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Senate Rejects Call to Withdraw Troops
Yahoooo via AP ^ | 6/22/06

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.


TOPICS: Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 109th; bugout; congress; cutandrun; iraq; oif; resolve; staythecourse; troopwithdrawal; ussenate
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1 posted on 06/22/2006 8:51:13 AM PDT by areafiftyone
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To: All

Looks like only 13 Dems voted for troop Withdrawal!


2 posted on 06/22/2006 8:51:57 AM PDT by areafiftyone (Politicans Are Like Diapers - Both Need To Be Changed Often And For the Same Reason!)
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To: areafiftyone

Curious. They don't tell us the vote totals. Anyone know what the vote was?


3 posted on 06/22/2006 8:53:15 AM PDT by MNJohnnie (The US Military. We kill foreigners so you don't have too.)
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To: areafiftyone
Looks like only 13 Dems voted for troop Withdrawal!

Ins't that more than last time? The tide is turning...Republicans in disaray. Schedule another debate. ;-)

4 posted on 06/22/2006 8:53:58 AM PDT by rhombus
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To: areafiftyone

And they're on the vaguer start withdrawing at the end of the year one. It looks like a virtual-party-line vote.


5 posted on 06/22/2006 8:54:10 AM PDT by steveegg (If the illegals would turn Mexico Red if they were forced there, why wouldn't they do that here?)
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To: areafiftyone; JennieOsborne; /\XABN584; 3D-JOY; 5Madman; <1/1,000,000th%; 11B3; 1Peter2:16; ...
KERRY CUT AND RUN PLAN GETS 13 VOTES !!!!


6 posted on 06/22/2006 8:54:18 AM PDT by davidosborne (DavidOsborne.net)
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To: MNJohnnie
13 Ayes
86 Nays
7 posted on 06/22/2006 8:54:27 AM PDT by areafiftyone (Politicans Are Like Diapers - Both Need To Be Changed Often And For the Same Reason!)
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To: areafiftyone; JennieOsborne; /\XABN584; 3D-JOY; 5Madman; <1/1,000,000th%; 11B3; 1Peter2:16; ...
KERRY CUT AND RUN PLAN GETS 13 VOTES !!!!


8 posted on 06/22/2006 8:55:14 AM PDT by davidosborne (DavidOsborne.net)
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To: areafiftyone
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.

The dems tried to get rid of the Kerry-Feingold proposal of withdrawal by 7/1/07 because even they recognized it was CUT AND RUN and nothing else, and the dems are trying to portray themselves as something OTHER than CUT AND RUN. Just what that is, I don't know.

9 posted on 06/22/2006 8:55:33 AM PDT by hsalaw
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To: areafiftyone
In an 86-13 vote, the Senate turned back a Democratic proposal that would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, with redeployments beginning this year. A second vote on another Democratic proposal to begin withdrawing, but with no timetable for the war's end, was planned immediately afterward.

Buried at the very end of the Asso Propaganda story. Should of been the banner headline. So yet again AP trys to cover up Democrat political disaster

10 posted on 06/22/2006 8:56:52 AM PDT by MNJohnnie (The US Military. We kill foreigners so you don't have too.)
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To: areafiftyone; JennieOsborne; /\XABN584; 3D-JOY; 5Madman; <1/1,000,000th%; 11B3; 1Peter2:16; ...
KERRY CUT AND RUN PLAN GETS 13 VOTES !!!!

NEXT UP IS THE LEVIN CUT AND RUN PLAN !!


11 posted on 06/22/2006 8:57:20 AM PDT by davidosborne (DavidOsborne.net)
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To: areafiftyone
The Levin Amendment will go down also but by a smaller margin than JFK's.

The MSM will undoubtedly report these two votes as a CHANGING TIDE towards TROOP withdrawal & redeployment, rather than major DEFEATS for both.

12 posted on 06/22/2006 8:57:39 AM PDT by PISANO (We will not tire......We will not falter.......We will NOT FAIL!!! .........GW Bush [Oct 2001])
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To: areafiftyone

Curious that there is no vote tally in the article.


13 posted on 06/22/2006 8:57:51 AM PDT by Road Warrior ‘04 (Kill 'em til they're dead! Then, kill 'em again!)
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To: areafiftyone
The Democrats keep slamming the door in their own face. As for the Drive By Media polls, they're been trumpeting that half the year. There's no substance to it or else the Democrats would be able to carry the American people with them on the War. They can't do so no matter how hard they try. If I was a betting man, I'd say the odds are good nothing will change after November.

(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")

14 posted on 06/22/2006 8:58:19 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: Bushbacker1

LOL That's because the AP is having oxygen tanks sent over to them.


15 posted on 06/22/2006 8:58:37 AM PDT by areafiftyone (Politicans Are Like Diapers - Both Need To Be Changed Often And For the Same Reason!)
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To: MNJohnnie

That was curious, maybe the AP doesn't want to scare Dems that most of their own leaders rejected their insane calls to cut & run.


16 posted on 06/22/2006 8:59:31 AM PDT by soloNYer
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To: davidosborne
NEXT UP IS THE LEVIN CUT AND RUN PLAN

Or as Senator McConnell calls it "The CUT & JOG PLAN".

17 posted on 06/22/2006 8:59:39 AM PDT by PISANO (We will not tire......We will not falter.......We will NOT FAIL!!! .........GW Bush [Oct 2001])
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To: areafiftyone

Compliments of MNJohnnie....

In an 86-13 vote, the Senate turned back a Democratic proposal that would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, with redeployments beginning this year. A second vote on another Democratic proposal to begin withdrawing, but with no timetable for the war's end, was planned immediately afterward.


18 posted on 06/22/2006 9:00:01 AM PDT by IrishMike (Democrats .... Stuck on Stupid, RINO's ...the most vicious judas goats)
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To: PISANO

LOL !!


19 posted on 06/22/2006 9:00:22 AM PDT by davidosborne (DavidOsborne.net)
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To: rhombus
Seven more than the last vote. The Democrats have yet to convince a majority of their party to embrace the kook position to commit suicide now.

(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")

20 posted on 06/22/2006 9:00:35 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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