Counting Your Chickens Before They Come Home To Roost
Via Atrios… Mission Accomplished Part Deux…
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have put down a quiet marker in the apparent hope that V-I Day might be only months away.
Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.
Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.
The original legislation empowered the president to designate “a day of celebration” to commemorate the success of the armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to “issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
Actually…I am kinda surprised the money was not spent and the celebrations not held. The republicans (and Joe Lieberman…but then, I repeat myself…) seem to think that things are going swimmingly over there and no amount of bloodshed can seem to convince them otherwise.