$100B War Supplemental May Fail - It's Not the Attachments So Much As the Lack of an Exit Strategy

Ever pressing their case, Nonstop Pentagon Radio's David Welna gave us 3 minutes this morning of the pesky hangups getting in the way of Congress coughing up another $100B in walking-around-money for the Pentagon in the form of a war supplemental bill for the Pentagon.

In the lead up to the story, Inskeep says the problems are not in "funding the troops," but in the attachments. That's not quite true: the real problem for many Democrats who are angling to stop the bill is the lack of an exit strategy.

Welna's entire report can be detailed in little space.

The Senate passed its version of the spending bill 86-3 "so you might think the skids would be greased" but there are some issues

• $5B for International Monetary Fund at Obama's request is not liked by Republicans.
  
• 51 Democrats in the House objected to expanding the AfPak war without an exit strategy.
• Many Democrats object to preventing release of photos of detainee abuse.
• "But wait, there's more:" (like he's selling Ginsu knives) the Senate version includes a prohibition on using money to transfer detainees from Guantanamo
  

Lindsey Graham's nattering nasal is heard in outrage that we would show pictures of what we do in the war,

I cannot believe that we're about to do this, that we're going to dismiss the advice of our commanders who are leading our troops at a time of war to give in to a fringe element.

and this is followed by Joe Lieberman's ever unctious, sonorous fail,

Senator Graham and I will not go quietly into the night.

Dick Durbin is heard supporting transfers from Guantanamo, an obviously sensible position, but still one requiring a place holder for the dark side of the argument. The best they can do is Rep. Peter King (R NY), who is heard not exactly opposing the idea, but suspicious of the WH tactics:

I think the administration is trying to ... make a point ... they're trying to take a case where they feel a conviction is somewhat easy and use that as a precedent for bringing other detainees to the United States.

which allows Welna to segue to a close:

That may well be the administration's plan but it won't be possible if the war plan bill passes as it stands now. That's left the WH insisting on changing the bill even as it urges House and Senate to pass it.

The words "war supplemental" were apparently not important to use together in this story. The preferred phrase is "war funding," as if there would be no funding without the supplemental - yet another huge war supplemental without an exit strategy - exactly the sort of thing Obama faulted Bush for in '07 and not only voted against, but built his winning campaign for the White House on.

Late breaking development: I've just received an email from Just Foreign Policy's Robert Naimon

For once, I'm not necessarily going to ask you to call your own Representative. Instead, I want you to go to Firedoglake's Citizen Whip Tool, using the link below. If your own Representative is on the target list, call your Representative. Otherwise, look for another Representative from your state, or any other Representative you'd like to call. Please use the Citizen Whip Tool to report your result. The bill is H.R. 2346, the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations Act, which includes funding for the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and for the IMF.

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental

With each passing day, the IMF/War Supplemental gets more controversial. As Mark Weisbrot notes, the story is getting out that the IMF wants $100 billion in U.S. tax dollars to bail out European banks. Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department has rebuffed Members of Congress who asked for reforms of IMF policy to be attached to the IMF money.