Posted on 06/22/2006 8:51:09 AM PDT by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON - The Senate has rejected a proposal to make the Bush administration withdraw all combat troops from Iraq in the next year. It was the first of two votes today on Democratic proposals to pull troops out of Iraq.
Democrats demanded that the U.S. begin withdrawing troops from Iraq this year, while Republicans echoed President Bush's call to stay the course ahead of Senate votes on Thursday that illustrate the choice facing voters in midterm elections this fall.
"Withdrawal is not an option. Surrender is not a solution," declared Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who characterized Democrats as defeatists wanting to "cut and run" from Iraq before the mission is complete.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in turn, portrayed Republican leaders as blindly following President Bush's "failed" policy, and said: "It is long past time to change course in Iraq and start to end the president's open-ended commitment."
The GOP-controlled Senate is voting today on two Democratic proposals to start redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq this year. The vote comes a week after both houses of Congress soundly rejected withdrawal timetables.
Both proposals — offered as amendments to an annual military bill — were expected to be defeated, mostly along partisan lines.
Republicans argued the United States must stay put to help the fledgling Iraqi government while Democrats demanded the Bush administration make clear that American forces won't be in Iraq forever.
"We must give them that support and not send a signal that we're going to pull possibly the rug out from under them," Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., said.
"It is time to tell the Iraqis that we have done what we can do militarily," Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., answered.
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have staged bitter partisan debates for two weeks, with both sides maneuvering for the political upper-hand in a midterm election year.
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans welcomed the Democratic-engineered debate because it highlighted divisions in the Democratic Party little more than four months before Election Day and as the GOP is trying to overcome polls showing the public favors a power shift in Congress to Democrats.
Democrats, for their part, tried to deflect attention from differences in their party on Iraq, even though the debate was over two separate Democratic proposals on the fate of U.S. troops.
One of those proposals, sponsored by Feingold and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, with redeployments beginning this year.
The other proposal — which most Democrats and their leadership support — calls for the administration to begin "a phased redeployment of U.S. forces" by year's end. The nonbinding resolution would not set a deadline of when all forces must be withdrawn.
The Bush administration says U.S. troops will stay in Iraq until Iraqi security forces can defend the country against a lethal insurgency that rose up after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
Senate Republicans opposed any timeline. They said a premature pullout and a public pronouncement of any such plan would risk all-out civil war, tip off terrorists, threaten U.S. security and cripple the Iraqi government just as democracy is taking hold.
In turn, almost all Democrats chastised Republicans for walking in lockstep with Bush and they accused him of failing to articulate a plan for the way ahead in Iraq. Democrats said it is time for troops to start coming home and for Congress to send a clear signal that the U.S. presence is not indefinite.
Sensitive to talk of a divided party, Democratic aides circulated a memo from a Democratic pollster suggesting that Republicans will pay a price in November for standing with the president's war policies. But Republicans dismissed that notion.
Democrats also played down concerns, voiced privately by some party strategists, that the Kerry-Feingold call for a "hard-and-fast" deadline is hindering the party's efforts to project a unified position on Iraq for the fall.
Still, those dismissals did not explain why Democratic leaders spent more than a week trying to write a "consensus" proposal that they hoped would persuade Kerry and Feingold to drop their own, which would set a "date certain" for ending the U.S. combat mission.
In the end, the two potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidates were not swayed and votes on the separate proposals were scheduled.
That looks just great! Neat ideas you have!
Thankyou bitt! Think they'll fall?
Another very clever graphic.
Gopher rocks!
Thanks for the ping!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssd3206A8tg&search=nazi
Daffy Duck fights the Nazis
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.