Matthews: Washington feels the heat
Posted: Monday, July 09, 2007 7:14 PM by Jen Brown
Chris Matthews
(Chris Matthews, on Monday's show)
Well, it's hot in Washington today -- and it not the humidity, it's the heat. And a lot of the heat is this war, this war the country doesn't want anymore.
What we're seeing and feeling in the country's Capitol tonight is the sound and sight and temperature of the fifth summer of a war in Iraq -- a war the American people backed, according to the polls back then, as long as it wouldn't produce significant casualties.
Are 3,600 dead "significant"? Is 27,000 wounded "significant"? Is this what people reckoned for when they bought the Bush-Cheney plan for peace, stability and democracy in Iraq, when they saluted the president's call to put the American Army in the middle of Arabia?
So now, just maybe, we're nearing the boiling point.
The Republican pressure on the president on Iraq is building. Will Democrats now seize the moment? The White House denies it's debating a troop withdrawal but even the president's leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell said, "The majority of the public has decided the Iraq effort is not worth it... that puts a lot of pressure on Congress to act because public opinion in a democracy is not irrelevant."
President Bush's low poll ratings hasn't stopped him from flexing his presidential power. Monday, he invoked executive privilege rebuffing Congress by refusing to provide information and testimony in the investigation into the firing if U.S. attorneys.
And what about you?
What do YOU think?
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