Dennis Kucinich - speaking the truth

Dennis Kucinich’s Showdown With the Democratic Leadership

At this point the Democratic leadership—the speaker and the majority leader and Rahm Emanuel—are all recommending that the Democrats support the appropriation that is going to be brought forward in the spring, for the purposes of [continuing to fund] the war in Iraq.

People first of all need to know about this. People need to know that there is an attempt by our leadership to support the supplemental, and what the consequences are.... The most difficult part of the challenge is to get members of Congress to understand that they themselves voted for a bill which went into effect on Oct. 1 that appropriated $70 billion, which could be used to bring the troops home. Unfortunately, our leadership is saying they’re supporting the supplemental as a way of supporting the troops. So if we continue to ignore the money that’s there right now to bring the troops home, we’re losing an opportunity to bring the troops home now. People are now saying that they oppose the war, but they’re continuing to fund it in the name of supporting the troops.

They say they’re not going to abandon the troops in the field. We’re professing a strange love for these troops by keeping them there, because the money’s there to bring them home. So this is going to shape up as a major discussion across this country. People are going to want to know why Democrats would not bring the troops home now, when the money is there now.

But at this point, if the Democrats go forward and support a supplemental which by some accounts is now rising to $160 billion, they’ll be providing enough money to keep the war going through the end of George Bush’s term.

Characters from both sides are prolonging this war. So what can be done?

It’s going to take a mass movement to change this situation. It’s going to take a mass movement to really create such an uproar that approval of the supplemental will be stopped.

We voted for change. What is being presented is not change - same face with just a new shade of lip gloss.