Politics & Power Quote by John Conyers

Conyers frames Iraq as a double failure: a moral one paid for in blood and a civic one paid for in cash. Calling it an "Administration's Iraq misadventure" is doing pointed work. "Misadventure" is a deliberately minimizing word for something catastrophic; it sidesteps the post-9/11 patriotic script without sounding anti-soldier, and it pins ownership on the executive branch rather than the nation. The subtext is impeachment-adjacent accountability: this wasn't an inevitable war, it was a choice, and choices have authors.

The line about taxpayers is a political lever, not an accounting note. Conyers is threading constituencies that don't usually sit together: war skeptics, fiscal hawks, and voters exhausted by a conflict that had metastasized into a permanent budget item. "One more penny" turns appropriations into a matter of principle, a bright line meant to deny the war its most renewable resource: congressional funding.

Then comes the careful rhetorical pivot that defined Democratic anti-war messaging in the mid-2000s: separating support for troops from support for the war. "Give our troops the supplies they need to get out... safely" anticipates the accusation of "cut and run" by making withdrawal itself the pro-troop position. It's exit strategy as patriotism.

Context matters. Conyers, a longtime House institutionalist and a prominent critic of the Bush administration, is speaking into a moment when Iraq had become less a "mission" than a quagmire, with casualties mounting and public opinion turning. The repetition of "Let's" is not poetry; it's a whip count, turning sentiment into marching orders: stop funding, plan the exit, bring them home.