Posted on 01/31/2007 5:31:19 PM PST by shrinkermd
Two senators leading separate efforts to put Congress on record against President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq joined forces Wednesday, agreeing on a nonbinding resolution that would criticize the plan.
Sens. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., and Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., had been sponsoring competing measures opposing Bush's strategy of sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to the war zone, with Warner's less harshly worded version attracting more Republican interest. The new resolution would vow to protect funding for troops while keeping Warner's original language expressing the Senate's opposition to the troop buildup.
The resolution could well gain more support from members of both parties than Levin's and Warner's separate versions had been attracting. It lacks Levin's language saying the troop increase is against the national interest, and it drops an earlier provision by Warner suggesting Senate support for some additional troops.
It also is likely to pose a threat to the White House because of its potential appeal to Republicans who have grown tired of the nearly four-year war and want a chance to express their concerns. The White House has been hoping to avoid an overwhelming congressional vote criticizing Bush's handling of the war.
"It's been a hard work in progress," Warner said of his resolution, which has been struggling to win support of 60 senators so as to prevent a filibuster.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
These people are looking for a way to please the antiwar, moonbat left and they cannot be permitted to prevail in their goal to defeat the United States of America.
President Bush got a standing o today in Wall Street. Many believe this is because of the economy. Perhaps, but the President is sticking to his beliefs which are designed to protect us; hence, many cheer when they see him and keep still because the nutroots and their followers are everywhere.
How did the GOP put such non conservative hacks like Warner and Lindsey Graham in positions of power in the Senate. It is prepsoterous.
If these Senators think they're so tough, why don't they make it a BINDING resolution.
WOW a joined "non binding" resolution against victory by defeatists and traitors in the Senate. And the liberal media is so orgasmic about this of course not wanting to accept the bitter truth that these are "no binding" resolution because the Senate is simply impotent to do anything and I am glad that the Senate is impotent. The Founding Fathers were very wise to make only one Commander in Chief who runs wars and foreign policies and that is the President of the United States of America.
I want to see the debate on this one as my two Senators Inhofe and Coburn have weighed in for the President and against the wimps!
Warner has been a weakling on national defense for as long as I can remember, but now he's really jumping the shark.
Who the hell is the Senate minority leader? Mitch McConnell? The least the damned Republican leadership can do is cut off all of Warner's pork until he behaves himself.
For the past six years nobody has been punished for straying off the reservation. Warner must want to be the next McCain, because McCain managed to get away with it every time.
I think next week we will have the debate and we will have traitors and defeatists on record, not that we have not have seen them before on record. The bad news about these non binding resolution is that it gives aid and comfort to the enemy.
What pathetic losers. Thank God Senate Republican Leader McConnell has all ready told the scum he has the 40 votes to fillbuster it. It is a totally useless PR stunt that does ONLY one thing. As General Petraus told these losers, this crap only encourage our enemies.
Exactly! I cannot wait to see my two OK Senators Inhofe and Coburn get some face time. Both of their emails that I posted are solidly with the President, our troops and the Iraqis.
I will NEVER send a dime or help out any lowlife Republican that dares to demean this effort. Warner is a nightmare and should retired from the Senate like yesterday.
Overall, the debate over troop levels in Iraq is not what matters - victory is what matters. I believe now is the time for us to look within ourselves and ask
I will ask them another question: " Are you giving aid and comfort to the enemy by your defeatist speeches and defeatist attitude?"
They need to answer both!
Military Matters: Variables in Iraq
By WILLIAM S. LIND
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(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.)
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- One way to look at the situation in Iraq is to try to identify variables, elements that could change. Without change, the war is likely to end with U.S. troops having to fight their way out, if they can.
The military situation in Iraq is not a variable.
All that can change is the speed of the U.S. defeat.
Some actions might slow it, although the time for such actions, such as adopting an "ink blot" strategy instead of "capture or kill," passed long ago.
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Other actions could speed the U.S. defeat in Iraq, an attack on Iran chief among them.
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It now looks as if the Bush administration may have realized that an out-of-the-blue, Pearl Harbor-style air and missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is politically infeasible. Instead, the White House will order a series of small "border incidents," U.S. pinpricks similar to the raid on an Iranian mission in Kurdistan, intended to provoke Iranian retaliation. That retaliation will then be presented as an Iranian attack on U.S. forces, with the air raids on Iranian nuclear targets called "retaliation." Fabricated border incidents have a long history as causes of war. Adolf Hitler used one as an excuse for his Sept. 1, 1939 attack on Poland.
As President George W. Bush made clear in his Jan. 10 speech on Iraq, his policies are not a variable. He will pursue the neo-conservatives' dreams all the way.
That leaves the U.S. Congress, and it may well be the key variable in the equation. 2008 is not that far away, and electoral panic continues to spread among Hill Republicans. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., is the first conservative Republican senator to break with the administration, opposing the "surge." Conservatives have a central role to play here, because if they turn openly against the war, Bush will lose his base.
But the Democrats hold both houses of Congress, so the main burden of ending a failed enterprise will fall on them. At present, they seem unwilling to go beyond symbolic but ineffectual measures, such as passing "non-binding resolutions." Why? It may be that they are paralyzed by a false understanding of the war, one stated by Vice President Dick Cheney on "Fox New Sunday" when he said, "We have these meetings with members of Congress, and they agree we can't fail... "
In fact, we have already failed. The war in Iraq was lost long ago. In terms of the administration's objective of a "democratic Iraq," which Bush re-stated in his Jan. 10 speech, it was lost before the first bomb fell, because it was unattainable no matter what we did. Now, not even the minimal objective of restoring an Iraqi state is attainable, at least until Iraq's many-sided, Fourth Generation civil war sorts itself out, and probably not then. Events in Iraq are simply beyond our control; the forces our invasion and destruction of the Iraqi state unleashed far overpower any army we can deploy to Iraq, surge or no surge.
Once Democrats accept and announce that Congress cannot lose a war that is already lost, they will have the freedom of action they need to get us out. Polls suggest the public will go along; most Americans now realize the war is lost, regardless of what President Bush may say or do.
It is probably true, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., constantly reminds us, that chaos will follow an American withdrawal. But that chaos became inevitable, not with America's withdrawal (it is already happening, even with U.S. troops present), but with its destruction of the Iraqi state. Again, the Democrats need to make this point to the American people, and make it often.
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Now he says McCain sees Chaos and he interprets that to mean in IRAQ......I Believe McCain .....meant Chaos in many more places than IRAQ......
WOW! Thanks for the ping on this one. I agree with you about McCain talking about this leading to more chaos in the region. They left out that part. McCain has been standing tall on Iraq which is why I believe the media is now not full supporters of the McCain Straight Talk Express.
They claim to be conservative.....
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ABOUT THE FREE CONGRESS FOUNDATION
Washington is full of "think tanks," places that produce books and papers about particular policy questions. So what's different about the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation?
Free Congress Foundation is politically conservative, but it is more than that: it is also culturally conservative. Most think tanks talk about tax rates or the environment or welfare policy and occasionally we do also. But our main focus is on the Culture War. Will America return to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture? Or will we continue the long slide into the cultural and moral decay of political correctness? If we do, America, once the greatest nation on earth, will become no less than a third world country.
For a detailed description of the Free Congress Foundation click here
I get emails from them and don't have a clue how I ended up on their email list -- never went to their website. To be truthful I didn't pay much attention to their emails either. Guess I will have to look closer now.
Does it matter? they are defeatists and traitors.
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