
*sigh* I wonder if Blunt has ever read 1984? Pause for giggles...
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 21, 2006 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
And having a Department of Peace is bad because . . . ?
Kind of like the new ad the Republicans are running with Bin Laden quotes, this makes me want to vote for Democrats even more than I did before.
October 21, 2006 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
unamerican, unchristian, AND anticapitalist
October 21, 2006 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why, oh why, don't reporters ask this obvious follow-up question to an utterly stupid comment like this? Are they truly that afraid of the pols?
October 21, 2006 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the best piece of "research" I have seen in a long time. I am going to forward the "US Institute of Peace" to my friends.
October 21, 2006 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not shameless. It is very consistent with the neo-cons' push toward Orwell"s 1984. I no longer use the words shameful and hypocritic with this bunch. Both adjectives assume that they that they have some buried sense of truth and conscience.
October 21, 2006 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Peace is bad because gov't might have to do something for it's citizens other than scare them and send them off to kill foreigners in a foreign land.
It's also bad because during a war it's easier to skim off or shakedown money from contractors or government itself to use for re-election or just to augment your income. It's also a political winner 'cause you can say your opponent is unpatriotic if they support peace.
October 21, 2006 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
When is someone going to address the fundamental flaw in framing the situation as a "War on Terror?" The Democrats have accepted the post-911 response as a necessary "war on terror", which is how Bush and Co. framed it, and have spent endless amounts of energy attacking Bush for the conduct of the war on terror, or questioning whether or not Iraq is central to this alleged war, but there has been virtually no discussion (that I know of) of the fallacy of the framework itself. Has anyone actually questioned the entire post-911 descriptive framework? Until we do, we will be trapped in a fear-based concept that plays right into the Republicans' hands.
When is someone going to ask the neo-cons "how can war stop terror when war is terror itself?" I am not suggesting a military response to 911 was not necessary to bring the perpetrators to justice. I am saying that we have allowed the Republicans to frame the fundamental issue in a way that guarantees the debate will remain within the context that they chose. And if there's one thing I learned many many years ago (in law school) it's that whoever frames the issue wins. Period. Going along with a "War on Terror" traps the Dems into arguing over who would best fight such a war. It doesn't posit an alternative agenda, and keeps us playing defense.
October 21, 2006 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry folks, but Roy Blunt will be coming back in January with at least 70% of the vote behind him. He's from my district, and the district really doesn't care.
October 22, 2006 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink