Blog - Articles Tagged 'Iraq'

By some bizarre turn of events, House Republicans are expected today to vote almost unanimously against a bill to fund the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their opposition to the bill, coupled with the House progressives' opposition to funding the wars in general, has thrown passage of the bill, and funding for U.S. troops overseas, in doubt.

The $96.7 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been stalled in Congress over objections that it would boost funding for the International Monetary Fund and block the release of detainee photos, not to mention objections to continuing to fund the wars.

Earlier this week I wrote about a special provision that the Senate had stuck inside the Iraq/Afghanistan war funding supplemental to block, at the discretion of the Pentagon, the public release of photographs of detainee torture. Now liberal House Democrats are threatening to block the bill - and funding for the wars - unless the photo suppression provision is taken out.

I highlighted this in yesterday's link roundup, but I think it deserves a bigger mention here. Salon's Glenn Greenwald found buried in the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental funding bill a provision to override FOIA laws, retroactively, and block the public release of all torture photos. Here's an excerpt from his post, which was also posted to Boing Boing today: The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman - called The The Detainee P...

The Senate voted today, 90-6, to take out $80 million from the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental that was included for the Obama administration to manage the closing of the Guantanamo detention center and to prohibit any funds in the bill from being used to transfer detainees to the U.S. Click through for a list of the six senators that voted to keep the funds in the bill.