Democrat Calls For The Joker To Back Off Bush
Aug 24, 2009 4 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
President Obama’s we-inherited-it defense is getting old, particularly when it comes to Afghanistan, according to …
… Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).
“A lot of what the Obama administration has been dealt with now they’ve been dealt with by past administrations – Afghanistan is something that arrived on their doorstep with a lot of other things,†Weiner said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“But they’re reaching a point now that, you know, that excuse is going to start to wane. Now you really do have to start coming to Congress and saying, ‘Listen, here’s how we’re going to do it. We might not know with certitude if it’s exactly this number of months and years, but we need something like that.’”
“We had a very bad experience with Iraq,” he continued, “that we had shifting plans, we had shifting rationales.”
Weiner’s comments were in response to reports that U.S. military leaders in Afgahnistan will request thousands of more troops, a deeper commitment to an increasingly unpopular eight-year-old war that he predicts would be a difficult sell to his contituents.
“There’s a lot of skepticism in Congress right now because there hasn’t really been a clearly articulated plan on how we’re going to do this,” Weiner said. “And I think that until the administration gets its arms around it … it’s a very difficult case to make.â€
Weiner also reiterated his strong support for a public option in health care reform legislation and said he wishes Obama would do the same.
“There was some argument for saying let Congress massage this for a while, but at a certain point, particularly over this August recess where we’re all having to go out – look I’m in a strange position here that I’m kind of defending four or five or six different plans in addition to my own because the administration hasn’t been clear,” he said. “I think the time has come for the president to say, ‘Here’s why we need it, and here’s what it means.’ Becasue what we’re doing now is we’re creating a vacuum and rushing into that vacuum is people who are just maikng stuff up.”
