Renegade Waiter

I spoke to Andy LaBarr (not sure if that’s the correct spelling) at Congressman John Dingell’s office in the Key Bank building in downtown Ypsi. I told Andy that I was there to deliver the signatures I collected as a volunteer in my community of Ypsilanti to end the war in Iraq. He thanked me for the signatures and said he would forward them to the DC office.

Standing in the office doorway, I asked Andy what Mr. Dingell’s recent efforts were to end the war and how it was going. Andy said that September would be the showdown on the war since May’s supplemental $100 billion that Dingell voted for and passed would run out at the end of that month. I told Andy that when I met with Mr. Dingell at his old Washington St. office a couple of years ago urging him to end the war, he told me that the best thing I could do to end it would be to elect Democrats in ’06 since his hands were tied as his party was out of power. Obviously, we did that, and we still have this god-forsaken war.

Andy said that Dingell has been trying to end it by supporting the May war funding bills which included a timetable for withdrawal, and that once Bush’s vetoes rained down on Congress and were sustained as expected by everyone this side of Mars, Dingell supported the timetable-less $100 billion to continue the war because, get this, Dingell feared that if they didn’t give Bush the money, Bush would raid Social Security to fund the war. HA!

First of all, that would be blatantly illegal, an impeachable offence, and as I told Andy, absolutely politically impossible for any president. Dingell is trying, if Andy is representing him correctly, to excuse his continuing of the war in order to protect Social Security!

I pointed out that according to my petition Dingell is out of step with our community’s will to “vote against any funds for military action of any kind in Iraq except for the safe withdrawal of all our armed forces.” Andy acknowledged that, and asserted that Dingell was in 100% compliance however with the other three petition demands: supporting “immediate withdrawal” (not true, because immediate withdrawal equals immediate cessation of funding, a la Rep. Kucinich’s bill); full funding of veteran benefits; and reconstruction aid under Iraqi control.

Andy said that he would address immediate cessation of funding with Dingell. This is of course the primary issue and the only way Congress can indeed end this war.

Andy also said that as Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Congressman Dingell was not a key player on the efforts to end the war in the Finance and Foreign Policy committees, to which I reminded Andy that as Dean of the House, the oldest and longest-serving member, Dingell commands a lot of respect from his colleagues and is a natural leader. If only he would lead on ending the bloodshed going on as we speak, in our name. . .